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A M E R I C A N C I N E M ATO G R A P H E R • F E B R U A RY 2 0 1 0 • T H E W O L F M A N – C H R I S M E N G E S, A S ...

Author: Martha Winterhalter (Publisher)

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A M E R I C A N C I N E M ATO G R A P H E R • F E B R U A RY 2 0 1 0 • T H E W O L F M A N – C H R I S M E N G E S, A S C , B S C – R E D O N E C A M E R A – S U S P I R I A • V O L . 9 1 N O. 2

FEBRUARY 2010

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Don McCuaig, ASC, CSC y earliest memories of film are of sensory experiences involving popcorn and soda pop, plus a wide-eyed enchantment with the larger-than-life images on the screen. Fate stepped in when I became a student lens maker in the military, and I was soon thereafter handed a camera and told to shoot the sunset. “American Cinematographer was incredibly helpful at the inception of my cinematography career, and it remains as valuable to me as my light meter. For decades, AC has provided me with the opportunity to experience my colleagues’ work through up-close and personal looks at sets, the sharing of technical information, and anecdotes about managing stage and location dilemmas. “I remain a perpetual student of my craft, and AC continues to provide an informed resource for information about both film and digital media.”

©photo by Owen Roizman, ASC

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— Don McCuaig, ASC, CSC

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Photo of Randall Einhorn by Joel Lipton exclusively for Schneider Optics

“On ‘The Office,’ our shots must appear real – documentary style – as if we are capturing the moment. That real feel grounds the subject matter for our audience. But ‘real’ implies an imperfect look like blown-out windows. And, when you’re working in HD, ‘blow out’ can look horrible. That’s where Schneider HD Classic Softs™ are my go-to tool. They turn a blow out into a nice bloom. And because HD is so unforgiving, I always use a quarter or a half HD Classic Soft on our actors. This takes the edge off the HD and gives them a look that is both real and attractive at the same time. I use filters to help with things I can’t control so I choose the matchless quality of Schneider glass. Whether I’m the Director or the Cinematographer, Schneider filters make the good things great and the bad things better.”

Director and Cinematographer Randall Einhorn is a two-time Emmy nominee for his work on the series Survivor. He has shot and/or directed over 113 episodes of The Office and directed

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The International Journal of Motion Imaging

On Our Cover: The full moon transforms Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) into a snarling werewolf in The Wolfman, shot by Shelly Johnson, ASC. (Photo by Frank Ockenfels, courtesy of Universal Pictures.)

FEATURES 32 46 56 68

Bad Moon Rising Shelly Johnson, ASC pens a firsthand account of his work on The Wolfman

Artistry and Conscience Chris Menges, ASC, BSC receives the Society’s International Award

Working With the Red AC technical editor Christopher Probst offers a hands-on assessment of the Red One camera

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Terror in Technicolor Luciano Tovoli, ASC, AIC recalls his visual strategies for the 1977 horror classic Suspiria

DEPARTMENTS 8 10 12 18 78 82 88 90 90 92 94 96

Editor’s Note President’s Desk Short Takes: What’s in the Box? Production Slate: Fish Tank • Dollhouse Post Focus: Offhollywood Digital New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index In Memoriam: Marc E. Reshovsky, ASC Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up: Paul Cameron

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— VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM TO ENJOY THESE WEB EXCLUSIVES — Q&A: John Cassaday on directing Dollhouse Podcasts: Werner Herzog and Peter Zeitlinger on Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans • Barry Markowitz, ASC on Crazy Heart • Richard Crudo, ASC interviews Victor J. Kemper, ASC about The Friends of Eddie Coyle

F e b r u a r y

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The International Journal of Motion Imaging

Visit us online at

www.theasc.com ———————————————————————————————————— PUBLISHER Martha Winterhalter ————————————————————————————————————

EDITORIAL EXECUTIVE EDITOR Stephen Pizzello SENIOR EDITOR Rachael K. Bosley ASSOCIATE EDITOR Jon D. Witmer TECHNICAL EDITOR Christopher Probst CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Stephanie Argy, Benjamin B, Douglas Bankston, Robert S. Birchard, Bob Fisher, Simon Gray, Jim Hemphill, David Heuring, Jay Holben, Mark Hope-Jones, Noah Kadner, Jean Oppenheimer, John Pavlus, Chris Pizzello, Jon Silberg, Iain Stasukevich, Kenneth Sweeney, Patricia Thomson ————————————————————————————————————

ART DEPARTMENT CREATIVE DIRECTOR Marion Gore ————————————————————————————————————

ADVERTISING ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Angie Gollmann 323-936-3769 FAX 323-936-9188 e-mail: [email protected] ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Sanja Pearce 323-908-3114 FAX 323-876-4973 e-mail: [email protected] ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Scott Burnell 323-936-0672 FAX 323-936-9188 e-mail: [email protected] CLASSIFIEDS/ADVERTISING COORDINATOR Diella Nepomuceno 323-908-3124 FAX 323-876-4973 e-mail: [email protected] ————————————————————————————————————

CIRCULATION, BOOKS & PRODUCTS CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Saul Molina CIRCULATION MANAGER Alex Lopez SHIPPING MANAGER Miguel Madrigal ———————————————————————————————————— ASC GENERAL MANAGER Brett Grauman ASC EVENTS COORDINATOR Patricia Armacost ASC PRESIDENT’S ASSISTANT Kim Weston ASC ACCOUNTING MANAGER Mila Basely ASC ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE Corey Clark ————————————————————————————————————

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American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 90th year of publication, is published monthly in Hollywood by ASC Holding Corp., 1782 N. Orange Dr., Hollywood, CA 90028, U.S.A., (800) 448-0145, (323) 969-4333, Fax (323) 876-4973, direct line for subscription inquiries (323) 969-4344. Subscriptions: U.S. $50; Canada/Mexico $70; all other foreign countries $95 a year (remit international Money Order or other exchange payable in U.S. $). Advertising: Rate card upon request from Hollywood office. Article Reprints: Requests for high-quality article reprints (or electronic reprints) should be made to Sheridan Reprints at (800) 635-7181 ext. 8065 or by e-mail [email protected]. Copyright 2007 ASC Holding Corp. (All rights reserved.) Periodicals postage paid at Los Angeles, CA and at additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA. POSTMASTER: Send address change to American Cinematographer, P.O. Box 2230, Hollywood, CA 90078.

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American Society of Cinematographers The ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but an educational, cultural and professional organization. Membership is by invitation to those who are actively engaged as directors of photography and have demonstrated outstanding ability. ASC membership has become one of the highest honors that can be bestowed upon a professional cinematographer — a mark of prestige and excellence.

OFFICERS - 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

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This month’s cover story on The Wolfman (“Bad Moon Rising,” page 32) comes straight from the source: cinematographer Shelly Johnson, ASC, who offers a first-person account of his strategies for the show. The article is filled with insights that provide valuable context for the filmmakers’ creative choices. “A key decision production made early on was to shoot a large portion of the film on location, a different stylistic approach than the one taken on the stagebound Universal classic,” Johnson writes. “The idea was to ground the story in reality and integrate our storytelling elements into that setting. I liked this idea, particularly for our night scenes, which we wanted to shoot at a much larger scale than is possible onstage.” In discussing his work, Johnson contends that the best images are those that support good stories, soulfully told: “When I think back on the cinematography I’ve admired over the years, it’s usually not the prettiest film or the film with the most dazzling action footage that impresses me. Although I respect those types of movies, the films that get inside me with their emotional treatment of a story are the ones that hit home.” Chris Menges, ASC, BSC certainly grasps the value of impactful narratives, which is just one of the reasons he will receive the ASC International Award later this month (“Artistry and Conscience,” page 46). No less an authority than Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC pronounces Menges “probably the greatest cinematographer working today.” Meanwhile, the self-effacing Menges maintains that what inspires him are “good writing and a good story, and hopefully something with political energy.” Over the course of his illustrious career, Menges has seen camera technology advance by leaps and bounds. With the advance of digital-imaging chips, today’s cinematographers confront more choices than ever while deciding which format to use on a given project, but the Red One camera has generated so much interest — and debate — that we felt compelled to examine its facets in depth, particularly after our most recent reader survey revealed significant interest in the topic. AC technical editor Christopher Probst has put the Red through its paces on dozens of shoots, and he assesses the camera in a thorough piece (“Working With the Red,” page 56). Readers have also requested more historical articles, so we’ve obliged with a look back at one of the most visually spectacular horror films ever made, Dario Argento’s occult chiller Suspiria, shot by Luciano Tovoli, ASC, AIC (“Terror in Technicolor,” page 68). In helping director Argento mount his masterpiece of operatic mayhem, Tovoli imbued the film with vivid primary colors that give it the feel of an inescapable acid trip — a daring strategy that caused the cinematographer’s loyal crewmembers some concern: “I was always telling the production designer and scenic painter, ‘More red! More blue!’” Tovoli remembers. “I made the same recommendation to my very patient gaffer, Alberto, and, like a good friend, he asked me, ‘Are you sure? It’s becoming quite disturbing!’ And to my inalterably happy face he asked, ‘Are you searching to be fired?’” Tovoli persevered, and his instincts lent the nightmarish images great power: Suspiria is now considered a classic of the genre, proving yet again that risk is often rewarding.

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Stephen Pizzello Executive Editor

Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.

Editor’s Note

Stefan Sonnenfeld

. Film back to film are coming to le op pe y s it so easy obably wh , which make de Which is pr tu ’s ti at la th image le exposure gives me an it d has incredib An s t. se h save time rk with on t with — whic ar st to light and wo n atio om HD erything fr color inform on makes ev loaded with ti lu so g all re in d er g. Consid e unmatche look amazin in post. Th b we proven e un th add an spots on at you, why ws transfers to ro th on ful. s a producti just beauti the surprise , man. It’s lm Fi x? mi to the workflow in commercials ing work on s award-winn Fallen is a mpromise. Hi co venge of the to Re s se 2: fu rs re me ld or io n fe sf ot en an m nn Tr o/ So d co m /g Stefan Trek an rs at ko da k. such as Star ies and othe or st and features s hi that. Hear testament to

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President’s Desk Does anyone set out to make a bad movie? I don’t mean in a tongue-in-cheek way, where you purposely put in dialogue and situations that are blatantly ridiculous to elicit a laugh. I mean in a really earnest, “I-hope-this-is-the-worst-movie-ever” way? I don’t think so. In fact, I think the bad movies we think of as guilty pleasures are the ones whose makers were convinced they had Citizen Kane II on their hands. I was thinking about this as I leafed through one of my favorite books. It’s a collection of the blandest postcards you could ever hope to find, the kind that look like they came off a dusty metal rack that had been in a truck stop somewhere off the interstate for decades. The book is called, appropriately, Boring Postcards (compiled by Martin Parr and published by Phaidon). Even though the book is filled with images like obscure turnpikes that no one would ever care about, and a factory that makes a ball bearing in only one size, as you go through the book, you instinctively start to wonder about the thought process involved in the images. Someone set up the camera there, where the building would look as flat as architecturally possible, and someone else thought that picture was worth making into 10,000 postcards. It becomes an almost hypnotic journey of discovery as you study each postcard and wonder why the photographer chose to do an aerial shot of a factory that looks like nothing from the sky. It certainly takes a great deal more effort to make an entire feature film than to take a photo, so aspiring to mediocrity would not seem to be high on a filmmaker’s list of goals. In my personal collection, I have more than 10,000 movies on DVD and Laserdisc. When I recently inventoried them to weed out duplicates, I discovered I had a large number of films that others would call trash. Sure, I have Fellini’s 81⁄2 and several different versions of D. W. Griffith’s silent films, along with milestone movies from every era in the history of cinema. But next to those, just as neatly shelved and categorized by genre, are titles that would not be given a moment’s thought by any serious student of cinema: The Pom-Pom Girls, The Bloodthirsty Butchers, Battle of the Amazons and The Naughty Stewardesses. And I had seen each of them more than once. There are a lot of one-shot wonders in my collection, filmmakers who came out of nowhere and were never seen again after their one bad opus. But the ones that are especially impressive actually carved out entire careers making films that the average Godard fan wouldn’t think twice about. Take Al Adamson. The first time I saw The Naughty Stewardesses at a drive-in, I was blown away by the Ronettesstyle title music and the graphics. Al worked in every exploitation genre, from biker chicks to horror flicks, and you could tell the man loved making movies when you watched one of his five-day epics. Hikmet Avedis was the king of the tawdry sexploitation film, with credits such as The Stepmother, Dr. Minx and Scorchy. His film The Teacher, though marketed as a sexy coming-of-age comedy, actually went into dark territory by killing off the main character at the end (and it was Jay “Dennis The Menace” North!). And what can I possibly say about Andy Milligan that The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! hasn’t already said? When I was an instructor at Columbia College in Chicago, I made my class go see a movie called Ms. 45, directed by Abel Ferrara. It’s an exploitation film about a mute girl who is assaulted and gets revenge on all the men in New York. I had seen it at a grindhouse and was impressed by the intensity of the performances, the edgy look of the low-budget lighting, and the filmmakers’ attempt to do something more than what was expected from such a movie. It was still an exploitation film, but it was an experience that remained in your mind long after you left the dank smell and sticky floors of the theater. It entertained and excited your imagination. So, by all means, celebrate Kurosawa, Kubrick and Coppola, because great cinema is an uplifting experience. But keep your other eye open for those movies that live on the ragged edge of acceptability. You just might be surprised at how good bad cinema can be.

Michael Goi, ASC President

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February 2010

American Cinematographer

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Short Takes

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Crafting What’s in the Box? By Iain Stasukevich

The science-fiction short film What’s in the Box? hit the Web shrouded in mystery. Viewers didn’t know whether it was a mobile-phone commercial or the trailer for an adaptation of the video game Half-Life. In fact, Tim Smit — who co-wrote, directed, shot, acted in and designed visual effects for the short — intended the project to be a submission for a director’s workshop, not the viral sensation it became. Told from a first-person perspective, What’s in the Box? follows an unnamed scientist as he attempts to escape the terrifying effects of an experiment gone horribly wrong. Smit is cagey about answering the film’s titular question, but the 24-year-old Dutchman does reveal something about his own influences. He grew up on video games and Hollywood action movies, but because the Netherlands doesn’t have much in the way of an entertainment industry, he chose to pursue a career in science and make short films in his spare time. “Film is something I’ve 12

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always been interested in, and even though my career choices took precedence, the interest never went away,” he says. Indeed, while studying nanoscience at Radboud University in Nijmegen, Smit produced and directed videos for the school, and in 2007, he participated in a “fake trailer” contest for the film Grindhouse. For his entry in the Grindhouse competition, Rise of the Dirtnappers, he won a Sony HDR-SR5 Handycam. The lightweight hi-def camera records to an internal hard-disk drive and uses a 1⁄3", 2.1-megapixel CMOS sensor to capture 1920x1080 HD images. It proved perfect for shooting What’s in the Box? “I was interested in first-person shooters [video games], particularly Half-Life, because they let you look through the eyes of the main character,” says Smit. “I wanted to do something like that with film, but I didn’t have access to actors or professional gear.” He and co-writer Thibaut Niels devised a treatment in which “the viewer would be the main character, and I’d only need a few people to assist me.” That main character is a scientist who wakes up on the

American Cinematographer

Images courtesy of Tim Smit.

The woodshed at right was one of the 3-D elements created for the short film What’s in the Box? Director, cowriter, cinematographer and visual-effects artist Tim Smit used Autodesk 3ds Max to construct the real woodshed’s crumbling counterpart, and he executed the final composite in Adobe After Effects.

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Right: An early CG effect reveals ominous clouds converging around a pair of towers. Below: Smit enhanced abandoned streets — which were captured in camera by shooting early in the morning — with CG rubble.

floor of a laboratory, disoriented and sporting a bloody nose. Rushing to a window, he sees ominous clouds converging on a pair of nearby towers. He retrieves a small, black box with a pulsing red ring and aims it toward the towers, and it emits a surge of energy that causes the towers to explode. Retreating from the window, he dons his Computer Brain Interface (a headband that provides an informative heads-up display, as in a first-person-shooter video game), grabs a few accoutrements and, still carrying the box, exits the building. In addition to the SR5, which Smit mounted to a skate helmet, the filmmaker captured some shots with a handheld Sony HDR-HC1. He kept both cameras at their widest zoom setting for maximum depth-of-field, and set the 14

February 2010

shutters to 1⁄250 for outdoor scenes and 1⁄50 for indoor scenes. In the opening sequence in the lab, Smit operated the HC1 while Niels provided the main character’s hands. “I needed to have total control over the camera,” says Smit. “We tried using the helmet camera at first, but I wasn’t fully able to see what the camera was seeing, so I ended up [handholding] the camera over Thibaut’s shoulder.” He used only the location’s existing fixtures to light the scene. Outside, cars, bicycles and personal effects litter the street, their owners strangely absent. A futuristic cityscape looms in the distance. The earth trembles, and fiery debris rains down from the sky. No sooner does the scientist take refuge in an abandoned bus than armed soldiers in protective white suits American Cinematographer

flank the vehicle, their electronically filtered voices cutting the silence. For this sequence, Smit wore the SR5 helmet rig, freeing his hands to work with props; he was able to work completely on his own until the soldiers appear. Smit designed and animated all of the visual effects in Adobe After Effects (which he also used to color correct the short) and Autodesk 3ds Max. “My main interests are environmental effects and explosions, but I’m not a professional digital artist, so the most difficult stuff — like the towers exploding, and the sky and clouds — required a lot of trial and error,” he says. He did, however, capture the empty streets entirely in camera, which “was quite tricky to do,” he recalls. “We shot most of our stuff very early on, between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m., when the majority of pedestrians were still at home. For the scene inside the bus, we looked for a street that wasn’t a major road and had a dead end. We found an industrial area of Nijmegen and asked the businesses nearby if it would be okay to film there, and then we dressed it up with cars and the bus, which we got for free for an hour if we promised to show the logo of the bus company.” When two of the soldiers enter the bus, the scientist straps a strangelooking gadget to his hand and points it at the nearest soldier. A thrumming

Clockwise from top left: Smit demonstrates the helmet-cam rig he used to capture a first-person perspective; created in 3ds Max, this gunship proved to be one of Smit’s biggest visual-effects challenges; the director's concept art for a soldier; two soldiers as they appear in the short.

sound fills the air, and the soldiers double over in pain. The scientist escapes out the vehicle’s back door and runs down the street; suddenly, two rocket-propelled missiles tear through the sky and obliterate a house at the end of the block. A gunship descends, spewing hot lead into the street. The scientist ducks into an empty house, but not before a soldier tags him with a bullet. “For the running scenes, we had the HC1 mounted to a stabilizer,” says Smit. “It was a simple system, a combination of metal rods and weights, that we built in a couple of hours. It looks like a ‘T’; I just mounted the camera to the top of the horizontal bar, and I’d hold [the stabilizer] out in front of me. That restricted me to one arm [to use in frame], but it gave the running shots a bit more steadiness.” The gunship, created in 3ds Max, 16

