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Photo of George Mooradian by Joel Lipton exclusively for Schneider Optics
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The International Journal of Film & Digital Production Techniques
On Our Cover: Mr. Spock (Zachary Quinto) beams onto the USS Enterprise in Star Trek, shot by Dan Mindel, ASC. (Frame grab courtesy of Paramount Pictures and Industrial Light & Magic.)
Features
28 40 54 64 70
Departments
8 10 14 78 84 92 94 94 96 98 100
A Bold, New Enterprise Dan Mindel, ASC brings Star Trek up to warp speed
Back to the Future Shane Hurlbut, ASC creates a dystopian world for Terminator Salvation
Making History Fun John Schwartzman, ASC brings icons to antic life in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
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Testing Digital Cameras The ASC and the Producers Guild of America analyze an array of digital cameras
Assessing Previs Previsualization is the focus of a joint committee formed by the ASC, the Art Directors Guild and the Visual Effects Society
Editor’s Note Short Takes: A 65mm Microsoft Installation Production Slate: Drag Me to Hell
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Downloading Nancy Post Focus: Cinematographers, Colorists and the DI
New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index ASC Membership Roster Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up: Alan Caso
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The International Journal of Film & Digital Production Techniques • Since 1920
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Editor’s Note s a longtime fan of the Star Trek franchise, I reacted to news of the 2009 “reboot” with cautious optimism. I spent many happy childhood hours glued to earlySeventies reruns of the original TV series, and I’ve also enjoyed some — but not all — of the subsequent series and theatrical features. This time around, I became vaguely concerned when director J.J. Abrams conceded in interviews that he’s always been more of a “Star Wars guy.” However, he also noted this preference made him more willing to take a few bold risks with the familiar mythology. A visit to the set last year with associate editor and fellow Trek fiend Jon Witmer indicated Starfleet was in good hands; an early preview of key sequences further reassured me; and an exhilarating April screening on the Paramount lot proved that Abrams, cinematographer Dan Mindel, ASC and the rest of their collaborators had hit the bull’s eye with their phasers. In my humble but studied opinion, this Trek film is the best yet and offers even the uninitiated a fantastic summer-blockbuster ride. As I write this column, Witmer is also feeling “transported” after seeing the finished picture. His article about the production (“A Bold, New Enterprise,” page 28), which offers in-depth analyses from Abrams, Mindel, production designer Scott Chambliss and visual-effects supervisor/2nd-unit director Roger Guyett, is essential reading for anyone who craves behind-the-scenes details. Here’s hoping the latest iteration of the Trek universe lives long and prospers. Sci-fi enthusiasts can also look forward to Terminator Salvation, which teamed cinematographer Shane Hurlbut, ASC with director McG. While a brief flurry of media attention was devoted to some of the creative interplay that occurred on-set, Witmer’s thorough exploration of the project (“Back to the Future,” page 40) provides a substantial account of Hurlbut’s work — and his crucial contributions to the film’s thrilling images. John Schwartman, ASC is the new hero of my 3-year-old son, Nicholas, because he got to man the camera on Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, the sequel to a movie that has delighted Nicholas more times than I can count. The further adventures of Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) promise more fun for all ages, and Pat Thomson’s piece (“Making History Fun,” page 54) explains how Schwartzman achieved the tale’s whimsical illusions. This issue also offers several topical articles that address key tools and techniques of the cinematographer’s trade. Stephanie Argy and Richard Edlund, ASC penned an overview of the recent Camera-Assessment Series, which examined seven digital cameras (“Testing Digital Cameras,” page 64), and also prepared a primer on previsualization (“Assessing Previs,” page 70) that focuses on the goals of a joint committee formed by the ASC, the Art Directors Guild and the Visual Effects Society. Valuable insights can also be found in a Q&A that Jon Silberg and I conducted with John Bailey, ASC and colorist Stefan Sonnenfeld about the benefits and perils cinematographers experience in the digital-intermediate suite (Post Focus, page 78). Bailey’s widely read Filmmakers’ Forum on this hotbutton topic (AC June ’08) caused such a stir that we encouraged him to revisit the subject.
Stephen Pizzello Executive Editor 8
Photo by Douglas Kirkland.
A
Short Takes A 65mm Microsoft Installation at JFK Airport
Visual installations serving as ads for Microsoft are on display at John F. Kennedy Airport. Presented across five high-definition plasma screens, the images were shot on 65mm by Christophe Lanzenberg.
10 June 2009
ravelers hustling through the American Airlines terminal at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport are currently getting a break from the drab interiors typical of such locations. An unconventional visual installation shows single motion images — a dog chasing a Frisbee along the beach, a golfer chipping from a sand trap — across five 40" highdefinition plasma screens. Each image is a quick narrative playing out in an attention-grabbing 9.31:1 aspect ratio. The images were designed as a visual analog to Microsoft’s “Life Without Borders” slogan. Graphic representations of cellphones, computer monitors and home-theater screens help express the message that magical moments of everyday life, once captured, can move easily among platforms that use Microsoft products. There are eight five-bank displays in the concourse, and any passenger arriving or departing on an
T
American Airlines flight passes by them. Ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky asked director Rob Feng and cinematographer Christophe Lanzenberg to create four vignettes, each with motion that would cross the frames from right to left, taking into account the viewer’s motion through the viewing area. The “stories” include a motorcycle daredevil jumping from one ramp to another, and a child creating a long soap bubble that bursts as he reaches the final frame. “The basic idea was that whatever was playing across the screens should really span all five,” says Feng. A graduate of the University of Southern California’s film program, Feng worked at visual-effects facility Digital Domain before joining Brand New School, a directing collective with offices in New York and Los Angeles. Lanzenberg, a native of France, moved to the United States in the mid-1980s and studied film history and theory in
the graduate program at Columbia University before transitioning into cinematography. His credits include music videos, commercials (“NBA: There Can Be Only One”) and features (Watching the Detectives and Sensation of Sight). He is now working with Savant Film. For the Microsoft installation, Feng and Lanzenberg considered a rig comprising five HD cameras and also researched the possibility of shooting in Imax. But extensive previsualization and previous experience on a five-HDcamera shoot convinced them that the most effective approach was to use a single 65mm camera, an Arri 765, which would allow them to shoot at frame rates of up to 75 fps. Scanned at 8K resolution and enlarged 12 percent, the 65mm frame provided adequate resolution even after the image was spread out over the five plasma screens. The ability to overcrank was
Frame grabs courtesy of Crispin Porter + Bogusky/Brand New School. Photo by Stephen Sloan.
by David Heuring
Above: A set comprising a sand trap and green allowed Lanzenberg to place the lens at grass level for some golf action. Below: The cinematographer digs in for the shot.
12 June 2009
crucial because the agency asked for images that moved from right to left at roughly the speed of the concourse’s moving sidewalks. That precluded the horizontal Imax format; Imax cameras max out at 48 fps. The single-camera approach also allowed the filmmakers to make simple adjustments — on the shoot day and in post — without the complications they might have encountered with a five-camera rig. “Each piece is really a short film that tells a story in one shot, from one edge of the frame to the other,” says Lanzenberg. “The trick was to anticipate any technical problems before they happened.” The company that built the physical display provided the filmmakers with a scale model, “but once we got to the venue, it was a totally different game,” recalls Feng. “There was all the ambient lighting, old screens that were blowing out, and many other small yet important factors that added
to the challenge.” He spent a good chunk of the two-month schedule carefully previsualizing every aspect of the project. “For something that looks so simple, there was a lot of math involved: choosing the right lenses, the right field of view and the right distances,” says the director. “Clairmont Camera made us a special ground glass in the very wide aspect ratio. We used Zeiss/Arriflex lenses that utilize a 64mm Maxi-PL mount; we used a 40mm for the motorcycle jump and used the 30mm extensively. The lenses were very sharp but didn’t have the distortion correction that today’s 35mm lenses have. We chose wide-angle lenses partly to make the backgrounds more prominent, and we found that the distortion looked kind of interesting.” Lanzenberg notes that some challenges were met with very simple solutions. “The boy with the bubble was photographed with the widest lens, the 30mm,” he recalls. “We chose that focal length to get more perspective on the forest and to emphasize the light coming through the woods in the background; we would have lost a lot of that on a longer lens. Once we started shooting, we realized that in order to appear to be running in a straight line, the boy had to run in a half-circle.” In most of the situations, Lanzenberg chose the best time of day to shoot and relied on available light. For the golf shot, a sand trap and green were built, allowing him to place the lens at grass level. The day was cloudy, so the cinematographer re-created harder sunlight using HMIs, emphasizing the shadow of the ball and the subtle movements of the golfer. To add contrast to the scene with the soap bubble, he built a wall of soft light on the camera-right side, using four 18Ks at a distance through
a 20'x30' frame of diffusion. Lanzenberg shot the material on Kodak Vision2 200T 5217, which he rated at EI 320. “It’s a softer, gentler stock, and I knew the image would retain a filmic quality on the HD monitor in the airport,” he says. “The slower lenses and high frame rates also affected that decision. Also, with the images being scanned and displayed on HD monitors, we wanted to stay true to the film image and avoid an electronic feel. That seems strange when we’re talking about the 65mm negative, but we were extracting an incredibly small sliver from the middle of the frame. I pull-processed the film by 1 stop to get even tighter grain.” FotoKem in Burbank, Calif., processed the footage and scanned it into the digital domain. In some cases, the frame was moved up and down imperceptibly to fine-tune composition. Some sharpening and additional slow motion were also done during the digital stages of post. Lanzenberg and Feng treated themselves to one printed roll. “We were very curious to see the quality of the large frame projected, and FotoKem very nicely printed a roll at full frame for us,” says Lanzenberg. “It was incredible and a real pleasure to see such beautiful, clean images. “I thought the most interesting aspect of the project was composing for the incredibly wide frame,” notes Lanzenberg. “It’s every cinematographer’s dream to shoot in CinemaScope, but 65mm is really incredible. It was the right choice for this project. The images are gorgeous.” I
Production Slate Fateful Encounters
Supernatural Wrath by Iain Stasukevich Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell begins by presenting its heroine, Christine Brown (Alison Lohman), with a seemingly simple moral dilemma. An ambitious loan officer eager for a promotion, Brown needs to prove to her superiors that she’s capable of making tough decisions; in this case, it means denying an elderly woman (Lorna Raver) an extension on her delinquent mortgage payment. Unfortunately, the old woman vows revenge and places a powerful curse on Brown, literally transforming her life into a living hell. “It’s the classic tale of a girl in trouble, not a blood-andguts horror movie,” says cinematographer Peter Deming, ASC. “I’d liken it to 14 June 2009
Poltergeist or something by Hitchcock.” The film presents two worlds; each feels equally real to Brown, but their differences suggest the possibility that the demon terrorizing Brown is a figment of her imagination. For the “ordinary world” of the bank, Deming used soft, natural lighting, adding little to no color. “We set up Christine’s everyday world in a palette of gray and desaturated colors,” notes production designer Steve Saklad. “Initially, our climate had to be restrained so the camera and lighting could transition us to that other place when things get amped up.” Deming worked with gaffer Michael LaViolette to make the most of practical fixtures. For example, a scene showing the old woman’s attack on Brown in a parking garage was shot in a
real garage, and after running tests with Kino Flos and HMIs gelled with Plus Green, Deming and LaViolette decided to augment the location’s existing mercury-vapor lamps with an additional half-dozen of the fixtures. “When you’re gel-packing a tungsten or HMI source, you’re losing light, and you have to keep the gels from burning,” notes LaViolette. However, the practicals posed their own challenges, particularly when it came to controlling and even effectively mounting them. Also, once the lights were turned off, it took time for many of them to come back on. The filmmakers also wanted to embrace existing fixtures for the movie’s numerous night exteriors. “There’s sodium-vapor light everywhere in Los Angeles at night,” says Deming. “We
Drag Me to Hell photos by Melissa Moseley, SMPSP. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Universal Pictures.
An evil hag unleashes her fury on bankloan officer Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) in Drag Me to Hell, shot by Peter Deming, ASC.
Right: Determined to show her bosses she can be tough, Brown resists the pleading of an elderly woman (Lorna Raver) who needs extra time to pay her mortgage. “We set up Christine’s everyday world in a palette of gray and desaturated colors,” notes production designer Steve Saklad. Below: A Turkish-style mansion serves as the setting for a séance. Deming and his crew bounced 6K and 12K Pars into thin Mylar to fill the space with a shimmering, organic light.
16 June 2009
rigged open-faced 1K and 2K sodiumvapor lamps onto streetlights and hid them as best we could. It was a sourceoriented approach. I didn’t want Condors [creating] fake moonlight.” Deming worked at a T2.8, using Kodak Vision3 500T 5219 for many of these scenes. “Everything was playing so low that the city backgrounds and light from houses were visible!” recalls LaViolette. In one key scene, Brown is having dinner with her boyfriend (Justin Long) and his parents at their upscale home and begins to envision horrifying things, including an eyeball appearing in the dessert. “The setup lent itself to a classic suspense-horror style, so we went for lighting that was realistic but also evocative of films shot onstage,” says Deming. “The idea was that we could plug into a classical Hollywood
style and perhaps even make it blackand-white, and it would still work.” “In order to suggest Christine is going insane, we made that scene very high-key, with delicate shadow-play rounding out the room a bit,” explains LaViolette. Chimeras were fitted over 2K Blondes (for keylight) and 650-watt Tweenies (backlight), which, along with a softbox, were rigged to a pipe suspended over the table. As Brown descends into her nightmare, the doors start rattling, cueing the introduction of “fantasy world” sources, including Pars and Fresnels employed in a hard, singlesource fashion. Dutch angles and frenetic, handheld camerawork also contribute to the tension of the scene. As the story progresses, Brown’s encounters with the demon become more frequent, and the demon becomes
increasingly corporeal. Eventually, Brown finds herself in a waterlogged grave, attempting to exhume a corpse. Saklad describes the cemetery set, one of the few built for the production, as a “horrific steel contraption” standing 12' high and outfitted with an elaborate plumbing system to re-circulate water through the grave so Lohman would not be affected by the mud. “You’re already asking for a suspension of disbelief by having someone in a hole digging up a body in the pouring rain,” notes Deming. “When shooting something like that, you should be conscious of the limitations of such a location so you don’t give away the artifice of the set by shooting it too wide.” In filming the scene, Deming used 35mm and 27mm prime lenses for shots close to Lohman and strove to maintain the feel of source-based lighting. Raimi “likes it dark and realistic, but he doesn’t want the viewer to strain to see what’s going on,” notes Deming. To bring out the texture of the rain, he employed a movable 20K backlight, and fill was provided by bouncing 1K Mickeys and 2K Mightys off white cards. A bank of Luminys Lightning Strikes units was used to punctuate the action. After Brown learns from a seer (Dileep Rao) that she can only rid herself of the curse by transferring it to another person, she finds herself in a Turkishstyle mansion, where the seer and a psychic team attempt a séance to effect
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Brown attempts to exhume the old woman’s corpse in a driving rainstorm. The sequence was filmed on a cemetery set with an elaborate plumbing system. “When shooting something like that, you should be conscious of the limitations of such a location so you don’t give away the artifice of the set by shooting it too wide,” advises Deming (bottom photo).
the transfer. “That sequence has the film’s most extreme visuals — lighting, camera and design all went to the same place,” says Saklad. (The set was built onstage at 20th Century Fox.) Before Brown can complete the transfer, the demon appears and foils her attempt. Prior to this scene, the demon has appeared only as a shadow or outline, but for its final appearance, the filmmakers wanted it to be a kinetic light that appeared to be everywhere at once. Deming had his crew bounce 6K and 12K HMI Pars into thin Mylar to create a shimmering, organic light that fills the cavernous room; flags were used to cut the light and limit clues to its directionality. Further enhancing the confusion of the scene is extensive handheld camerawork, and 1st AC David Eubank physically shook the camera in several shots as A-camera operator Patrick Rousseau followed the action. Visual effects that could be achieved on set with light, shadows and smoke were done in-camera. In many cases, these effects were enhanced by artists working under visual-effects supervisor Bruce Jones. “The goal was to make it organic,” says Deming. “We’d try to start the process on set because we wanted to give the actors something physical to use.” Surveying the experience he has gained since shooting Raimi’s Evil Dead II 22 years ago, Deming says his ideas about cinematography haven’t changed that much. “Cinematography is all about storytelling, and when you’re doing a genre film, you have to try to take it somewhere it hasn’t been before. It’s easy to fall back on convention, but you should try to come up with a way to redefine the genre.” TECHNICAL SPECS 2.40:1 Super 35mm Panaflex Platinum, Gold II Primo lenses Kodak Vision3 500T 5219; Vision2 250D 5205, 200T 5217 Digital Intermediate ¢
18 June 2009
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A Dark Romance by Rachael K. Bosley A stark, wintry palette sets the tone for the independent film Downloading Nancy, which follows a desperately unhappy woman (Maria Bello) who hires a man she meets on the Internet (Jason Patric) to kill her, but soon discovers that he could well be her soul mate. Rounding out the four-character drama are Nancy’s remote husband (Rufus Sewell) and her therapist (Amy Brenneman).
20 June 2009
The feature-directing debut of Sweden’s Johan Renck, Nancy was shot by cinematographers and frequent collaborators Rain Li and Christopher Doyle, HKSC. The pair shared last year’s Boston Society of Film Critics cinematography prize for Paranoid Park (AC April ’08), and among their other recent collaborations are the Polish film Warsaw Dark, which Doyle directed and Li shot, and Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control, for which Doyle was the director of photography and Li was the
second-unit cinematographer. On Nancy, both of them shouldered a camera throughout the shoot, which took place on location in Regina, Saskatchewan. To get their perspectives on the project, AC caught up with Doyle in person on one of his recent visits to Los Angeles, and with Li via e-mail as she worked in London and Beijing. American Cinematographer : What made Nancy appealing to you, and why did you think it was a good project for both of you to do? Rain Li: I liked the script a lot, and it struck me as a female film, something that would affect female audiences more than male ones. Cinematography is about building mood and atmosphere through composition, camera moves and lighting, and this story offered a lot of opportunities to do that. Chris suggested we collaborate on it because Johan wanted to allow the actors a lot of physical freedom and have the camera capture them as organically as possible, and they thought two cameras would be the best way. Johan was certainly very brave to let both of us shoot his first film, and he was also very encouraging. Christopher Doyle, HKSC: Johan and I had worked together on commercials many times, and we knew
Downloading Nancy photos by Allan Feildel, courtesy of Strand Releasing.
Right: In a scene from Downloading Nancy, a pet store serves as the backdrop for a brief romantic interlude between Nancy (Maria Bello) and Louis (Jason Patric), whom she has hired to kill her. Below: The camera adopts a surreptitious position as Nancy waits to meet Louis at the bus station.
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On location at the bus station, Christopher Doyle, HKSC (right) and co-cinematographer Rain Li discuss their two-camera strategy as 1st AD John O’Rourke (foreground) and director Johan Renck (with script on his lap) listen.