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proved to be one of the most challenging effects elements. “The majority of the effects are 2-D, because I’m not so skilled in character animation or making 3-D models, although I knew specific effects would call for that,” says Smit. He learned to use the software by taking advantage of Internet tutorials and instructional books; in the latter category, Deconstructing the Elements With 3ds Max, by Pete Draper, was especially helpful. “I researched the artists that inspired me and just kept practicing,” says Smit. The only other element of What’s in the Box? that utilized a 3-D model is a woodshed that the scientist uses for shelter before it’s blown open by the soldiers. Smit took digital stills of a real woodshed and built its crumbling counterpart in 3ds Max. Using the SR5, he shot the smoke and dust elements against a greenscreen American Cinematographer

set up in his back yard. Visual-effects composites and editing were then performed in After Effects. For post work, Smit downscaled the 1920x1080 footage to 960x450 to “put less strain on my computer.” After it was uploaded to YouTube, What’s in the Box? soon topped 1 million views, and Smit has since received offers to expand the project into a feature. In the meantime, though, he’s busy keeping up with viewers’ demands for more, creating puzzles to unlock new content on the film’s Web site, www.whatsinthe box.nl. As for the master’s degree in nanoscience, he says, “The things I want to do in the future are not related to physics at all. The knowledge I’ve gained at university helps me think about things and understand them better, and that definitely helps me as a director.” ●

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Production Slate

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Hard Lessons By Patricia Thomson

From the beginning of their professional collaboration, director Andrea Arnold put Robbie Ryan, BSC through his paces. “The first shot I ever asked Robbie to do was the opening in Wasp,” Arnold says, referring to her 26-minute drama about a single mother who is unable to feed her children and makes some unwise choices. “I asked if he could be on [actress] Natalie Press’ face as she ran down a flight of stairs with four kids. He ran down backwards!” Wasp (2005) went on to win the Academy Award for Best LiveAction Short, and since then, Arnold and Ryan have continued their collaboration with Red Road, which won Cannes’ Prix du Jury in 2006 (AC April ’07), and Fish Tank, which made a splash at last year’s Cannes and AFI film festivals. For Fish Tank, which retains the raw naturalism of Arnold’s prior films, Ryan was once again running down stairs and through cramped quarters. The film focuses on 15-year-old Mia (Katie Jarvis), a high-school dropout who lives with her party-girl mother (Kierston Wareing) and prepubescent sister (Rebecca Griffiths). Mia’s solace is hip-hop dancing, which she practices alone in an empty flat. One 18

February 2010

day, her mother brings home a new boyfriend, Connor (Michael Fassbender), who soon moves in. Easygoing and attentive to both daughters, Connor conquers Mia’s wariness with a mix of paternal care and charm, and the inexperienced girl is soon grappling with feelings for him that are not familial. One of Arnold’s chief concerns was to foster viewer empathy for her troubled protagonist. “I knew Mia might be hard to like, but I believe if you can see the world from her perspective, you can find some empathy for her, so I wanted the camera to stick close to her and experience the world the way she does,” she says. “I hope Fish Tank will help people fear teens like Mia less.” Scenes were shot in chronological order. “I did that mainly for Katie because she’d never acted before,” explains Arnold. “I wanted her to feel she knew where she was day by day. We shot the last scene on the last day, and I feel Katie had really changed and grown — it showed in her face.” Sequential shooting was facilitated by the proximity of key locations, most of which were in adjacent apartment towers in Essex, England. Three side-by-side flats served as Mia’s apartment, the production’s equipment room and the green room. Unfortunately, chronological shooting also meant most

American Cinematographer

Fish Tank photos by Holly Horner, courtesy of IFC Films.

In a scene from Fish Tank, shot by Robbie Ryan, BSC, Connor (Michael Fassbender) tries to forge a bond with his girlfriend’s daughter, Mia (Katie Jarvis), during a family outing.

Mia’s escape from family pressure is hip-hop dancing, which she practices in an empty apartment in her housing project.

major scenes were saved for the end of the shoot. “With a normal schedule, the ‘bigger’ or more technical scenes tend to be jumbled around, but shooting sequentially, you end up with a heavy section at the end because of the dramatic arc,” notes Ryan. “That dawned on me halfway through prep! It was fine, but we were a bit wrecked.” Ryan shot Fish Tank in 35mm using three Fuji film stocks, mainly Eterna Vivid 160 8543. Working with Hugh Whittaker at Panavision’s U.K. office, the cinematographer chose a Panaflex Millennium XL as his main camera because of its top-mounted mag, and because he and Arnold wanted to use Primo Close Focus lenses. “We used the whole range, wide and tight,” he notes. “There was a lot of ND filtering going on.” 20

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The film’s unusual 1.33:1 aspect ratio had several inspirations. Arnold recalls that when she supervised a 4x3 transfer of Red Road for television, she grew to like the intimacy of the frame. Also, she was smitten by Polaroid photos she’d seen in a recent exhibition at the Tate Modern (Street and Studio: An Urban History of Photography), and by Polaroids in Andrei Tarkovsky’s autobiographical collection and Barbara Hitchcock’s The Polaroid Book. When she and Ryan tested 35mm, 16mm and high-definition video for Fish Tank, Ryan shot the 35mm full-aperture, and when they viewed the tests at Soho Film Lab, “it looked lovely, very home-movie,” says Ryan. Arnold immediately decided 1.33:1 was “absolutely right” for Fish Tank: “It suited the small rooms; it was intimate and put American Cinematographer

Mia very much in the center of the frame; and it made things feel a little more claustrophobic, which underscored Mia’s frustrations.” To achieve the 1.33:1 frame, the filmmakers had to forego the photochemical finish they originally intended and create the smaller frame digitally within the 1.85:1 frame. With colorist Rob Pizzey at Ascent 142 Features, Ryan strove to use the digitalintermediate process to create images that “were as close to the photochemical process as possible, warts and all,” he says. “Our first few weeks of rushes were heavier and more contrasty than what Rob was doing in his initial grade, so they became his reference.” Ultimately, Ryan was satisfied with what he was able to achieve in the DI. “I think the visuals are nice and honest, true to what we shot.” The cinematographer’s team on Fish Tank was documentary-size: three camera assistants, a gaffer and an electrician. He recalls, “The sparks and gaffer weren’t used that much; they were good, but they were always waiting for some mission to go on!” There was no grip. “Andrea bans tripods from her set,” Ryan continues. “On a shoot that’s completely handheld, you sort of need a grip even more, because you need someone to pass the camera to when you finish the shot — the Millennium is quite heavy! But they say if you don’t need a tripod, you don’t need a grip. Poor John Watters, my focus puller, often had to hold the camera for me.” Ryan eventually recruited a friend to be a grip trainee. “He

Ryan finds an angle on Jarvis as 1st AC John Watters stands by.

had no experience, but he could hold a camera!” Panavision also supplied the production with an Arri 2-C, which Ryan used for landscapes and some atmospheric details. “It’s very light, and any time there was a lull in the shooting, I could run off and shoot loads of cutaways,” he says. “That made my day.” The lighting package comprised mostly small instruments. “To be honest, the biggest light source [in Mia’s apartment] was the tellie!” says Ryan. A Nine-light Maxi-Brute was used to create or augment sunlight, and the crew augmented practicals with a mix of Kino Flos, Mini-Flos and Dedolights. “The Dedo is my favorite light because it does everything — it’s the best spotlight in the world; it can be a very intense floodlight; you can dim it; and it’s got a really long throw. Gaffers hate them because they’re tiny — most gaffers have very big hands — but they’re really versatile.” The largest movie light was a halfpanel Wendy Light on a 40' crane; this was used to light a large, open field Mia crosses at night. Framing for Academy Aperture took some getting used to. Portraiture worked 22

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beautifully, and Ryan appreciated the extra headroom. “It didn’t make the handheld so nauseous!” he notes. The challenge was framing multiple actors. “We just pulled back and made a wide two-shot, which is unusual for Andrea — she tends to be overthe-shoulder,” says Ryan. “Luckily, it didn’t occur too often.” A subtle shift in framing could tease out nuances in the main character, who is poised between vulnerable child and sullen teen. When Mia looks out the window and watches Connor leave for the first time, “we had a low angle, and it just didn’t feel right,” recalls Arnold. “I wanted to feel her interest and need, so I moved the camera higher, above her, and the change was incredible. She seemed younger, smaller, more fragile and very needy.” Ryan adds, “Katie had an innocent look from that angle, and when we discovered that, we tried to play on it throughout the film.” The handheld camerawork underscores the energy in high-adrenaline scenes, as when a panicked Mia runs after Connor when he leaves for good. The scene is a long, continuous shot that moves from apartment to parking lot, down two separate staircases and through two doors, all at American Cinematographer

top speed. “This was a really important scene, and there was no way it would have had the same effect if we’d done a static wide,” says Ryan. The unfettered camera enabled quieter moments as well. In one erotically charged scene, Connor finds a drunken Mia passed out in her mother’s bed. He carries her to her bedroom, removes her shoes and pants and tucks her in while the half-conscious teen watches stealthily. Ryan positioned the camera behind Jarvis on the bed, peering through the crook of her arm. “I love that shot because you totally have her point of view,” he says. On the soundtrack, her breath is heightened, and the frame rate is slowed to 40 fps. “It draws your attention to the sound, and sound design is really important for Andrea,” says Ryan. Slow-motion recurs in a few other key moments between Mia and Connor. “They’re intimate, sensual moments,” says Ryan. “We tried it at 48 fps and then came down to 40. It’s noticeably slow but has a subtlety that’s really quite good.” Arnold and Ryan coined a word for this slowmotion effect: “slooge.” After three collaborations with Arnold, “we just have a shared language,” says Ryan. They also have great respect for each other. Arnold observes, “You can tell so much about a photographer by the way he looks at a person through a lens. Robbie likes people, and that’s there in the way he frames them. He’s a poet with the camera.” “I’m lucky to be in this kind of working relationship,” says Ryan. “Sometimes you struggle to get what a director wants, and sometimes directors don’t know what they want. Andrea knows, and she’s happy we can achieve it. Long may it last!”

TECHNICAL SPECS 1.33:1 (1.85:1 original) 35mm Panaflex Millennium XL; Arri 2-C Primo Close Focus lenses Fuji Eterna Vivid 160 8543, Reala 500D 8592, Eterna 400T 8583 Digital Intermediate

➣

Right: Echo (Eliza Dushku) finds an outfit to match her newly imprinted persona in the Dollhouse episode “Belle Chose.” Below: Under the supervision of Adelle DeWitt (Olivia Williams, left), Topher Brink (Fran Kranz, second from left), Boyd Langton (Harry Lennix, second from right) and Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett), Echo sits down for a “treatment,” which will erase her imprinted personality.

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Redesigning Dollhouse By Michael Goldman

It had already been a high-stress morning for cinematographer Lisa Wiegand and the rest of the crew and cast of Fox’s Dollhouse by the time Joss Whedon, the show’s creator/producer, gathered them for a sit-down on a soundstage in mid-November. The team was not yet even halfway through another long filming day, with the entire cast participating in the final scene of the episode at hand, “The Attic.” Whedon announced that 20th Century Fox had decided to cancel the show. Production on “The Attic” and the final three episodes would continue, he added, and the entire second season would air. Dollhouse chronicles the story of a mysterious organization that wipes the minds of volunteers and reprograms them to perform particular missions for paying clients. The show quickly developed a cult following in its first season, battling its way to a second season despite borderline ratings. In its second season, the show switched from shooting 35mm to digital capture, and Wiegand took over the cinematographer spot from Ross Berryman, ASC, ACS. “Lisa was recommended by Rodney Charters [ASC, CSC], who shot our unaired 13th episode [‘Epitaph 1’] last season and brought her on as his B-camera operator — she had worked with him on 24,” Whedon explains. “We shot ‘Epitaph 1’ with digital cameras, but even before that experience, we felt we’d have to switch to digital if the show got renewed. Shooting that episode digitally was the wake-up call for me — I realized we could get more dramatic footage with less light and shoot real quickly, on a lower budget, and I wanted that energy in the show. “When Lisa interviewed for the job, her competence and intensity for working this way just sparked, and [producer] David Solomon and I fought to get her onto the show,” continues Whedon. “The network was a little leery because it was her first credit as a TV-series cinematographer, but we prevailed, and after that our good feeling about her work only increased.” Wiegand is eager to credit others for making the gig work out so well, as she demonstrates while picking at a salad American Cinematographer

Dollhouse photos by Carin Baer, Richard Foreman, Greg Gayne and Adam Taylor, courtesy of Fox Broadcasting Co.

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•|•

Cassaday Imprints “The Attic”

The Dollhouse episode “The Attic,” which finds Echo (Eliza Dushku) trapped in a perpetual nightmare in which she faces a mysterious villain named Arcane, marks John Cassaday’s directing debut in the episodic-television world. After directing TV news in Texas, Cassaday moved to New York and broke into the comic-book industry, illustrating such books as Desperadoes, Captain America, Planetary and, with Dollhouse creator/comic-book writer Joss Whedon, Astonishing X-Men. When Whedon offered Cassaday a turn behind the camera, Cassaday was eager to oblige. He spoke to AC about the experience, and here are some excerpts from the conversation: American Cinematographer: What did you think of the premise of ‘The Attic’ when it was presented to you? John Cassaday: When I read Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen’s script, I walked over to their office and said, ‘This is a gift. Thank you.’ It was tremendous, and I felt like it was tailor-made for me. This episode is kind of a condensed version of Planetary, which gave me a chance to dive into all kinds of different genres from one issue to the next. In ‘The Attic,’ we jump from Alice in Wonderland to slick scifi to the war in Afghanistan to a horror film. It’s been mind-boggling for me. Did the fact that the Attic hadn’t been seen onscreen before enable you to contribute to its actual design? Cassaday: A lot of it was in the script, but I was able to tinker with many facets visual. I’d swing by [production designer] Cameron Birnie’s office every day during prep, and we’d sketch different ideas. Among the pieces I helped design is a large tree that rests in the center of the Dollhouse set; it was something special to see my drawings become reality. There’s also an apocalyptic scene where we see what the future will bring, and it involved a big crane shot with a huge greenscreen; [visual-effects supervisor] Mike Leone and I

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•|•

would go back-and-forth about what I wanted to see [in the final image]. The episode’s nightmare landscape lends itself to visuals that are quite unlike anything we’ve seen before on Dollhouse. How did you feel about taking the show into uncharted waters? Cassaday: It was daunting, but there was also a comfort factor in that my episode didn’t have to conform to everyone else’s. There are moments within the Dollhouse where I had to maintain the established look, but then there are all these ‘dreams’ that allowed us to play in some uncharted territory. Your artwork shows a great understanding of light and shadow and an appreciation for their emotional impact. What was it like collaborating with a cinematographer to realize those effects in a live-action environment? Cassaday: The visuals obviously matter a lot to me, and more often than not, [cinematographer] Lisa Wiegand and her crew were making it look even better than what I hoped for. There’s a scene in Adelle’s [Olivia Williams] office where I wanted to create a film-noir look with heavy shadows and lights beaming through the blinds. Lisa and her crew set it up superbly. Adelle says something horrible and threatening to Topher [Fran Kranz]. She’s like a cat with a mouse, and when she threatens him, he backs up into this shadow that rests on his face, like he’s putting on a mask. You can still see him, but he’s trying to hide. It was a thrill to shoot, and putting it together in the edit was just as interesting — I felt a strong correlation between the editing process and breaking down panels on a comicbook page. — Jon D. Witmer To read our full interview with Cassaday, visit www.theasc.com/magazine in February.

American Cinematographer

A gnarled, snow-covered tree fills the center of the Dollhouse in one of the nightmare sequences in the episode “The Attic.”

during her lunch break. “This experience has reinforced how important my team members are, and I’ve had a great team on this show,” she says. “I’ve relied quite a bit on them. I’ve learned so much, and Joss has been completely supportive.” Once it became clear Dollhouse would transition to digital capture, it was Wiegand who made the choice to shoot 1080p high-definition video using Panasonic’s VariCam AJ-HPX3700, recording to P2 cards in the 10-bit 4:2:2 format (using the AVC-Intra compression scheme). She also worked closely with Whedon to reconstitute the look of the show, a change motivated in part — but only in part — by the switch to digital. “By the time we realized our budget would be cut, I was already a little frustrated with the pace [of production], and I thought we really needed a visceral, visual intensity to carry it all through,” says Whedon. “All these things came together. I realized we could save time and money and also rethink the visual design of the show, which I wanted to do anyway. “The main change Lisa helped me institute was to get more expressionistic — lots of sparks and pin spots and more depth and separation in the frame without actually putting up walls, and just letting things be a little more traumatic,” he continues. “I threw a little bit of my pedantic attachment

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Built onstage at Fox Studios in Los Angeles, the Dollhouse sets include (clockwise from top left) the primary twostory common area, DeWitt’s office and the dining area.

to realism to the wind and said, ‘Let’s go for it; let’s run more handheld with lighter cameras and let the visuals work with us.’” Wiegand offered the production a few camera options, but she strongly preferred the VariCam, which is seldom seen in the episodic world. “We really liked the mobility of the Sony PMW-EX3s we used on the 13th episode last year, and we wanted something that could bridge the look of that episode and the look of the rest of season one, which was shot on 35mm in a different style,” Wiegand explains. “So I chose an ENG-style camera, larger than the EX3 but not too heavy. I knew we would do a lot of handheld work and would want to be really mobile, so ENG seemed the way to go. I didn’t feel [Panavision’s] Genesis or [Sony’s] F35 or F23 would lend themselves to some of the smaller sets and all the handheld work.” Furthermore, she felt strongly that it was more important to consider setup speed and chip sensitivity over the advantages of a larger chip. She calls the VariCam’s 2⁄3" chip “a happy ENG medium. We give up some of that nice falloff and depth28

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of-field you get with bigger chips, and a bit of latitude, but we gain speed and lighting advantages. The Red [One] would have given us more latitude because it captures more data, but we would have needed more light; also, we shoot so much action that we felt the VariCam was better suited to being bumped around. It was sort of like shooting with reversal film instead of negative: we had to nail our exposures right off. But that was okay. We had our monitors and waveforms. “A lot of shows that go from film to digital use the F35 or the Genesis largely because they’re trying to preserve or create a film look digitally,” she adds. “We weren’t concerned with that. We were fine with letting it feel different, letting it feel digital. The show is sci-fi, it’s about technology, and it didn’t need to feel like film.” Wiegand and associate producer Chris Cheramie worked out the tapeless workflow, which comprised recording to P2 at 1080p AVC-Intra 100, with the VariCam set to the Film-rec 600% setting for increased latitude. (The show usually used two cameras rigged with Panasonic AJAmerican Cinematographer

CVF100G color viewfinders. Other Panasonic models were incorporated for secondunit and specialty work periodically.) Robin Charters, Rodney Charters’ son, was added to the crew as digital-imaging technician and built a plan to back data up to D5 tape in post. But on set, they relied exclusively on P2 cards and hard drives. “We shot straight to P2 cards, and on set, Robin downloaded the cards to drives, creating double backups, and then sent the cards and one hard drive to Level 3 [in Burbank], where they created dailies from that data and backed up the data to D5,” says Wiegand. “The 3700 only goes to 30 fps progressive, so we couldn’t overcrank as much with that model, but whenever we did slo-mo shots, we used the Panasonic 2700, which shoots up to 60 fps but at 720p. We got a little less resolution, but for those shots, we were willing to give that up for the ability to shoot 60 fps.” There were other adjustments to consider, she adds. She opted almost exclusively for Zeiss DigiZoom lenses, and that meant that “because the camera is an ENG camera, we do have to back-focus every time we change a lens, and sometimes after a camera has warmed up a little bit.” But she emphasizes that the adjustment was merely a matter of developing a rhythm for doing things a slightly different way. “Our focus pullers worked in two different ways. Our A-camera focus puller, because that camera was mainly handheld and moving quite a bit, liked to be near the camera and pulled by distance, so he had to back-focus a lot more than our B-camera focus puller, who pulled off a monitor because he was often on very long lenses and moving a lot less.” ➣

Dollhouse creator/ producer Joss Whedon and Dushku share a moment between takes while shooting the episodes “The Public Eye” and “The Left Hand.”