22 June 2009
a two-camera setup on Nancy would be the ideal for the actors and for the time and money we had. I knew Rain was the ideal person for the other camera. I know her composition will be extremely close to what I would have done myself, but perhaps with something more — it might be 97 percent, or it might be 150 percent. There are no concerns about someone else trying to prove another point, and that’s extremely reassuring. She is my greatest collaborator. Did Johan’s background as a musician inform his approach to the material? Doyle: I think what makes this kind of film different from a mainstreamintended film is that you stack up the ideas or images so they become a single experience. Most films are sequential; they go from A to B as opposed to stopping on the way. But the thing is, in life, you do stop on the way. In music, you dwell on an idea; you revert back to the original phrase and see what else it could have meant. In conversation, you do that, too. I think filmmakers like Johan and Jim Jarmusch and Wong Kar-wai, who come from a musical background, have those facilities with the rhythm of life, and to give that a visual form, whether it’s through color or movement or composition, is extremely coherent. It gives the audience a moment to reflect or engage. If you try to
reduce a film to one line, in one way that’s ridiculous, but in another way perhaps that’s really valid. If we can reduce our image-making to one coherent experience, I think we’ve made a good film. Given that this was Johan’s first feature, did he approach it differently than he did your other collaborations? Doyle: He didn’t drink! [Laughs.] No, the great pleasure of working with Johan is that there is one idea, one vision, and there’s no deviation from that. He’s also an interesting person to go on location scouts with because he won’t take more than five minutes in one spot. You can scout for a whole film in five hours! Maybe it comes from the climate — all Swedes are in a hurry because they know winter is coming soon! Johan is great. He’s one of those people who would jump with or without a parachute. This story is bleak, and he talked about wanting it to look almost monochromatic. How did you achieve that? Li: In coordination with the costume designer [Denise Östholm] and production designer [Lauri Faggioni], we decided that pull-processing Fuji 400 Eterna would be the best way to achieve the muted look Johan wanted and bridge the feelings between passionate and mundane, dark and romantic. We
also used a lot of toplight, which Johan loves. The main location, the house where Nancy and her husband live, had a very low ceiling, and because most of the shots involved two or three parts of a room in one take, we couldn’t hide lights anywhere except the windows, and they were too small to light the scene. The only thing we could do was add more flat-panel fluorescent lights — which are very common in Regina — to the ceiling. The fixtures are just cheap fluorescent tubes with a cream-colored plastic cover that diffuses the light, and the sources in the house were those mixed with daylight. Chris and I discussed whether to swap out the bulbs for Kino Flo tubes so they wouldn’t look quite as green, but by that time, we’d seen most of the other locations and knew we’d have to deal with those lights in all of them, and we knew we wouldn’t have time to change every tube. Therefore, we decided we wouldn’t change any of them; it’s a big decision to light an entire film that way! Pull-processed Fuji 400 does an amazing job of blending colors in mixed lighting so no individual color pops out, which is another reason we chose it for this movie. Pull-processing Fuji appears to be one of your favorite techniques, Chris. Doyle: It has made the labs in Thailand very afraid of me — they see me coming and say, ‘Oh, no, he’s going to f**k up the machines again!’ But you have to find a lab that believes its reputation depends on films like ours as well as the James Bond movies. Cinematographers should look for that complicity, and smaller labs should always be researched and engaged. [Ed. Note: Doyle did the final color-timing of Nancy at FotoKem in Burbank, Calif.] You do find something that approximates your own eye, whether it’s lighting style, color or film stock. I think Kodak and Fuji try too hard sometimes. I don’t think this particular medium needs seven different kinds of Ajax, so to speak. Most cinematographers are reasonably focused and organized; they feel complicity with a certain look, and
Above: In framing Nancy’s distant husband (Rufus Sewell), “we wanted to feel almost extraneous to his experience,” says Doyle. “By contrast, we’re often almost inside Nancy.” Below: Another voyeuristic angle is assumed for Nancy’s session with her therapist (Amy Brenneman).
24 June 2009
they return to that. I have an idea about what will work, but if there’s time and money for testing, I test other things. If there isn’t, you fall back on what you’re used to. Another thing I did on Nancy that I’ve done on every film I’ve shot in the last five years is light some night exteriors with those lamps that construction crews use out on the road at night. They’re extremely cheap — you can buy one for what it costs to rent an 18K for a week. It’s a small generator that has four
lamps on an arm that can be extended, and the lights can be separated out or used together. They appear in shot at the train depot in Paranoid Park, and in Nancy, we used them outside the bus station and for the burial scene. They’ve become my favorite tools. Sometimes you have to make sure the ballast is stable so it won’t flicker, and sometimes it doesn’t matter if it flickers. How did you work out which of you would shoot what on Nancy? Li: The goal was to give the actors freedom to walk from one space to another without having to worry about marks or lighting. Once Johan had worked out the blocking with the actors, Chris and I were called to the set with the assistant director [John O’Rourke] to watch the scene. Then Chris and I discussed which angles we’d use and whether to add a few small lights to a certain part of the room. In some scenes in Nancy’s house, Chris would be in the kitchen, shooting the beginning of the scene, and I would be in the living room, waiting to pick up the actors as they walked from the kitchen to the living room; that way, the performances could float uninterrupted. In some cases, we would focus on shooting different actors, and we’d create a rough path for each other so we didn’t end up in each other’s shot when the actors moved. Many shots have a furtive quality — the camera is peering at the characters through doorways or from behind furniture or other objects. What’s the reason for that?
Doyle: Johan talked a lot about creating a sense of voyeurism. We’re experiencing something gratuitously that most of us wouldn’t want to go through or feel the need to engage. We were trying to imply discretion and yet intrigue. We chose the location we chose for Nancy’s house precisely because it allowed us to shoot into certain rooms from a distance and make use of various framing devices. Did you know at the outset that you’d be working almost entirely handheld? Doyle: Yes. Johan wanted the camera to float with the characters, I think to imply a kind of ambivalence toward them and their understanding. He actually complained that my handholding was too steady! He kept saying, ‘Chris, you’ve got to float more!’ I’ve spent 10 years perfecting a way in which you can’t even notice the camera is handheld, so that was kind of a challenge. The scenes between Nancy and her therapist appear to be a departure from that strategy — the shots are quite stable. Doyle: Yeah, those are confrontations, whereas everything else in the film is ambivalent. The camera floats except when you know she’s nuts. When Nancy and Louis [Patric] are talking at the Chinese restaurant, the camera is about eye level with her, whereas you assume a slightly higher angle on him. Then, at one point, when he’s in the middle of a sentence, the camera drops down to his eye level. Do you recall why you did that? Doyle: Rain and I were probably just trying to keep out of each other’s way! Generally, we were trying to get more objectivity with him and more subjectivity with her. You do drift in and try to be consistent, but we’re not all Storaro! [Laughs.] You were contending with a fairly extreme climate in Saskatchewan. How did that affect your work? Doyle: It did dictate certain aspects of the look. The whole city was
Louis helps Nancy choose a dress for her unusual special occasion.
monochromatic — all white! The story was originally set in another location, but because it’s mostly interiors, it was easy to set somewhere else, in this case Baltimore. Although tax breaks and soft money help get a film made, they can be an iron fist in a velvet glove sometimes, and I think they’re penny-wise, poundfoolish when they cause a film like Nancy to be moved into another environment. In general, on a smaller film, the intent and integrity of a location is very basic to what we do — we respond to what’s there. We riff off the street noise in Chinatown in New York, the sound of the waves in Venice Beach or the austerity of Bruges. And in this case, the climate had very real limitations; it was -35°C [-24°F] plus wind chill, bloody cold, and it took an hour to change a lens [in order to avoid condensation because of the temperature shift]. And everyone works at a slower speed in those temperatures. We were also contending with Canadian union laws that dictated a certain amount of [local crew] participation. When you have a certain vision, sometimes you’re better off just going in with a really small crew and doing it. Do you and Rain currently have another collaboration in the works? Doyle: The extent of the collaboration always depends on the project. There has been some reticence in the filmmaking community because Rain 26
is coming onto big projects, which bring with them all the big prejudices, at a different level of experience, and sometimes I have to fight for it. But everything boils down to word of mouth, and the only way to have our collaboration continue to grow is by actually doing things. The most gratifying thing is seeing kids’ reactions when we do workshops together at film schools and film festivals, which we do a lot. They see the two of us arguing with each other as equals and realize a young woman is making films of this quality, and they really respond. That’s wonderful. TECHNICAL SPECS 1.85:1 35mm Moviecam Compact MK2 Cooke S4 and Angenieux Optimo (24-290mm) lenses Fuji Eterna 400 8583 I
Erratum In last month’s ASC Awards photo spread (“Cinematography’s Summit”), Tracy Fleischman’s name was accidentally omitted from a caption on page 71. She was the guest of nominee Kramer Morgenthau, ASC.
A Bold, New
Enterprise
With Star Trek, cinematographer Dan Mindel, ASC and director J.J. Abrams update Gene Roddenberry’s universe for a new generation of fans. by Jon D. Witmer Unit photography by Zade Rosenthal, SMPSP n 1966, when audiences were introduced to Capt. James T. Kirk, he was already exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations, and boldly going (with his equally enterprising crew) where no one had
I 28 June 2009
gone before. However, Kirk’s journey to the bridge of the USS Enterprise and his first contact with his core crew is a story that the Star Trek franchise’s six series and 10 feature films never told. Director J.J. Abrams has filled in the gaps with a new Star Trek
feature that reboots the franchise, and he concedes that finding a look for the movie, which was shot by Dan Mindel, ASC, was a challenge. “This isn’t a reinvention to a degree that ignores the history of the franchise,” says Abrams. “We needed to
Photos courtesy of Paramount Pictures. Frame grabs courtesy of Paramount and ILM.
embrace what had come before, but the spirit of what Gene Roddenberry created needed to be treated in a modern context, with an awareness of today’s audiences.” Mindel, who previously teamed with Abrams on Mission: Impossible III (AC May ’06), recalls, “J.J. told us early on to use the original TV show as our key reference. He wanted us to pay attention to that young, go-get-’em, positive attitude.” Other Mission: Impossible collaborators who signed onto Star Trek included production designer Scott Chambliss and visual-effects supervisor/2nd-unit director Roger Guyett. Mindel was eager to employ the anamorphic format for Trek’s 23rd-century vistas. “I’m not interested in using Super 35mm,” says the cinematographer. “J.J. wanted me to convince him to shoot anamorphic, so he and I looked at every test we could do, and when he saw the 50mm Primo projected, with the falloff in focus, he was convinced.” Guyett notes that although the distortion inherent in anamorphic lenses complicated the visual-effects work, “the result is worth it.” The Trek crew’s first assignment took them aboard the USS Kelvin to shoot the opening sequence, in which the Kelvin is pitted against the time-traveling Romulan warlord Nero (Eric Bana) and his starship, the Narada. Chambliss says his design for the Kelvin, which predates the Enterprise by some 25 years in story time, “had the feeling of combining Flash Gordon with a Corvette commercial from 1965, with a cigar lounge thrown in for the bridge. Because it’s the first spaceship we’re on in the movie, J.J. and I wanted to do a bit of a fake-out that would enable us to make the Enterprise feel really different.” The Kelvin’s interior lighting is dominated by harsh toplight that was created with open, undiffused sources, and Mindel notes that “the
Kelvin was where we learned everything we needed to know about lighting the Enterprise, but we had a lot more freedom on the Kelvin because there were places to hide lights.” The hard-light strategy was carried into a power plant in Long Beach, Calif., that served as the Kelvin’s lower decks and engineering section. Chambliss describes the location as “stressed, textural and oily, which was the feeling we wanted the Kelvin to have.”
Mindel was intrigued by Abrams’ desire to shoot Star Trek on location as much as possible. The director explains, “This movie is a space adventure and could potentially feel artificial because of that premise, and I was very nervous about it not having guts and reality. I decided it would be critical to shoot in real, practical locations or build sets that would, for the most part, give us the freedom to shoot as if we were on a real location, perhaps with some set extensions.” ¢
Opposite page: Spock (Zachary Quinto, left) and James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) face the first of their adventures together in Star Trek. This page, top: The villainous Nero (Eric Bana) sets his sights on the young heroes. Middle: Nero’s ship, the Narada, squares off against the USS Kelvin in the film’s opening sequence. Below: Some 25 years after the attack on the Kelvin, the newly constructed USS Enterprise heads into the final frontier.
American Cinematographer 29
A Bold, New Enterprise Top and middle: Cinematographer Dan Mindel, ASC employed a hardlight strategy inside the Kelvin. Below: The look was carried through scenes set in the starship’s lower decks, shot on location in a power plant in Long Beach, Calif.
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The introduction of the adult James Kirk (Chris Pine) takes place in an Iowa bar populated by Starfleet cadets. To create the futuristic watering hole, an array of 23rd-century adornments was added to the bar at the American Legion Hollywood Post 43. “We used some Blondes for toplight and a High End Systems DL.2 behind the door to project a moving image and add some life,” says gaffer Chris Prampin. “We also used Element Labs’ Stealth Displays and Versa Tubes, which are big, connectable LED pieces that allow you to put any color into them or run an image across them. We built [a rig with those units] big enough to encompass an entire wall, and, with the help of PRG, where we rented them, we had a full library of images and colors.” During his momentous night at the bar, Kirk meets Nyota Uhura (Zoe Saldana), dukes it out with four of Starfleet’s finest, and endures a blunt scolding by Capt. Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood). Suitably chastened, Kirk musters the dignity to enlist in Starfleet and attend the Academy, where he befriends Leonard “Bones” McCoy (Karl Urban) and sows the seeds of his rivalry — and eventual friendship — with the half human/half Vulcan Spock (Zachary Quinto). Later, when Spock’s home planet of Vulcan is threatened, Kirk and his graduating class receive their first field assignment, reporting for duty via shuttlecraft that take off from a large hangar. For the shuttle launchings, the filmmakers shot inside the Marine Corps Air Station in Tustin, Calif. A mixture of 16' HMI balloons and stand-mounted Gaffairs (rented from Skylight Balloon Lighting) provided ambience inside the 1,000'-long-by-300'wide hangar, while 120' Condors rigged with Xenons and 18Ks on Arri MaxMovers swept the floor for added effect. Shooting inside the shuttle-
In contrast to the Kelvin’s hard angles, production designer Scott Chambliss incorporated smooth curves into the Enterprise. Mindel worked with Chambliss to build as much lighting into the bridge (far left) and corridors (near left) as possible, and sections of a brewery in Van Nuys, Calif., stood in for the engineering sections (below).
craft, Mindel would squeeze in a Kino Flo or LED panel for fill, and his crew would often position a Xenon angled in through the windows and bounced off a piece of Rosco Soft Silver on the floor. “It was really hard to get dollies in there, so we often shot handheld,” says Mindel. “That allowed the camera to be part of what’s going on.” (On larger sets, the filmmakers more often moved the cameras via a Steadicam or Technocrane.) Boarding one of the shuttlecraft, Kirk and McCoy depart for the Enterprise and catch their first glimpse of the ship in space. “There are certain things you can’t let go of if you’re going to do Star Trek, and one of them is the general look and shape of the Enterprise,” says Abrams. “You want people to glance at it and go, ‘Yeah, it’s the Enterprise.’ And those who already know it can study it and realize how different it is.” In updating Starfleet’s flagship, Chambliss abandoned the Kelvin’s pulp influences in favor of “designers who were interested in futurism and future technology, such as Eero Saarinen. I got some line drawings of the original exterior of the Enterprise, which was all right angles and flat discs, and started applying the curvature of Saarinen’s architecture to the
main structural elements. It was an elegant approach that allowed the ship to be itself and get kind of sexy in the process.” To carry that sex appeal through the starship’s interior, Mindel tried to lend the sets “the feeling of a brand-new car, when it’s all sparkly. I sometimes used Tiffen Black Pro-Mists to give them a bit more sparkle, and I was very keen to have reflections on the set from glass, shiny objects and surfaces. It just feels so full of life when you get that. “We made a huge effort to stay within the confines of the set and maintain the realism,” he continues. “We don’t like to fly out walls, and we built a vast amount of practical light into the set.” In the corridors, Mindel’s crew hung 2K Blondes and
750-watt Lekos above holes that the art department cut into the ceiling. “We also had MoleBeam Projectors in various parts of the hallway,” adds Prampin. “Al DeMayo, our lightingfixtures foreman, made sure what we wanted was possible.” Much of the lighting built into the interior was designed to cause lens flares, which serve as a visual motif throughout the picture. “The Enterprise has lights set in frame that basically point down the lens of the camera in every direction,” says Mindel. “Wherever you look, you get a flare. It goes against everything one learns as a camera technician, which is to shield the lens from any extraneous light and stop it from flaring. We’ll either get slaughtered by our
American Cinematographer 31
Visual Effects for the 23rd Century Right: The Enterprise soars into battle against the Narada.
n AC’s October 1967 coverage of the original Star Trek series, ASC members Howard A. Anderson, Linwood G. Dunn and Joseph Westheimer detailed their Emmywinning special-effects work on the show, and for the purposes of the discussion, Westheimer broke this work into five basic categories. To lend the new Star Trek feature some historical perspective, we asked the film’s visual-effects supervisor, Roger Guyett, to use the same parameters to summarize the work done by artists at Industrial Light & Magic, Digital Domain, Svengali Visual Effects, Lola Visual Effects, Evil Eye Pictures and Kerner Optical. Joseph Westheimer, ASC: First are shots of the USS Enterprise flying in space or orbiting a planet. Roger Guyett: Trying to think of new ways to show off the Enterprise was a challenge of its own. The level of complexity ILM artists are able to create in their digital surfaces is just phenomenal. We were able to talk to people who had worked on the original Star Trek movies about how they dealt with surfaces, and we [digitally] created stuff like interference paint, which the original effects teams achieved practically on the Enterprise. Westheimer: The second type of effect is materialization of the people as they are transported to
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the ship from a planet or [vice versa] …. The materialization or transporter effect is accomplished by superimposing a glitter over the form of the people or object being transported. Guyett: We wanted to update the transporter but still make it familiar. J.J. [Abrams] had a lot of really good ideas, and the idea you see in the movie is his; he thought it should look like light beams traveling in a very dimensional way so you can understand the space where this stuff is happening. The effect was always slightly different depending on the environment the characters were in and the lighting conditions, and it was always difficult to achieve. I think the transporter was our Battle of Waterloo — it was tougher than we first thought it would be! Westheimer: The phaser effect [has] a variety of settings and adjustments. Most often used is the stun effect, which can knock a man down and render him unconscious. Full effect, which causes an object to dematerialize and disappear, is another. Guyett: Of course you want to embrace the old stun vs. kill. But you can believe our phasers are actually firing; they’re more high-energy and gnarly than the original phasers, and they just feel more dangerous. If you get hit by one of these things, you’re
going to get a horrible wound. It feels like getting hit by a projectile. Westheimer: The fourth type of effect is the television reductions and superimposures. Aboard the Enterprise are many view screens, [and] the most important is the Bridge Viewing Screen. Guyett: It’s the greatest bridge window of any battleship, and at the same time, it’s got great heads-up display capability and an advanced user-interface system, so you can play back information. We used greenscreen because a lot of the characters wear blue, but the issue was that we wanted to reflect the interior of the ship. We tried using a real piece of glass so all the reflections would be true, but building a piece of glass like that was an absolute nightmare. In the end, we shot plates of the interior view that we could reflect back onto the window when we added it digitally, and we had a CG mock-up of the interior that would give us a correct reflection with correct perspective. Westheimer: Finally are the scenes or sequences in which an optical effect is created literally from scratch. These effects can be classified as ‘esoteric adventures’ …. A recent request, to quote the script, was for a ‘columnar-like area of blurry, misty interference of some sort. It is rather like a gentle whirl-
wind, but one of force rather than air current. Faint pastel lights and shades appear and disappear. It moves from side to side gently and then disappears.’ From this description, our optical company must create on film the effect that the writer has conceived. Guyett: We hit a home run the first time out with our warp effect. Russell Earl, my co-supervisor, and I decided we wanted it to feel like you’re traveling faster than light, but what does that mean? We had some great artists working on this show, and the effect came together very quickly. It has enough flavor of the old-style warp, but you get more of a first-person experience — it’s as though you’re inside it. One thing we did with our space battles that’s slightly different was a lot of completely virtual pyro. Traditionally, if you blow something up, you have to shoot an element, but we wanted a much more automated process. We studied the way things would explode in space and invented a whole system based on that. There’s no oxygen, for example, so there has to be a source things burn back to. There’s also no drag or resistance, so if something has a velocity, it doesn’t slow down or arc back to the ground. We also created some full-on CG creatures. We had one that’s sort of halfway between a polar bear and a gorilla — we called him the Polarilla. Neville Page designed pretty much all of the creatures and species within the movie. They probably did less of that on the original show because it was harder to do, whereas it’s relatively straightforward in CG. But having said that, it’s still not easy!
peers or be really admired for it!” Abrams adds, “The flares often weren’t made by a light source in the frame, and to me, that implies there’s something extraordinary happening just off camera. It makes me feel like I’m not watching the average moment. And I love the idea of a motif that is so inherently analog and imperfect in its unpredictability; it serves as counterpoint to the sterile, controlled look that so many visualeffects films seem to have.” If the built-in lighting wasn’t providing the desired flare, the crew aimed Xenon flashlights at the lenses as the cameras rolled. “Our A- and Bcamera operators, Colin Anderson and Phil Carr-Forster, would tell us if we needed to go a little farther in or out of the frame, or up or down, to get the ultimate flare,” recalls Prampin. “It was funny to watch — Dan and I were running around, ducking, jumping and hiding behind things just so we wouldn’t be seen by
the cameras. The flashlights were so bright that there are probably several instances where Dan’s actually in the movie, but you can’t really tell!” On the Enterprise’s ovalshaped bridge, the primary flare inducers comprised a ring of MR 16s and MR 11s fitted into the wall; each was mounted so it could be slightly panned and tilted for maximum effect. “The bridge had many lighting opportunities built into it: screens, buttons, blinking lights and all the bells and whistles,” notes Chambliss. “It feels contemporary and utterly fleshed out.” The consoles manned by Spock, Hikaru Sulu (John Cho) and Pavel Chekov (Anton Yelchin) featured practical fixtures from the art department and built-in LiteGear XFlo dimmable fluorescent fixtures, which were also installed beneath milk-glass floor panels under the set’s centerpiece, the captain’s chair. The XFlos, run off a dimmer-board system programmed by Joshua
Above: Spock addresses an assembly of cadets at Starfleet Academy. Below: California State UniversityNorthridge stood in for some of the Academy’s exteriors; visual effects transformed the setting into 23rd-century San Francisco.