Beyond altering the method of acquisition, the biggest corresponding change instituted by Wiegand was the modification of how sets were lit. Whedon says the lighting changes were about “creating different moods for each set — giving each set its own character and a more sci-fi feel than what we had the first season.” Wiegand accomplished that by reevaluating virtually everything. She explains,

“We took out a bunch of lights that were on the set, searching for a contrastier look. We added a lot of blue to Topher’s office, making the main area of the Dollhouse warmer so that his office and the imprint room [where memories are erased and reprogrammed] are a lot bluer, a lot cooler. We changed many things, mainly trying to achieve an image with more contrast and color separation.

“There were a lot of space lights in the main body of the Dollhouse last season, and we removed about half of them and brought in large Chimeras with tight grids to focus the light and keep it moody,” she continues. “Some of our smaller spaces had a lot of high-tech equipment, like machinery and monitors, which we liked to make glow. We purchased some Rosco LitePads, which we used a lot on 24, and taped them on monitors to throw a nice, cool glow on people. They’re 5600°K, and since I mix color temperatures a lot, they helped make a nice contrast from the look of last season. One of our favorite color combos was a tungsten light with Half Blue and Half Plus Green gels. Allowing the characters to travel through different color temperatures gave the image more depth than straight white light.” Whedon now says that he “can’t imagine shooting film for television any more.” In particular, he’s in love with being able to judge imagery on set off a 17" Panasonic monitor without having to wait for dailies. That’s not to say the dailies color-

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correction phase, handled by colorist Richard Flores at Level 3, and the final online, also done at Level 3 by colorist Larry Field, weren’t important. Each day’s dailies normally went from Flores to Wiegand as JPEG files and standard-def DVDs. She also monitored Field’s work during the online process via ProRes files sent to her on hard drives by Level 3. Wiegand often distributed notes about the footage to the post team each day, but she notes that the rhythm she developed with Flores and Field gave both of them an intuitive understanding of how her imagery typically needed to be tweaked to fit the show’s visual schemes. That’s because the production utilized a proprietary look-up table on set that allowed Wiegand to “shoot less for the actual contrast we will have in the end,” she says. “The LUT expands our latitude somewhat so that we get more rendition out of highlights and shadows. But we basically treat the data more like a negative; we get more information than we’ll need, and then we can blow out highlights and crush blacks when we go into post, if we need to.”

28mm – 76mm

Cinematographer Lisa Wiegand (left) supervises a setup on location in Malibu for “The Left Hand” while A-camera operator Jay Hunter and 1st AC Reza Tabrizi find the frame.

Wiegand never did finish her salad — duty called. Even as Whedon wandered off to ponder the best way to wind up his show with a post-apocalyptic bang that connects threads briefly visualized in ‘Epitaph 1,’ Wiegand’s focus remained firmly on “The Attic.” As she packed up her lunch, she conceded, “It’s been a totally insane day.” And it wasn’t done yet.

17mm – 80mm

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●

24mm – 290mm

Shelly Johnson, ASC offers a firsthand account of his visual strategies for The Wolfman. by Shelly Johnson, ASC •|•

Bad Moon

Rising

A

s I’m on my way to the airport to board a flight to London, my phone rings. It’s Donna Langley at Universal. “Shelly, I want you to know that this is a dark picture,” she says. “The images need to have atmosphere and texture, and we’re looking for a dark and moody look. I want to make sure you’re up for it.” This was the first time I recall a studio asking me to make a film dark — I’m usually the one trying to sell them on the idea. I assured Donna that I was indeed up to the task, and that I was excited about creating a uniquely dark world, a world in which the Wolfman could exist. The Wolfman is the story of an estranged man’s journey home. Sent away to America as a child after witnessing his mother’s murder, Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) returns to his family’s English estate decades later, following his brother’s violent death. There, he reconnects with his father 32

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(Anthony Hopkins) and learns the full breadth of the old man’s manipulations and about the family’s mysterious secret: the dark curse Lawrence will inherit through an attack by a mysterious creature. He also discovers, for the first time since his mother’s death, the true meaning of unconditional love, shown to him by Gwen (Emily Blunt), the fiancée of his departed brother. Upon reading the script, I was taken by the presence of conflicting elements sharing the same space in the storytelling: sanity and insanity, love and hate, selfishness and generosity, truth and lies. The story was constructed using these opposites to convey the characters’ complex emotions, their inner struggle to find balance between their true feelings and desires and those affected by the curse of the werewolf. I wanted my visual plan to evoke these same complexities. My initial instinct was to integrate opposing elements and have them share the same

American Cinematographer

Photos by Frank Connor. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Opposite: A full moon transforms Lawrence Talbot into a snarling beast. This page, top: Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) returns to England to investigate his brother’s mysterious death. Middle and bottom: Shelly Johnson, ASC adjusts a remote head while working with a Technocrane, which he and director Joe Johnston favor for its verisimilitude. “Joe prefers to work from the Technocrane because it’s flexible and fits perfectly into his directing style,” Johnson notes.

frame: light and dark, hard and soft, warm and cool, symmetry and asymmetry. The project had come to me only a few days prior to my arrival in London. Director Joe Johnston, with whom I had previously collaborated on Jurassic Park 3 and Hidalgo (AC April ’04), contacted me when he took over for the previous director, who had left the film. Joe was to have three weeks’ prep, and I was to have two — not a lot for a $100-million-plus undertaking of this scale. Joe is a true author of his movies. By that I mean he works in detail with www.theasc.com

February 2010

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Bad Moon Rising

Top: After Talbot is sent to an asylum, his father (Anthony Hopkins) pays him a visit. Middle: Even in close quarters, the two men don’t see eye to eye. Bottom: Talbot reflects on his brother’s fate while visiting his corpse in an ice-cooled morgue.

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the production designer, cinematographer, actors, editor, composer and sound editors to create a whole experience for the audience. I think his greatest gift is to keep the production team focused on story so that all of our large-scale technical decisions have a clear reason to be; they are incorporated into the movie in the same manner story beats are represented in the script. With so little prep time, I needed to find a way to connect with the production team, most of which had already been assembled, and also with the material. I began going through art books to cull ideas for my visual plan. I found my inspiration when I walked into the art department at Pinewood Studios on my first day: production designer Rick Heinrichs had developed an impressive amount of concept art that had a most haunting presence. Rick was also there to show me his plans and concepts, which were quite complex and meticulous. I appreciated his manner, as he was instrumental in getting me fully aligned with the vision he and Joe had been developing during their short time together. In the concept art, Rick envisioned telling the story within a world of shadows and evocative forms. He American Cinematographer

intended for many of his dark mansion sets to be lit by means of reflective light sources, such as large bounce flats, to give shape to the dark moldings as opposed to enormous amounts of incident light. This was something I was considering implementing, too, so I was inspired by Rick’s take on the material. A key decision production made early on was to shoot a large portion of the film on location, a different stylistic approach than the one taken on the earlier, stagebound Universal classic. The idea was to ground the story in reality and integrate our storytelling elements into that setting. I liked this idea, particularly for our night scenes, which we wanted to shoot at a much larger scale than is possible onstage. In thinking about the night photography, I knew the moon had to have a haunting, enigmatic presence. I chose to let the moonlight transform as the story progressed. I didn’t want to hang the same moon effect over each night scene; rather, I wanted to let the scene tell me what the moon should look like. At one point in the story, Lawrence travels to a large gypsy camp at the edge of the woods to meet Maleva (Geraldine Chaplin), who warns him about the curse of the werewolf. In the camp, moonlight appears in different ways — as a soft source overhead, a 20'x20' soft box loaded with 30 space lights; as a silhouette source seen through the distant trees, created with rows of 20Ks backlighting ground fog; and, finally, as a lit sky, achieved by positioning an array of Dinos low and backlighting a night skyscape created by towering clouds of smoke. All of these hard and soft sources were able to coexist within our world and create a single overall texture for night, when belief surrenders to superstition. This type of idea extended to all of our large location shoots, many of which were planned for early in our production schedule. Our gaffer was John “Biggles” Higgins, who had come aboard with the prior team. He is a wonderful man, and he helped me

Top: Powerful shafts of light illuminate the interior of the Talbot family estate. Middle: Candlelight predominates in a dining-room sequence. Bottom: Softboxes illuminate another room in Talbot Hall, a set built by production designer Rick Heinrichs and his crew.

www.theasc.com

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Bad Moon Rising

Top: Gwen (Emily Blunt), the fiancée of Talbot’s deceased brother, attempts to elude the prowling werewolf. Middle: Large lighting units provide backlight ambience for a climactic sequence in which torchbearing men hunt the menacing creature in a forest. Johnson went to great lengths to lend the final chase a dramatic ambience. “I believed I could underlight the forest with 20Ks placed [in a spot where the forest floor descended],” he explains. “The sequence could be built upon images of foreground forms moving before tangled, dramatic backgrounds. This lighting scheme allowed us to look up without limits and create a sense of scale for our characters within their surroundings.” Bottom: Large, crane-mounted softboxes provide an eerie atmosphere.

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enormously when it came to preparing efficiently. I talked to him a great deal about my desire to approach the lighting with a fearless mindset; I wanted to create an aggressive look that would emerge from darkness and focus on what the audience needed to see. It was my desire to have the sets and locations creep out of the shadows. I wanted to see into depth but wanted that depth to exist only in form, not detail, and I wanted to bring the scenes into light when it was appropriate. To this end, I made detailed lighting diagrams for Biggles and his rigging crew. He was familiar with working on this scale and always allowed ample time to place large cranes and pre-rig. This was invaluable because our night locations were immense. With Biggles’ help, we were able to focus 50 or 60 light placements in advance. When the production company arrived, we only needed to supplement the base lighting after Joe had had a chance to rehearse the scene. One of my favorite scenes takes place on a hilltop amid a primitive formation of standing stones. This is where Lawrence inherits the curse of the werewolf. It’s one of the few night American Cinematographer

Top left: A fully transformed Talbot vents his rage in the forest. Top right: A diagram illustrates Johnson’s setup for a gypsy camp and the surrounding woods. Bottom: Talbot learns about the werewolf curse after arriving at the camp. In this setting, Johnson mixed a variety of sources to create a believable ambience: “All of these hard and soft sources were able to coexist within our world and create a single overall texture for night, when belief surrenders to superstition … I wanted to see into depth but wanted that depth to exist only in form, not detail, and I wanted to bring the scenes into light when it was appropriate.”

scenes we shot onstage, and we did so because we needed to control fog effects — in the scene, the creature pursues Lawrence through a gray fog. A 360degree set was constructed on H-Stage at Shepperton Studios; it featured a 360-degree painted backing and an exquisitely detailed foreground summit with Druid stones. In keeping with my desire to have opposing elements coexist, I created a moonlight source to project through a 16'-wide cutout in the top portion of the backing that was both hard and soft from the same direction. I formed a hard shadow using an open-face 18K gelled with 3⁄4 CTO and created a soft source from the same placement with an array of diffused Maxi-Brutes gelled with 1⁄4 CTB. The soft light gave us the wrap we needed for the fog to carry the light into some shadows, and the 18K gave us the glint we needed to bring the moonlight to the fever pitch required for the content of the scene. We shot most of the picture on Kodak Vision3 500T 5219, using Vision2 200T 5217 for day scenes. I was impressed with 5219 because it transitioned neatly to a nice, tight black that worked very well with the lighting style for The Wolfman. It’s my new favorite stock, and it reminds me of the first 160T 5293 stock that came out years ago and was discontinued after a very short run. Many people might expect a film like The Wolfman to have a widescreen www.theasc.com

February 2010

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Bad Moon Rising

Doctors in an operating theater watch in horror as Talbot transforms into a snarling manbeast. “The scene is sourced with gaslight, which has a natural falloff and an oddly discomforting appearance,” Johnson explains, adding that the look of this scene was inspired by the Thomas Eakins painting The Agnew Clinic. “The painting has a central subject under a full light that falls off quickly, rendering the audience members part of the glazed shadows. I emulated that type of light with two 8'x16' light boxes fitted with Light Control Grid.”

aspect ratio, but we shot it in Super 1.85:1. To me, 1.85 was appropriate because much of what is haunting Lawrence comes from above — the moon, the upper floors of Talbot Hall — and Rick had designed many of the sets with this vertical character. Framing for 1.85 was a nod to the style of the 38

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classic The Wolf Man (1941), and it also appeared to be the optimum choice for our storytelling. We worked with a crew of wonderful English collaborators. Acamera operator Des Whelan is an old friend who, fortunately, was available to join us on the show. Pete Cavaciuti American Cinematographer

operated the B camera, and Julian Bucknall and Craig Bloor were on focus. It’s not easy to go to a foreign country and work with people who are new to you, but this crew put a lot of themselves into this project, and they will always have my respect and gratitude. Key grip Gary Hymns worked proficiently with the 30' Technocrane, from which we shot nearly everything. Joe prefers to work from the Technocrane because it’s flexible and fits perfectly into his directing style. He and I seem to understand that piece of equipment and have a way of finding expression while designing with it, whether on location or in a tight set. Panavision U.K. provided our camera gear, two Panaflex Millennium XLs and Primo prime and zoom lenses. Joe prefers to use the 4:1 zoom whenever possible so he can make small adjustments between takes as the scene evolves. This is the third film I’ve done with him, and I always try to give him space to create; I’ll always lay a little extra dance floor or make sure there is an extra foot or two to adjust, or place the Technocrane arm so he can move in tighter or extend more laterally as he sees fit. I’ll always make an effort to light a bit deeper and wider than we discussed as well, so that Joe can take the actors further without feeling the burden of waiting for technical adjustments. I always want the set to be a creative place

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Bad Moon Rising

Top photos: Talbot explores his ancestral home with natural sources lighting the way — a candle at night and artificial “sunlight” in the daytime. Johnson reveals that the film’s many candlelit scenes required him to come up with a viable way to boost the illumination. “We shot a test and achieved our best look using doublewicked candles shot wide open on Primo prime lenses at T1.9 on our pushed 5219 … I’m fortunate that I was in an environment that allowed for creative solutions to emerge and was collaborating with a crew that could back up these ideas with a mastery of their craft.” Bottom: The werewolf bares his fangs.

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for him, never a technical toy store. Although The Wolfman is set in 1891, at the beginning of the electricity age, we decided that incandescent lighting would be present in the city, and candlelight would predominate in the countryside. Joe, Rick and I often discussed how this would serve as a visual representation of Lawrence’s journey into the past. I was in a quandary as to how to shoot many of our candlelit scenes. We had planned a number of shots in which Benicio would walk the length of a long, dark hallway with a solitary candle illuminating the space. Because I’m not fond of shooting at a T1.3, I decided to look at options for believably electrifying some candles. I am not accustomed to pushing film, but one day in our first week, I found myself in a situation where Joe needed one more setup at magic hour and we were out of light. We were losing the location the next day, so I force-processed the 5219 by 1 stop and rated it at ASA 800. To my surprise, the film pushed beautifully; there was only a slight increase in grain and no real contrast issues under our lighting conditions. The printer lights showed we were getting a true ASA800 rating from the process at Deluxe Laboratories in London. With that, I believed we had discovered how to shoot our candlelit scenes. We shot a test and achieved our American Cinematographer

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An uneasy Gwen makes her way through Talbot Hall with only candles to light her path.

best look using double-wicked candles shot wide open on Primo prime lenses at T1.9 on our pushed 5219. It was such a simple solution that I might not have explored it so soon if I hadn’t had to push that one, post-magic-hour shot. I’m fortunate that I was in an environment that allowed for creative solutions to emerge and was collaborating with a crew that could back up these ideas with a mastery of their craft. A central scene in the film takes place in an operating-room theater, where doctors who are trying to convince Lawrence that his afflictions are delusional are suddenly proved wrong when the full moon appears. The scene is sourced with gaslight, which has a natural falloff and an oddly discomforting appearance. To help establish an eerie presence in our mental-institution scenes, we referenced Thomas Eakins’ painting The Agnew Clinic, which depicts a Victorian Era medical procedure using a lone, monochromatic gaslight source. The painting has a central subject under a full light that falls off quickly, rendering the audience members part of the glazed shadows. I emulated that type of light with two 8'x16' light boxes fitted with Light

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Bad Moon Rising

Johnson frames Del Toro on one of the cinematographer’s favorite sets: a primitive formation of standing stones constructed as a 360-degree set on H-Stage at Shepperton Studios. The set featured a painted backing that completely surrounded a faux hilltop dressed with Druid stones. “In keeping with my desire to have opposing elements co-exist, I created a moonlight source to project through a 16'-wide cutout in the top portion of the backing that was both hard and soft from the same direction. I formed a hard shadow using an openfaced 18K gelled with ¾ CTO and created a soft source from the same placement with an array of diffused MaxiBrutes gelled with ¼ CTB.”