— Jon D. Witmer
American Cinematographer 33
A Bold, New Enterprise
Above: Capt. Robau (Faran Tahir, center) faces off against the Narada’s Romulan crew. Below left: Nero ponders his next move. Below right: Chambliss designed the interior of the ship as an assortment of pieces that could be rearranged numerous ways to suggest the vessel’s immense scale.
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Thatcher, “allowed us to put a little life into [the set],” says Prampin. “We could set up a little pulse in them, or we could make it look like something was flickering and the power was going out.” Red-alert situations have been a Star Trek staple from the very beginning. To make the most of those sequences, Mindel had the electricians fit a red-gelled XFlo alongside all of the clean tubes built into the bridge, enabling the dimmer-board operator to instantaneously establish the red-alert look. To further punctuate the change in ship’s status, “we incorporated a lot of LED technology, such as LiteGear LiteRibbon RGB strips, which allowed us to change the color,” says Prampin. The strips were installed as architectural accents around steps
and other cutaways on the bridge; when not in red alert, the strips glowed blue to match Neoflex tubing running through narrow channels Chambliss designed into the set’s walls and ceiling. (Neoflex is a flexible, plastic-encased LED strip that creates a glow similar to a neon fixture.) When the Enterprise arrives at Vulcan, its crew finds the planet endangered by Nero’s Narada, which, Chambliss says, “makes the scale of the Enterprise look rather insignificant.” To economically suggest the immense scale of the Narada’s interior, Chambliss drew on his experience working in theater. “I thought we should treat the soundstage like a theater stage and create a world where we could mix and match elements to create differ-
ent and new environments over and over again. It’s not a traditional way of designing movies, but it’s a very traditional way of designing theatrical scenery.” Last year, AC visited the Paramount soundstage housing the Narada’s interior “elements.” The result of Chambliss’ approach was a seemingly random arrangement of almost countless pieces, some on casters, some incorporating display interfaces and Romulan insignia, some hanging from wires run to the ceiling, and many featuring corrugated black tubing that lent the entire stage an eerie quality that was enhanced by Mindel’s use of smoke and yellow light. “The larger tower elements could be shot from any side,” notes Chambliss. “We could put them together to make some massive
structure, or we could pull them apart, flip them sideways and fly them up in the air. Much to my delight, as soon as I showed J.J. a model of this approach, he instantly got it and started going along for the ride. He told me it felt like having a stage full of toys.” “Given that the set was going to change on the fly, we had to be able to change the lighting on the fly,” says Mindel. “We built in the ability to control our lights from a dimmer board and rearrange what we were doing remotely.” Accordingly, the cinematographer employed a number of moving fixtures — including Vari-Lite VL3500s and Clay Paky Alpha Spot 1200s — above the set, with Nine-light Maxi-Brutes, MoleBeam Projectors, 5Ks and 10Ks cutting additional shafts through the
smoked interior. On the floor, Kino Flos gelled with Lee 101 Yellow were placed to light particular set pieces, and the outer edge of the set was lined with a painted backdrop that was alternately frontlit with Far Cycs or backlit with Sky Pans. “It was a pretty abstract backing, so we tried to be abstract with our lighting and just pick spots that worked with the set’s configuration at the time,” says Prampin. During AC’s visit, a phaser battle was staged inside the Romulan ship. Between takes, prop master Russell Bobbitt offered a close look at Starfleet’s standard-issue sidearm. Staying true to the phaser wielded by the series’ original cast members, the updated firearm still boasts both “stun” and “kill” settings; now, however, the two settings are visually
differentiated with the press of a thumb switch that physically flips the barrel 180 degrees. “With the guns, gadgets and all of the control panels, our intention was always to provide a literal functionality,” says Chambliss, who praises Bobbitt and set decorator Karen Manthey for their “enormous and carefully considered contributions” to that work. Before traveling back in time to wreak havoc, the Narada was a mining vessel, and Nero now uses its retractable drilling platform as a devastating weapon. In an attempt to render the weapon inoperative, Kirk, Sulu and a “red shirt” named Olsen (Greg Ellis) space-dive out of a shuttlecraft and into Vulcan’s atmosphere, landing on the platform. A wedge of the platform was constructed in Dodger Stadium’s
Left: Kirk tussles with Nero’s crew on an aerial drilling platform while Sulu (John Cho, left) struggles with a parachute malfunction. Below left: Visual-effects supervisor/2ndunit director Roger Guyett (standing at right) leads the second unit through shooting on the drill platform. Below right: The crew takes aim with air movers to sell the impression that Kirk and Sulu are plummeting toward the Vulcan surface.
American Cinematographer 35
A Bold, New Enterprise Right: Spock addresses the Vulcan council. The scene was filmed in the SkyRose chapel in Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, Calif. Below: Mindel (holding finder) and director J.J. Abrams scour the countryside in search of lens flares.
parking lot and backed by greenscreen; the site’s elevation allowed Mindel to shoot into the sky without fear of glimpsing the Los Angeles skyline. “We learned on Mission: Impossible that these big greenscreen sets work better outside,” says Mindel. “You get the ambient dust and wind and sunlight, which really help sell the gag.” Condors also stood at the ready with Nine-light MaxiBrutes and Dinos for backlight and 100K and 50K SoftSuns for fill. The approach “certainly didn’t make compositing the sequence easy,” says Guyett. “With a really gnarly set, greenscreens get dirty and become less effective, but I think if we’d done it [onstage], there would be a greater chance of people looking at it and saying, ‘I don’t really believe they’re outside.’” Mindel adds, “Part
36 June 2009
of working on this kind of movie is learning about the [visual-effects] technology, and Roger’s very keen to teach guys like me. He and I shared the experience all the way to the digital intermediate, because the biggest issue is blending everything together seamlessly [in post].” The filmmakers carried out the DI at Company 3 with colorist Stefan Sonnenfeld. “Shooting on film, which is really important to me and Dan, and then doing the DI with Stefan allowed us to do a critical and final pass that was in some cases about color-correction and in other cases about being incredibly creative and giving certain locations an even bolder look,” says Abrams. Mindel notes, “Kodak offered us [Vision3 500T] 5219 because of its greater latitude, but I found it lacked the
initial contrast that I like; I’d much rather have the contrast on the negative than try to add it afterwards.” He opted instead to shoot two Kodak Vision2 negatives, 100T 5212 (day exteriors) and 500T 5218 (interiors). “We shot at T2.82⁄3 basically all the time, and I like to use zooms on set, so I pushed by half a stop to give us enough light when we were inside or shooting at night,” adds Mindel. After the mission is accomplished on the drill platform, Sulu is jolted off and into freefall. When Kirk jumps after him, it falls to Chekov, aboard the Enterprise, to lock onto the plummeting targets and beam them back to the transporter room. In the transporter-room set, “we had some floor and ceiling lighting effects that remained fairly similar to the look of the original series,” says Mindel. Prampin adds, “We gave the art department old Fresnel lenses out of 10Ks, and they actually incorporated those into the set for the characters to stand on.” A mix of 10Ks and Ninelights provided illumination from below the transporter, and 2K MoleBeam Projectors were aimed through holes designed into the ceiling. The transporter remained dark “until the characters stood on it, and then we would gradually start putting a little light into it,” says Prampin. “Eventually, we would get to an overexposed state, at which point the characters would ‘disappear.’” (25K SoftSuns and 8K Paparazzis enhanced the effect.) When Pike falls into Nero’s hands, Spock becomes acting captain of the Enterprise, and in the interest of logic and efficiency, he decides to keep Kirk out of his way by jettisoning him to the ice planet Delta Vega. The planet’s exterior was constructed alongside the drill platform at Dodger Stadium. “We mocked up a proof-ofconcept on the computer and did a very quick survey of the car park,” says Guyett. “We ran a Sunpath on the two sets, and we were able to present this concept of shooting the two sets
A Bold, New Enterprise From left: Chekov (Anton Yelchin), Kirk, Scotty (Simon Pegg), Bones (Karl Urban), Sulu and Uhura (Zoe Saldana) boldly go where no one has gone before.
side-by-side and demonstrate that it could actually work. J.J. would do first unit on one, I’d do second unit on the other, and then we’d swap.” Cinematographer Bruce McCleery, a longtime collaborator of Mindel’s, shot the second-unit material. The filmmakers combined several techniques to suggest a larger space than conventional construction could provide in the stadium’s parking lot. “We shot plates in Alaska, and we did a lot of fantastic
38
DigiMatte work to create the ice environment,” recalls Guyett. (Aerial director of photography David B. Nowell, ASC shot plates in Alaska and Utah.) A bluescreen, illuminated by 18Ks, wrapped around the Delta Vega exterior, and above the set, key rigging grip Rick Rader suspended a large silk from a construction crane that could be moved depending on the position of the sun. For additional fill, Mindel used 100K and 50K SoftSuns.
Seemingly stranded on the ice planet, Kirk encounters an elderly Spock (Leonard Nimoy), who has traveled back in time in pursuit of Nero. This Spock leads Kirk to a Starfleet outpost tended by Montgomery Scott (Simon Pegg). The outpost set was built in a part of the Anheuser-Busch brewery in Van Nuys, Calif. “We used Par 64 space lights to create little pools of light for people to walk through, but for the most part, we kept it pretty subdued,” says Prampin. “To hide the back wall, Scott Chambliss put up a bunch of chain-link fence with some aged plastic on it, and behind that we stuck a lot of 4-by-4 Kinos, some gelled with Lee 179 Chrome Orange and some with Lee 219 Fluorescent Green. We also used some Kinos in and around Scotty’s station, but we mostly keyed that with Blondes through diffusion, usually Lee 129 [Heavy Frost].” After the elder Spock shares a
future formula of Scott’s with the young engineer, Scott and Kirk manage to beam back to the Enterprise as the ship travels at warp speed; Scott’s calculations, however, land the pair in the engineering decks. For this scene, the filmmakers sought a largescale location “that would feel clean and fresh instead of oily and disgusting,” says Chambliss. “Instantly, we thought of major food-processing plants, and our research led us to the [Anheuser-Busch] plant.” Mindel explains, “We shot in a pump house, which was so noisy that everyone had to wear ear protection. We also shot in the fermentation house, which was refrigerated — it was 100°F outside, and we were all inside in protective clothing! The fermentation tanks gave us many reflections and great-looking pings off the stainless steel, but we had to be very careful about what kind of lights we used, where we used them and for how long, because you can’t
change the temperature of the ambient air very much before you mess up all the beer. “We only used fluorescents to key with, and we were able to light backgrounds with conventional lights and turn them off between takes so they never got too hot,” he continues. “We weren’t allowed to bring dollies up there, so we shot with the Steadicam.” The filmmakers also tapped some of the location’s existing mercury-vapor worklights. “We just wrapped them in a little Rosco Scrim to control their level and brought in our own lights to augment that,” says Prampin. With Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu and Chekov all finally aboard, the Enterprise boldly enters danger’s maw to conclude its first adventure. Proud to have enlisted for another voyage with Abrams, Mindel reflects, “J.J. enjoys what he does immensely, and he
wants us all to bring our best and show him something a little different from what’s been seen before. His mantras are that the work should be fun, and you should respect the audience. We tried really hard to make this film worthy of its name.” I
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39
Back to the
Future Shane Hurlbut, ASC and director McG envision the post-Judgment Day world of Terminator Salvation. by Jon D. Witmer Unit photography by Richard Foreman, SMPSP
hane Hurlbut, ASC has seen the future. As a matter of fact, he has spent the better part of the last two years there, in the grimy, smoldering, post-apocalyptic world of Terminator Salvation. The year is 2018, and guntoting robots have transformed human survivors into scavengers. The world is dominated by a robocentric organization called Skynet, but the whole scene is actually overseen by a man named McG. For 77 shooting days — not to mention months of prep and post — the future was set up in and around Albuquerque Studios in New Mexico, where AC visited last August. The production, the fourth film in the franchise begun in 1984 by director James Cameron’s The Terminator, has almost completely overtaken the studio. Evidence of
S
40 June 2009
Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Warner Bros.
Opposite page: A T-700 rolls off the assembly line in Terminator Salvation. This page, top: John Connor (Christian Bale, left) questions the allegiance of Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a human/machine hybrid. Middle: Director McG (left) gives instructions to a T-600. Bottom: Shane Hurlbut, ASC (right) preps the next setup as Worthington and 1st AD Bruce Franklin look on.
the all-out war that serves as the story’s backdrop lines the road from the airport to the studio; dusty, burnt-out automobile chassis sit on the shoulder, and, closer to the studio entrance, a tow truck replete with built-on weaponry and a cowcatcher stands sentry. The first three Terminator films all took place in the present day and presented Terminator robots sent back in time in an attempt to prevent John Connor from becoming the leader of the human resistance, but Salvation is confined to the future, before anyone traveled back in time, and before Connor (played by Christian Bale) earns all of his stripes. “This is post-Judgment Day, after the bombs have gone off,” says McG. “This is the world we’ve only had the tiniest sneak peek at in the other films.” To create the future, the director called on Hurlbut, a collaborator on We Are Marshall (2006) and numerous music videos and commercials, and production designer Martin Laing. “We’re trying to build on the language and the rules that were set forward [by the previous films] and create a bigger, more ¢ exciting show,” says Laing. American Cinematographer 41
Back to the Future
Connor leads members of the resistance in an assault against a Skynet operations center.
42 June 2009
Within the overarching timeline of the series, “the machines in this film precede the coming of the Arnold Schwarzenegger T-800” in the original film, says McG. Therefore, Salvation’s models required some reverse-engineering on Laing’s part. “We had to make the parts bigger and more brutal,” says Laing. “The T-700 is 6-foot-9, and the T-600 is 7-foot-3 and has a rubber mask that doesn’t quite fit and is falling apart. We also wanted to go with the realities of metal. They’d be casting steel, and the reality of steel is dark, rusty and oily.” (Stan Winston Studio physically realized the Terminator designs with on-set puppets, costumes and props.) “Martin and I were both totally into this dark, greasy, grimy world,” enthuses Hurlbut, who was eager to depart from the series’ established visual language. “We didn’t want to go into that same cobaltblue moonlight. We wanted to reinvent the look.” Inspired by Technicolor’s photochemical OZ process (created by Bob Olson and Mike Zacharia), Hurlbut sat down with colorist Stefan Sonnenfeld at Company 3 and “devised an intense, digital version of the OZ process,” says the cinematographer. “The skies turn silver-blue, and instead of brown rods in the desert, there are silver rods. Everything looks metallic, and what better way to depict a world of machines?” With the digital post path in mind, Laing used more saturated colors in some parts of the set. “For example,” he says, “we created red flora that’s come up out of the ground where the radiation level from the bombs is the highest.” Hurlbut adds, “The red tones in this movie are very saturated and vibrant, but our post process took them down to a wonderful bloodcrimson.” On the day AC visits the set, Hurlbut steps away from a rehearsal to explain the filmmakers’ modus
Clockwise from left: Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) confronts Wright; cranes and wirework enable the crew to shoot a sequence in which a giant Harvester Terminator pulls humans out of an old 7-Eleven; the Harvester unleashes Moto-Terminators to pursue fleeing humans; Reese and Wright escape in a modified tow truck.
operandi, but heads back toward his crew — including gaffer Todd Higgins, key grip David Knudson, A-camera operator Chris Moseley, B-camera operator George Billinger and C-camera operator Gary Hatfield — when McG calls out, “Let’s get a lens on this!” Before the cameras start to roll, though, Hurlbut returns to introduce his assistant, Po Chan. “Once we go into production, she takes all the lighting notes on set, including keylight, backlight and fill exposure, and camera placement and color temperature. Her notes were absolutely essential with all of the visual-effects setups we had. She also manages the daily schedule, so when you walk onto the set in the morning, you know the scene, the stock, the equipment and the personnel because it’s all on the list — unless I want to change it on the day. There’s always
that wild card! “McG and I feel the best prep is the one that’s well thought out and lets us change our plans on any given day,” continues Hurlbut. “We’ve had sequences that were supposed to be one long take, but then I added a few new cameras to catch explosions, and the transformation was really exciting.” As the set braces for the first take of the day, Chan leads the way to another stage, which contains the subterranean outpost Connor and his colleagues call home. The series of tunnels and rooms includes the small room Connor shares with his wife, Kate (Bryce Dallas Howard). The tunnels are chockablock with mementos of the past, including a basketball hoop and a woodcut portrait of a dog. “The resistance isn’t only fighting the Terminators, they’re also fighting the reality of
American Cinematographer 43
Back to the Future
Connor interrogates Wright after discovering Skynet’s handiwork beneath Wright’s skin. Hurlbut’s assistant, Po Chan, drew up the lighting plots for the film’s sets and locations.
what happens in nature: Moisture gets in and the paint starts peeling,” says Laing. “They’ve run out of paint. It’s the sad world they’re in.” The sad world is also reflected in the resistance’s meager air force, comprising a ragged array of helicopters and airplanes. “It’s a patch-
work quilt,” says Laing. “The planes have been breaking down and they’ve had to steal bits from other planes, which creates a sad but almost colorful texture.” In keeping with the freedom fighters’ retrofitted aesthetic, the outpost is illuminated by streetlights
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and other found sources jerry-built into the tunnels’ walls and ceilings. “Victor Zolfo, our set decorator, found the most amazing practicals,” says Hurlbut. “There are fluorescents, warning beacons, and old cobra-head streetlamps lying around. In the hallways, I hung little 650-watt FCX bulbs in the ceiling, and when people walk through them, they go in and out of hot toplight.” Hurlbut also hung 2', 4' and 8' batten strips in areas of the outpost for a soft, controllable source. “In an 8-foot strip, there are 25 R30 85watt globes in a line, and I can dim them up or down depending on what I want the stop to be.” Throughout the shoot, the cinematographer maintained a stop of T2, shooting in Super 35mm with three Kodak stocks: Vision2 50D 5201 (day exteriors) and 200T 5217 (day interiors) and Vision3 500T 5219 (night exteriors and dark interiors). “Glenn Brown, my first assistant, is the reason we’re able to pull
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44 June 2009
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Top: Connor transmits radio messages with the hope of finding other human survivors. Middle: Connor and his wife, Kate (Bryce Dallas Howard), share a quiet moment in the resistance’s subterranean outpost. Bottom: Hurlbut checks the light in the outpost’s corridors.
at a T2 the whole time. He is amazing.” Hurlbut wanted to minimize grain throughout the picture. “Other films that deal with postapocalyptic settings add grain, but I thought we should reinvent the genre with a unique look without adding grain,” he says. “I also shot the whole movie on a 144-degree shutter to sharpen the effects and make the image snap. The action, the sparks and the fire are just a little crisper.” Leaving the relative safety of the resistance behind, Chan heads toward another stage, this one housing the underbelly of Skynet’s operations; a splinter unit is picking up some additional footage. Opening the stage door sends a shaft of daylight cutting through the interior haze, and when the door closes again, moments pass before any detail can be discerned. When the eyes adjust, the sight is shocking: Human refugees dressed in the tattered remnants of clothes huddle in a cramped, overcrowded cage, the victims of Skynet’s efforts to harvest human hair and skin in an attempt to create a Terminator visually indistinguishable from humans. (The smoke that plays inside this set marks a motif running throughout the film, even in exteriors, suggesting a world still smoldering from ¢ Judgment Day.) American Cinematographer 45
Back to the Future
Above: Skynet uses flying Transporters to ferry humans for a harvesting program. “We built our [Transporter] set around cattle cars,” says production designer Martin Laing. “Humans are now being moved like cattle, just brutally pushed from A to B.” Below left: Reese is caught in a Transporter. Below right: The machines unload their human cargo in a large processing facility.
46 June 2009
In an early scene in the film, Connor leads a group of fighters into the missile silo that houses this cage. A ground-level assault wipes out most of the silo’s power except for a few warning strobes and spinning red beacons. Otherwise, the interior “was lit with Surefire flashlights mounted to guns,” says Hurlbut. To better illuminate his surroundings, Connor ignites a magnesium flare. Hurlbut recalls, “I told Christian, ‘This is very dangerous, but it’s going to be the coolest shot you’ve ever seen — the result will be total darkness, and when you strike the flare, you’re going to become as bright as a nuclear bomb!’” The surface attack leading to the discovery of the underground cages was filmed as a day exterior in the New Mexico desert, where the
production had to contend with high winds. Before tackling Salvation, Hurlbut shot Swing Vote (2008) in the state, and on that feature, he took a cue from his nightexterior setups to help him through the windy days. “For night ambience, I’ll bounce 12-light Maxis into a flyswatter, a 45-foot Pettibone telescopic-boom forklift with a big bounce mounted on it. For days, we started mounting bounces on Pettibones, and we could drive them anywhere, with no lines and no bull pricks in the ground. We got the ones with the turning front rack so we could aim the bounce exactly where we wanted it.” For night-exterior setups, he added 120' Condors fitted with 24light Dinos for backlight. “My backlight is probably 1½ stops down, and my fill is about 3½ down — it’s in
the toe,” he says. “I have a home out in the Santa Rosa Valley, and I can really study the moonlight and how it backlights or sidelights trees. I think nights look utterly realistic when you underexpose.” Hurlbut incorporated such underexposure for an exterior location involving a Napalm run Connor makes from a helicopter. He explains, “We built a pond just down from the studio that was 80-feet wide by 200-feet long, and we put approximately 60 cement trees alongside that we could light on fire for the Napalm strike.” After the strike, Connor’s chopper crashes into the pond, which is infested with Hydrobots. Laing notes, “The Hydrobot is the first Terminator we see in the water, so we took the movement of an eel but worked with the reality of pistons and pro-
Back to the Future Right: Hurlbut incorporated smoke, sparks and fire effects inside the Terminator factory, which was constructed in a New Mexico power plant. Below left: The crew prepares to shoot stagebound footage to match an exterior Napalm strike. Below right: Gelled Par cans are aimed into mirrors to make a grounded Pave Hawk helicopter appear to fly over a series of explosions.
48 June 2009
pellers to actually make it go through the water. We tried to make it as real as possible.” Helping sell the realism, Hurlbut adds, “Charlie Gibson, the visual-effects supervisor, knocked it out of the park with every rendered frame. The teams he assembled were at the top of the game.” (Those teams included Industrial Light & Magic, Asylum, Pixel Liberation Front, Rising Sun Pictures and Kerner Optical.) “Patrick Loungway, our second-unit cinematographer, devised a shot where a guy falls out of the helicopter and into that pond with a Hydrobot attacking his face,” says Hurlbut. “Patrick put a 5K on a Condor with a ceiling fan spinning in front and a piece of foamcore as
the helicopter’s shadow.” For the setup, the camera was in the water looking up as Connor’s co-pilot breaks the surface; underwater director of photography Peter Zuccarini helped realize the shot. “In our last three weeks, we’ve had first and second unit, both with splinter units, to get all the shots,” says Hurlbut. “Converting [cameras] in a multi-camera shoot is where you lose all your time on films, so I make sure everything is built and ready to go,” the cinematographer continues. “The crash cams are ready, the Steadicam is ready, and I’ve got two cameras in handheld mode and two cameras in studio mode. We rarely use more than two or three cameras
at a time, but when we want to go to the crane, it’s ready. “We went with a full Primo lens package,” he continues. “They’re nice, sharp lenses with incredible contrast; I thought this film was the perfect application for them.” Aside from NDs, he avoided filtration, and he notes that he and McG would generally establish the scenes with a wide lens and then cover the action on long lenses. “Most of the time, 21mm was as wide as we went. McG loves close-ups around the actor’s face, so we’d start on a 21mm and then go to a 150mm.” In contrast to the moonlight ambience near the pond, the night breaks open with artificial glare around Skynet, where flying machines called Transporters ferry humans for the machines’ harvesting program. When resistance member Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) is captured and taken to Skynet, Connor and Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) set off to rescue him. “I lit Skynet with a blue-green tone — that was the evil color — and used warmer tones for the resistance,” says Hurlbut. To maintain that look where the Transporters land and unload their cargo, the cinematographer worked with David Pringle of Luminys Systems to acquire 600 metal-halide sports fixtures, which Pringle modified with housings “that made them more
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Back to the Future Top: The sterile laboratory where Skynet conducts its human experiments stands in sharp contrast to the rest of the postapocalyptic world. Middle: McG shows his solidarity with the human resistance. Below: Connor leads Reese and Star (Jadagrace) out of the lab.
efficient,” says Hurlbut. “He put reflectors in them and moved the ballast, so we have an incredibly bright source that weighs very little. “We put six Pettibones outside of Skynet, and [key rigging grip] Kent Baker mounted 60 of these lights on each one,” he continues. “Scott Graves, the rigging gaffer, and Kent Baker can turn any vision into a reality.” The cyan motif continues in the so-called Terminator factory, where machines manufacture T-700 endoskeletons. Chan leads the way into another darkened stage, where a small part of this factory awaits
50 June 2009
some insert shots. Most of the action, however, was filmed on location inside a local power plant. To establish “the reality of machines making machines, we went to a Swedish company called ABB, who sent us 16 of their robots along with one of their technicians,” says Laing. “We added the torsos of our Terminators into the set and then brought in these robots, which were programmed to do a ballet around them. It was absolutely lovely.” Despite the mechanized majesty, Hurlbut was concerned the location might look too small onscreen. “The factory was rather small, and McG wanted to make it feel like it went on to infinity,” he says. “So we added smoke and brought in the language of Skynet with metal-halide sports fixtures on one end, backlighting the smoke and silhouetting the robots, which made them look menacing. It was very dark in there, but there were sparks and fire creating ambient light. There were guys welding right next to the frame, and Mike Meinardus, the special-effects coordinator, and his key set foreman Chris Brenczewski had propane poppers — there’s a flame under a little tube, and when you hit a button, a solenoid valve opens a 5-gallon propane tank, shooting the propane through the flame and creating a 15-foot fireball. Being able to light practically with all of these different sources has been an amazing gift from the special-effects department — they made this look possible.” Fire also pocks the post-nuclear landscape, and Hurlbut regularly employed flame effects on night exteriors to boost contrast. “In a fullmoonlight environment, everything’s kind of gray,” he notes. “When we injected the fire element, it really brought everything out and gave it dimension.” To supplement real flames on location, the electricians clustered Fay lights, pointing in all directions, on a Western dolly. “We put a Magic Gadget flicker generator
Back to the Future Wright struggles to face his inner demons.
in there and dialed it to achieve our highs and lows,” says Hurlbut. The movable rig was gelled with double Full and Half CTO. “We had to really boost the fire effect because of our DI plan,” he notes. With the gel canopy completely covering the lights, the rig “was totally waterproof. We had six of those rigs and moved them wherever we needed fire.” The same gel combination was used in a different rig to make it
appear as though a Pave Hawk helicopter is flying over Skynet as explosions erupt beneath the aircraft. To sell the effect while the aircraft sat on the stage floor, Hurlbut had the floor covered with mirrors and set a line of rock’n’roll truss fitted with gelled Par cans above the helicopter, on either side. With the overhead fixtures bouncing into the mirrors, the “fire” source appeared to be below the helicopter; to add a sense of movement, a chase sequence was
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run from a dimmer board while lamp operators physically panned metalhalide sports fixtures. “It was like a poor-man’s process,” says Hurlbut. “There were nine guys panning lights and our dimmer-board operator, Bryan Booth, doing his dance, and it all looked so real.” Skynet’s headquarters are in San Francisco, where a mad scientist named Serena (Helena Bonham Carter) sits behind the curtain of Skynet’s machinations in an utterly sterile environment that contrasts poignantly with the rest of the world. “She’s the evil witch who has created her own little world,” says Laing. “But underneath, everything’s very dark and dingy.” The sterility is most notable in Serena’s tower, where she squares off against Wright. Hurlbut explains, “I lit the set from overhead and overexposed it to make it hyper-white. That was the one day I shot at a T4,
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because McG wanted more depth in there.” HPL space lights, which incorporate halogen Pars, provided the base exposure in the set. “The wide shots played nicely with the top source, but for close-ups, we brought in a little fill for their eyes,” says Hurlbut. When the Salvation crew returns from lunch, they prepare to shoot in another section of Skynet, the lab where experiments involving human skin and hair are conducted. The lab reflects the clinical atmosphere of Serena’s tower but has a morgue-like quality thanks to the human cadavers lying on surgical tables. In the scene at hand, Connor, Reese and a girl named Star (Jadagrace) try to make their way out of the facility, and when Terminators take up the chase, things start to explode. Practical lights adorn much of the set, with an overhead grid of near-
ly 100 space lights providing overall ambience. To facilitate CG extensions in post, a bluescreen lines the outer edge of the set; it is lit by Kino Flo Image 80s along the top and bottom, all fitted with Super Blue tubes. “That’s mainly what I use for stage applications, and when we do bluescreen work outside, I use 18Ks,” says Hurlbut. The cinematographer goes on to explain his preference for bluescreen over greenscreen: “If you have blue contamination on a face, you can desaturate it to make it look like skylight. But what can you do with green contamination?” Despite the extensive visualeffects work, effects were achieved practically and in-camera as often as possible. “I wanted all the explosions, all the velocity, to be a tactile experience,” says McG. “When people see CG elements, they sort of detach from the movie, and this
story is a cautionary tale. We live in a science-fiction world, and if we don’t watch out, this could happen.” With that ominous prediction hanging in the air, McG surveys the set and turns once more to face the future. “Make it hot!” he shouts. “Let’s go!” I
TECHNICAL SPECS 2.40:1 Super 35mm Panaflex Millennium XL, Platinum; PanArri 435 Extreme; Arri 235, 35-3 Primo lenses Kodak Vision2 50D 5201, 200T 5217; Vision3 500T 5219 Digital Intermediate Printed on Kodak Vision 2383
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Making History
Fun
John Schwartzman, ASC captures a cavalcade of famous figures in the madcap comedy Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. by Patricia Thomson Unit photography by Doane Gregory
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hero’s welcome greeted Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian when the production arrived at the titular museum in Washington, D.C., last May. “It was like being an American soldier in 1945 driving through Sicily, where everyone’s throwing prosciutto and bottles of wine,” recalls John Schwartzman, ASC, who joined director Shawn Levy to film the sequel. Smithsonian staffers were well aware that the original Night at the Museum (2006) had boosted attendance at New York’s American Museum of Natural History by 20 percent, so they welcomed the sequel with open arms. The filmmakers even received per-
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mission to shoot inside the National Air and Space Museum, a first for a Hollywood production. Battle of the Smithsonian picks up with Larry Daley (Ben Stiller), now a successful businessman, as he visits his old friends at the museum and discovers that interactive displays are replacing the old-fashioned dioramas, which are being shipped to the Smithsonian for storage. When he realizes the materials include the Egyptian tablet that gives life to the museum’s inanimate inhabitants, Daley dashes to Washington to try to retrieve the tablet before dark, but doesn’t arrive in time. Among the newly awakened is the evil Egyptian king Kah Mun
Photos courtesy of 20th Century Fox.
Rah (Hank Azaria), who intends to use the tablet to open the doors to the underworld. He recruits other bad guys, including Ivan the Terrible (Christopher Guest) and Napoleon (Alain Chabat). Meanwhile, Daley gathers a team that includes Gen. George Custer (Bill Hader) and Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams). The action peaks when Daley and Earhart steal her aircraft and the Wright brothers’ plane from the Air and Space Museum and escape to New York with their precious cargo. Like its predecessor, which was directed by Levy and shot by Guillermo Navarro, ASC, Battle of the Smithsonian features few scenes without visual effects; even a simple two-shot often has animated elements, such as a dancing Degas ballerina, in the background. Nevertheless, says Levy, he retained the philosophy of the first film: “This was a comedy first and an effects extravaganza second.” Comedy was one reason Levy decided to shoot widescreen. He had never done so, but Schwartzman convinced him it would allow the comedy to play better. “The wider frame allows you to unify multiple stars, which is a treat for audiences,” says Levy. “To see Ben Stiller improvising in the same frame as Hank Azaria or Christopher Guest just maximizes the comedy trip.” Of the decision to use Super 35mm instead of anamorphic, Schwartzman explains, “I would have preferred anamorphic, but we were going to have many units going, and we had to be sure we’d have enough equipment for everybody. And nowadays, with digital intermediates, Super 35 isn’t a bad way to go.” For Schwartzman, one of the challenges of the production was balancing the story’s nighttime setting with the mandate that comedy shouldn’t be too dark. “The studio [20th Century Fox] wanted Night at the Museum to look more like Day
Opposite page: Smithsonian Museum security guard Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) and aviatrix Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams) check out a female statue’s reaction as Rodin’s Thinker flexes his “guns” to impress her. This page, top: Larry and his new friend try to contain the mayhem unleashed by a magical Egyptian tablet. Middle: Evil pharaoh Kah Mun Rah (Hank Azaria) uses an hourglass to torment miniature cowpoke Jedediah (Owen Wilson). Bottom: Honest Abe Lincoln springs to life in his memorial chair.
American Cinematographer 55
Making History Fun
Top left: Armed with his trusty flashlight, Larry shows off the form that got him promoted to the big leagues of museum security. Top right: Larry attempts to reason with Napoleon (Alain Chabat). Below: Napoleon and Ivan the Terrible (Christopher Guest) suffer a temporary setback in their quest for world domination.
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at the Museum,” he notes wryly. “That was a battle Guillermo [Navarro] had to fight pretty much all the way through, and I have to give him credit for fighting the hard fight. On this film, the studio knew it had a successful franchise, so I didn’t have to fight as much.” Indeed, Schwartzman had access to plenty of gear during the 72-day shoot. Two Technocranes (30' and 50') with stabilized Scorpio remote heads were constantly onstage in Vancouver, where most of the movie was shot, and Schwartzman says they were valuable for enhancing the comedy. “If
an actor suddenly stops 4 inches to the left of where he should be and you don’t have any more track, you’re stuck,” he notes. “You don’t want to call ‘Cut’ if the actors are riffing, so we used the Technocrane like a dolly and kept shooting. [Acamera operator] Ian Fox could tell [Technocrane technician] Ryan Monroe, ‘Camera left, 6 more inches,’ and we could literally do five minutes of a scene in one shot. Shawn became very enamored of long, moving masters. We’d still go back and shoot coverage, but it was almost like shooting rehearsals — you never knew when you were
going to get something magical.” Panavision headquarters in Woodland Hills, Calif., supplied the camera package, which included two Panaflex Platinums, a Millennium XL, Arri 435s, and Primo prime and zoom lenses. The second unit, which worked for half of the shoot and operated like an action unit, mainly used the Arris. “Second unit was actually shot by Ian, our A-camera operator,” says Schwarztman, who also used Fox this way on National Treasure. “When we started that work, I moved [B-camera operator] David Crone to the A cam, and Ian became the 2nd-unit director of photography. By then, we’d shot enough of the movie that Ian knew exactly what to do. I didn’t have to explain how I lit the stacks underneath the Smithsonian, for instance. It worked out very well.” Much of the picture was shot on Kodak Vision2 Expression 500T 5229, which Schwartzman rated normally. (Vision2 200T 5217 was used for day exteriors and greenscreen work.) “Half of this movie is Ben in his dark blue uniform, and he looked best on 5229,” notes the cinematographer, who also tested the costume with Vision2 500T 5218 and Vision3 500T 5219. “5229
was a little softer in the shadows, so we could see more detail in his jacket. If he was standing there talking, it would have been very easy to bring the level of brightness of his jacket up without affecting everything else, but this is essentially a chase movie, so it would have been very difficult to constantly light his jacket independently of his face. 5229 made that problem go away.” Production began with four days of exteriors on the Washington Mall, and Schwartzman was surprised by the location’s limited lighting. “At night, it’s pitch black, which is really tragic. The buildings are barely lit, and the trees aren’t lit at all. We ordered something like 11 miles of cable, and it had to come from Los Angeles because there wasn’t enough on the East Coast!” Gaffer Jay Kemp and his crew spent a week placing 300 Blondes and Redheads under all the trees. To create moonlight both in Washington and on a nine-block stretch outside the American Museum of Natural History, which appears at the beginning and end of the film, Schwartzman turned to LRX lights. “I’d never used them before, and they were quite good for this kind of thing,” he observes. “In D.C., we used two LRX Piranhas with 12K HMIs, and in New York, we put three LRX Singles each on two 120foot Condors. You can pan, tilt and spot them remotely, and they move very quickly.” For night scenes in which the Air and Space Museum is seen in the background, Schwartzman wanted the museum’s famous displays to be visible through the building’s glass façade. “The windows have a neutral density that cuts out four stops of light because they don’t want sunlight to damage the aircraft,” he notes. “To make the exhibits glow, we had to bring in a lot of 6K HMI Pars and bounce them around to build up the ambience. The lights were gelled to match the existing
A Technocrane hovers over crewmembers as they set up a scene. “You don’t want to call ‘Cut’ if the actors are riffing, so we used the Technocrane like a dolly and kept shooting,” says cinematographer John Schwartzman, ASC (below).
American Cinematographer 57
Making History Fun Right: Jedediah (Owen Wilson) and the equally diminutive Roman general Octavius (Steve Coogan) emerge from a packing crate. Below: An oversized set ringed with greenscreen sells the illusion.
interior color temperature, which was around 4500°K and slightly green.” Night scenes set in the Air and Space Museum were shot on a massive set built at Vancouver’s Washington Studios, a former shipyard. The 57,000-square-foot space facilitated a full-scale reconstruction
58 June 2009
of the museum’s two-story lobby, including a mezzanine sturdy enough to hold a Technocrane. “There were probably 60 display cases that had everything from flight suits to an Apollo lunar lander on a moonscape,” Schwartzman marvels. “You could go into the gift shop and eat Space Food ice cream. It really
looked like you’d turned the corner at the Air and Space Museum and walked into a new wing.” Even with 10 weeks of prep, Schwartzman had his hands full. “That facility was a great place to build a ship but a terrible place to make a movie, because there was literally no infrastructure,” he says. “It was the biggest, most complicated set I’ve ever lit. We had to ask BC Hydro, the hydroelectric power company, to run 16,000 amps of power to our stage. It took eight weeks just to get the cabling and dimmers in, and that was with 40 people working 12 hours a day.” He notes that Vancouver-based gaffer Drew Davidson and key grip Mike Kirilenko were “two of the best and brightest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. “We used around 120 space lights, in addition to all the practicals, to light the set,” continues the cinematographer. “Ninety percent of the lighting is visible in shot. There were 300 Image 80s underneath the mezzanine as ambient light. The display cases required days to wire. It
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Making History Fun
A Prasad threeaxis Mega Mount remote head attached to a 50' Technocrane helped the filmmakers stage a dogfight in the Air and Space Museum, a massive set constructed at Vancouver’s Washington Studios. “We literally flew the camera through the whole place, doing really wild angles and steep, sharp turns,” says Schwartzman.
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was as though we were setting up our own museum. Almost everything in there had to be photographable, and there was very little room to hide movie lights. We built scaffolding and a grid overhead, but those were used just for big, broad washes of light. Everything else was done with very small units on the ground. We could flip a switch and have the thing pretty much lit up, then focus on cleaning up faces for the close-ups.” In the film’s most complicated set piece, the entire Air and Space Museum springs to life. “That was kid-in-a-candy-store time,” recalls Levy. “We had live-action rockets and jet fighters in addition to CG aircraft and spacecraft. We had both Technocranes working, live pyro and dry ice. It was an embarrassment of riches.” After shooting the requisite scenes with the actors, Levy decided to spend one day filming without the cast. “We decided to film any cool shot that John, [visual-effects supervisor] Dan DeLeeuw and I could imagine,” says the director. “It was an amazing luxury.” One of Schwartzman’s ideas was to engage the model airplanes in a dogfight. To capture the planes’ points of view, a 50' Technocrane was positioned on the second floor and mounted with a Prasad threeaxis Mega Mount remote head that could swivel 360 degrees. “We literally flew the camera through the whole place, doing really wild angles and steep, sharp turns,” says Schwartzman. “We explored everything. I put the camera into a reveal craning down through Jupiter, beginning with the camera 80 feet in the air, as an opening shot we could use somewhere else. That day was like sending your second unit out to get great shots of New York, but in this case, it was our set.” Some sequences the filmmakers expected to shoot against greenscreen were filmed on this set instead. When Daley and Earhart
steal the Wright brothers’ Flyer, they climb aboard its wing as the aircraft is suspended 40' above ground. “We actually did that live, which enabled us to cut a giant sequence out of our previz — and also made it better,” says Schwartzman. But greenscreen was absolutely necessary for other sequences, including scenes inside the Lincoln Memorial, when the statue of Lincoln comes to life; scenes with the 2"-tall characters Jedediah (Owen Wilson) and Octavius (Steve Coogan); and scenes showing the Wright Flyer exiting the museum and flying over the Washington Mall. (That escape also involved the film’s only model work, shot with a motion-control camera on an 80' model by cameraman Tim Angulo.) In all, the production shot 14 weeks of greenscreen work on one of the four stages it occupied at Vancouver’s Mammoth Studios, and Schwartzman wanted a lighting rig that would be workable in every situation. “Since we were going to use the greenscreen set for a variety of scenarios throughout the shoot, it made sense to spend the time and the money up front to rig it properly,” he says. “We needed a certain intensity because we planned to do a sequence that was an homage to 300 — it was to be shot at a fairly deep stop, T5.6, at 150 fps on 200-ASA film,” continues Schwartzman. “We built some 20-by-20-foot softboxes that each held 96 1K globes, but they weren’t bright enough, so we added 2K Nooks to get the output we needed. We built the boxes big so the scale of the light source would be correct for a 2-inch-tall character. With the large sources, the light wrapped and reflected in a more realistic way.” The softboxes were suspended from chain motors, allowing them to hang horizontally or vertically or at an angle somewhere in between. “We hung six of them in two rows of 61
Making History Fun
The Capitol Dome serves as a scenic nighttime backdrop.