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STANDING STONES

3-31-08

Ground Row of single tube Flos. (216) Located under rostrum. (DMX)

E)

Topper

34'

16' Green Screen rigged to pullies pulled snug to perms to be lowered as needed for effects shots

Vertical Support

American Cinematographer

Control Grid. We suspended them from chain motors so we could remotely adjust the light level and angle as the scene unfolded. The set was built with a vertical aesthetic, which aided in recreating the feel of the Eakins painting. While scouting for a location for our climactic night pursuit through the woods, I found myself standing alone in Bourne Wood on a Sunday afternoon. Forests are always a bit of a challenge for cinematographers, because it’s difficult to light a thick forest without making it look like you’re using an array of movie lights. This particular forest had an extraordinary sculptural appearance, and I thought these forms could look particularly haunting at night. I found a spot of high ground where the forest floor descended and formed a small hill. I thought about using the low area as a light well; I believed I could underlight the entire forest with 20Ks placed there. This would be a new, exciting way to light night. The sequence could be built upon images of foreground forms moving before dramatic, tangled backgrounds. This lighting scheme allowed us to look up without limits and create a sense of scale for our characters within their surroundings. The final look is indeed an artificially lit forest, but I believe this type of aggressive source incorporated within the storytelling will engage the audience in an exciting way. With so many components coming together to form an overall look, I wanted to have one consistent element that could be integrated throughout the film and anchor all our visual ideas. I wanted the highlights to have a pearlescent, glowing look, and the coexisting blacks to be rich, having an ominous effect on values that adjoined them in the frame. Using sample images and Photoshop, I devised a look called The Black Layer Luminance technique. I showed my technique to colorist Jill Bogdanowicz at Technicolor along with the steps needed to accomplish the effect in Photoshop. Jill translated that into something she could implement in the digital-intermediate bay. She is quite a

Makeup expert Rick Baker demonstrates some of the steps required to “animalize” Del Toro.

genius. She takes a luminance key off the lower blacks and subtly defocuses them, and then she punches through those areas with silvery highlights and comes very close to what I did in my samples. We are combining that with a certain amount of desturation, and the total look gives a sense of richness with the heightened impression of anguish I was hoping to achieve. In discussing the cinematography

on a project of this size and scale, one can spend hours discussing how many 20Ks were lined up in a given place, or the technical intricacies of shooting a complex sequence. A cinematographer can also speak in artistic terms, discussing the intensity a composition might bring to a screen moment, or the storytelling attributes found in the color spectrum. Ultimately, though, the cinematographer is just one of the people 43

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Bad Moon Rising

Large arms were employed to light and shoot a city square.

involved in the creation of a film. Certain moments in a script will evoke different emotions in me than they would in anybody else. Everyone involved with a film brings to it his or her own, unique history, and everyone’s passion must coalesce into a finished

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work. This, to me, is the great intangible of filmmaking: what happens when specific people come together to tell a specific story. I believe that is one reason why crewmembers such as those we had in London can become emotionally

attached to a project. Filmmaking is an interchange of creative ideas that either hits upon a point of collaboration or doesn’t. I believe that when minds come together who are meant to be together, that creatively charged atmosphere is conveyed on the screen and directly to the audience. That’s how truly great films have affected me. When I think back on the cinematography I’ve admired over the years, it’s usually not the prettiest film or the film with the most dazzling action footage that impresses me. Although I respect those types of movies, the films that get inside me with their emotional treatment of a story are the ones that hit home. It’s a delicate phenomenon, because a cinematographer has to be ready to give of himself to an audience. Actually, I don’t think I was truly ready to do that, to step well outside of my safety zone in order to communicate an idea with the director and the actors, until just a few years ago. I had to learn

they could not claim cinematography to be a solitary form, but rather an essential component of the art of film. I think the collective spirit of the entire production team is what makes great things happen on the screen. For me, The Wolfman’s success will be measured by the truth with which it reaches the audience. ●

TECHNICAL SPECS Super 1.85:1 For smaller setups, such as this funeral cortege, dolly tracks and a pole-mounted fixture sufficed.

Super 35mm Panaflex Millennium XL

how to take a risk without being 100percent assured of the outcome, to trust the feeling that my concept was the appropriate direction to take. When I see or read interviews with my favorite cinematographers, such as ASC members Gregg Toland,

James Wong Howe, Conrad Hall and Allen Daviau, I notice that when they discuss their artistry, they almost always pass the credit for their accomplishments to another person. They shot some of the most incredible images in movie history, and they understood that

Primo lenses Kodak Vision3 500T 5219, Vision2 200T 5217 Digital Intermediate Printed on Kodak Vision 2383

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Artistry and Conscience Chris Menges, ASC, BSC receives the Society’s International Award for creating a litany of outstanding images. by Mark Hope-Jones •|• 46

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L

ater this month, director of photography Chris Menges, ASC, BSC will receive the ASC International Award in recognition of a 50-year career in film and television that has taken him to the far corners of the earth. It is a career that shows no sign of abating; he recently wrapped London Boulevard for firsttime director William Monahan and Route Irish for longtime collaborator Ken Loach. These latest two credits illustrate a common thread that runs through Menges’ work: the knack of teaming up with interesting new directors, often shooting their first films, and also sustaining relationships with directors across many years and many projects. Loach is a classic example: Menges made such an

American Cinematographer

Photos courtesy of Chris Menges, AMPAS and the British Society of Cinematographers.

impression on the director while operating the camera on Poor Cow (1967), Loach’s first feature, that Loach asked him to photograph the next one, Kes (1970), Menges’ first movie as cinematographer. Kes had a profound impact on British cinema and marked the beginning of a creative partnership that endures to this day. Other acclaimed directors who worked with Menges early in their careers and sought him out again include Stephen Frears, Bill Forsyth, Neil Jordan and Roland Joffé. The latter three established relationships with Menges during a period of intense creativity for the cinemataographer, when he abandoned documentaries and turned his full attention to shooting features. He won Academy Awards for two collaborations with Joffé, The Killing Fields (1984; AC Apr. ’85) and The Mission (1986; AC Feb. ’87); the latter also brought Menges his first ASC Award nomination. After he spent a decade focusing on directing, Menges returned to cinematography with Jordan’s Michael Collins (1996; AC Oct. ’96), earning another set of Academy and ASC nominations. He was nominated by the ASC and the Academy again last year, along with Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC, for Stephen Daldry’s The Reader

This page: Menges contributed stunning imagery to The Mission (1986), for which he earned an Academy Award (near left) and an ASC nomination (below). “The light in Colombia and Argentina was inspiring, and the crew was superb,” says the cinematographer, who tends to shun the spotlight. “[Producer] David Puttnam told me I should attend the Oscars because, as he rightly noted, the nomination belonged to the entire shooting crew.”

(2008), a film Menges took over when production delays and previous commitments forced Deakins from the project. “When I started out, Chris was kind of my idol — and always has been, actually,” says Deakins. “I think he’s probably the greatest cinematographer working today.” Menges was born just over a year into World War II in the rural county of Herefordshire, England, a short distance across the border from where he now lives in Wales. Coming from a family of musicians who worked in the theater, he developed an early interest in the arts. He had a www.theasc.com

cousin with a job at the BBC, and it wasn’t long before Menges’ interest gravitated towards filmmaking. At the age of 17, he was introduced to Alan Forbes, who would become an early mentor. “At that time, we were living in North London, and I became an apprentice to Alan,” recalls Menges. “He was an American making documentary films for the cinema and television in London. He was really the man who taught me the basics of cinematography, editing and sound. I was his assistant, and he was a one-man band, so I had a rich opportunity to learn different genres and techniques. February 2010

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Artistry and Conscience

Near right: Menges (right) deplanes with journalist Michael Parkinson in 1964 while covering the Cyprus Civil War and Zanzibar Revolution for the British TV program World in Action. Far right: Menges gives young actor David Bradley a “butcher’s look” while shooting Kes (1970).

He was a great teacher.” By the time Forbes returned to the United States, at the end of the 1950s, Menges had cut his teeth on a number of gritty social documentaries and dramas. He had also built up some useful industry contacts, and he quickly found a job in the cutting room at Derek Knight & Partners in Soho, which in turn led to work as a cameraman for Alan King Associates. One particularly influential person to whom he was introduced by Forbes was cinematographer Brian Probyn, BSC. Menges describes Probyn as “another very good teacher” and worked sporadically as his assistant on short films, including The Saturday Men (1962), which came straight out of the naturalistic tradition of Free Cinema. In 1963, Menges joined the World in Action team at Granada Television and swiftly became a highly experienced cameraman. Over the next few years, his working relationship with Probyn continued; it was for Probyn that he operated on Loach’s Poor Cow, Menges’ first taste of feature-film work. World in Action was a hardhitting, investigative-journalism program that aired in Britain from 1963 to 1998. “They sent me all over the place with really good journalists like Alex Valentine, Stephen Peet and Michael Parkinson,” says Menges. 48

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“We covered news stories such as the fighting in Angola, the uprising in Zanzibar, the civil war in Cyprus, Spain under Franco, and, most importantly for me, we went to South Africa during the time of apartheid.

“The things I go for are good writing and a good story, and hopefully something with political energy.” — Chris Menges, ASC, BSC

Armed with a Bolex and looking a bit like a student, I went up to Bulawayo in Matabeleland with Alex Valentine to make a documentary about the Ndebele’s support for the African National Congress, which was a real education. All of these things were American Cinematographer

amazing — to be that age and to be traveling, learning and seeing — but South Africa was important because when I was asked to direct A World Apart [1988], I knew I could film it in Bulawayo. I knew I’d have political support from the ANC groups I’d met and could give the city enough of a feel of Johannesburg, because, obviously, we couldn’t actually shoot the film in South Africa.” Experiences such as these made Menges an international filmmaker from the earliest years of his career. Many of the documentaries he shot involved traveling to dangerous regions and taking extraordinary risks, especially the films he made with director Adrian Cowell. Their first collaboration was Raid Into Tibet (1966), a 30-minute documentary that followed a group of Khamba guerrillas as they crossed the border into Tibet and attacked a Chinese military convoy. Menges, Cowell and journalist George Patterson accompanied the Khambas on a grueling trek across the mountains and filmed the raid. Several Chinese soldiers were killed during the attack, and the raiding party eventually fled when one of the guerrillas was shot. Menges and Cowell also worked together on a series of films about illicit opium production in the

Angola photo by Chris Wangler.

Top left: In 1964, Menges crossed into Tibet at an altitude of 19,000' with the Khambas, who attacked a Chinese military convoy. “We were chased back into Nepal by the Chinese army,” he says. Top right: Covering the civil war in Angola. Bottom: In 1969, Menges (right) makes his way through Vietnam with soundman Ivan Sharrock, “a friend and somebody to be with when all hell breaks loose.”

Golden Triangle. The pair had visited Burma during an earlier filmmaking tour of Southeast Asia, but their 1972-73 expedition into the Burmese mountains for The Opium Warlords (1974) proved far more treacherous. “We were with the Shan State Army, a group fighting for independence from Burma, and we had a lot of trouble,” Menges recalls. “Remnants of the Kuomintang [who fled China after losing a power struggle with the Communists after World War II] had come to Burma to run the opium trade, and they declared war on the Shan State Army. For a year-and-ahalf, they chased us from mountain to mountain, ambushing us and trying to blow us up. During the long march from northern Shan State to the Thai border, we carried our shot rushes in polystyrene boxes on mules — much of the footage remained exposed and undeveloped for over a year. The five mules with our rushes had big crosses on them, and our instruction to the army was that they were the only ones to save when we were ambushed.” The 1960s and 1970s were dominated by documentary work for

Menges, though he grabbed opportunities to build on his fiction-film experience between projects. “Having just come out of the Amazon with Adrian Cowell on The Tribe That Hides From Man [1970], where we were searching for the Kreen-Akrore [tribe] with the Txukahamae, I caught the train to Cheltenham the day after arriving back in London to operate on If… [1968]. That film was a learning www.theasc.com

curve for me and an important project for two reasons: one was working with [director] Lindsay Anderson, and the other was working with [cinematographer] Miroslav Ondrícek [ASC, ACK], who had shot A Blonde in Love [1965].” An appreciation for Czech cinema was one of the things that drew Menges and Loach together when they met on Poor Cow. “I February 2010

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Artistry and Conscience

Clockwise from top left: Menges (right) confers with cinematographer Miroslav Ondrícek (center) and Czech interpreter Jirina Tvarochova while serving as camera operator on If… (1968); finding a frame with director Neil Jordan (center) and operator Mike Roberts on Michael Collins (1996); learning “the ways of the cowboys” and “what makes Tommy tick” while filming The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005) with director Tommy Lee Jones; experiencing “harmony” with director Jim Sheridan (at camera) on The Boxer (1997).

suspect we were both profoundly affected by films coming from Czechoslovakia, such as Peter and Pavla [1964] and A Blonde in Love — Milos Forman’s early films,” says Menges. “Those films had a real sense of irony, of sensitivity, of catching the moment and of natural light. They were moving and also funny.” Loach recognized that Menges’ skills as a documentary cameraman could help give Kes a similar style. “Doing documentaries, you learn to catch everything that comes at you,” says Menges. “I’m sure that must have been partly what appealed to Ken 50

February 2010

about my work.” Though his documentary experience undoubtedly informed Menges’ approach to drama, the cameras generally used for the two genres differed far more at the start of his career than they do today. In 1963, when Menges joined World in Action, Éclair released the NPR, the first silent, portable 16mm camera with a coaxial magazine. “It was a revolution because you could pick it up and walk with it,” says Menges. “You had a reflex viewfinder that swiveled with your eye, so you could boom the camera up and down and your eye American Cinematographer

would stay with the eyepiece.” By contrast, “on Kes, the camera was in a huge, lead-lined blimp that took two people to lift it off the ground.” Interestingly, the freedoms and limitations of different formats and genres led Menges to the same conclusion: what the camera does is always subordinate to what is happening in front of it. Shooting handheld with the NPR, “you suddenly realized it’s no good getting great pictures if you can’t hear what people are saying,” he explains. “In a way, the real test when you’re on a film set is to shut your eyes and listen

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Artistry and Conscience

Capturing a contemplative moment on The Reader (2008). Menges shared the film’s cinematography credit with his good friend Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC; the duo earned Academy, ASC and BAFTA award nominations for their work.

to the dialogue.” On Kes, the equipment was cumbersome and the work rate slow, but for Menges, it was a fascinating experience because he learned so much about what makes a fiction film succeed. “The first thing about Kes is that it’s beautifully written,” he says. “The next thing is the sensitive direction and great acting, and then, almost down at the bottom of the list, are the framing and photography.” The catalyst for Menges’ eventual renunciation of documentary work was a British film he made in Spanish Harlem called East 103rd Street (1981). He explains, “It wasn’t until then that I realized I’m scared of documentaries, because I recognized that however hard you try not to exploit people, you can end up in a situation where you do. That film was put out in America, and I wasn’t consulted; it was about a family with a drug history, and I think I should have been allowed to discuss it with the family before it was broadcast in New York. Also, ATV got about $30,000 for the transmission, and I think that 52

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money should have been put towards something that helped the family and helped with addiction in New York. What they did was rotten, and that’s

“I think Chris is probably the greatest cinematographer working today.” — Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC

why I stopped.” Following this disquieting experience, Menges made a decisive transition into feature films. After shooting Looks and Smiles (1981) for Loach, he American Cinematographer

was asked to work on Angel, Jordan’s first film. “Neil is a writer from a totally different tradition,” says the cinematographer. “It was exciting because he didn’t know much about movies, and I was learning about Irish politics. For Neil, it was a true baptism of fire, and in a way, it was also that for me.” Another director to make a strong impression on Menges at that time was Alan Clarke, for whom he shot Made in Britain (1982). Menges describes Clarke as “probably the best director I’ve worked with other than Ken Loach. He was a complete inspiration because everything was Steadicam or handheld; every time we did a shot, he would harden it up and give it real energy. Alan was a champion of catching the moment. It was totally different from what Ken does, and yet they both have enormous energy and a kind of logic that serves the writing.” While working on A Sense of Freedom (1979) with director John Mackenzie, Menges met Forsyth, who later asked him to shoot Local Hero (1983). Set in a small fishing village on the west coast of Scotland, the film charmed critics and audiences alike; its exquisite location photography won universal praise and brought Menges his first BAFTA nomination. “Bill is a smashing bloke and a really good director,” says Menges. “I don’t know why the hell he doesn’t make more films. It was just a fabulous experience. One day, Burt Lancaster was sitting in his chair on the office set, and I was looking at his desk while we were waiting. I moved two of the pens on the desk, and this voice growled, ‘Don’t touch my props. They’re my memory.’ Even that was an education: actors’ props are important to them!” The accolades garnered by almost every film Menges worked on during that period led to one opportunity after another. “It probably helped that Kes was a well-liked film, and when Angel came out, [producer] David Puttnam agreed to have me on

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Above: Menges (in background, far right, with white sweater) won his first Academy Award for The Killing Fields (1984), directed by Roland Joffé (center, in dark shirt). Right: Examining storyboards for The Reader with director Stephen Daldry and script supervisor Susanna Lenton. “We had a few days to shoot a very complex set of ideas,” Menges recalls.