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three and just articulated them however we needed to,” says Schwartzman. “If I wanted a backlight that was soft and low, we could just lower the thing out of frame. It was all done by the push of a button.” The rig enabled the filmmakers
to work quickly. “We never worked longer than a 10-hour day,” notes Schwartzman. “That kept everybody fresh.” Thanks to the size of the greenscreen stage, Schwartzman could scale the film’s 2" characters
down the correct way, by moving the camera back. “At times, the camera was 200 feet away from the actor!” he says. “Guillermo really helped me by figuring out all the math on the first film. We kept notes, and we had high-end matte software on the set, so we could literally look at composites as we lined up the shot.” In many respects, says Schwartzman, his job was made easy by “splendid” sets, locations and costumes. “There’s just so much to look at in every shot,” he says. The Smithsonian’s Castle Commons, for instance, contains stained-glass windows and chandeliers, and “you really couldn’t make a bad angle in there. There are so many hanging fixtures that I think there’s something sparkling in the background in every shot.” Making the most of the natural light at hand, he added some 20Ks and Chimeras to provide soft fill.
For Schwartzman, the only downside of the production was the scarcity of film dailies. “There’s been such a push to get the film to the editors as quickly as possible that that’s taken precedence over everything else,” he observes. “There’s no way a colorist doing a high-def transfer on a Spirit can tell you whether your density is exactly the way it was the day before, or that you need another half-stop of exposure. Those were the types of conversations I had with [timers] John Bickford and Mike Zacharia every day when I was filming The Rock [AC June ’96], Armageddon [AC July ’98], Pearl Harbor [AC May ’01], Seabiscuit [AC Aug. ’03] and The Rookie. Today, if you want to print dailies, it stops the machine.” On Battle of the Smithsonian, he viewed film dailies twice a week for the first few weeks of the shoot; after that, HD dailies were screened on a plasma TV.
“Some filmmakers feel they can correct any inconsistencies in post, so they don’t want to worry about it on the front end,” says Schwartzman. “I’m prepping Green Hornet with Michel Gondry, and I know Michel is going to have to fight a million battles, and [film dailies] won’t be one he’ll want to fight. I can’t blame him, but it stings to have part of the craft you love taken away from you.” All told, however, Schwartzman considers Battle of the Smithsonian a great experience. “I enjoyed every moment of making this movie, and I’m really proud of it. Having shot a previous picture starring Ben Stiller [Meet the Fockers], I knew that speed would be a really good thing to have in our back pocket, and all the rigging we did in prep was really important for that. A day of shooting on a movie like this is about $300,000, and if you
can save one day by spending $20,000 more to rig a set properly, it’s the best $20,000 you’ve ever spent. We were very clever in how we rigged and shot this movie, and that’s why we finished three days ahead of schedule.” I
TECHNICAL SPECS 2.40:1 Super 35mm Panaflex Platinum, Millennium XL; Arri 435 Primo lenses Kodak Vision2 Expression 500T 5229; Vision2 200T 5217 Digital Intermediate Printed on Kodak Vision Premier 2393
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Testing Digital Cameras The ASC and the Producers Guild of America put 7 digital cameras through their paces with the Camera-Assessment Series. by Stephanie Argy and Richard Edlund, ASC
he Producers Guild of America and the American Society of Cinematographers recently joined forces to conduct landmark tests of seven digital cameras: Arri’s D-21, Panasonic’s AJHPX3700, Panavision’s Genesis, Red’s One, Sony’s F23 and F35, and Thomson’s Grass Valley Viper. Shooting the same tests at the same time was an Arri 435, which used four Kodak stocks, two tungsten (Vision2 250T 5217 and Vision3 500T 5219) and two daylight (Vision2 250D 5205 and Vision3 250D 5207). “It was a snapshot in
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time because the technology of digital cameras is by no means static,” says Curtis Clark, ASC, chair of the Society’s Technology Committee. The tests will be presented for the first time this month, during the PGA’s Produced By Conference (www.producedbyconference.com). The event will give viewers a chance to see the footage and draw their own conclusions about the cameras’ performances, but the idea is not to crown a winner. “Our only agenda was to supply the community with an educational resource,” says David Stump, ASC, chair of the Technology
Committee’s Camera Subcommittee. “It’s not a competitive test; it’s not a shootout.” The idea of the project, which was funded by Revelations Entertainment, was to create a definitive overview of the current state of digital cameras, a collection of footage that could serve as a reference for the industry at large. “It’s really hard to find a set of unbiased test materials made under controlled circumstances,” says Stump. “When a test of any camera is done, the test usually ends up being owned by a motion-picture studio, so the next
Photos by Yousef Linjawi and Simon Wakelin, courtesy of the Producers Guild of America.
person who wants to use that camera has to start all over again and do his own tests.” It was critical that the tests be done in a way that embodied the integrity and authority of the ASC. In 2003-2004, the Society collaborated with Digital Cinema Initiatives to create Standardized Evaluation Material, or Stem, a mini-movie that provided a robust test of image quality for technologies used in digitalcinema distribution. “To this day, Stem and what we did with DCI remains the benchmark,” says Clark. “The Camera-Assessment Series had to live up to that high standard.” The process began with long discussions in the Technology Committee’s camera and workflow subcommittees about the challenges that were likely to arise. “We tried to lay down a set of ground rules that would fit every camera into both a film-out and digital-out motion-picture production pipeline,” says Stump. “That pipeline could be unique, but it had to share the criteria that are the baselines for all motion-picture production: 10-bit log for filmout, doing a DI and doing a P3 output for digital cinema.”
Other standards were set for the cameras as well. “Because cinematographers’ base business is feature films, we drew the line in the sand at the point we felt was sufficient for big-screen work,” says Stump. At minimum, he explains, the cameras had to be capable of an image with resolution of 1080p and a color depth of 4:4:4. “That weeded out a lot of cameras,” he notes. In recent years, the ASC has pursued collaborations with various organizations in the industry, and for the Camera-Assessment Series, the PGA and producer Lori McCreary were indispensable in pulling everything together. At Clark’s invitation, McCreary had been attending meetings of the ASC Technology Committee, where she was struck by cinematographers’ perspective on new technologies. “Because they constantly have to think about where things are headed, cinematographers can better, more accurately predict the future than filmmakers in other fields,” she observes. The PGA hopes the test results will enable producers to better understand the budgetary and workflow ramifications caused by
the choice of a camera. “Workflow directly affects the producer’s job on a daily basis, and we’re not as informed as we could be,” says McCreary. The ASC and the PGA brought their own concerns and interests to the tests; these included image quality, color space, contrast, dynamic range, ease of use, ergonomics, how well the cameras fit into a typical production workflow, and how much extra time, if any, they required on set. All of these were factored into the design of the tests, situations Stump describes as “commonplace but difficult. We wanted to show how all of these cameras deal with the normal issues of everyday cinematography: windows that look out onto exteriors, daylit exteriors, daylit interiors. How does it look under night tungsten light? How does it look under a laundry list of typical scenarios?” During the tests, each camera had its own cinematographer: Bill Bennett, ASC was on the Arri D-21; Mark Doering-Powell was on the Panasonic AJ-HPX3700; Shelly Johnson, ASC was on the Panavision Genesis; Nancy Schreiber, ASC was
Top digital cameras were tested under a variety of conditions by a group of distinguished cinematographers during the recent CameraAssessment Series organized by the ASC and PGA. In the photo on this page, visible from left to right in the front row are ASC members Shelly Johnson, Nancy Schreiber, Peter Anderson and Kramer Morgenthau (standing). Standing behind a camera in the second row at far right is Karl Walter Lindenlaub, ASC, BVK; visible behind Schreiber is Bill Bennett, ASC (wearing light-blue cap).
American Cinematographer 65
Testing Digital Cameras The setup supervised by Lindenlaub included an explosion involving “Bruce,” the mechanical shark made famous in Jaws. “The shadow was 2 stops under in the dark part of waves, while part of the flame was 6-7 stops over,” he noted. “It will be interesting to see which cameras hold that detail.”
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on the Red One; Peter Anderson, ASC was on the Sony F23; Kramer Morgenthau, ASC was on the Sony F35; Marty Ollstein was on the Thomson Grass Valley Viper; and Karl Walter Lindenlaub, ASC, BVK manned the Arri 435. “We tried to employ a cinematographer for each camera who gave the manufacturer a sense of comfort and gave each camera its greatest opportunity to shine,” says Stump. “Those were both important things. These are mechanical devices, but all this machinery doesn’t exist in a vacuum; everyone has something at stake. Everyone trying to sell or rent a digital camera has a lot of time and money invested in that device. It was very important to take that into consideration when casting for the right cinematographer to accompany each camera on set.” The tests were shot at Universal Studios on sets used for Desperate Housewives and at the lake where Bruce, the shark from Jaws, resides. “It was a gigantic effort that required the cooperation and assistance of several hundred people,” notes Stump. “Without the PGA’s help, we could never have pulled it off.” Stump supervised the testing, collaborating with other ASC cinematographers who were also working in a supervisory capacity: Clark, Rodney Charters, Kees Van Oostrum and Richard Crudo. The cameras
passed through six different test scenarios, each of which had its own cinematographer (or, in a couple of instances, two cinematographers); those cinematographers were ASC members Charters, Richard Edlund, Steven Fierberg, Michael Goi, Jacek Laskus, Matthew Leonetti, Stephen Lighthill, Lindenlaub, Robert Primes and John Toll. “Lighting was absolutely left to the cinematographers’ discretion,” notes Stump. The following is an overview of the six scenarios: Day-Exterior Lock-Off: Charters and Edlund “Our test was very simple,” says Edlund, the vice chairman of the Camera Subcommittee. He notes that a moving camera loses some resolution because the shutter is open while the camera is in motion, but when the camera stops panning, it’s possible to see the pattern of the pixels, which he calls “bathroom tile.” The shot had a complex subject — a house with bricks and shingles and other tiny details — and Edlund thought it would be interesting to see how the cameras dealt with that. Day-Exterior Tracking Shot of a Moving Bicycle: Fierberg and Laskus This scenario was meant to reveal any strobing and movement issues with the various cameras, but
it also became a contrast test. The shot tracks alongside a bicyclist riding from camera left toward camera right in front of a white picket fence. “The picket fence is a repeating pattern, and so is the spinning bicycle wheel,” says Fierberg. “In the past, some cameras had trouble showing those without annoying strobing.” During the shot, Fierberg pushed in closer toward the picket fence to change the frequency of the boards’ appearance onscreen. As a further motion test, he also added a person walking in the opposite direction from the camera’s movement. “In some cameras, you could open the shutter to get less strobing and more blur,” explains Fierberg. “That works fine until you encounter the person walking the other way; then, the person’s head becomes a disturbing blur.” He notes that because the camera is moving at one speed and the person is walking a certain speed in the opposite direction, the blur is much more pronounced. “The bicyclist isn’t very blurred because the speed difference between him and the camera is very minor.” The scene was shot in frontlight — sunlight — but because the camera passes in front of dark shrubbery, the test showed the contrast capabilities of the cameras, too. Night Interior: Goi “The only parameters for this setup were that it was a night interior that had performers of varying skin color in it,” says Goi. “They left it to me to figure out what else I wanted to work into the scenario.” The scene is a living room at night, and Goi came up with the idea of having three characters — an African-American male, a Caucasian female and a Caucasian male — surrounded by boxes, as though they have just moved in. They toast each other with wine. “I specifically chose red wine because it’s particularly difficult to make it look like red wine onscreen,” notes Goi. “Often,
it looks like black oil.” Because the characters have just moved in, Goi included a bare lightbulb in the scene, which “gave me the opportunity to see if there was any streaking.” To look at values in the highlights, he began the scene with the couch covered with an offwhite sheet that was slightly overexposed by the bare bulb. “When the sheet is removed, the couch is of a very different density,” he says. Goi opens his shot with the African-American and the Caucasian woman side by side, with the same amount of light on their faces. They then cross to the couch, where Goi gives the AfricanAmerican actor about another third of a stop to see what the difference would be. To also test the cameras’ abilities to separate dark values, Goi positioned the African-American on the couch so that his head would be in front of a black marble fireplace. The Caucasian man is wearing a red T-shirt, the tone of which is very close to the color of the uncovered couch, so the test reveals how the cameras separate those close tonalities. “There’s a lot of stuff in this test that’s very close to the edge in terms of how I’d shoot it on film,” notes Goi. “If one camera or another is more crushy, you’ll see those differences clearly.” Inside Light, Outside Light: Leonetti Leonetti says his scenario offers one of the most challenging assignments for a cinematographer: balancing interior and exterior lighting. “Every time I show up for a setup like that, I have to put my thinking cap on,” he remarks. The main question was whether to shoot with blue or incandescent light. Blue was chosen. “Given that information, I dreamed the shot up,” says Leonetti. “I was trying to create some contrast, some very highly illuminated, reflective pieces in the shot. In
addition, the idea was to see how each camera would balance the inside and the outside, which is seen through a bay window.” The shot begins on a hot tray of glasses in the foreground. “I put a light on the balcony and made it pretty bright so I could see how each camera would take the highlights and if it could hold the highlights,” says Leonetti. The camera then pans left, past two ungelled windows that are 4-5 stops over the f-stop for the rest of the shot. The camera continues panning until it settles on two people, an African-American man and a Caucasian woman, standing in front of the bay window. “I tried to do the balance so it wouldn’t blow out,” says Leonetti. To do that, he explains, you must either build up the inside lighting or use ND gel on the windows to darken the outside. “I chose to do a little of both. I put the camera in a place where I could hide HMIs outside, so each of those windows had a light coming through. I had two 0.3 neutral-density gels on the outside window.” For each camera, he then made a second pass, taking off one of the 0.3 gels. Leonetti chose the exposure for the film camera, but he had the cinematographers for each digital camera set their own f-stops. “I didn’t touch the lighting. We tried to make it look as consistent as possible. I kept reading the light to make sure the light didn’t change. That was important.”
To maintain that consistency, this test was spread over two days so that all shooting was done between 10:15 a.m. and 2 p.m. Day Exterior: Lighthill and Toll Although the cameras spent most of their day rotating from set to set, there were two scenarios that all cameras shot at once. This was one of them. The scene takes place in a park playground, where a number of people of varying races are throwing balls, spinning Hula-Hoops and so forth. A pale woman pushes a baby carriage through the foreground. “I’m really happy I got to do that one, because the most common thing all cinematographers have to do is take the dynamic range of a day exterior, midday or late day, and make it work,” says Lighthill. “There are different skin tones and lots of different values, so I think it will test all the media.” The scene was shot twice, once at dusk (overseen by Toll) and the next day at midday (overseen by Lighthill). “John’s situation was quite different from mine, of course,” notes Lighthill. “He had more light coming in and long shadows. But the midday setup has almost all the challenges cinematographers typically face that are so hard to wrangle. There’s a great dynamic range between the brightest and the darkest elements in the shot.” ¢
Morgenthau (sitting at far right) surveys a setup along with Johnson and Schreiber (at left) and Lindenlaub and Lindenlaub’s 1st AC, Tommy Klines (standing behind Morgenthau).
American Cinematographer 67
Testing Digital Cameras
The cinematographers pose for a group photo to commemmorate their participation in the study.
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The Lake: Lindenlaub The scene at the lake was also shot by all the cameras at once — at sunrise. “It’s a wide shot of the lake with the mechanical shark and a big flame explosion,” says Lindenlaub. “The information in the setup is actually quite interesting.” Behind
the lake is a big hill with a lot of dark foliage, and the water and flame offer an extreme contrast range. “The shadow was under 2 stops in the dark part of waves, while part of the flame was 6-7 stops over. It will be interesting to see which cameras hold that detail.”
Lightbulb: Primes The main purpose of this scenario was to see latitude in a very challenging situation. “These days, if you can’t shoot under low-light conditions, you’re at a competitive disadvantage,” notes Primes. He decided to start with a large close-up of a bare lightbulb. Then, a man’s face comes in and the camera dollies back, revealing a dark garage with lots of objects and detail in the background shadows. As the frame widens, the man walks over to stand behind a workbench. “We made a mark for the actor that was about 1 foot away from the bulb — he was 4 stops over incident light,” says Primes. “At the bench, he was 1 stop underexposed.” Meanwhile, the background was about 4 stops under. Although Primes considered blacking out a window in the background, he decided instead to tent it and put a light with a blue filter there
so that it would be a nice compositional element with the same tonality on every take. He also took care to ensure that the lightbulb and voltage would be the same from take to take, and the face at the same distance. “The set never changed, the voltage was brought up to a very tight tolerance, and the actor was very wellrehearsed,” he says. “I think all the tests are going to be valuable, but mine was kind of brutal, and I’m happy about that,” he adds. Postproduction Although every test was designed to challenge the cameras in various ways, the object was not to “break” them. Clark notes that during post at LaserPacific, where color correction was done on an Autodesk Lustre by Mike Sowa, every effort was made to give the cameras the chance to look their best. “If we have
to give a camera more time in post, we’ll do that, but all of that work will be documented,” says Clark. Stump says close attention will be paid to what it takes for the material to fit well into the standardized workflow established for the tests. “That’s a really effective learning scenario: how do we fit this square peg into the lab’s round hole? I’m trying to listen through the wall into the projection booth and into the machine room and throughout the halls of LaserPacific as they chase what kind of signal we’ve brought them from any particular camera!” He adds that it isn’t only the potential users of these cameras who are learning from the tests. “The manufacturers who participated are learning as much about the workflows as we are,” he says. “Few of them have had the opportunity to chase one of their shoots all the way through to a finished piece of film. I
think we’re going to see a lot of modifications and upgrades come from this testing.” Clark says he hopes the tests will make filmmakers more aware of how critical the overall workflow is. “Making a film isn’t just about picking a camera and shooting,” he says. “How are you going to finish it? Is it going to end up as a compromise that you didn’t anticipate but have to live with? The important thing is to make an informed choice when you pick your camera. Then, you can apply your aesthetic.” Given that digital technologies are constantly evolving, McCreary says she hopes the Camera-Assessment Series will be an ongoing process rather than a one-off event. “You eat an elephant one bite at a time,” she says. A report about the CAS test results will be published in our September issue. I
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Assessing
Previs
The ASC, the Art Directors Guild and the Visual Effects Society join forces to explore the existing and potential uses of previsualization. by Stephanie Argy and Richard Edlund, ASC revisualization is the process of using computer-generated animation to explore scenes and sequences before they are shot, and it can significantly impact the cinematographer’s job. It can enable the director of photography to become even more involved in shaping a movie’s narrative; conversely, there is a danger he or she will end up merely executing shots that were conceived and detailed by someone else long before the cinematographer joined the production. “I can understand why cinematographers have been reluctant to embrace previs: they’re often excluded from the process,” says Chris Edwards of The Third Floor, a company specializing in previsualization. “But we have found their involvement is really key.” To address some issues related to previsualization, including how best to integrate it into production, the ASC Technology Committee recently joined with the Art Directors Guild and the Visual Effects Society to form the Previsualization Committee, the first joint committee formed by the three organizations. Co-chaired by Ron Frankel, the owner of previs company Proof, and David Morin, a
P
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consultant with Autodesk, the group began meeting in April 2008. Over the course of 12 meetings, it has brought together some of the leading previs practitioners in the industry, cinematographers, production designers, visual-effects supervisors and other filmmakers to explore previs and the role it should play in the future. “Learning how other people see this process has been very insightful,” says Frankel. “Previs is coming into its own in a very interesting way.” Previsualization has been around in various forms for decades. Before shooting the original Star Wars, George Lucas worked out the timing for space battles by cutting together footage of World War II fighter-plane dogfights. On the third Star Wars film, Return of the Jedi, the speeder-bike sequence in the forest was tested out using action figures that were shot with lipstick cameras. “We could figure out movements and work out a little, dynamic piece of action, then cut it together and see if the shots we’d planned were going to work well,” says Neil Krepela, ASC, a cinematographer and visual-effects supervisor who worked on Jedi. In the definition crafted by the
Previsualization Committee, previs generally comprises computer-generated imagery created in a 3-D modeling-and-animation application and then edited together to demonstrate the potential execution of a scene or sequence. According to the committee’s research, the earliest example of CG previs appears to be The Boy Who Could Fly (1985). During a sequence in that movie, two children fly over a school fair filled with amusement-park rides; the child performers were held aloft on wires suspended from a large crane, and the sequence was covered with a Skycam supported by pylons. James Bissell, the project’s production designer and second-unit director, asked Canadian computergraphics company Omnibus to help him create a digital version of the sequence so he could experiment. The resultant previs enabled him to see where the shadows would be at different times of day so he could position the camera and crane as efficiently as possible. “They said, ‘What a great use for the technology — we never thought of that,’” recalls Bissell. “It allowed us to shoot a pretty elaborate sequence in about three days.” Previs is not visual effects,
Images courtesy of The Third Floor and Pixel Liberation Front.