Local Hero,” says Menges. “Then, when Local Hero came out, Roland [ Joffé] asked me to do The Killing Fields, and Puttnam agreed to that as well.” Joffé was determined to give The Killing Fields, which is set amid the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, an authentic feel. “Roland wanted someone who’d been in a few bloody conflicts,” says Menges. “In addition to what happened in Burma, I’d done several films for the BBC in Vietnam. During prep, we went to Thailand and talked endlessly about how to give it the quality of the documentaries I’d shot in Saigon. The Killing Fields was an extraordinary film, and it was entirely Roland’s vision. A lot of

talented people gave their hearts to it, but he made that film, and as far as I’m concerned, it was Roland who won the Oscar for cinematography.” Before taking a break to try his hand at directing, Menges shot The Mission for Joffé, an experience he does not look back on as fondly as The Killing Fields, despite the fact that it earned him another Oscar. He is dismissive of his directorial efforts during the years that followed, though A World Apart won awards at Cannes and from the New York Film Critics. “At least two of the films I made were complete disasters, ill-conceived and badly made,” he says. “So to be invited back to shoot Michael Collins and to work with Neil [ Jordan] and [opera-

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Artistry and Conscience

In 1988, Menges directed his first feature, A World Apart, which he describes as his “best experience” on a set. He enlisted fellow BSC member Peter Biziou as cinematographer.

tor] Mike Roberts and all those actors was very, very important. It’s a film I warm to myself, and it was lucky that he asked me, because I was in a bit of a grump at that stage.” Since then, Menges has worked

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on a steady stream of interesting projects, including Jim Sheridan’s The Boxer (1997), for which he earned an ASC nomination (AC June ’98); Sean Penn’s The Pledge (2001); Jordan’s The Good Thief (2002); Frears’ Dirty Pretty

Things (2002); Tommy Lee Jones’ The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005); and Richard Eyre’s Notes on a Scandal (2006). “I think the things I go for are good writing and a good story, and hopefully something with political energy,” he says. “The problem is that what you read on paper may not necessarily turn out to be a good film. You can only give it your best and pray.” Menges continues to operate the camera on his films. “For me, looking through the finder during rehearsals and during a take helps me discipline my sense of framing, of how to catch a character, of light, and of how to tell the story. I believe that if you don’t operate, you lose a lot of those skills because you’re probably looking at a video monitor that gives you no real sense of the performance or the light.” When Deakins left film school in the mid-1970s, he sought Menges out to ask his advice about how to

become a documentary cameraman. “One of the first television documentaries I did was about a ’round-theworld yacht race,” says Deakins. “Chris and I were working for the same TV company at the time, and I’m sure he’d already turned the job down.” Menges recalls it distinctly: “Oh, God, I just couldn’t do it — be on a yacht going around the world and be sick every day!” Deakins took the project on and was excited to be using one of the cameras Menges had recently brought back from Burma. Two decades later, Deakins was equally excited to share cinematographer duties with Menges on The Reader. “I’m flattered to be on the same [title] card as him, really,” reflects Deakins. Since becoming an ASC member in October 2003, Menges has visited the Clubhouse and met with fellow members, but, he notes, “it’s a long way away from the Radnorshire hillside

Menges spends some quality time with an animal friend in Wales, where he has a home in a steep valley surrounded by moorland, trees and wildlife. “The farm pulls me back to earth,” he says.

where we live, surrounded by sheep! But I get American Cinematographer every month. I’ve been reading it since I was 17, and I find the combination of information and ideas totally exhilarating; without it, one could feel really

isolated and miss out on learning new ideas and new tricks.” As for the ASC International Award, he says, “I don’t know quite why I’ve been chosen, but I’m really thrilled.” ●

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Working S Withthe

Red

AC’s technical editor shares some tips and observations about shooting with the Red One digital camera. by Christopher Probst •|•

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ince the birth of cinema, it has been the cinematographer’s charge, if not calling, to wrangle the technical to serve an artistic goal, and the recent, rapid evolution of digital technologies has added layers of complexity to this challenge. Forging into new territories, experimenting with new media and pushing the boundaries of possibilities have always been check-boxes in our mad-scientist job description, and over the past decade I’ve had opportunities to explore the pros and cons of several digital motion-picture cameras, including Panasonic’s VariCam; Sony’s CineAlta family, which includes the F900, F950, F23 and F35 cameras; Panavision’s Genesis; Vision Research’s Phantom HD; and Red Digital Cinema’s Red One. Naturally, each of these platforms presented its own learning curve in terms of both practical handling and image control. AC ’s recent reader survey revealed significant interest in the subject of shooting with the Red, so my goal with this article is to discuss some aspects of that camera’s particular usage. I have shot some of my favorite projects with the Red, and I’m extremely proud of the imagery I have created with it, but the Red, like any other camera platform, is not perfect. I have so far used the Red to photograph more than 50 music videos and commercials. The first was the music video for Chris Brown’s “Forever,” which I shot in early 2008, when the camera was still fairly new in the marketplace. At that time, few rental houses had them, and even fewer rental houses or post facilities knew how to handle them. As with any new technology — and certainly with any new model of workflow — there were some growing pains. I’d shot loads of digital imagery with other platforms, but I quickly found that many aspects of working with the Red were unique to

American Cinematographer

Frame grabs and photos courtesy of Christopher Probst.

the camera. For example, early on, you could quickly get bogged down just trying to define the best codec to use so you could edit your files on an Avid; the Red was launched with a post protocol geared primarily toward using Final Cut Pro, leaving post facilities initially at a loss as to how to edit and online footage in other systems. There are several things you should take into consideration before selecting the Red for a job. It should first be noted that, in my opinion, the camera is presently not well suited for low-light, warm-colored scenes; its native color temperature is around 5,000°K, and the manufacturer recommends the camera be rated at 320 ASA. The camera designers’ decision to balance what I would regard as a medium-sensitivity sensor toward daylight was a little shortsighted. The permanent color-temperature bias of the Red is “locked in” at polar opposites of the real-world shooting conditions cinematographers typically face: we mainly need less sensitivity in daylight and more sensitivity in artificial lighting situations. Let me explain: If you’re planning to shoot an intimate, candlelit interior, you will likely be shooting in very low light levels in color temperatures near 2,000°K. No matter how you set the Red’s “viewing” settings — you can adjust the monitoring look-up table to display any color-temperature setting you desire — you will not be affecting how the “raw” image is recorded. This means you might be dramatically reducing the blue-channel information that the “blue-hungry” sensor receives. The result, depending also on your lighting and exposure, might be an objectionable amount of noise in the image. The “remedy” isn’t much of one: If you place a color-correction filter on the camera to compensate for using the daylight-balanced technology in a tungsten-or-lower color-temperature environment, you will need to use at least an 80C blue filter. An 80C absorbs more than a full stop of light,

Opposite and this page: The music video for Katy Perry’s “Waking Up in Vegas” was shot entirely on location in Las Vegas by cinematographer Christopher Probst (shown operating the camera in the middle photo on this page), who used Red One cameras (Build 20 of the firmware) and Arri Master Prime lenses.

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Working With the Red so if you apply it, your 320-ASA digital camera will be rated below 160 ASA. Most cinematographers would not select a 100-ASA or even 200ASA negative in a low-light circumstance. We would, in fact, probably use a 500-ASA tungsten stock and push it as much as one stop, yielding an ASA of 640-1,000, depending on how we rate the film and force-processing on our meter. The difference between shooting low-light scenes with 100-to160-ASA sensitivity vs. 500-to-1,000ASA sensitivity speaks for itself. Over the course of my experiences with the Red, I’ve grappled with how to best address this low-light problem. I almost always choose the fastest lenses possible, Zeiss Superspeed T1.3 primes or the newer Arri Master Primes, which are also T1.3. The Red is often selected based on budgetary limitations, and if that’s the case on your project, obtaining the costlier Master Primes will be tricky. On the music video for Katy Perry’s “Waking Up in Vegas,” however, we were able to obtain Master Primes. Las Vegas casino interiors, though adorned with a dizzying array of blinking, glowing and flashing lights, are actually quite dark. Shooting wide-open on Master Primes and balancing my supplemental lighting to the existing ambience allowed me to capture some of my favorite Red footage to date. As of this writing, Red Digital Cinema has said that when it releases its next camera, the Epic, later this year, One owners will have the option of upgrading the One’s sensor to the new Mysterium-X chip, which will reportedly offer increased sensitivity and reduced noise. The company’s literature does not provide an ASA rating for the new imager but suggests that the sensor performs comparably at around 800 ASA. This will be a great step toward solving the low-light problem, and I look forward to testing the upgrade when it becomes available. The Red One’s CMOS Mysterium sensor utilizes what is called a “rolling” shutter to achieve its

Above: Frame grabs from Chris Brown’s “Crawl,” which Probst shot in downtown Los Angeles using Red’s beta-only firmware update, Build 21, in 4K Anamorphic mode. Right: Probst at work on another project.

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American Cinematographer

Eminem pays the ultimate price for his transgressions in the music video for “We Made You,” directed by Joseph Kahn and shot by Probst with Red cameras (Build 20). The video won the 2009 MTV Video Music Award for Best Hip-Hop Video.

image capture. Unlike Arri’s D-21 camera, the Red has no physical rotating reflex mirror; like many digital cameras on the market, it uses an electronic-shutter scheme to create an effective scan-rate at which a frame is looked at on the sensor. Problems arise with all electronic rolling shutters when the camera is moved very quickly, like with a whip-pan; or when the camera travels at a fast rate perpendicular to a stationary object; or if there is a very rapid momentary change in the exposure condition. In these instances, strobing, partial exposure or a skewing of the geometric lines in the frame can occur. Strobing caused by camera panning has been a consideration with film cameras for decades, but a rolling shutter can also create split frames of exposure with very fast changes in the frame. For example, I recently shot the video for Chris Brown’s “Crawl” in downtown Los Angeles using a Red and anamorphic lenses. In one scene, we had several paparazzi flashbulbs going off in-shot. Because still-photo flashes are very brief in duration, many of the subsequent exposed “frames” on the Red recorded half of the flash in one frame, and the other “half ” in the subsequent frame. I found this effect to be very distracting but was unable to deal with it on set.

The Red has also exhibited sensitivity to heat, which can affect the image and camera in peculiar ways. The camera does have settings that allow you to control its fan functions, but even with the camera set to run the cooling fan continuously — which you cannot do if you’re also recording on-

“I’d shot loads of digital imagery with other platforms, but I quickly found that many aspects of working with the Red were unique to the camera.”

set sound — the Red has exhibited several problems in hot environments. This is due in part to the camera’s design: the heat-sink ventilation is www.theasc.com

located on the bottom of the body. As we all know, heat rises. The main chassis of the Red is basically an aluminum-alloy cylinder, and when the camera gets hot, the heat rises inside this tubular body and literally cooks the electronics inside from the top down. As the sensor overheats, several hairline vertical “scratches” begin to appear in the image; these defects appear on the viewing output to the monitor and are also recorded to the “raw” .r3d files. I have witnessed this on many occasions with many different Red bodies. The only way to solve this problem is to take the camera into a colder environment and allow it to cool down. Once it cools, the streaks in the image will go away. So if you’re planning to shoot a big Western in Death Valley in the middle of summer, you should carefully consider whether to use the Red — or at least bring lots of ice packs to place around the body. I have also found the Red’s onboard-battery harness to be very temperamental. I’ve had dozens of Red cameras power themselves off after the slightest jostling of the onboard battery. The contact pins that engage the batteries are prone to intermittent failure, and when that happens, the camera shuts down. This is, of course, also a service issue for the camerarental house, but I have experienced February 2010

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Working With the Red

Lady Gaga bares all in her video for “Love Game,” which Probst shot with Red One cameras, using Build 20 and a great many star filters in front of Arri Ultra Prime lenses.

this problem with Red cameras provided by rental houses in all parts of the world. Potential Red users should be aware of this, because no one can guarantee the particular hardware option/upgrade being used on individual Red cameras in the field. This spontaneous poweringdown problem is compounded by the 60

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fact that the Red One has a slow bootup time, which I affectionately call “the longest 90 seconds of your life.” I have been in situations where we were getting ready to roll, the set was locked up, all cuing was at the ready, and as the slate was placed in front of the camera, the battery connection failed, and we had to release everything because it American Cinematographer

would then take approximately two minutes for the Red to return to a rollready state. There are several workarounds for this problem. One is that you can run the camera off a tethered block battery that is not physically mounted on the camera. However, the camera will not indicate when these block batteries are running low, so power interruptions can occur in this scenario. There have been improvements to the onboard-battery mounts, and more than one configuration is available from third-party manufacturers. Still, this is an ongoing problem, and as Red cameras age in the rental market, their connection ports will need to be properly serviced in order to help prevent this dreaded occurrence. Additionally, to avoid reboot delays when changing batteries, most rental houses now carry “hot-swap” options so that the camera will never lose power as batteries or power-supply sources are changed. Certain kinds of vibrations can also create problems with the recording devices used with the Red One. When choosing which recording medium to use, you should take vibration — physical as well as the kind caused by loud noise levels — into consideration. The three most prevalent data-capture options currently being used with Red cameras are: 1) recording to Compact Flash cards that insert directly into the body; 2) saving the files to an onboard Red Drive; and 3) using onboard RedRAM drives. The Compact Flash card, the least expensive option, offers the shortest recording time but is a fairly stable and proven recording medium. Occasionally you might encounter a bad card — I have lost takes to a card stating a failure after a whole take was executed — but, for the most part, this is the most dependable way to save data on the camera. However, with most CF cards offering full-resolution 4K recording times comparable to a 1,000' magazine of 35mm film, the reported time savings of shooting digital and not having to constantly reload

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Working With the Red

Probst also used the Red One on a pair of commercials for Honda (right) and HP (below). Both spots were shot using Build 20.

film is moot. Also, CF cards do place limits on the recording speed/resolution that can be used; a 16GB CF card will not allow shooting 2K 120 fps using Redcode 36, whereas Red Drives and RedRAM drives support that. Red Drives offer substantially longer recording times; you can definitely outrun even the longest filmload scenario, with more than 120 minutes of capture time available at 4K. But there is a catch: If you are in a very jarring environment, or even if you’re just around loud sounds, you might experience a number of dropped 62

February 2010

frames while recording your data to a Red Drive. On one of my Red projects, a commercial, the sound of the talent yelling in a room created hundreds of dropped frames. The incident could have gone unnoticed if the assistant hadn’t been keeping an eye on the onboard monitor while the monitor was not “zoomed in.” (When “zoomed in,” you lose the data-display information on the onboard monitor that shows dropped frames have occurred during a take.) It’s ironic that the Red is so often used to shoot music videos, where loud playback is the norm. It is somewhat frustrating that if we don’t American Cinematographer

want to risk dropped frames with the Red Drive, we must either switch to the shorter-record-length CF cards or acquire RedRAM drives, the most expensive recording option. The RedRAM drive utilizes the same solid-state technology as CF cards, internally arraying a number of laptop flash drives together to allow up to 40 minutes of 4K Redcode Raw information. The catch is that the RedRAM drive is approximately five times more expensive than a standard Red Drive and roughly nine times more expensive than a 16GB Red CF card. However, many filmmakers find that the long recording time and comparative stability around vibrations make this the best recording option of the three. A discussion of the Red One’s qualities would be incomplete if it didn’t touch upon the resolution/ compression options the system offers. It is remarkable that Jim Jannard was able to bring a 4K camera to the market at a price point accessible to almost everyone, but the adage, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” comes to mind. In order to discuss the Red One’s resolution, it is first necessary to discuss the system’s Mysterium Bayer-pattern CMOS sensor.

This illustration details a small section of a Bayer pattern, which the Red One’s Mysterium sensor utilizes to derive its color information. Note that for every square fourphotosite cluster within this scheme, there are two green photosites for every single red and blue photosite. De-Bayer processing is therefore required to derive RGB data values.

Bayer-pattern imagers incorporate a unique system to derive RGB color information in order to form an image. In this chip architecture, the sensor is laid out with groups of four adjacent color receptors: two green photosites are arranged diagonally and are flanked by individual red and blue photosites. This sort of checkerboard pattern is repeated across the entire sensor. (See illustration above.) Color information for a specific region of the image must therefore be interpreted by de-Bayer-processing the green “pixel” photosites group with their adjacent red and blue photosites to calculate a cumulative RGB value. Put more plainly, with a Bayer pattern, each photosite on the sensor does not represent an individual RGB value of color information. Just how this color-receptor scheme translates into effective resolution can lead to confusion when comparing it to other sensor technologies with different resolution designations. For this reason, it is difficult to compare resolution properties of a 4K Bayer-pattern camera to a camera that derives data from oversampled pixels or from a sensor that utilizes co-sited photosites, individual photosites that

feature separate RGB “co-sites” to yield a true one-to-one pixel-to-RGB value. It’s true that the Bayer-pattern

“In the real world, the only way the Mysterium could deliver true 4K resolution would be if the sensor were used as a monochrome chip.”

information that comes from the Red One’s sensor is technically 4K data, but in the real world, the only way the Mysterium could deliver true 4K resolution would be if the sensor were used www.theasc.com

as a monochrome chip, delivering a black-and-white picture. In that scenario, each photosite sample would be discrete and would not be averaged with any adjacent photosite data; every photosite would contribute discretely to the overall resolution. Unfortunately, with a Bayer-pattern imager, each photosite on the sensor does not generate an RGB value. And because a Bayer-pattern sensor must use color information from at least four adjacent photosites to derive a single RGB value, it is necessarily true that the effective resolution derived from the 4K Bayer data is less than 4K. The cinematographer’s goal with any format is to use it to the best of its capabilities and capture as much information and latitude as possible. With that in mind, I state that the Red One should only be used in the highestresolution setting possible for a given shooting scenario. The system does allow you to record in a number of lower resolutions, and with different degrees of compression, but to do so is to step onto a very slippery slope. Let’s suppose for a moment that you’re hired to shoot a job whose end result is standard high-definition February 2010

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Working With the Red 1920x1080 24p imagery. You might think it would make sense to simply shoot the project at that resolution, thereby avoiding all the down-rezzing hassles in post. But whenever I have shot the Red at any resolution setting other than 4K, there has been a marked difference in image quality. I’ve had the opportunity to do direct frame comparisons of a scene that was shot at full 4K 16x9 resolution using Redcode 36, and then, in the same lighting and composition, at 2K resolution for slowmotion. The difference from 4K to 2K was startling. I was viewing the footage in its purest form, straight from the deBayered .r3d files on a properly calibrated system capable of displaying high resolutions, so I was able to truly inspect my digital “negative.” The Red camera alters its resolution and speed settings by physically changing the way it “looks” at its sensor to gather its image data. (See illustration on p. 65.) In basic terms, as you lower your resolution settings on the camera, the camera physically looks at less and less of the sensor. So when you switch from 4K to 2K, you effectively switch from looking at the full Super

Another of Probst’s Red projects, a kooky U.K. ad for the flavored drink Oasis, was shot in Thailand but set in Tokyo. In the spot, a giant comic-book rubber duck that “hates” ordinary water wreaks havoc on those foolish enough not to enjoy Oasis.

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American Cinematographer

This is a simple illustration demonstrating the various scanning sizes the Red One uses in its different resolution settings. Note that as the resolution goes down, so does the physical size of the sensor used.

35mm-sized sensor to looking at an area half that size, comparable to Super 16mm. This characteristic comes to the fore when capturing material at higher frame rates. Suppose you want to capture a shot at 24 fps and then, with the same composition, do a take in slow-motion at 72 fps. Currently, with Build 20 of Red One firmware, you must switch the camera to 2K resolution in order to shoot 72 fps. And because the camera is now scanning half the sensor size it was scanning in the 4K take, you must change lenses on the camera to compensate. This becomes increasingly problematic if the shot in question is a wide shot. If you originally rolled with a 14mm Ultra Prime on the camera, you need a 7mm prime lens to achieve the same field-ofview when you switch to 2K 72 fps. Certainly, extreme-wide-angle 35mmformat lenses exist, but they often exhibit certain distortion characteristics and are usually slower than their standard-focal-length counterparts. The need to switch the lenses at all is

nuisance enough, but if you want to accomplish wide slow-motion shots, you must therefore carry a separate set of wide 16mm-format lenses to cover the 2K Super 16mm scan size. Red Digital Cinema has corrected much of this problem in its next camera system, the Epic S35, which will offer up to 100 fps in 5K resolution and 125 fps in 4K resolution. Additionally, the Epic line will feature several different “brain” modules with different sensor options, including Super 35-sized Mysterium-X chips, full-frame 35mm still photo, 645 format, and even 617 format-sized Monstro sensors. These cameras will also feature improvements in the Redcode compression-setting options.