although the two disciplines are often lumped together, perhaps because previs is commonly used on pictures that involve complex visual-effects sequences. Also, many of the tools and applications used in previs, such as Maya, are also used for visual-effects work. But previs is as different from visual effects as a sketch is from a painting; it’s about quickly trying out possible shots and sequences in real time and making changes on the fly, rather than making polished shots that are textured and properly lit. “Previs is used to tell the story in the rawest possible form,” says Laurent Lavigne, whose previs work includes the films Transformers, Jumper and The Last Samurai. Contrary to popular belief, previs is not an entry-level visualeffects job. “I believe it’s a specialized field that requires classically trained artists,” says Steven Yamamoto, whose previs credits include Public Enemies, Hancock and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. “You need a high level of knowledge of not only CG work, but also creative storytelling. Combining those skills is asking a lot of one person.” The previsualization process begins with the creation of digital assets: sets, characters, vehicles and anything else that needs to be modeled in CG. These elements are then animated, and actions and positions are set, just as a director would block a live-action scene with real actors. Next, virtual cameras are placed into the scene. Angles, lenses and moves are chosen, and shots that cover the action are rendered out. These shots can then be assembled into a sequence or handed to the project’s picture editor, who adds them to the cut as though they are real coverage. Previs can be continued on set, to solve problems and validate what’s been shot, and in post, where previs elements can be retimed and adjusted to fit with the real footage as it ¢ becomes available.
The Third Floor created this previsualization progression for a battle sequence in the World War II action drama Valkyrie. From top to bottom: characters and ground plane; characters, vehicles and terrain; characters, vehicles and terrain with textures; textured characters, vehicles and terrain with lighting and shadow cards; added mountain geometry, background, cyclorama, dust cards and atmosphere cards; added explosion cards.
American Cinematographer 71
Assessing Previs Two of the previs schematics prepared by Pixel Liberation Front for The Matrix Reloaded detail key moments from the film’s ambitious freeway chase.
Companies considering the use of previsualization should know up front what they need and want from the process. It involves a variety of logistical questions, some of
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which can only be answered on a project-by-project basis: How should the previs crew be structured? Is it best to have a team of artists from one company, or should
the team comprise several artists who are independent of one another? Once a team is in place, to whom should they report? Which departments should be involved in the pre-
vis process? Should the team work in its own office or on-site with the project’s crew or production staff? The biggest previs question might be: Who is it for, and what is its purpose? Some people see the process as a way to work through logistically difficult sequences, determine what will be necessary to shoot them, and then provide the relevant departments with very precise data. Roberto Schaefer, ASC says that on Quantum of Solace, previs was used for very technical reasons: “We did a lot of previs for set construction; they built CG sets to make sure we could get the angles we needed. The scaffold-and-rope fight scene was a complicated jigsaw puzzle because the set didn’t fit into the stage — it hit the rafters and was supposed to be 20 feet taller than it was. We wanted to do a previs to make sure we were on the same page for camera angles, movements and so on.” Others might see previs as a tool for exploring the narrative. “The animation pipeline has a story department, but live action doesn’t, and previs becomes the ersatz story department,” observes David Dozoretz of Persistence of Vision. Working with a small number of digital artists — sometimes just one — gives a director a relatively inexpensive, low-pressure way to explore ideas, and it’s easy to discard any that don’t work. “Previs is the director’s ‘undo’ button,” says Edwards. “In film school, I learned that every moment I waste is a moment I’m sucking out of my movie. If you’re going to make mistakes — and you will — it’s better to do it with a smaller team, and you’ll probably make fewer mistakes.” Colin Green of The Pixel Liberation Front adds, “If filmmaking is about real heat-of-battle decision-making, previs allows for decisions to be made with more deliberation. We force answers to creative questions and make contributions to the creative vision. The formalism of the 73
Assessing Previs Previs Glossary A joint subcommittee comprising members of the American Society of Cinematographers, the Art Directors Guild and the Visual Effects Society has agreed upon the following definitions: Previsualization, or previs, is a collaborative process that generates preliminary versions of shots or sequences predominantly using 3D animation tools and a virtual environment. It enables filmmakers to visually explore creative ideas, plan technical solutions, and communicate a shared vision for efficient production. There are a number of types of previs in current practice, including: Pitchvis illustrates the potential of a project before it has been fully funded or greenlit. As part of development, these sequences are conceptual, to be refined or replaced during preproduction. Technical Previs incorporates and generates accurate camera, lighting, design and scene-layout information to help define production requirements. This often takes the form of dimensional diagrams that illustrate how particular shots can be accomplished using real-world terms and measurements. On-Set Previs creates real-time (or near-real-time) visualizations on location to help the director, cinematographer, visual-effects supervisor and crew quickly evaluate captured imagery. This includes the use of techniques that can synchronize and composite live photography with 2D or 3D virtual elements for immediate visual feedback. Postvis combines digital elements and production photography to validate footage selection, provide placeholder shots for editorial, and refine effects design. Edits incorporating postvis sequences are often shown to test audiences for feedback, and to producers and visual-effects vendors for planning and budgeting.
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medium forces you to figure things out in a way that storyboards and finger gestures never will.” The perception of previsualization as a time to experiment raises still more questions, including how finished previs materials should be. One topic of discussion in the Previsualization Committee has been whether the CG models made in previs can or should be constructed in such a way that they can later be handed off to a visual-effects facility and used as the basis for the final effects. “There’s always someone who believes he can set up this amazing pipeline and integrate previs and effects, but right now, you can’t do that,” notes Nic Hatch, owner of London previs facility Nvisage. According to Hatch, the different goals and needs of the two departments make it difficult to combine them. Previs is concerned with timing and framing, and the models and character rigs are very simple; they have a limited number of controls so they can be easily manipulated in real time, with no rendering. By contrast, artists making visual-effects shots that will appear in the movie have to create photorealistic images, so their models and characters need to be complex, fully textured and rendered out, making them very difficult to work with in real time. “I like to think of previs companies as speedboats: We’re very fast and can change direction easily,” says Hatch. “A post house is like an oil tanker: It can carry a lot, but when it switches its engine off, it’ll cruise for two miles before it can stop.” Production designer Alex McDowell has used previs for both live-action and animation projects. He is currently working at Dreamworks Animation, where he has participated in numerous discussions about “assetizing vs. disposability.” Assetizing means creating assets (such as CG models and
camera moves) during previs that can be used by other artists as the basis for visual-effects shots (or other aspects of post), so they don’t have to start from scratch when they do their work. At the moment, the consensus is that trying to preserve assets too soon can undermine a critical aspect of previs: the ability to try things out and discard attempts that don’t work. “Disposability is super-useful,” says McDowell. “If you try to assetize, you lock yourself in.” How detailed should previsualization be? “In the beginning, [the mandate] was, ‘Keep it rough and don’t texture,” says Dozoretz, who became one of the industry’s first previs artists when he joined Lucasfilm in 1992. However, when his team began to work on the podrace sequence in the fourth Star Wars film, The Phantom Menace, they needed to show the speed of the racers rushing by, which required them to create texture. Today, previs artists and facilities offer a range of polish in their animations. Yamamoto says each movie’s narrative dictates the level of detail and how and where it’s used: “If we have a 30-foot robot running through a city street, it’s part of how we tell the story that the robot is this large, has this much mass and runs this fast. It might not be that important for me to put textures on the sky, but it would be important that the robot is not floating on the ground and can actually take solid steps. We might also add the details of his feet sinking into the ground, because those details tell the story of a 30-foot robot running down the street.” All previs practitioners advocate making a scene’s dimensions and scale as real-world as possible. At the moment, though, there is no standardized way to match the virtual cameras in previs to real ones. (One workgroup within the Previsualization Committee has
been exploring the best ways to achieve that goal.) An even more pressing need is to increase the role the cinematographer plays in the previs process. “The main problem I’ve encountered has been getting some of the cinematographer’s time,” says Yamamoto. “The first chance I get, I want to ask him what aspect ratio he wants to use, what lenses he likes, and what kind of equipment he plans to use — if he’s going to have a 20-foot crane, I don’t want to put in a 30-foot-crane move. I also try to research the cinematographer’s style, not just the director’s, to try and get a handle on how he frames things.” Until now, many cinematographers have had little occasion to interact with previs artists. Schaefer, who has used previs on several pictures in addition to Quantum of Solace, including Finding Neverland and Stranger Than Fiction, says he has never been asked about the process by another cinematographer. Some cinematographers might fear previs will lock the production into a narrow vision (i.e., shoot the storyboards), and Schaefer believes that concern is valid: “The bad side of previs is that people tend to see it as the written word, the Bible. It’s important to treat it as a basic guide. If your approach abides by the previs too strictly, it can limit your thinking.” Previs practitioners are acutely aware of those dangers, but they contend that the process should never lock anyone into doing what was planned if a better idea emerges on set. “Don’t be afraid of it, and don’t feel you’re being boxed in,” advises Edwards. “Previs doesn’t prohibit you from responding to happy accidents. Actually, it frees you up to respond to what’s going on.” One danger some have encountered is that a producer or studio will have its own agenda for
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Assessing Previs previsualization work. “What drives me crazy is when the director does previs and the studio says, ‘That’s it, that’s what you have to do,’ or, worse, the studio tries to take it over,” says Dozoretz. “It’s a bastardization of the process when the director is not allowed to think on his feet, or when previs is used against him.” One of the most controversial aspects of the previsualization process has been its use very early in prep, in some cases to convince studios or investors to greenlight a project. This work is sometimes done even before a director is attached, which raises thorny ethical issues for previs artists who see themselves as part of the director’s team. In other cases, a director might commission a previs to demonstrate his vision for a project. In one instance, this ploy failed to get the director hired, but the previs house that did the spec work was
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hired to work on the film with a different director. The less-than-intuitive nature of previsualization can frustrate filmmakers as they interact with it. Schaefer says he hasn’t leaned on previs as a tool for creative exploration partly because he finds the process a bit clumsy. “Maybe it’s the interface — I’m a Mac person, and previs is very Windows-based,” he muses. “It could be a lot more useful if I felt more comfortable with the interactive manipulations. If they could give it to me on a computer and I could do it on my own time, it would be a more creative process for me.” One relatively new option that could facilitate the process is the growing use of handheld interfaces that mimic a camera; these tools make it possible to physically move around in CG space. Basically, after
a CG environment is built, it can be displayed on a portable screen that behaves like a handheld camera within the scene. A director, cinematographer or production designer can then carry the screen around, exploring the space and setting up shots. “You build an environment, and then the director and cinematographer can have a meeting in that environment,” says Edwards. McDowell says this capability represents an enormous change for production designers. “Most of my peers had to learn to translate abstract thoughts into blueprints, a completely inappropriate medium,” he notes. “Now, we’re able to carve space. I can build a [virtual] set and ask the cinematographer to look at it. Everything can happen almost instantly.” He adds that the latest generation of interactive devices is no longer so driven by the technologists, whose influence was greater in
the recent past. “I’m finding that you don’t need to know anything about the tools, except that they’re there for you in some form or another. You don’t need to be technical in any way [in order to use them].” Bissell, however, says he doesn’t need a virtual camera. “I don’t design that way,” he says. He does his own previs work by using Google SketchUp and then exporting that work to Maya. “When I break down a scene, there are certain images each scene is going to have. I don’t approach cinematic design as if it’s architecture; I design the angles and then build the space. I’m not really interested in walk-throughs unless that’s part of a scene’s dynamics. If it is, I’ll do it in Maya.” Nevertheless, a handheld interface does give filmmakers the means to express their own creative personalities. Visual-effects supervisor John Scheele recalls visiting the
set of a James Cameron project with Oliver Stone, who was allowed to experiment with the virtual camera. “Oliver grabbed the camera and started pushing in, like something from Natural Born Killers,” Scheele recalls. “Directors and cinematographers immediately come at it with a style all their own.” He adds that he looks forward to the next step, when filmmakers will not only emulate their signature moves, but also use the technology with more depth. “How can these tools get into the hands of the people who should be using them?” he muses. Answering those questions, and many others, is the purpose of Previs 2020, a Previsualization Committee workgroup that is trying to envision what the process can become. “Thinking forward is completely liberating,” says McDowell, a Previs 2020 member. “Where could [the technology] go? If it can do this,
why can’t it do that?” What role will previsualization play in the digital-filmmaking pipeline? Can it become a focal point for digital technology, the backbone of an overarching structure that erases the lines between prep, production and post? Can it be used to set up an immersive, non-linear production space? The Previsualization Committee has begun asking the questions, and the answers will ultimately come from the filmmaking community as a whole, from those using the technology on projects that have yet to be envisioned. I
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Post Focus Cinematographers, Colorists and the DI by Jon Silberg and Stephen Pizzello Early in 2008, National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” ran a segment in which colorist and Company 3 founder Stefan Sonnenfeld, an associate member of the ASC, spoke about the tools and skills colorists can bring to feature films via the digitalintermediate process. One listener was John Bailey, ASC, who believed that the reporter, Susan Stamberg, and Sonnenfeld were touting colorists as a replacement for the director of photography. Shortly thereafter, Bailey addressed this and other concerns related to digital post and digital capture in a Filmmakers’ Forum (AC June ’08), a piece that prompted much discussion, including a Filmmakers’ Forum by Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC (AC Oct. ’08) and a number of letters to the editor. After Bailey’s piece was published, he and Sonnenfeld collaborated on a DI for the feature He’s Just Not That Into You (AC Feb. ’09). In the process, each developed a better understanding of the other’s perspective on a number of complex issues related to digital post. AC recently sat down with them to get some of the details. American Cinematographer : John, what was your initial reaction to the NPR story? John Bailey, ASC: It brought into focus something I’ve been thinking about for some time: how has the role of the cinematographer changed in the world of digital finishing as opposed to the world of photochemical finishing? It hasn’t been an evolution, it’s been a qualitative change, and cinematographers are experiencing it all the time. 78 June 2009
Since I wrote the Filmmakers’ Forum, many young cinematographers have come to me and said, ‘Yes, this is happening … there are more difficulties in the DI suite in terms of collaboration and having control over the final look of the film.’ I should mention that I’ve had a number of wonderful experiences with [colorist] John Dunn at Ascent Media, including the timing of a new master of Silverado [AC July ’85]. John is very respectful of the original work and does not try to reconceive it; on each project, he is very low-key and artful. Stefan, do you believe cinematographers are losing control over the look of their films in the DI suite? Stefan Sonnenfeld: I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with many cinematographers on DIs, and I have no intention of taking over their creative process. It’s extremely important to stay true to what the cinematographers are doing because our work complements theirs. Bailey: Inherently, the parameters you work within to finish a film photochemically are much narrower. In terms of poetry, it’s like writing a sonnet rather than free verse. Photochemical printing requires more discipline and control. In the DI suite, the options you have to go in and play later are numerous, almost limitless; you can do primary and secondary color changes, you can isolate parts of the frame with power windows and tweak them, and you can recompose shots — something that’s done all the time. The fact that the tools exist suggests they could be misused, even if that isn’t always the case. What are some of the things you’re hearing from young cinematographers? Bailey: For one thing, many of
them haven’t done much work in the photochemical realm and are less aware of the greater dynamic range and transparency of pure photochemical shooting and finishing. I came through a tradition where we essentially just had one-light dailies, and when they came back, everyone could see how consistent your work was. I think young cinematographers who have worked only with video dailies and then finished their films in the DI suite have unconsciously started to rely more and more on post tools to make things right. I’m hearing at labs that many timers are concerned about how uneven some work looks now. I know of a couple of projects on which the answer-print timers have essentially said, ‘We can’t make it even enough. There’s so much variance in the negative density that the simple three-color controls and light/dark parameters aren’t enough.’ They have to strike a DI in order to make a decent answer print. That’s unfortunate, because if you ever want to strike an IP off that negative for archival purposes, it’s going to be very erratic. Sonnenfeld: It’s true that the newer filmmakers are used to going into a telecine suite and don’t have the experience John’s talking about. I can think of a perfect analogy: My brother is a musician, and he recently talked me into getting some Roland drums and keyboards, which are extremely complicated and can sample anything in the world. One of the Roland guys told me, ‘You’re not great, but I can tell that you at least know how to play the piano.’ There are a lot of prominent socalled musicians who can’t play a song or read music. They might come up with a successful sound, but they can’t go back to the basics. People who don’t understand the basics of the photochemical process come into the
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Stephen Lighthill, ASC n my last year of graduate school at Boston University, where I was studying print journalism, I took a filmmaking course that required us to produce a short film. Shooting that film was my most rewarding experience in graduate school. “My first legitimate cinematography work was for CBS News, where I shot news with an Auricon conversion, a large, 16mm single-system sound camera. American Cinematographer was the only reliable source of information for finding batteries, inverters, lenses, lights, shoulder braces and related equipment for cinematographers. “AC has been my bible ever since. Most importantly, the magazine was my graduate school for cinematography, and it helped me understand I’m part of a community of visual artists.”