This brings me to one of the most important considerations for those considering the Red platform: compression. One of the miracles of the Red One is also one of its Achilles’ heels. Taking what should be a massive file of RAW 4K image data and recording it to a small CF card would seem to require some form of internal computational alchemy that Red isn’t keen to publicize. (It is based on the JPEG 2000 compression algorithm). However, in general terms, if you break a 12-bit 4K Bayer-pattern movingimage file down to its mathematical components, it would add up to something like the theoretical data boxed below. Currently, Red’s highest

Theoretical uncompressed 4K image data: 4K 16x9 image (4096 x 2304 pixels) = 9,368,064 pixels per frame 12 bits per pixel = 12 x 9,368,064 = 112,416,768 bits per Bayer-pattern frame 112,416,768 bits /8 = 14,052,096 Bytes 14,052,096 Bytes /1024 = 13,722 KB 13,772.75 KB /1024 = 13.401 MB per frame 13.401 MB x 24fps = 321.627 MB per second or 2573 Mb/s

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Working With the Red compression standard — Redcode 36 at 23.98 fps — records approximately 1.8 GB per minute, or .03 GB per second, which calculates to roughly 240 Mb per second. When you compare that to an uncompressed data rate of 2573 Mb/s, you can see that Redcode 36 offers a compression ratio in the neighborhood of approximately 10:1. What this means in terms of image-making is that there are some definite trade-offs in terms of dynamic range and subtleties in the range of tones. I have seen this in practical tests with the camera. In one instance, a Phantom HD camera was set up sideby-side with a Red One on the camera prep floor to shoot the same “scene.” The file that the Phantom HD generated at 2K resolution was, on average, approximately 8 times larger than the Red’s 4K file. Given that significant amount of compression, coupled with the Bayer-pattern sensor’s

color/resolution considerations, I have a hard time calling the Red’s .r3d files true RAW data.

“The Red has a slow boot-up time, which I affectionately call ‘the longest 90 seconds of your life.’”

One final aspect to touch upon is post. Just as with film cameras, how you handle the post process for the

Red is as important to the camera’s performance as how you light and capture your imagery. With the Red, “post” really begins the moment the data is removed from the camera on set. Careful handling of unprotected data — footage that has not been backed up to multiple duplicate drives — is paramount. The importance of having properly trained individuals performing this task cannot be overstated. Once the Red’s data exists on drives as master .r3d files, a whole range of various image-handling — and quality-affecting — options open up. Without detailing every pipeline possible for processing and manipulating Red material, I would point out that there are several different methods to de-Bayer, down-rez and online the raw data to enable color correction and assembly of an edited project. Different color-correction platforms — DaVinci, Luster, Pablo and your

WE WANT YOUR OPINION! The 10 Best-Shot Films of 1998-2008 Our 80th anniversary readers’ poll covered the years 1894-1997, and it’s time to bring it up to date. Films from every nation are eligible, provided they were theatrically released between 1998 and 2008. Submit your picks online* by March 31st at www.theasc.com. The nomination form will include room for comments, which might be included in our coverage of the results. *Subscriber login required 66

own Apple computer — offer different ways to ingest Red material: files converted to DPX; platforms that can internally work from the raw .r3d code; or converting the raw footage to tape, such as laying the material down to HDCam-SR. Each of these options presents its own plusses and minuses in terms of the ease of post and will have a different impact on the look of the image. Digital cinematography is evolving daily, and as the specifics of the tools we use change, the need for cinematographers to embrace that change and maintain our role as the author of the image is critical. Digital motionpicture cameras have altered the filmproduction paradigm, but their presence need not be a death knell for artistry or quality. Just as film has evolved and matured over the last century, so, too, will digital capture, and that is something I’m very excited to witness and embrace. ●

The author, shown here taking a break on the set, has used the Red One on more than 50 projects.

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Luciano Tovoli, ASC, AIC recalls the details of his approach to Dario Argento’s legendary horror film Suspiria. by Stanley Manders •|•

Terror in

Technicolor T

he horror film is stylistically rooted in German Expressionism of the 1920s, but the 1970s found the genre in transition. Smash Hollywood hits such as The Exorcist (1973), Jaws (1975), Carrie (1976) and The Omen (1976) not only offered graphic shocks, but also transformed or completely shed the genre’s traditional trappings of ghouls, ghosts and goblins. Instead, the characters and situations became somewhat familiar, the settings were contemporary and even homey, and the films’ largely naturalistic cinematography firmly grounded the fantastic in reality. A world away, in Italy, filmmaker Dario Argento had carved out a unique niche in the fright-film business with such thrillers as The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970) and Deep Red (1975). These atmospheric stories, populated with demented killers and boasting grotesque set pieces, drip with equal parts gore and suspense — pop-culture products of the changing times. Flush with success, yet seeking a new creative direction, Argento then decided to envelop himself in the macabre lore of Old Europe. Working with fellow screenwriter Daria Nicolodi, he concocted a heady tale of witchcraft and the occult set in a ballet academy poised on the edge of Germany’s Black Forest. There, a young American student, Suzy ( Jessica

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Harper), becomes the target of Mater Suspirium, the Mother of Sighs, a demonic headmistress whose murderous minions dispatch those around Suzy with operatic aplomb. Their elaborate, Grand Guignol-style deaths unfold in a series of bloodchilling sequences. The evocatively titled Suspiria (1977), photographed by Luciano Tovoli, ASC, AIC, is a feast of intensely expressive images and sound. A creative touchstone among horror aficionados, the picture stands as an example to all filmmakers seeking to create tangible onscreen synergy between story, design, direction and cinematography. Inspired in part by the Technicolor grandeur of Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Argento wanted to achieve a palette rich with primary hues and deep blacks. Tovoli notes that when Argento approached him about the project, “I had not seen any of his films, but, of course, I knew him as a very successful director.” At the time, Tovoli was perhaps best known for his work in Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger (1975). “Horror films did not interest me at that moment of my professional life — I was a very impressionable guy, you see,” he continues. “But I do remember one summer afternoon in my apartment, when I heard a

American Cinematographer

Photos courtesy of Luciano Tovoli. Frame grabs courtesy of Anchor Bay Entertainment.

loud noise coming from the street. I looked out and saw a huge crowd sprinting from one movie theater to another. I later discovered that both theaters were showing Argento’s The Cat O’ Nine Tails [1971], and they were hoping to find a free seat! I said to myself, ‘A director who provokes such brisk movement in a crowd should be a very good one!’ After that I searched to see all of his movies. Ignorance is a curable sickness!” Tovoli was intrigued by Argento’s ideas for Suspiria. “I think describing it as a Gothic fairytale is correct, but normally, the director and cinematographer do not sit down the first day we meet and say, ‘This time we will do a Gothic fairytale.’ Instead, we start speaking about many subjects relating to — or sometimes not relating to — the film we have to do. A good director, or in this case a great one, does not give precise recipes or strict commands, but instead searches to influence his collaborators with the originality of his dream.” For Tovoli, one fundamental issue on Suspiria was “the choice of colors and the way I utilized them in accordance with [production designer] Giuseppe Bassan, who was working under Argento’s inspired guidance. We were often making our decisions in the flow of the shooting, without too many elaborate consultations or directions, but just in a kind of magic comprehension. “I decided to intensively utilize primary colors — blue, green and red — to identify the normal flow of life, and then apply a complementary color, mainly yellow, to contaminate them,” continues Tovoli. “A [horror] film brings to the surface some of the ancestral fears that we hide deep inside us, and Suspiria would not have had the same cathartic function if I had utilized the fullness and consolatory sweetness of the full color spectrum. To immediately make Suspiria a total abstraction from what we call ‘everyday reality,’ I used the usually reassuring primary colors only in their purest essence, making them immediately, surprisingly violent and

In Suspiria, Suzy (Jessica Harper) arrives at a mysterious ballet academy and is immediately thrust into a multi-hued realm with increasingly surreal settings.

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Suzy is “welcomed” by the strict Miss Tanner (Alida Valli), who rules the academy through fear and intimidation. Throughout the film, Tovoli’s widescreen compositions highlight the dramatic production design.

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provocative. This brings the audience into the world of Suspiria.” But the brightly hued artifice also has a certain distancing effect on the viewer. “You say to yourself, ‘This will never happen to me because I have never seen such intense colors in my life,’” says Tovoli. “This makes you feel reassured and, at the same time, strangely attracted to proceed deeper and deeper into this colorful journey.” The film’s opening shots quickly transport the audience, as Suzy makes her way through the Munich airport on her way to the ballet academy. “With colors forbidden in reality, the Munich airport becomes Suspiria airport,” says Tovoli. “Then, the first close-ups of her in a cab, as it’s raining furiously outside, express perfectly the dynamics of the full color palette I sought for the rest of the film — the pulsating, mixing and alternating primary and complementary colors.” Like Disney’s Snow White, to whom Harper bears more than a passing resemblance, Suzy is soon lost in a strange world of magic and witchcraft. “I was deeply inspired by Jessica’s interesting face, by its volumes and proportions, and her beautifully expressive eyes,” Tovoli says of his star. “After I prepared the light and she arrived on the set, she was immediately shining so brilliantly that I was astonished every time, as was Argento. Of course, I tried to light her laterally as much as possible, with almost no light in the axis of the American Cinematographer

Top, far left: Director Dario Argento (left) and Tovoli prepare a shot of actress Joan Bennett, who plays Madame Blanc, the stern headmistress and leader of the secret coven that plots against Suzy.

camera, to add a sense of perspective to her face. On other films, I had registered the fact that the lens loves some faces, but in Jessica’s case, the relationship was really phenomenal.” The theatrical, expressionistic approach Argento and Tovoli sought for Suspiria was unusual for the time, especially for a contemporary film. “It was surprising for a great part of our crew, who had never met a cinematographer who wanted to put the strongest possible lights so close to the actors through colored-velvet screens,” says Tovoli. “But it was very new for me as well. I had never lit a film like this before. For many years at the beginning of my career, I prayed only for the most natural light possible.” Tovoli recalls a pledge that he and future ASC member Nestor Alméndros made while they were attending the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome. “We promised over two glasses of good Tuscan red wine to never abandon the marvelous religion of real light,” he says. “I respected that oath for maybe a decade, but then I started to be quite bored. Alméndros, who was much more serious about this kind of thing than I, continued in the same direction with the most enviable success. Meanwhile, I started to study the work of the blackand-white cinematographers working at Cinecittà in Rome, in Hollywood and elsewhere. I searched to reconstruct

their unbelievable lighting and complex technique; I watched the films over and over to learn how they achieved such great artistic results.” Among his favorites were Italian cinematographers Anchise Brizzi, Arturo Gallea, Ubaldo Arata, Carlo Montuori, Massimo Terzano, Otello Martelli, Aldo Tonti and, later, Aldo Graziati and Gianni Di Venanzo. “Working in black-and-white with Antonioni, Di Venanzo brought a substantial change to the technique, utilizing many small diffused lights for www.theasc.com

interiors instead of bigger Fresnel units,” Tovoli notes. The cinematographer was initially reluctant to sign onto Suspiria “because I was conscious of my lack of experience and, more importantly, my lack of real passion for that kind of film,” he explains. “I’ve never accepted a job just to take a job. Also, even in the most insignificant film, I always searched to find some significance. That, of course, was not at all the case with Suspiria. But fortunately, Argento insisted I join him, February 2010

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After a mysterious infestation is discovered in the girls’ dorm, the students are moved to makeshift quarters in a dance studio, which takes on a sinister look as Suzy and Sara (Stefania Casini) share their fears. To heighten such dramatic contrasts in color, Tovoli (bottom photo, lighting the scene) employed Technicolor IB printing to control his hues.

and I still do not know why. “I chose my camera crew very carefully,” he continues. “I brought in Idelmo Simonelli, one of the best camera operators, a true star. When he said, ‘This is by far the best take,’ it was by far the best take! I also brought the 72

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best first camera assistant, Peppino Tinelli; the best grip, Mario Moreschini; and the best gaffer, Alberto Altibrandi, whose nickname was ‘Gnaccheretta’ [Castanet].” With only a few weeks of prep, Tovoli began camera and lighting tests in earnest. “After my first conversation with Argento, I vaguely imagined how to technically achieve this radical departure from my previous lighting style, but also, I needed to know if I had truly abandoned naturalism,” he says. “On The Passenger, I searched to force the strength of the real light, often overexposing, bringing the negative near the shoulder of the sensitometric curve to burn up some of the detail. In a way, this is what I did on Suspiria as well, but at a much higher level, ‘overexposing’ through the intensity of a specific color in a specific shot, with the negative [Eastman 5254] carefully exposed at the American Cinematographer

center of the curve. I utilized this technique on every shot in the film. I was always telling the production designer and scenic painter, ‘More red! More blue!’ I made the same recommendation to my very patient gaffer, Alberto, and, like a good friend, he asked me, ‘Are you sure? There is already a lot of green. It’s becoming quite disturbing!’ And to my inalterably happy face he asked, ‘Are you searching to be fired?’” Part of Tovoli’s approach was to make extensive use of frames of brightly colored velour and tissue paper set in front of Arcs positioned very close to the performers. “I wanted to create light that would simulate the color coming from pots of paint thrown very respectfully on the actors’ faces, recalling Jackson Pollock’s fundamental gesture of splashing pure color on the canvas. In my imagination, our canvas was our actors’ faces. Soon, someone calmly explained to me that this was not possible for multiple reasons, and I was forced to find an alternative method of lighting the actors’ faces and, to an extent, the backgrounds, with the strongest possible light as close to the subject as possible. While shooting, our actors were very often reasonably worried they might be burned!” Tovoli also employed mirrors to change the quality of the light. “The stratagem of the mirrors could double the distance between our light sources and the scene,” he explains, noting that he was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s use of mirrors in his work. “If I have to choose one impressive reference, why not go directly to the best? It’s always better to tap in at the highest level! I utilized mirrors not to destroy enemy ships, as Archimedes did in the war between Siracusa and Rome, but to destroy with a violent shaft of hypercolored light a universally ‘elegant’ or ‘refined’ image. This was driven by my desire to always go beyond what would be conventionally accepted. The aesthetic concept on Suspiria — and Argento will forgive me if I pretend to speak for him — was never to subtract, but to add.”

Bassan’s extensive use of wildly textured backgrounds, geometric shapes and colored surfaces add greatly to the picture’s crazy-quilt visual quality, and Tovoli sought to keep such elements in crisp focus. “Sharpness has always been another of my profound beliefs, in part as a form of respect for the optics specialists who work hard every day to improve the rendering of the lenses,” he says. “I do not use, or very scarcely use in lighter values, diffusers or colored filters. And I absolutely never used them on Suspiria. In general, I am not interested in ‘pictorial’ images. Watching a film, I get bored and lose interest when I see diffused smoke where there is not any justification for it apart from the desire to create a nice atmosphere. I’m tempted to call the fire brigade! “When I first started to do photography, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Henri Cartier-Bresson, among many others, opened my eyes to the vast territory of sharpness and contrast as primordial values in photography — and cinematography, of course. On Suspiria, I lived with the illusion that I could make sharp the simple, flat volume of a monochromatic wall by using the pure intensity and pulsating vibrations of the color itself.” Using Mitchell BNC and Arri 2-C cameras, Tovoli shot Suspiria in 2.35:1 Technovision anamorphic, a format he loves deeply. “The glorious Technovision anamorphic lens!” he exclaims. “The incredibly passionate Enrico Chroscicki believed so strongly in great panoramic images that he went to Paris in the early 1950s to search for the survivors of Henri Chrétien, the French astronomer who designed the Hypergonar lens, from which the first anamorphic lens was later derived. Chroscicki told me he also met with a very old collaborator of Chrétien’s in Nice, and found in a dusty drawer not only the original drawings of two lenses but also a single optical anamorphic element to be put in front of a normal primary lens. Thanks to this almost archaeological discovery — I baptized him the Winkelmann of lenses —

Suzy encounters a mysterious witch who casts a spell upon her. The simple effect was created with a piece of mirror reflecting back into the lens; dust was added to the air to help carry the light.

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Terror in Technicolor Chroscicki, in his little workshop in Rome, made just one lens! It was a 50mm, and he rented this single lens for years before he had the money to build a full series of anamorphic lenses. How could I not shoot Suspiria with Enrico’s anamorphic Technovision lenses? Vittorio Storaro [ASC, AIC] has shot all his films with Technovision lenses!” Eastman 5254, a 100-ASA negative, “had beautiful contrast values and colors, which I admired, and that was so important for the Technicolor process separations we were to make from our negative, because we planned to force, violate and deteriorate the image’s normal color range,” he adds. From the outset, the filmmakers intended to use Technicolor’s legendary dye-transfer printing process as the final step in creating the haunted realm of Suspiria. Technicolor Rome shut down its IB printing in 1978, making Argento’s film one of its last dye-transfer projects. Tovoli recalls, “Technicolor Rome applied the negative-developing and positive-printing system with extreme accuracy, and they agreed, maybe for the first time in their history, to make a minor but important modification for us. They agreed to lose a diffuser that was typically used to slightly flash the yellow-cyan-magenta imbibed matrix, thus preventing any possible bleeding of the colors outside the physical contours of each image. The possible bleeding of colors was exactly what I was searching for with Argento — we wanted more contrast, more vibrating colors — so I proposed to Carlo Labella, the nicest man and a very talented color timer, that we lose this little attenuation of the color contrast. I am not ready to forget his friendly smile as he listened to my apparently absurd proposal!” Also, for the matrix printing of the cyan layer, lab technicians used a special filter that was more selective for the color red, which was particularly complicated to render in the dye-transfer process but also a key component of Suspiria’s palette. The filter enabled the post team to faithfully reproduce all the information present on the original negative.

This page and opposite: Sara is stalked through the academy grounds in one of the film’s most expressive and frightening sequences. Seeking refuge, she is trapped in a room filled with barbed wire.