©photo by Owen Roizman, ASC
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DI suite and say, ‘Tweak the shit out of this,’ and that’s when I realize how important it is to work with people who understand the basics. If they don’t, the result can be a horrible-looking picture that gives the whole process a bad name. Some cinematographers would love to have one-lights, but others are working with producers or directors who might not understand what they’re looking at, and for them, the important thing is to get everyone excited about the look of the dailies. What’s your take, John? Bailey: It’s all about ensuring that the cinematographer has an accurate understanding of what resides in the negative. When the colorist is changing gamma and primary and secondary colors on a day-to-day basis, the result can look like an answer print — or at least somebody’s version of an answer print — but you really have no idea what the negative looks like. Sonnenfeld: That’s where I like to feel a little snobby, if you will, because I talk to cinematographers every day, or at least every week, about their negatives. I’m not just sitting there pushing buttons. One issue that comes up all the time is the cinematographer’s participation, or lack thereof, in the DI process. Some are paid for post work, but many aren’t, and in many cases, if another job comes along, they won’t turn it down in order to supervise the DI. Sonnenfeld: I’ve seen cinematographers get paid for post work, but only on very large projects — obviously, money is the issue. Most cinematographers come in on their own time, and that’s tough, especially when the DI is dragged out for two or three months or more. How can you expect the cinematographer to be available at random times and turn down other jobs in order to be there? Bailey: Take The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a film that would have been inconceivable five years 80 June 2009
ago. It has a strongly controlled DI look, which is the aesthetic [director] David Fincher wanted, and the post process was so long and complicated that [cinematographer] Claudio Miranda was unable to be there all the time. Films like that, whose whole conception and execution is dependent upon digital finishing, introduce another whole set of characteristics and variables, and the more prevalent they become, the more the question of the cinematographer’s involvement will come up. Most of us can’t dedicate months of our lives to the DI suite. When the time came to do a DI on He’s Just Not That Into You, I was shooting When in Rome in New York, and I was only able to come to Los Angeles on two weekends and give very minimal input, while [director] Ken Kwapis and Stefan took care of the rest. I think the result is very, very good, but I’ll never know what it would have looked like if I’d been able to be more involved. Nor do I know what it would have looked like if I’d been able to finish it photochemically, which is what we wanted to do. This gets to the crux of the issue for me: We didn’t want the DI process, the studio promised us we could finish photochemically, and then, when we were getting ready to cut the negative, they changed their minds. We were stunned. Our fallback position was to ask for a 4K DI, but the studio said they didn’t want to establish that precedent. When that decision became nonnegotiable, I decided I’d like to do a film with Stefan — he contacted me after reading my article in AC. I told Ken I knew Stefan would be a custodian of the vision we had of the picture, and he was. It was a great experience. Sonnenfeld: I’m known for making the DI a collaborative process. I’m an associate member of the ASC, and I feel I represent the Society’s standards. I shot film for years as a cinematographer on music videos and commercials, and I’m in tune with what cinematographers are trying to
do and trying not to do. Working with John was fantastic. I always learn from people like him when we work together on DIs; every time I get in that room with someone who is sophisticated in his knowledge of film, it helps me. Bailey: Since you’re an advocate for the DI process, Stefan, I’d like to ask you what you think you were able to do on He’s Just Not That Into You that could not have been achieved photochemically. Sonnenfeld: I’ll be the first to say that the film would have looked beautiful with a photochemical finish. But even if I’m working on a film that was shot beautifully, I still like the creativity of the DI process; you can do a scene warmer, cooler, brighter or darker and play around with smaller adjustments and see them in real time. I like that flexibility, and I think it’s very helpful. Bailey: With all due respect, I still feel there was no reason to do a DI. Everything we wanted was there in the negative. A few years ago, I shot a feature in 3-perf Super 35mm only because the actor’s contract mandated a DI with approval for cosmetic corrections. That requirement dictated the format we chose. I never would have made that choice creatively. More recently, I did another film that featured a number of very beautiful actresses. For reasons unfathomable to me, one of them decided she wanted several dozen cosmetic fixes in the DI. It made me start to question the potential implications for the future. What if an actor or a producer who has contractual power to do so decides to digitally change the nature of the cinematographer’s lighting — more or less fill, or a softer or harder keylight? What if they decide to change the image size or reposition a close-up? You might say, ‘Impossible. The director wouldn’t allow it.’ But how many auteur directors with full creative control do you know today? For some years now, the studios have required us all to accept a provision in our contract that says, ‘Geneva artists’
rights notwithstanding, you agree that you are engaged as Work for Hire.’ In fact, that means you have no creative control over your work. Stefan, what about John’s assertion that an anamorphic film that’s finished photochemically, print-to-print, offers much better image quality than a 2K or even 4K digital finish? Is it accurate? Sonnenfeld: The short answer is yes, but the long answer is that there are too many ancillary deliverables these days that require digital manipulation to make a strictly photochemical finish practical. You can’t just do an IP and assume everything downstream is going to look fine. The good thing about the DI is that you control the look of all deliverables from end to end; you put all your time and energy into the digital master, and we can ensure the quality of the image through all of the deliverables with minimal effort. I think that’s enough of a reason to do a DI. If I were making a film that would only be seen theatrically once, it would be a different story. These days, your master lives on a Blu-ray DVD for the rest of your life. And even if you do a photochemical finish, you have to go through the DI process to create the file that’s used for digital distribution at thousands of theaters around the world. Almost every project has to do that, especially the big titles, and that’s why so many studios are mandating DIs. Bailey: But I would argue that if you don’t have to do a DI for creative reasons, you should cut negative — so you have an established cut negative that’s not buried within 500 rolls of film — and make an IP from that, then use the IP as a source for a highquality video master. I did that yesterday on one of my recent films, and the 2K video master I did will essentially become the digital master. Both of the films I had in competition at Sundance this year [Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and The Greatest] had cut negative and were finished photochemically. Sonnenfeld: But there are
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some filmmakers — Tony Scott is an example — who want the flexibility to rework the look of movies they shot 10 or 15 years ago because their sensibilities have changed. For Tony, we remastered The Hunger and Top Gun, and he changed a lot of stuff. We took the IP and scanned the untimed negative and made comparisons, and we found it was easier to work off an untimed negative than the timed IP when Tony wanted to take the look in different directions. A timed IP is limiting to some degree. If Scott hadn’t wanted to change the look, would the IP have been sufficient? Sonnenfeld: It’s easier for the colorist to work from because the color decisions are incorporated into it, and yes, there is consistency, but in the digital process, you have to hit every scene. Just because it’s consistent and it’s an IP, that doesn’t mean the same 10 scenes will always look the same with one correction. What about the argument that cutting neg is limiting in terms of future deliverables? Bailey: I feel that a movie, like a novel, is an artifact; it’s not 500,000 feet of raw data to be repurposed at will. On any production, the director makes certain decisions about a performance, the actors make certain choices, and the cinematographer makes certain choices, and that becomes what the film is. Those are the decisions I made, and it’s the statement I wanted to make. Sonnenfeld: But as you know, John, there are cinematographers who want to come in here and put 15 power windows on everything. Bailey: And that has been detrimental to the look of a lot of movies! I think that not cutting neg is a double-edged sword. You don’t lose the frames, but you’ve essentially imprisoned the original film — what was theatrically released — in 1,000foot rolls of film, and if you shot 500,000 feet of original camera negative, all of that has to be stored. That mandates a huge physical archive. And 82 June 2009
all these digital masters we’re talking about — 4K, 2K, 1K — comprise a huge amount of information that has to not only be stored properly but also migrated to new formats as they evolve. And when things are stored on tape, or on hard drives, which are a bigger problem, they have a tendency to sort of corrupt and disappear. One of the first long-form things I did on video was The Anniversary Party [AC July ’01], which I shot in the PAL format. For a long time, [co-directors] Alan Cumming and Jennifer Jason-Leigh considered shooting Super 16mm instead of video, and today, even though I’m pleased with the movie, I regret that we didn’t shoot film, because if we had, we’d have an archival original camera negative. What will happen to our original PAL tapes, I don’t know. Sonnenfeld: I recently remastered a big movie that’s about six years old, and two of the reels couldn’t be recovered from the DTF [tapes] because the tape just wouldn’t play. We had to re-create the roll by scanning the negative and conforming [it]. Bailey: And if the film hadn’t earned $100 million at the box office, would there even be all that negative? What happens if the negative wasn’t cut, and you have to dig through 400,000 or 500,000 feet of film stored in 1,000-foot rolls? Who’s going to pay for that? Ansel Adams burned most of his negatives because he felt his creative intent was in the print, not the negative. Do you see a kind of corollary in the film world? Bailey: I saw a wonderful show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art that had some of Ansel Adams’ key images from Yosemite; they showed the evolution of his prints from the so-called vintage print done at the time to the print he made right before he died. There were maybe five or six versions of the same image, and it’s amazing how different they were. I understand that kind of evolution. Every artist has a right to do that, but
Adams was an artist who created an image and had control over what he wanted to do every step of the way. I don’t think very many filmmakers have that kind of control. Certainly, cinematographers don’t. It’s only recently that studios, in their enlightened selfinterest, have understood the importance of calling the cinematographer in to supervise some of these new iterations of their work. I know I’m on the losing side of this. I just hope I can finish my career in the photochemical realm as much as possible, because I know what’s coming, and aesthetics and quality are not driving those decisions — it’s monetary. Studios want nothing more than to eliminate these bulky, old film prints that need to be transported, and the faster digital cinema comes in, the cheaper it will be to deliver the product. Sonnenfeld: That’s why it’s so important to work with the right people. Every DI is different; this isn’t a business where generic work will do. You have to really understand what the hell is going on. A lot of film schools don’t teach enough about the things we’re discussing. Filmmaking is like any other craft: if you want to learn it, you’d better be prepared to learn everything about it. If you want to be a great filmmaker, you have to understand postproduction. You’re going to get torched if you don’t. I
New Products & Services to reach into the highlights,” says Fred Murphy, ASC. “It has warmer, richer, better skin tones than its predecessors. It is also good to have a relatively fast stock that gives you strong images in falling light.” For more information, visit www.kodak.com/go/motion.
Kodak Introduces Vision3 250D Eastman Kodak Co. has unveiled Vision3 250D 5207/7207 color-negative film, the second emulsion in the Vision3 line. “We introduced Vision3 technology in response to our customers’ requests for an expanded range of capabilities from capture all the way through postproduction and distribution,” says Ingrid Goodyear, general manager of Worldwide Image Capture Products for Kodak’s Entertainment Imaging Division. “By extending the Vision3 portfolio, we continue to give our customers more workflow efficiencies combined with all the existing advantages of film: image quality, resolution, unrivaled dynamic range, flexibility and archivability.” 5207/7207 is designed to retain the richness in colors and contrast that are characteristic of Vision3 technology, with more details in the extreme highlight areas. Like Vision3 500T 5219/7219, the new stock incorporates proprietary Advanced Dye-Layering Technology, which renders finer-grain images in underexposed areas and produces cleaner film-to-digital transfers for post. 5207/7207 also offers exceptional imaging in natural daylight, artificial daylight and a variety of mixedlighting situations while maintaining pleasing flesh tones and color reproduction. “What I like about the 5207 is its intense rendering of color, its strength when it is underexposed, and its ability 84 June 2009
Helical Antennas Go 12 Rounds Although they have been on the market for a number of years, Professional Wireless Systems’ proprietary Helical antennas only recently made the transition into feature-film production with 12 Rounds, directed by Renny Harlin and shot by David Boyd, ASC. Production mixer Paul Ledford employed the Helical antennas to capture dialogue in the midst of a highspeed chase. Inspired by the use of Helical antennas for Super Bowl broadcasts, Ledford spoke with Carl Cordes, PWS’s general manager, who “indicated that Helicals would be equally effective on car-chase and foot-chase sequences for movies,” says Ledford. Prior to buying the antennas, Ledford experimented with a rental kit. He notes, “Our test van consistently monitored transmissions from a car moving in the same traffic direction a couple of blocks away.” The advantages of the Helical system were especially appreciated by 12 Rounds’ stunt drivers, who could put more distance between themselves and the audio van. “We were able to maintain continuous contact with the talent while keeping well away from the driving action,” says Ledford. “Everyone could see and hear everything. The units functioned flawlessly throughout our 52-day location shoot, even when we were driving across bridges. They were particularly helpful during a streetcar sequence shot on Canal Street. They picked up transmissions
from distances of almost six blocks away. “We shared our chase van with our video-assist operator, Chris Murphy,” Ledford continues. “During production, we tested the PWS Helical on our IFB transmissions and videoassist receivers and found them to be a great improvement.” He worked with a Six Pack kit of 100mw and 250mw Lectrosonics units; some transmitters were outfitted with pack antennas, and others used small mag mounts on car exteriors. “These were quite acceptable visually and proved functional at virtually any angle,” he enthuses. “I think this technology has a real future in location-based feature-film production.” According to Cordes, PWS Helical antennas deliver 14 dB of forward gain and cover a bandwidth from 450 MHz to over 800 MHz, with an overall beam width of 57 degrees. “They’ve performed flawlessly at Super Bowl broadcasts for the past five years and
have also been used on a number of reality-TV productions,” says Cordes. “It’s a logical and effective solution for maintaining dependable audio and video feeds during high-action productions.” For more information, visit www.professionalwireless.com. Mytherapy Opens D-Cinelab Specializing in raw-camera post, 2K and 4K DI processes, and digitalcinema mastering, Mytherapy DCinelab has opened a new facility in London’s West End. The facility takes raw-camera processing beyond simple conversion and into the realm of advanced post, offering such services as noise removal, grain and film-stock match, and color-artifact removal. The facility also offers real-time transfer of raw camera data in 4:4:4 10-bit log and image sequence. Mytherapy D-Cinelab can handle the entire high-end digital post on a project or complement other facilities by assisting in the creation of a workflow from acquisition through to deliverables. Mytherapy supports such camera systems as Red One, Silicon Imaging 2K, Phantom HD and Arri D-21. For more information, visit www.mytherapy.tv.
16x9 Super Fisheye, Wide Attachments 16x9 Inc. has unveiled the EXII 0.6X Wide Attachment and the EXII 0.45X Super Fisheye Lens Attachment. The EXII 0.6X, the company’s first HD-quality wide attachment designed as a single-lens element, measures 0.9" long with a front diameter of 98mm, and it weighs 6.6 ounces. Increasing wideangle coverage by 40 percent, the EXII 0.6X minimizes barrel distortion and enables partial zooming with cameras 85
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that have auto-focus capability. The Wide Attachment is compatible with a number of cameras from Canon, Panasonic and Sony, and is available in 62mm, 72mm, 77mm and 82mm thread mounts ($345), as well as a bayonet mount ($395). The single-element, HD-quality EXII 0.45X Super Fisheye boasts a small, lightweight design — measuring 0.9" long with a front diameter of 115mm and weighing 14.4 ounces — with more mounting options to fit popular cameras from Panasonic and Sony; mounting options include bayonet ($595) and 62mm, 72mm, 77mm and 82mm threaded ($545). For more information, visit www.16x9inc.com. OConnor Updates Classic OConnor, a Vitec Group brand, has upgraded its workhorse Ultimate 2575 Fluid Head. The new “D” model boasts ergonomic changes to controls and more pan-bar mounting points while retaining the counterbalance specifications and other characteristics that contributed to the popularity of its predecessor, the 2575C. The 2575D enables easier adjustments by relocating all controls on the platform to the operator’s side — the left. The one-touch platform-release lever allows for one action to undo the safety catch and open the lever, speeding deployment and location changes in the field. The upgraded fluid head’s platform now features dual platform scales
— one on each side — and four handle rosettes to allow operation from either side of the head, as well as front or back handle-mounting. The 2575D weighs the same as its predecessor (22.9 pounds), carries the same payload (0-87 pounds), and is compatible with the same accessories. It also features OConnor’s smooth pan-and-tilt fluid drag, specifically designed to deliver the control and stability necessary for filmstyle shooting. OConnor’s patented sinusoidal counterbalance system provides accurate balance at any point in the tilt range. For more information, visit www.ocon.com.
Vinten Supports Videographers Vinten has responded to demands from DV-camera users by introducing an addition to its Protouch lightweight camera-support range. The new Pro-5Plus pan-and-tilt head boasts a switchable counterbalance spring for smoother, controllable tilt movements, separate pan-and-tilt locks, continuously variable pan-and-tilt drag for smoother panning, a 75mm spherical base, a leveling bubble, a quick-release side-load camera attachment system for convenient attachment and release from the head, and a fixed-length pan bar that can be positioned to suit any preference. Despite its lightweight construction, no compromises have been made regarding camera stability. With a solidly engineered single-stage Pozi-Loc aluminum tripod and lightweight floor spreader, the Pro-5Plus offers class-
leading rigidity with maximum control. The grab-and-go Pro-5Plus system also offers two levels of counterbalance: position 1 for the smallest of camcorders requiring no counterbalance, and position 2 for camcorders of up to 9.9 pounds. The Pro-5Plus pan-and-tilt head comes with its own Petrol transport case. For more information, visit www.vinten.com. EZ Jib Adds Extension EZ FX, Inc. has introduced an extension kit for its EZ Jib camera crane. Replacing the 6' and 4' extensions, the new kit can be used at either 3.5' or 7', effectively offering two extensions in one kit. Further, the kit is more compact than the 6' extension, providing easier storage and transport. Supporting cameras weighing up to 25 pounds, the new extension kit includes an extension for the camera end of the jib and a suspension cable for stabilization and strength. The kit adapts to all EZ Jibs sold in the past, and the jib system can also be outfitted with remote control pan/tilt heads. For more information, call (800) 541-5706 or visit www.ezfx.com. Petrol Rolls Out C-Stand Bag Petrol, a Vitec Group brand, has unveiled the C-Stand Rolling Bag, a padded, semi-hard carrier designed to hold up to four C-stands comfortably and securely. Dual-directional upside-down zippers extend the length of the lid and open quickly to fully expose the bag’s interior. Inside, the contents are surrounded on all sides by cushioning, and sturdy nylon binding straps hold the C-stands in position. A drawing on the bottom of the carrier illustrates how the stands should be placed. The case’s exterior boasts front and rear handgrips, enabling easy lifting
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of the bag from a shelf or back compartment of a car. Other features include Petrol’s U-Grip ergonomic interlocking carrying handle and a smooth-gliding inline skate-wheel assembly for convenient rollaway toting. The bag is constructed of durable, water-resistant, black ballistic nylon. The C-Stand Rolling Bag has a recommended price of $175. For more information, visit www.petrolbags.com.
CineBags Redesigns Laptop Bag CineBags has redesigned its CB17 Laptop Bag. Designed to hold laptops of up to 17", the CB-17 includes a removable laptop sleeve, a shoulder strap and CineBags’ “Remove Before Filming” key chain. The bag can also expand to accommodate large production binders. The CB-17 is available in gray and orange or a limited-edition “digital camo” version. For more information, visit www.cinebags.com. Editing Magic with Magix Software Magix has introduced two videoediting software packages, Video Pro X and Movie Edit Pro 15. Features of Video Pro X, the company’s professional video-editing solution, include Source and Program Monitor, allowing for direct comparison 88
between original and edited video clips, and Multi-Camera Editing, with support for up to four cameras and full audiosource synchronization between multiple tracks or inputs. Video Pro X also boast an improved user interface, wherein all shortcuts are freely definable, the timeline can be adjusted based on the user’s preferences, and all interface components can be made bigger or smaller, moved or even hidden. The software package supports full 1080p HD video content for uploading, editing and burning to Blu-ray discs. Movie Edit Pro 15 fuses sophisticated video-editing tools with advanced surround dubbing and individually adjustable special effects, all packaged in a simple user interface. Like Video Pro X, it offers full 1080p HD support. Other features include full YouTube support to help users publish their videos directly to the Web site, and Multi-Camera Editing for two cameras. For more information, visit www.magix.com. VDS Keeps Quantel Plugged In Video Design Software has released six new Synapse-Neuron bundles for Quantel, allowing the Quantel Q-range operator direct, interactive use of hundreds of professional-grade After Effects plug-ins from within the Pablo, iQ, gQ, eQ, QPaintbox and QEffects environments. The neurons include Red Giant Psunami, a photorealistic water-simulation plug-in; Red Giant Radium Glow, featuring filters for creating glimmering points and precise outlines; Red Giant Warp, offering control over shadows, reflections and corner-point warps; DigiEffects Simulate: Camera, which mimics
camera and projection artifacts; DigiEffects Simulate: Illuma, featuring practical lighting effects; and DigiEffects Damage, which simulates analog and digital errors and defects. “We are very pleased to be able to offer Quantel users these exciting, new plug-ins,” says Larry Mincer, president of VDS. “Our Synapse platform will continue to provide great new visual effects on Quantel as they become available. It offers Quantel operators over 900 plugins, ranging from the latest eye-catching visual effects to advanced imageprocessing algorithms to solve difficult compositing problems.” For more information, visit www.videodesignsoftware.com. Escape Offers Online CameraTracking Course Escape Studios is offering the online course “Camera Tracking for VFX,” which delves into the professional camera-tracking skills required by aspiring 3-D artists. Taught by Escape Studios staff, the course covers background, workflows and best practices in a flexible format that includes more than 12 hours of video content. “Camera tracking, also called match moving, is one of the most important and fundamental techniques for 3-D artists to master,” says Dominic Davenport, CEO and founder of Escape Studios. “This course has been meticulously planned to provide students with a thorough professional grounding in the theory and techniques required for seamless camera moves.” The course covers software applications PFTrack 5 and Maya Live, showing techniques that are applicable to all software packages. A basic understanding of Maya is required, but the course assumes no prior knowledge of camera tracking. After completing the course, students will be well versed in tracking, solving and adjusting shots, as well as techniques for manipulating footage. A series of online videos is provided to clarify key points, and students can
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experiment with included sample footage for hands-on learning. Additionally, as part of Escape Studios’ online learning system, immediate access to professional feedback and communication with other users is provided. The fee for the course is $299. For more information or to register, visit www.escapestudios.com. Tiffen, Lowel Team Up The Tiffen Co. has agreed to handle the manufacturing, worldwide distribution and marketing of all LowelLight Manufacturing, Inc., products. “This agreement between our companies is a perfect fit,” says Steven Tiffen, president and CEO of The Tiffen Co. “The broad range of lighting products Lowel offers complements our name-brand photographic-accessory lines, and our distribution channels reach the same markets. We are both very excited about this expansion and the opportunities it presents.” Marvin Seligman, president of Lowel-Light, adds, “As we enter our 50th year, this partnership brings us closer together with Tiffen and its other premier brands, such as Steadicam. It allows us to concentrate on what we do best: create innovative, functional and elegant lighting tools for today’s imaging world.” For more information, visit www.tiffen.com or www.lowel.com. Thomson Post Becomes Digital Film Technology Parter Capital Group has completed its acquisition of the Thomson Post Production Business Unit, which has been rebranded Digital Film Technology. The transition for DFT customers is seamless because DFT is selling and supporting Thomson’s full post-product line, including the Spirit and Shadow family of scanners/ telecines/datacines, the Bones family of dailies and post workflow-management tools, the Scream grain reducer, and the Luther color-calibration system. “In addition to our seasoned management team, we have an extremely talented and motivated group 90 June 2009
of people that are committed to delivering superior sales and support services and innovative technology and products,” says Stefan Kramper, managing director of DFT. “By building on our history and leadership in the post industry and opening our internal and external communication channels, we are able to more effectively facilitate customer requirements.” For more information, visit www.dft-film.com. Band Pro Offers Financial Services Band Pro Film & Digital, Inc., recently unveiled a customer-focused financing program, offering a number of customized financing options designed for the needs of the broadcast- and cinema-production industries. A team of finance professionals will be available to help secure flexible and competitive financing options for new and existing Band Pro customers. The new service aims to serve customers requesting financing options from 12 to 60 months. Most applicants will be approved within 24 hours. For more information, call (818) 841-9655, e-mail finance@band pro.com, or visit www.bandpro.com. Epson Unveils Home Cinema Projector Epson has added the PowerLite Home Cinema 6500 UB to its awardwinning line of 3LCD 1080p front projectors. Offering true 1080p (1920x1080 pixels) resolution with the latest 3LCD D7 chip set for significantly higher contrast, a built-in HQV Reon-VX processor by Silicon Optix, and a wide range of new performance advantages, the 6500 UB delivers an outstanding viewing experience for home entertainment. 3LCD technology enables the projector to deliver vibrant colors without the possibility of color break-up, unlike single-chip projectors, which use a spinning color wheel to create colors. It also allows the 6500 UB to provide a significantly enhanced contrast ratio (up to 75,000:1) to deliver darker blacks and brighter whites.