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American Cinematographer

Tovoli recently revisited Suspiria at Technicolor Rome to supervise a new HD transfer, which will result in a Bluray release this spring. “I worked with a very talented colorist, Fabrizio Conti, and we tried to stay as close as possible to the look of the original,” he says. “I think we did an extremely good job, but it is impossible to compare even the best digital master to a film printed with Technicolor’s dye-transfer process, especially for a film as extreme as Suspiria!” The cinematographer’s bold use of color is showcased in one of Suspiria’s most bravura sequences, in which Suzy’s friend Sara (Stefania Casini) is relentlessly pursued by an unseen assailant. Terrified, she runs through a labyrinth of colorfully hued corridors in the boarding school, finally slamming shut a heavy door behind her. Leaning against it, she sees a straight razor slowly slide between the door and the jam as her attacker tries to flip open the simple lock. In a panic, Sara spots a tiny window that offers possible escape. Climbing through it, she cannot clearly see the room she is entering. She jumps to the floor, only to find the chamber filled with coils of barbed wire. Trapped and helpless, she struggles in this bluetinged nightmare until the killer reaches her. “That is one of my favorite scenes because Argento left me free to create a color symphony following only my emotion and taste,” says Tovoli. “That is very rare in the relationship between the director and the cinematographer. Looking at that sequence today, I realize I made it in a state of total pleasure, going on shot after shot with my collaborators, almost blindly utilizing the new alphabet of colors that had become our instinctive color language. The red, of course, is the aggression and danger, the blood that the unknown pursuer will soon force out of your body with his knife. The blue is the terrifying death sentence already pronounced and a color that accompanies you into the sinister world of death. The delicate orange coloration of the little window high in the wall of the room is the www.theasc.com

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Terror in Technicolor

Left: Tovoli extends his meter down to water level for a suspenseful swimming sequence as his camera is set up. Above: The cinematographer enjoys a rare calm moment during the shoot.

momentary illusion of safety, a painting done with colored lights. Then there is the shining metallic blue of the barbed wire, like a carnivorous plant that will capture and almost digest you forever. Such a very rich bouquet of gifts for a cinematographer! Thanks, Maestro Argento! The sequence of colors in the frantic pursuit was not planned at all. I made it absolutely on the inspiration of the moment.” Conversely, another key set piece finds Argento and Tovoli bleeding off their elaborate color scheme to render an almost monochromatic milieu of nocturnal mayhem. In the sequence, blind pianist Daniel (Flavio Bucci) and his guide dog enter the vast Konigsplatz Square at night, the pale gray stone of the surrounding buildings starkly set against the darkness. Atop one roof, an imposing statue of a huge bird of prey peers down on the frightened man. Daniel cannot see that the creature disappears, but hears the flapping of great wings as something swoops down over the square at him as his dog barks incessantly. Then, in one of the great twists in horror cinema, Daniel is murdered, with his shockingly red blood punctuating the moment. For Tovoli, the Konigsplatz 76

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Square offered a tremendous lighting challenge. “What kept me up at night was the dimension of the location,” the cinematographer says. “Since then, I have lit bigger spaces, including the huge Pula Arena in Croatia for Julie Taymor’s Titus [1999; AC Feb. ’00]. Knowing that Hitler utilized the

“The aesthetic concept on Suspiria was never to subtract, but to add.”

Konigsplatz Square for his parades and speeches did not reassure me at all! We decided to not use color in the scene to enhance the loneliness of the empty space and make the sudden explosion of bloody red [more dramatic]. “The bird’s [point-of-view shot] was a very clear idea of Argento’s that American Cinematographer

we realized quite easily by running a thin steel cable from the top of one temple to the ground by a hand-released hook. When the ground hook was released, the elastic part of the cable brought our Arriflex camera off the solid ground and into the air to soar over the square. Of course, we got quite excited about the shot and pushed the special mechanical effect responsible to delay the release of the hook at the very last possible second.” The resulting POV effect adds an ingenious sense of menace to the already flamboyant scene. “Discussing the film this way brings back the feeling of total happiness, a fabulous shooting time in which a young cinematographer not at all intimidated by the task before him took the opportunity to collaborate with a great director and sweet man named Dario Argento,” muses Tovoli, who would later shoot such Hollywood suspense films as Reversal of Fortune (1990) and Single White Female (1992). “I believe it is this human secret, not a technical one, that is behind the lasting long life of Suspiria.” The author thanks D’Arienzo Antonio, Robert Hoffman, Bruce Heller and Rob Hummel for their assistance with this article. ●

Post Focus Colorist Milan Boncich (top) finesses a project in Offhollywood’s new SoHo facility, which boasts a prep floor, office spaces and a 35-seat theater capable of screening 2-D and 3-D DCPs (bottom).

Offhollywood’s Digital Perspective By Claire Walla

In 2003, after years of producing low-budget independent features, building relationships, solving other people’s problems and not making much money in the process, Mark Pederson and Aldey Sanchez started their own company, Offhollywood, with a mandate to do “guerrilla digital intermediates.” Armed with one Apple computer and a copy of Final Cut Pro, they posted ultra-low-budget productions while keeping a close watch on new industry trends. Among the developers with whom they forged a relationship was Red Digital Cinema, which was on the brink of introducing the Red One camera. Just before the One was officially unveiled, Offhollywood agreed to purchase the first two bodies that would be released to the public, #0006 and #0007. (The first five cameras went to Red founder Jim Jannard.) The investment was a shot in the dark: Pederson had no way of knowing that Red would quickly develop a significant industry presence, or that the cameras would eventually revamp Offhollywood’s business model, transforming it into the front-to-back production facility it is today. With their keen interest in new technology, Pederson and Sanchez took to Red with a great deal of enthusiasm. “Red is a very atypical company,” says Pederson. “It’s like a bunch of mad scientists breaking the rules, and I think they like the fact that we have some of the same rebel sensibilities.” When Offhollywood received its Red 78

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Photos by Patrick Cecilian, courtesy of Offhollywood.

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An early investment in Red One cameras transformed Offhollywood from a “guerrilla” post house to the front-to-back production facility it is today.

cameras, in 2007, Pederson and Sanchez tested and posted footage every day, untangling the kinks while consulting with productions and teaching the mechanics to other rental houses. Eventually, Offhollywood landed a project called Asylum Seekers, an experimental feature by a young director named Ronia Ajami; it was one of the first features to shoot fully with Red cameras. Soon thereafter, director/cinematographer Doug Liman used Offhollywood’s Red cameras for additional photography on his 2008 feature Jumper. At press time, Liman was finishing post at Offhollywood on the feature Fair Game, which was shot entirely with the company’s Reds. Pederson says Offhollywood’s early work with the Red helped the company define its own workflow for the camera. “It was very much a moving target because the camera was such a moving target — there were always new firmware builds,” he notes, adding that both Reds received six firmware updates while Asylum Seekers was in production. “A lot of people say the Red workflow is a problem, and that frustrates me so much because there is no such thing as ‘a Red workflow.’ There are a bunch of workflows.” The camera captures compressed information in Redcode RAW, with unprocessed proxies viewable as 2K Quick-

Time files for immediate review of “dailies.” Once the QuickTime proxies are logged and captured in 2K, 3K or 4K, Offhollywood typically edits footage in Final Cut Pro, does color-grading using Assimilate Scratch, and uses a Digital Video Systems Clipster 3 for both 2-D and 3-D DCP creation. The company still uses the same AJA Kona 3 Video System it initially purchased, which Pederson notes is a highly efficient solution for image capture and HD conversion. He emphasizes, though, that each production’s workflow depends on the importance of the dailies and the needs of the filmmakers. John “Pliny” Eremic, chief operating officer and director of postproduction, notes that although Offhollywood is the only authorized Red service center on the East Coast, “we don’t just cater to Red.” The company also offers post services for projects originating on other digital platforms, as well as 35mm and 16mm film. (The company has a partnership with FotoKem in Burbank whereby Offhollywood sends film to FotoKem for digital transfer.) To date, Offhollywood has provided cameras and technical support for 14 features and has done second-unit and post work for 23 others. Pederson and Sanchez have welcomed colorists Robbie Renfrow and Milan Boncich and senior DI/visual-effects artist Jim Geduldick to the team, and the

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company recently opened the doors of its new, larger facility in SoHo, featuring a brand-new prep floor, new office spaces and a 35-seat theater capable of screening 2-D and 3-D DCPs. Offhollywood continues to test new software and hardware solutions, and in addition to the growing cache of Red Ones it owns and sub-leases from individual owners, the company will soon obtain Red’s new Epic camera system. Most recently, Offhollywood has ventured into 3-D technology. Its first 3-D feature, The Mortician, is currently in production in New Orleans; cinematographer Michael McDonough is using Red Ones with Element Technica Quasar 3-D rigs. Offhollywood has also invested in The Foundry’s Nuke compositing software and Ocula 3-D for 3-D post, and the company’s new theater is equipped with 3-D glasses and a Dolby Cinema Server capable of showing 2-D and 3-D footage. (The theater also has a Barco DP2000 2K projector for DI work.) Noting that Offhollywood’s front-toback business model makes the company especially well suited to 3-D workflows, Pederson muses, “I don’t know how long it will last, but there’s going to be a moment in time when you’ll have a significantly better chance of selling your movie, finding theatrical distribution and making your money back if your movie’s in 3-D.” “Technology democratizes services,” says Sanchez. “When Mark and I started Offhollywood, we talked about how technology would merge the production and postproduction worlds. To compete, you need to offer more added value, and I think one of our core strengths is our expertise on the very bleeding edge.” ●

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New Products & Services Osram, Mole Introduce MoleLED Mole Richardson and Osram have launched the MoleLED filmfriendly LED lighting solution. The MoleLED system unites a sophisticated fixture designed by Mole Richardson with Osram’s advanced remote-phosphor LED technology. Touting 3200°K and 5600°K color, the 50-watt MoleLED fixture offers an alternative solution for fluorescent fixtures up to 110 watts or tungsten solutions up to 300 watts. MoleLED fixtures have a rated life of over 25,000 hours and will operate on everything from a 12-volt car battery or 14.4-volt Anton/Bauer or IDX Vmount battery to a 24-volt camera battery or any DC source up to 50 volts. The MoleLED was designed with both local and remote DMX dimming, and the fixtures can be dimmed down to 10 percent without any shift in color temperature. Each MoleLED fixture consists of 12 Osram Kreios LED metal core circuit boards; the 12 boards each contain 20 high-output blue LEDs topped with a remote-phosphor dome, for a total of 240 individual sources. The phosphor domes, an Osram proprietary design, are blue-light activated to produce light in two exact color temperatures, tungsten and daylight. Osram’s remote-phosphor technology offers a single semiconductor system leading to consistent temperature behavior, allowing the module to easily achieve a CRI greater than 90. Spectral characteristics are simple to adjust with remote phosphors, and the technology further ensures light and color output stability over time. “Remote-phosphor technology allows the MoleLED fixture to provide tungsten and daylight white light that parallels both the spectral sensitivity curves of film and the visible spectrum, or what the eye sees,” says Leslie Trudeau, Osram Sylvania NAFTA business unit manager for entertainment. “This is one of the many benefits over LED mixing.” Mike Parker, CEO of Mole Richardson and an ASC associate member, adds, “Unlike existing LED fixtures, the MoleLED blends these multiple sources into one soft light source. This single-source approach renders the light more attractive to the talent and more familiar to the technicians.” Built rugged and with a low profile and mobile features, MoleLEDs are ideally suited for all set-lighting needs. The fixtures also feature multiple rigging points and mounting options, and Mole Richardson offers a wide range of standard accessories, including barn doors, louvers and gel frames. For more information, visit www.sylvania.com and www.mole.com. 82

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• SUBMISSION INFORMATION • Please e-mail New Products/Services releases to: [email protected] and include full contact information and product images. Photos must be TIFF or JPEG files of at least 300dpi.

Sony Updates HDCam-SR Sony Electronics has unveiled the next generation of its HDCam-SR production technology, including the SRW-9000 HDCam-SR camcorder, which features a “future-proof” upgrade path to 35mm imaging and file-based production. Sony has also announced SR memory solid-state media and more cost-effective BCT-SR series tape pricing. “HDCam-SR technology now meets the current and future needs of high-end cinematic and TV broadcast production,” says Rob Willox, director of Sony Electronics’ content-creation group. “SR is already file based and can support data recording in resolutions up to 4K as DPX today. The benefits of non-linear acquisition are now a production requirement. The addition of solid-state media enhances the format’s inherent file-based design and brings SR’s proven quality to an even wider audience.” The SRW-9000 camcorder combines the SR format’s image quality with the versatility of a one-piece camcorder. The full HD (1920x1080) resolution camcorder uses 2⁄3" CCDs with a 14-bit A/D converter and digital signal processing to capture up to 1080/60p images with a high level of detail. Furthermore, recognizing the market’s requirement for a 35mm “B” camera complement to its high-end F35, Sony has unveiled an optional upgrade path for the SRW-9000 to a 35mm imager and PL mount to increase the camcorder’s flexibility and protect a user’s investment. The latest HDCam-SR compression is SR Lite, a 220 Mb/s data rate codec based on the open MPEG-4 SStP (Simple Studio Profile); SR Lite will be supported as an MXF-wrapped file to help ensure high picture quality while enabling almost real-time exchange over a GB Ethernet connection. SR Lite is designed to provide more efficiency and flexibility for SStP file-based production, using an open codec that is ideal for high-end cinematic and broadcast production. Because the system is backwards compatible, content recorded on HDCam tape can also be integrated into the MXF SStP file-based operation. Sony has also announced the next version of its popular SRW recorder, the SRW-5800/2. The updated deck will support MXF file transfer and the 220 Mb/s data rate as well as the ability

American Cinematographer

IDX Redefines Red Camera Power IDX System Technology Inc. has unveiled the Redefined Elite battery system for powering the Red One camera. The Redefined solution consists of two power packages centered on Elite batteries along with the sleek EL-BAPIDXA mounting plate, which is customized with V-mount and Lemo technology. Redefined Elite is a 136 watt-hour highcapacity V-mount battery system with the unique IDX twin power-cartridge construction as well as multiple safety and protection features. In addition to awardwinning architecture, the Redefined solution offers the exclusive Elite Smart Battery mode, which quickly and easily activates the protocol data for tighter integration with the Red One system. Vmount battery plate EL-BAPIDXA — which

was crafted by Element Technica in partnership with IDX — enables operators to view live battery-life data by percentage in the Red One viewfinder. When the batteries are drained, new power-cartridge pairs can be inserted into the original housing in less than 30 seconds. IDX Elite batteries are in full compliance with the 2009 DOT and IATA Dangerous Goods Regulations, meaning they can be carried aboard all national and international flights. Professionals also have the option of either using the high-performance quad charger VL-4S or dual charger/AC adapter VL-2SPLUS. Additional variations of the mounting plate are available and can be purchased separately from Element Technica. For more information, visit www.elementtechnica.com and www.id xtek.com.

to record and play back 4:4:4 content at 2X real time. These capabilities will also be available to existing SRW-5800 owners through optional hardware upgrades. The SR solid-state memory cards will deliver rapid transfer rates of more than 5 Gb/s and storage capacity of up to 1TB. This new SR memory technology is designed to be the ideal media for future high-end production, with native acquisition capabilities for applications such as 3-D 1080p and higher resolutions up to 4K. Sony also plans to deliver an upgrade to SR memory on the existing SRW-9000 camcorder, along with a memory adapter for the F35 and F23. “Our enhancements to the SR technology extend far beyond product announcements,” Willox stresses. “We’re reassuring customers that what they buy not only works now, but also supports future needs and delivers a return on their investment.” The SRW-9000 camcorder is currently available through Band Pro Film & Digital. For more information, visit www.bandpro.com and http://pro. sony.com.

Element Technica Goes 3-D with Quasar Element Technica, whose series of Technica 3D Rigs are designed to precisely position a pair of cameras to achieve realistic stereoscopic digital video for broadcast and cinema applications, has begun delivering its Quasar 3D Rigs to owner/operators and rental houses. The Quasar is designed to accommodate full-size digital-cinema cameras like the Sony F23 and F35, Red One, and Panavision Genesis, as well as full-body box-type digital broadcast cameras like the Sony F950 and 1500, Philips LDK and more. Regardless of the cameras utilized, the Quasar’s precision and refinement make it an ideal platform for matching zoom or prime lenses to accommodate any shooting style or format. The Technica 3D Series provides smartly engineered 3-D systems that are lighter weight and less costly than previous 3-D rigs, making 3-D acquisition easy for traditional 2-D production crews. Complete camera/lens installation and alignment can be completed in less than 15 minutes with nothing more than a set of Allen wrenches and a mirror gauge. Wayne Miller, president

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requiring complex interocular and convergence calculation techniques. Interocular, convergence, zoom, focus and iris control can all be coordinated through Element Technica’s Stereo Assist feature; Technica 3D Rig users can also choose to integrate Preston motors with the system via ports and adapters. Element Technica is coordinating one-day operator training classes geared toward camera assistants through Keslow Camera and Offhollywood. For more information, visit www.elementtechnica.com and www.technica3d.com. of Action 3D Productions, chose the Quasar 3D Rigs to capture the Dave Matthews Band concert at the Austin City Limits Festival, Ben Harper at the Mile High Music Festival, and Gogo Bordello at the All Points West Music Festival. “The functionality of the Technica 3D Rigs is such that when you’re out on location shooting, they are quick to set up and calibrate,” he says. “Once aligned, they hold that alignment very well.” “Now, for the first time, the very best 3-D acquisition equipment can be rented much like a traditional camera package,” says Stephen Pizzo, co-founder of Element Technica. “Combine that with the ability to choose your own crew as well as your favorite post facility, and you gain greater creative control over the entire 3-D process.” Technica 3D systems will soon be available in three different sizes to accommodate a variety of cameras. In addition to the largest system, Quasar, the mid-sized Pulsar mounts box-style digital-cinema cameras such as the Red Scarlet, Red Epic and Silicon Imaging SI-2K. The ultra-small Neutron is designed for tiny 2⁄3"- or 1⁄3"imager cameras supporting C-mount lenses, such as the SI-2K Mini and the Iconix HD-RH1. All three Technica 3D Rig systems can convert from parallel to beamsplitter configuration and back. Element Technica has also developed a series of intuitive hardware/software tools to automate stereo calculation. These tools will be available as add-on modules for the core 3D Rig systems to enable users to intuitively control how much or how little the subject comes off of the screen without 84

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tial accessories. Rugged nylon handgrips on either side of the tray allow for easy removal and carrying. Underneath, the Red One fits comfortably in the bag’s lower padded compartment. When a panel is removed from the upper accessory tray, the camera can be stored without disturbing the viewfinder. An adjustable nylon strap holds

Petrol Bags Red One Petrol, a Vitec Group brand, has introduced the Petrol Red Bag (PRB-15), an innovative camera carrier specifically designed to transport and protect the Red One digital camera. The Red Bag’s dual-directional upside-down zippers open smoothly for quick and easy access to the smartly designed interior, where a removable upper tray with detachable dividers provides the perfect place to stash the Red One’s essen-

the camera firmly and safely in place, and four detachable padded dividers help secure the compartment’s contents and form pockets for additional storage. The PRB-15 comes equipped with a separate fabric sleeve to hold the Red One’s steel support rods. With the rods inside, the

Fast Forward Video Launches Micron Recorder Fast Forward Video (FFV) has announced the release of its Micron HD digital video recorder (DVR), a powerful, costeffective solution for recording and playingout broadcast-quality digital SD and HD video. The Micron HD offers many of the features of FFV’s Omega HD DVR in a single rack unit and at a price point specifically targeted to today’s most budget-conscious broadcast-grade operations. “The Micron HD is a direct response to many of our customers who requested an inexpensive entry-level HD DVR that could still measure up to the superb picture quality of the Omega HD,” says Harry Glass, vice president of sales for FFV. “The single-channel Micron HD is an ideal solution for broad-

casters seeking to migrate to HD operations at a low cost per channel while maintaining SD capabilities.” The Micron HD utilizes high-quality JPEG2000 compression at speeds up to 100 Mb/s, making it an excellent replacement for SD-only DVRs and analog tape decks. It offers up to five hours of record time, and its removable non-proprietary 2.5" SATA drive is fully compatible with FFV’s Elite HD camera-mounted DVR. Users can record, play and store multiple SD and HD video files, and with a simple machine controller, users can access a larger set of functions and command multiple units with one keystroke. The suggested retail price of the Micron HD DVR is $4,995. For more information, visit www.ffv.com.

American Cinematographer

sleeve stores neatly against the lower chamber’s middle divider. An external envelopestyle pocket keeps important documents close at hand. Additional features include an internal envelope-style pocket of clear plastic mesh, Petrol’s built-in smooth-gliding wheel-and-tote assembly, Griplock interlocking top carrying handle and a padded shoulder strap. Petrol’s exclusive thermoformed panels of cold-molded laminate and injection-molded polypropylene legs safeguard the bottom of the bag from dirt or water. The exterior is constructed of black ballistic nylon and Cordura. The PRB-15 has a recommended price of $499. For more information, visit www.petrolbags.com. Chrosziel Accessorizes Red Chrosziel now offers three matteboxes specially designed for the Red One camera, as well as a support system with a bridge plate and 19mm rods. Of the three matteboxes, MB 840 R2 offers the most versatility, with its doublerotating filter stage and two identical multi-

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format filter holders for 4"x5.65" horizontal and 5"x5". Both rotate independently and boast independent height adjustment. The MB 840 R2 also features a convenient swing-away design for easy lens changes, and the mattebox mounts directly to the 19mm rods without the need for an adapter. (If necessary, a tools-free clamp adapter can be attached for mounting the mattebox directly to the lens.) The maximum lens diameter compatible with the mattebox is 142.5mm; smaller diameters use rubber bellows and retaining rings. The MB 805 Red is a variation on the standard MB 805 mattebox. Like MB 840 R2, MB 805 Red fits directly onto the 19mm

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support rods. The fixed stage is equipped with multi-format filter holders for 4"x4" and 4"x5.65" horizontal; a second stage features multi-format filter holders for 5"x5" and 4"x5.65" horizontal. Both the MB 840 R2 and MB 805 Red can be upgraded with further filter stages. The MB 456 R2 boasts a compact and lightweight (approximately 1.3 pounds) design. It can be used with 15mm support rods or it can attach directly to the lens as a sunshade. The two rotating filter stages are equipped with identical 4"x5.65"/4"x4" filter holders. The maximum front-element diameter is 130mm, covering most lenses commonly used with the Red One. Chrosziel products are distributed in the United States by 16x9 Inc. For more information, visit www.chrosziel.com and www.16x9inc.com. AJA Releases Free iPhone App AJA Video Systems has released the AJA DataCalc iPhone application, a fast and simple storage-requirement calculator for video and audio professionals. DataCalc can be used in the field during acquisition or in the edit bay during post, allowing the user to effortlessly calculate their storage consumption and data-capturing requirements. The application supports a wide array of video-compression formats, including Apple ProRes, DVCProHD, HDV, XDCam, DV, RGB and YUV uncompressed, and more. Supported video standards include NTSC, PAL, 1080i, 1080p, 720p, 2K and 4K. “We’re all big fans of the iPhone and wanted to create an application that would be useful to our customers in professional digital content creation,” says Nick Rashby, president of AJA Video Systems. “DataCalc is right in line with AJA’s product philosophy, which aims to deliver products that simplify and streamline the often complex workflows of video professionals. It’s a simple little application that has already proven to be very handy in the field!” The application features an intuitive user interface where most settings can be entered with a simple finger scroll through lists of the most common file-format configurations. Durations can be entered in units of days, hours or seconds, or in a precise time code frame count. A “More” button 86

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allows users to further select and specify frame rates, frame sizes and compression type, as well as audio sample rates and bits per sample. Pressing the “Information” icon on the “More” page takes users to a “Summary” page where they can review results and have the option to deliver the data via email. DataCalc is available as a free download from the Apple iTunes Store. For more information, visit www.aja.com.

Filmworkers Adds Digigog Services Filmworkers has launched the Digigog digital-media processing service at its Chicago and Dallas locations. The service is aimed at facilitating the growing number of feature film, television and commercial productions that are choosing to capture and post their projects as data. The Digigog offers a seamless, onestop solution for servicing commercials, films and other projects from dailies through delivery, especially those shot with digital cameras such as the Red One and Vision Research Phantom HD. Services include dailies processing for digitally acquired media, real-time non-linear color grading at resolutions up to 2K, and final assembly and deliverables production. The Digigog’s services can also be packaged with other services offered by Filmworkers, including visual-effects production, CG and motion-graphics design. “Projects that originate on data have special technical and creative requirements,” says Reid Brody, president of Filmworkers. “The Digigog has the resources needed to process Red camera and other data files with maximum quality and effi-

JMR Stores Red Data JMR Electronics, Inc. has launched the BlueStor Red Video Storage Server, which boasts a transfer rate of over 1.4 GB/s and is ideal for recording and streaming digital video imagery captured on a Red One digital camera or used in complex SD, HD, 2K and 4K postproduction workflows. The 4U rack-mount 16-bay RAID system offers extremely high performance, robust reliability and a wide variety of ingest and output features, making it ideal for both postproduction, streaming and DVR/DVTR replacement editing applications. The BlueStor Red also features dual quad-core processors; dual 3 Gb/s internal SAS expanders; dual PCIe RAID controllers; redundant hot-swap power supplies and fans; a 19-in-1 card reader; Blu-ray writer; an Nvidia Quadro FX5600 SDI graphics card; 24 GB of DDR3 ECC memory; and USB, FireWire, dual GigE and an E-SATA storage port. The system can scale up to 32 TB using the latest generation 2 TB disk drives.

JMR’s affordable and fault-tolerant storage solutions are based on the company’s PeSAN (PCIe Storage Attached Network) technology. The company’s 16bay BlueStor PeSAN RAID systems were developed to be the ultimate in high-performance Direct Attached Storage or Network Attached Storage for a wide range of video applications, including content creation, video editing and 2K/4K digital-intermediate applications requiring extremely high sustained throughput and reliability. For collaborative or multi-stream SD/HD and 2K/4K DI workflows requiring even higher performance and scalable storage, BlueStor PeSAN RAIDs can achieve up to 4,000 MB/s and be expanded to over 4,000 TB using the current JMR PeSAN technology. For more information, visit www.jmr.com.

American Cinematographer

ciency. Our staff understands the nuances of working with data. They can help clients reap the benefits of a data-centric mode of production while avoiding the pitfalls.” The Digigog offers overnight dailies processing for data files from virtually any source. The system generates dailies in the format required by the project’s editorial team, including Avid DNX-HD and Apple ProRes 422, as well as uncompressed files for final color-correction and assembly. Deliverables for review purposes are available in a variety of popular formats, including QuickTime. The Digigog also offers real-time non-linear color-grading services for both film-based and digitally acquired projects through the use of DaVinci’s Splice technology, which allows the company’s DaVinci 2K Plus color correctors to grade scanned imagery directly on a SAN. Commercials and features can be graded in context, saving time and enhancing the creative process. Repositioning, grain reduction and other image-processing functions can be applied in real time. Colorist Lynette Duensing notes, “Splice allows us to directly access Red camera DPX conversions. It’s a seamless process from end to end.” The Digigog’s proprietary software facilitates importing EDLs and automates most aspects of the final assembly process. As color grading occurs at 2K, the workflow results in a high-resolution master that can be used to produce deliverables for all distribution channels, including HD, SD and Internet media. Because all elements are stored in a randomly accessible shared-storage environment, multiple versions of a project can be produced quickly and with ease. For more information, visit www.filmworkers.com. ●

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In Memoriam

ASC member Marc E. Reshovsky, an award-winning cinematographer and still photographer, died on Nov. 20 at the age of 53. The cause of death was complications resulting from influenza. Reshovsky was born on Nov. 6, 1957, in Los Angeles, Calif. His mother, Zora, was a magazine writer, and his father, Ernest, was a freelance photojournalist. Young Reshovsky would often accompany his father on assignments. When Reshovsky was in his early teens, a local arts program introduced him to filmmaking, and one of his Super 8mm films went on to earn accolades in National Educational Television’s 1971 National Young Filmmakers’ Competition, airing nationwide on public television. In 1975, with an eye on law school, Reshovsky began studying political science at the University of California-Los Angeles. Before long, though, his passion for crafting images led him to transfer into the university’s film department, where he concentrated on cinematography. After graduating with a B.A. in 1980, Reshovsky was accepted into UCLA’s graduate film program, but he chose instead to begin his professional career. His first jobs were as an assistant, but he soon found work as a cinematographer on travel and adventure documentaries, shooting in Europe, New Zealand, Indonesia and Alaska. From 1982-1984, Reshovsky lived and worked in New Zealand, where he worked first as a still photographer and printer, and then as a staff cinematographer for a small production company that created commercials, industrials and documentaries. He returned to Los Angeles in 1984 and quickly carved a niche in the emerging field of music videos. By 1990, he had shot some 300 music videos, plus numerous long-form concerts for such acts as Fleetwood Mac, Bon Jovi and Pink Floyd. During this time, Reshovsky also took his first steps into feature films, shooting low-budget features such as Sorority House Massacre (1986) and Teen Witch (1989) and doing second-unit cinematography for Robert Richardson, ASC on Eight Men Out (1988) 92

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Marc Reshovsky, ASC, 1957-2009

and Oliver Stapleton, BSC on The Grifters (1990). In 1992, Reshovsky was nominated for a CableACE award for his cinematography in the pilot for Red Shoe Diaries. That same year, he shot the music video for En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind,” which brought him the Music Video Production Association Award for Best Cinematography and an MTV Award nomination. He also shot the short films Trevor (1994) and Lieberman in Love (1995), which won Academy Awards for Best Live-Action Short Subject in their respective years. Reshovsky won an ASC Award in the Regular Series category for his work on the 3rd Rock From the Sun episode “Nightmare on Dick Street.” Three years later, in 2000, he joined the ASC; Russell Carpenter, Steven Poster and John Schwartzman recommended him for membership. That same year, Reshovsky was presented with the Kodak Vision Lifetime Achievement Award for music-video cinematography. In 1986, Reshovsky married Sandra Matsumoto. They had two sons, Zachary and Rory, and settled in Pasadena, Calif. Matsumoto died in 2004, and Reshovsky relocated to Lopez Island, Wash. In 2007, he collaborated with viola da gamba player Vittorio Ghielmi on the concert piece The Spectacle, based on Dieterich Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostri cantatas. A decade ago, while participating in a seminar on music videos’ impact on feature filmmaking, Reshovsky was asked about the effects of then-new digital technologies, and his answer still rings true: “We are not going to devolve because of technology. Cinematography is a language and a form of artistic expression which comes from the soul.” Reshovsky is survived by his sons; his partner, Taylor Bruce; and his faithful dog, Mochi. — Jon D. Witmer ●

American Cinematographer

Clubhouse News

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freelance world as a first camera assistant. He later earned operating credits on such features as My Fellow Americans and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and such series as Twin Peaks and Picket Fences. While operating on NYPD Blue, du Pont was promoted to director of photography, and he has since photographed episodes of Lincoln Heights, Saving Grace and Private Practice. He has also shot the features Confessions of a Sexist Pig and Saving Shiloh. Deakins Nominated for Spirit Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC recently notched his third Independent Spirit Award nomination, this time for A Serious Man. He was previously nominated for Homicide and Fargo, winning for the latter. The other nominees in the cinematography category this year are Adriano Goldman, for Sin Nombre (AC April ’09); Anne Misawa, for Treeless Mountain; Andrij Parekh, for Cold Souls; and Peter Zeitlinger, for Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Barber Elected to 2010 PERA Council ASC associate Carly M. Barber of Illumination Dynamics was recently elected to the 2010 PERA Council, which serves the needs of the equipment-rental market for motion-picture, TV and commercial production. Other newly elected members are Daniel Gurzi of Abel Cine Tech, Greg Meyers of Cinequipt, J.R. Reid of JR Lighting, John Rule of Rule/Boston Camera Rental, Mark Tye of Citation Support and Mark Wofford of Production Consultants & Equipment. They join sitting council members Leigh Blicher of Videofax, Marc Stephens of MPS Studios, and ASC associate Thomas Fletcher of Fletcher Camera & Lenses. ●

Houghton photo by Ken Ortiz. Klein photo by Douglas Kirkland. Du Pont photo by James Zucal.

Top to bottom: Tom Houghton, ASC; David Klein, ASC; Lex du Pont, ASC.

Houghton, Klein, du Pont Join Society A native of San Rafael, Calif., Tom Houghton, ASC began working at a Redding television station when he was 15. He shot, developed and edited film for the news and gained experience in the control room. In high school, he earned a Honeywell scholarship for his photography, and he pursued his passion for still and moving images at New York University, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts in film. Houghton’s professional career took him through the ranks of the electrical department, and once he moved up to cinematographer, he shot commercials and such features as Fire Down Below and Finding Amanda. His director-of-photography credits include the series 30 Rock, Love Monkey, Canterbury’s Law and Rescue Me. He earned an Emmy nomination for the latter. David Klein, ASC was born in St. Louis, Mo., and raised near Boise, Idaho. His father and grandfather were photography and cinematography hobbyists, and when Klein graduated from high school, his grandfather gave him a 16mm Bolex. While attending a filmmaking program at the Vancouver Film School, Klein met director Kevin Smith, with whom he later collaborated on the features Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Clerks II and Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Klein also shot Smith’s forthcoming film Cop Out. The cinematographer’s credits include the features Fool’s Gold, The Ape and Good Time Max, and episodes of State of Grace, Gemini Division and Pushing Daisies. Born in Wilmington, Del., Lex du Pont, ASC developed an interest in photography through working on his high school’s newspaper and yearbook. After earning a Bachelor of Arts degree at Brown University, he found work producing commercial animatics in New York City. He went on to become a television-commercial producer before changing tacks and relocating to Los Angeles. On the West Coast, du Pont worked for two years at Aramac Camera, a division of Leonetti Cine Rentals, before entering the

Paul Cameron, ASC

When you were a child, what film made the strongest impression on you? Gone with the Wind (1939). I was 6 or 7, and my parents took me to see it at an old theater in Montclair, N.J. I remember thinking the screen was the size of the sky. I was mesmerized as the film played. Which cinematographers, past or present, do you most admire, and why? I’m watching a lot of films shot by Gordon Willis, ASC, as he recently got an honorary Oscar. Stunning artistry, powerful choices, and a consummate professional with one of the best eyes/sensibilities ever. He ruled the 1970s. Robbie Müller, NSC, BVK had a huge effect on me when I was in university, and he still does.

How did you get your first break in the business? I bought two cases of beer, went to Ferco and then to Panavision New York. I made a couple friends, learned to use some cameras and kept my eye on the ball. I knew I had to get into the union. I failed my camera-assistant test at NABET. A month later, I screened my reel at NABET and got in as a director of photography — different group of guys that day! After bouncing between Los Angeles and New York, I went back to New York, walked into the Gersh Agency and screened my reel for Tom Turley. He called me two weeks later and had me working with Jeff Lovinger and Bob Giraldi within a week. What has been your most satisfying moment on a project? Looking at the check print for Man on Fire.

What sparked your interest in photography? The Polaroid Land Camera. I didn’t grow up with a lot of family pictures or exposure to photography. When I was about 15, my brother bought that camera, and I started taking a lot of Polaroids. I still do, and I’ll continue to do so until there is no more Polaroid film left on the planet. Where did you train and/or study? I ended up at the State University of New YorkPurchase by default; I couldn’t afford New York University or Columbia University. At the time, there were less than a half-dozen film programs in the country. It turned out great because SUNYPurchase attracted artists from the New York metropolitan area and a very eclectic group of professors. There was no cinematography major per se. I started shooting everyone’s films in my class because I couldn’t afford to make many on my own. I was motivated, and I got into NABET 15 as a director of photography before I left school. I was kicked out of SUNY for filming a band called the B-52s. At the time, I was working at the school’s equipment room, and my friend Charlie Libin and I had this crazy idea to shoot this band from Georgia at a club in NYC where we bartended. We brought a bunch of film students and gear into the city and had a great night shooting. For most students, that was their first real experience with shooting. A couple of months later, Charlie and I were editing at the school, and we were asked to leave because we never got the proper permissions. Oh, well. No degree. Who were your early teachers or mentors? Deszu Magyar, who taught directing at SUNY for a couple of years and went on to run the American Film Institute. He influenced me as an artist and as a man. He didn’t care about Hollywood or success. He always said, ‘Work hard and don’t look back. Be authentic.’ Apart from a short stint with Ron Fortunato, ASC, I was never mentored by another cinematographer. I’m trying to do it now for others. What are some of your key artistic influences? The Futurists, the Cubists and all of those outside the box, advancing guard. 96

February 2010

Have you made any memorable blunders? One of the first student projects I did was a film requiring multiple exposures. I shot it on regular 16mm, and I didn’t compensate for the total number of exposures. In fact, I didn’t compensate at all. The footage was so overexposed it was unusable — reversal film! I think I have that one down now. What is the best professional advice you’ve ever received? Invest in yourself, and if you’re not willing to risk everything, then don’t bother doing anything. What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you? Book: The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb. Films: The Conversation, Klute and Dog Day Afternoon. Artwork: Cloud Gate, the bean sculpture by Anish Kapoor in Chicago’s Millennium Park. Music: Lou Reed’s Street Hassle. Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like to try? I’m about to shoot a small film with director Malcolm Venville. It’s a very different project for me. I’ve been shying away from bigger action films and trying to move into more dramatic material. If you weren’t a cinematographer, what might you be doing instead? Cutting wood and living in the wilderness. Into the Wild with good food and wine. Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for membership? Tom Sigel, Daniel Pearl and Jeff Cronenweth. How has ASC membership impacted your life and career? I’ve always felt pressure to shoot good films, and now I feel it more than ever. ●

American Cinematographer

Photo by Fernando Fespiritusanto.

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ONFILM C H R I S M A N L E Y, A S C

“My early experience working for Roger Corman taught me how to work quickly without compromising. At its best, cinematography reinforces the emotion or mood of a scene the same way that the music in the score does. It’s almost intangible–the audience is only marginally aware of it on a subconscious level. I believe that shooting on ﬁlm is part of the equation. There’s an emotional quotient that you can’t measure, but the audience can feel it. There have been experiments where audiences looked at the same scene recorded in both ﬁlm and digital formats. They thought the performances were better on ﬁlm, even though it was the same exact scene. … I trust my eyes. If I see it on set, I know the audience will see it on ﬁlm in cinemas and on HD television sets. As ﬁlmmakers, every ﬁlm or still image we see informs the images we choose to make in the future. We are all standing on the backs of the great cinematographers who came before us.” Chris Manley, ASC began his career shooting low-budget ﬁlms for Roger Corman, including The Phantom Eye which won a daytime Emmy® Award for cinematography. His credits include the television series Threat Matrix, CSI: NY, Prison Break and Mad Men, which earned a 2009 Emmy® nomination for cinematography. [All these programs were shot on Kodak motion picture ﬁlm.] For an extended interview with Chris Manley, 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

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