A Dynamic Iris system with automatic light-output adjustments up to 60 times per second makes the 6500 UB projector ideal for fast-action movies and sports. The projector also features Epson’s exclusive Cinema Filter, which delivers a larger color space. Epson’s 12-bit 3LCD driver technology increases the projector’s color gamut to 68.72 billion available colors for an enhanced viewing experience. The 6500 UB also features a unique OptiCinema multi-lens system developed by Fujinon; this system allows for sharp, clear images and precise focus and adjustment flexibility. The projector is equipped with Silicon Optix’s HQV Reon-VX scaling and deinterlacing video processor to reduce mosquito and block noise while adding multi-level contrast enhancement and other picture-improvement options. Epson’s new FineFrame technology delivers smoother and sharper motion pictures while virtually eliminating judder to provide optimum picture detail. Other features include brightness of up to 1,600 lumens, an improved airflow system, an advanced air-filtration system, a brighter 200-watt E-TORL lamp, manual lens shift of 100-percent maximum vertical and 50-percent maximum horizontal, and six color modes. The projector includes a number of inputs, including dual HDMI 1.3a, Svideo, composite video and VGA-type RGB. The Home Cinema 6500 UB has a list price of $2,999. For more information, visit www.epson.com. I
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American Society of Cinematographers Roster OFFICERS – 2008-’09 Daryn Okada, President Michael Goi, Vice President Richard Crudo, Vice President Owen Roizman, Vice President Victor J. Kemper, Treasurer Isidore Mankofsky, Secretary John Hora, Sergeant-at-Arms MEMBERS OF THE BOARD Curtis Clark Richard Crudo Caleb Deschanel John C. Flinn III William A. Fraker Michael Goi John Hora Victor J. Kemper Matthew Leonetti Stephen Lighthill Daryn Okada Robert Primes Owen Roizman Nancy Schreiber Kees Van Oostrum ALTERNATES Steven Fierberg Michael D. O’Shea Sol Negrin Michael Negrin
96 June 2009
ACTIVE MEMBERS Thomas Ackerman Lance Acord Lloyd Ahern II Herbert Alpert Russ Alsobrook Howard A. Anderson III Howard A. Anderson Jr. James Anderson Peter Anderson Tony Askins Charles Austin Christopher Baffa James Bagdonas King Baggot John Bailey Michael Ballhaus Andrzej Bartkowiak John Bartley Bojan Bazelli Frank Beascoechea Affonso Beato Mat Beck Dion Beebe Bill Bennett Andres Berenguer Carl Berger Gabriel Beristain Steven Bernstein Ross Berryman Michael Bonvillain Richard Bowen David Boyd Russell Boyd Jonathan Brown Don Burgess Stephen H. Burum Bill Butler Frank B. Byers Bobby Byrne Antonio Calvache Paul Cameron Russell P. Carpenter James L. Carter Alan Caso Michael Chapman Rodney Charters James A. Chressanthis Joan Churchill Curtis Clark Peter L. Collister Jack Cooperman Jack Couffer Vincent G. Cox Jeff Cronenweth Richard Crudo Dean R. Cundey Stefan Czapsky David Darby Allen Daviau Roger Deakins Jan DeBont Thomas Del Ruth Peter Deming Caleb Deschanel Ron Dexter George Spiro Dibie Craig Di Bona
Ernest Dickerson Billy Dickson Bill Dill Bert Dunk John Dykstra Richard Edlund Frederick Elmes Robert Elswit Geoffrey Erb Scott Farrar Jon Fauer Don E. FauntLeRoy Gerald Feil Steven Fierberg Gerald Perry Finnerman Mauro Fiore John C. Flinn III Ron Fortunato William A. Fraker Tak Fujimoto Alex Funke Steve Gainer Ron Garcia Dejan Georgevich Michael Goi Stephen Goldblatt Paul Goldsmith Frederic Goodich Victor Goss Jack Green Adam Greenberg Robbie Greenberg Alexander Gruszynski Changwei Gu Rick Gunter Rob Hahn Gerald Hirschfeld Henner Hofmann Adam Holender Ernie Holzman John C. Hora Gil Hubbs Michel Hugo Shane Hurlbut Judy Irola Mark Irwin Levie Isaacks Andrew Jackson Peter James Johnny E. Jensen Torben Johnke Frank Johnson Shelly Johnson Jeffrey Jur William K. Jurgensen Adam Kane Stephen M. Katz Ken Kelsch Victor J. Kemper Wayne Kennan Francis Kenny Glenn Kershaw Darius Khondji Gary Kibbe Jan Kiesser Jeffrey L. Kimball Alar Kivilo Richard Kline
George Koblasa Fred J. Koenekamp Lajos Koltai Pete Kozachik Neil Krepela Willy Kurant Ellen M. Kuras George La Fountaine Edward Lachman Ken Lamkin Jacek Laskus Andrew Laszlo Denis Lenoir John R. Leonetti Matthew Leonetti Andrew Lesnie Peter Levy Matthew Libatique Stephen Lighthill Karl Walter Lindenlaub John Lindley Robert F. Liu Walt Lloyd Bruce Logan Gordon Lonsdale Emmanuel Lubezki Julio G. Macat Glen MacPherson Constantine Makris Karl Malkames Denis Maloney Isidore Mankofsky Christopher Manley Michael D. Margulies Barry Markowitz Vincent Martinelli Steve Mason Clark Mathis Don McAlpine Don McCuaig Seamus McGarvey Robert McLachlan Greg McMurry Steve McNutt Terry K. Meade Chris Menges Rexford Metz Anastas Michos Douglas Milsome Dan Mindel Charles Minsky Richard Moore Donald A. Morgan Donald M. Morgan Kramer Morgenthau M. David Mullen Dennis Muren Fred Murphy Hiro Narita Guillermo Navarro Michael B. Negrin Sol Negrin Bill Neil Alex Nepomniaschy Yuri Neyman John Newby Sam Nicholson David B. Nowell
Rene Ohashi Daryn Okada Thomas Olgeirsson Woody Omens Miroslav Ondricek Michael D. O’Shea Anthony Palmieri Phedon Papamichael Daniel Pearl Edward J. Pei James Pergola Don Peterman Lowell Peterson Wally Pfister Gene Polito Bill Pope Steven Poster Tom Priestley Jr. Rodrigo Prieto Robert Primes Frank Prinzi Richard Quinlan Declan Quinn Earl Rath Richard Rawlings Jr. Frank Raymond Tami Reiker Marc Reshovsky Robert Richardson Anthony B. Richmond Bill Roe Owen Roizman Pete Romano Charles Rosher Jr. Giuseppe Rotunno Philippe Rousselot Juan Ruiz-Anchia Marvin Rush Paul Ryan Eric Saarinen Alik Sakharov Mikael Salomon Harris Savides Roberto Schaefer Aaron Schneider Nancy Schreiber Fred Schuler John Schwartzman John Seale Christian Sebaldt Dean Semler Eduardo Serra Steven Shaw Richard Shore Newton Thomas Sigel John Simmons Sandi Sissel Bradley B. Six Dennis L. Smith Roland “Ozzie” Smith Reed Smoot Bing Sokolsky Peter Sova Dante Spinotti Robert Steadman Ueli Steiger Peter Stein Robert M. Stevens
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Tom Stern Vittorio Storaro Harry Stradling Jr. David Stump Tim Suhrstedt Peter Suschitzky Alfred Taylor Jonathan Taylor Rodney Taylor William Taylor Don Thorin John Toll Mario Tosi Salvatore Totino Luciano Tovoli Jost Vacano Theo Van de Sande Eric Van Haren Noman Kees Van Oostrum Ron Vargas Mark Vargo Amelia Vincent William Wages Roy H. Wagner Ric Waite Michael Watkins Jonathan West Haskell Wexler Jack Whitman Gordon Willis Dariusz Wolski Ralph Woolsey Peter Wunstorf Robert Yeoman Richard Yuricich Jerzy Zielinski Vilmos Zsigmond Kenneth Zunder ASSOCIATE MEMBERS Alan Albert Richard Aschman Volker Bahnemann Joseph J. Ball Carly M. Barber Craig Barron Thomas M. Barron Larry Barton Bob Beitcher Mark Bender Bruce Berke John Bickford Steven A. Blakely Mitchell Bogdanowicz Jack Bonura Michael Bravin William Brodersen Garrett Brown Ronald D. Burdett Reid Burns Vincent Carabello Jim Carter Leonard Chapman Denny Clairmont Cary Clayton Emory M. Cohen Sean Coughlin Robert B. Creamer Grover Crisp Daniel Curry
Ross Danielson Carlos D. DeMattos Gary Demos Richard Di Bona Kevin Dillon David Dodson Judith Doherty Don Donigi Cyril Drabinsky Jesse Dylan Jonathan Erland John Farrand Ray Feeney William Feightner Phil Feiner Jimmy Fisher Scott Fleischer Thomas Fletcher Steve Garfinkel Salvatore Giarratano Richard B. Glickman John A. Gresch Jim Hannafin William Hansard Bill Hansard, Jr. Richard Hart Roman I. Harte Robert Harvey Don Henderson Charles Herzfeld Larry Hezzelwood Frieder Hochheim Bob Hoffman Vinny Hogan Robert C. Hummel Roy Isaia George Joblove Joel Johnson John Johnston Curtis Jones Frank Kay Debbie Kennard Milton Keslow Robert Keslow Larry Kingen Douglas Kirkland Timothy J. Knapp Ron Koch Karl Kresser Lou Levinson Suzanne Lezotte Grant Loucks Andy Maltz Steven E. Manios Robert Mastronardi Joe Matza Albert L. Mayer, Sr. Albert Mayer, Jr. Andy McIntyre Stan Miller Walter H. Mills George Milton Mike Mimaki Rami Mina Tak Miyagishima Michael Morelli Dash Morrison Nolan Murdock Mark W. Murphy Dan Muscarella
F. Jack Napor Iain A. Neil Otto Nemenz Ernst Nettmann Tony Ngai Mickel Niehenke Marty Oppenheimer Walt Ordway Larry Parker Michael Parker Warren Parker Doug Pentek Ed Phillips Nick Phillips Joshua Pines Carl Porcello Howard Preston David Pringle Phil Radin Christopher Reyna Colin Ritchie Eric G. Rodli Andy Romanoff Daniel Rosen Dana Ross Bill Russell Kish Sadhvani David Samuelson Peter K. Schnitzler Walter Schonfeld Juergen Schwinzer Ronald Scott Steven Scott Don Shapiro Milton R. Shefter Leon Silverman Garrett Smith Stefan Sonnenfeld Jurgen Sporn John L. Sprung Joseph N. Tawil Ira Tiffen Arthur Tostado Ann Turner Bill Turner Stephan Ukas-Bradley Mark Van Horne Richard Vetter Joe Violante Dedo Weigert Franz Weiser Evans Wetmore Beverly Wood Jan Yarbrough Hoyt Yeatman Irwin M. Young Michael Zacharia Bob Zahn Nazir Zaidi Michael Zakula Les Zellan HONORARY MEMBERS Col. Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. Neil A. Armstrong Col. Michael Collins Bob Fisher Cpt. Bruce McCandless II David MacDonald D. Brian Spruill
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Clubhouse News
Society Welcomes Farrar California native Scott Farrar, ASC started making films in high school. He continued his education at the University of California-Los Angeles, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Master of Fine Arts in theater design with an emphasis in film. Farrar began working as a freelance director of photography and editor, but after a visit to Industrial Light & Magic during the production of Star Wars (1977), he decided to focus on photographic effects. Following a stint with Robert Abel and Associates, Farrar joined Douglas Trumbull to work on Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), and in 1981, he joined ILM as an effects cinematographer/camera operator on Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982). In 1985, Farrar won an Academy Award for his contribution to Cocoon’s visual effects, and he was subsequently promoted to visual-effects supervisor for Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988). Farrar earned Oscar nominations for Backdraft (1991), Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) and Transformers (2007). He recently completed work on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009). Drawing on his background as a camera operator and cinematographer, 98 June 2009
Lake Arrowhead Fest Fetes ASC Members At the 10th annual Lake Arrowhead Film Festival in April, Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC and the late Laszlo Kovacs, ASC were honored with Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography Awards. Fellow Society member Ron Dexter presented the award to Zsigmond during the festival’s Gala Awards Ceremony, and the LAFF Vice-President of the Board of Directors, Jack Cooperman, ASC, presented a Special Recognition Award to James Chressanthis, ASC for his documentary No Subtitles Necessary. Awards were also presented in the categories Documentary Feature, Feature Film, Ensemble Cast, Special Achievement in Film, Best of the Festival, Short Documentary, Short Film, Animated Film and Student Film; director Joe Dante took home the award for Special Achievement in the Art of Independent Filmmaking. “This is a very filmmakeroriented festival,” says Cooperman. “We never show more than two screens at any one time, and because it’s all in one facility, there’s a tremendous
amount of communication between the audience and the filmmakers.” Cinematographers who have been honored by the festival in the past include ASC members William A. Fraker and Donald M. Morgan. Cooperman adds, “My whole function [during the festival] is to make the general public aware of the role of the cinematographer.” Beverly Hills Fest Honors Wexler Haskell Wexler, ASC was presented with the Legend Award during the ninth annual International Beverly Hills Film Festival. The award was presented on April 5 at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Hummel Presents Big Picture On May 7, in conjunction with an exhibition celebrating the 75th anniversary of the National Archives, ASC associate member Rob Hummel presented “The Big Picture: The Evolution of the Wide-Screen Film.” Organized in partnership with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, The Charles Guggenheim Center for the Documentary Film and the Foundation for the National Archives, the illustrated lecture traced the history of motion-picture formats from the silent era to the present day. Cinematheque Hosts Roizman Owen Roizman, ASC recently visited the American Cinematheque’s Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, Calif., to discuss his Oscar-nominated work on William Friedkin’s The French Connection (1971). Former Los Angeles Times writer Kevin Thomas led the discussion following a screening of the film. I
Photo of Vilmos Zsigmond and Jack Cooperman by Linda Silverstein, courtesy of the Lake Arrowhead Film Festival.
he has pushed to develop CG tools similar to the flags, nets, shiny boards and barn doors found on live-action sets.
JOIN HOLLYWOOD’S PROFESSIONALS IN 2009 For the Pre-Production • Production • Post Production Community
Paramount Pictures Studio Lot, Hollywood, CA Exhibition & Premiere Seminars: June 5 - 6, 2009 The Film Series at Cine Gear Expo: June 4 - 6, 2009 Master Class Seminars: June 7, 2009 CALL FOR ENTRIES! THE FILM SERIES AT CINE GEAR EXPO 2009 Independent, Student Short Film & Feature Film Competition
ANNOUNCING NEW!
Contact us @ 310/472-0809 •
[email protected] For more information and updates, visit us at:
The Expansion Into Documentary Film Competition Deadlines For Submissions Are:
Early 3.15.09 • Regular 4.08.09 • Late 5.01.09
W W W. C I N E G E A R E X P O. C O M
ASC CLOSE-UP Alan Caso, ASC
Which cinematographers, past or present, do you most admire? Gregg Toland, ASC; Sol Polito, ASC; Robert Surtees, ASC; Freddie Young, ASC, BSC; Carlo Di Palma; Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC; Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC; Geoffrey Unsworth, BSC; Gordon Willis, ASC; Robert Richardson, ASC; Darius Khondji, ASC, AFC; John Alcott, BSC; and Janusz Kaminski. What sparked your interest in photography? An involvement in drawing and painting since I was a child. Also, my dad was a photographer in the Air Force. Where did you train and/or study? Massachusetts College of Art and the University of Massachusetts. Who were your early teachers or mentors? I’m not sure if ‘mentors’ is the word, but those with whom I’ve worked for varying amounts of time and from whom I learned the most were Jan DeBont, ASC; Ernest Day, BSC; Winton Hoch, ASC; Orson Welles; and Bruce Surtees. What are some of your key artistic influences? Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Degas and Renoir; Sergei Eisenstein, Buster Keaton, Orson Welles, David Lean, Sam Peckinpah and Francis Ford Coppola; Truffaut and Godard; Antonioni, De Sica, Leone and Bertolucci; Alfred Eisenstaedt, Alfred Stieglitz, Ansel Adams, Richard Avedon, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Edward Weston and Robert Frank. How did you get your first break in the business? I got a job as an assistant on a film called Roar (1981) that Jan DeBont came over from Holland to film. He moved me up to operator very early in the production. As the movie rolled on for over three years, it gave me a great daily training ground to learn the complicated skills of operating, and cinematography in general. It also provided a chance for me to train with a Steadicam; this allowed me the opportunity to begin a parallel career as an A-camera and Steadicam operator.
100 June 2009
What has been your most satisfying moment on a project? It’s hard to put a superlative on the moment. I would say these are some: as complete works, the period pieces Frankenstein (for Hallmark) and Into the West (for DreamWorks/TNT); actually surviving the feature Reindeer Games and miniseries George Wallace with John Frankenheimer — and with fond memories; the sheer glee of doing Muppet movies; and the complete freedom to create the look of Six Feet Under. Have you made any memorable blunders? Falling asleep while operating a close-up on Bette Davis. What is the best professional advice you’ve ever received? From John Frankenheimer: ‘Alan, whatever you do in this business, don’t ever let them push you into shooting something you know is just bad, something you’ll end up regretting or hating. Simple rule of thumb: don’t shoot s**t!’ What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you? I read such a wide variety of fiction and enjoy art in such an eclectic way that it is very hard to cite any one thing. I would rather say that the collective experience of appreciating and living in today’s complex environment speaks volumes. Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like to try? My favorite genres are action, period pieces and Westerns. I would love to try a musical. If you weren’t a cinematographer, what might you be doing instead? Building furniture and growing a big vegetable garden. Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for membership? Charlie Correll, Gil Hubbs and Kees Van Oostrum. How has ASC membership impacted your life and career? It has brought me closer to my peers and made available the tremendous resources offered by the Society. Membership has also allowed me the opportunity to give back to the community through the Society’s involvement with educational, awards and technical-advancement programs. I
Photo by Kodak.
When you were a child, what film made the strongest impression on you? There really wasn’t one, but a combination of several, including Lawrence of Arabia (1962), West Side Story (1961), Blow-Up (1966), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Psycho (1960), Major Dundee (1965) and Ben-Hur (1959).
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The Difference is Tiffen 1-800-645-2522 • tiffen.com
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