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A M E R I C A N C I N E M AT O G R A P H E R • J A N U A RY 2 0 0 9 • R E V O L U T I O N A RY R O A D ; T H E C U R I O U S C A S E O F B E N J A M I N B U T T O N ; D E F I A N C E ; J A C K G R E E N , A S C • V O L . 9 0 N O. 1
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© 2008 Sony Electronics Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Features and specifications are subject to change without notice. Sony, CineAlta, HDNA, the HDNA logo, XDCAM and XDCAM EX are trademarks of Sony.
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The International Journal of Film & Digital Production Techniques
On Our Cover: Businessman Frank Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio) finds his marriage crumbling in Revolutionary Road, shot by Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC. (Photo by François Duhamel, SMPSP, courtesy of DreamWorks LLC.)
Features 28 42 58 70
Departments
8 10 16 80 84 88 89 90 92 94 96
Close Focus Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC captures a couple’s downward spiral in Revolutionary Road
An Old Soul Claudio Miranda exploits cutting-edge technologies on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
42
Brothers in Arms Eduardo Serra, ASC, AFC frames a true tale of World War II heroism in Defiance
A Cut Above Jack Green, ASC receives the Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award
Editor’s Note Short Takes: Triangle of Need Production Slate: Frost/Nixon, The Wrestler Post Focus: HPA Awards, Still Me New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index In Memoriam: Robert C. Jessup, ASC Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up: Gabriel Beristain
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CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Saul Molina CIRCULATION MANAGER Alex Lopez SHIPPING MANAGER Miguel Madrigal ———————————————————————————————————— ASC GENERAL MANAGER Brett Grauman ASC EVENTS COORDINATOR Patricia Armacost ASC PRESIDENT’S ASSISTANT Kim Weston ASC ACCOUNTING MANAGER Mila Basely ASC ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE Corey Clark ———————————————————————————————————— American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 88th year of publication, is published monthly in Hollywood by ASC Holding Corp., 1782 N. Orange Dr., Hollywood, CA 90028, U.S.A., (800) 448-0145, (323) 969-4333, Fax (323) 876-4973, direct line for subscription inquiries (323) 969-4344. Subscriptions: U.S. $50; Canada/Mexico $70; all other foreign countries $95 a year (remit international Money Order or other exchange payable in U.S. $). Advertising: Rate card upon request from Hollywood office. Article Reprints: Requests for high-quality article reprints should be made to McNeil Group at (800) 394-5157 ext. 26. Copyright 2007 ASC Holding Corp. (All rights reserved.) Periodicals postage paid at Los Angeles, CA and at additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA. POSTMASTER: Send address change to American Cinematographer, P.O. Box 2230, Hollywood, CA 90078.
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BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Harris Savides,
ASC
For up-to-the-minute screening information, to read Dustin Lance Black’s original screenplay, and to hear Danny Elfman’s score and more about this extraordinary film from director Gus Van Sant, go to: www.FilmInFocus.com/awards08 ARTWORK ©2008 FOCUS FEATURES, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
“A TOTAL TRIUMPH, BRIMMING WITH HUMOR AND HEART. IF THERE’S A BETTER MOVIE AROUND THIS YEAR, WITH MORE BRISTLING PURPOSE, I SURE HAVEN’T SEEN IT. ####. Camera genius Harris Savides, gives the film a tribal vibrancy. Shooting on the streets Harvey walked in San Francisco, and blending in archival footage, he drops us into the cartwheeling culture of the 1970s with a dizzying sense of time and place. An American classic.” —Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE
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The ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but an educational, cultural and professional organization. Membership is by invitation to those who are actively engaged as directors of photography and have demonstrated outstanding ability. ASC membership has become one of the highest honors that can be bestowed upon a professional cinematographer — a mark of prestige and excellence.
OFFICERS - 2008/2009 Daryn Okada President
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Richard Crudo Vice President
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ALTERNATES Matthew Leonetti Steven Fierberg James Chressanthis Michael D. O’Shea Sol Negrin MUSEUM CURATOR
Steve Gainer
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Editor’s Note irector Sam Mendes first explored the illusions and delusions of American suburbia in American Beauty (1999), which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Achievement in Cinematography (for Conrad L. Hall, ASC). On his latest project, Revolutionary Road, the English filmmaker teamed with Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC to focus a pitiless lens on the crumbling marriage of an outwardly enviable couple (played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet) in suburban Connecticut in 1955. Based on Richard Yates’ novel, the picture led Mendes and Deakins to spotlight the actors’ performances while avoiding stylistic flourishes in their approach to the period. “I hate the idea that you have to make the photography colorful because it’s the ’50s, or that you have to make it gauzy and sepia because it’s an earlier era — I’ve never seen the point of that, really,” Deakins tells senior editor Rachael K. Bosley (“Close Focus,” page 28). Mendes seconds the motion: “I didn’t want to have any shots that said, ‘The 1950s: weren’t they extraordinary!’ I simply wanted it to be where these characters live.” In an insightful sidebar (“Furnishing a Plain Period Look,” page 36), set decorator Deborah Schutt confirms, “We all wanted to make a period movie that didn’t look like one.” David Fincher and cinematographer Claudio Miranda had to convey the look of eight different decades while turning back the clock on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which stars Brad Pitt as a man who is born in 1918 and ages in reverse. While the film offers plenty of period ambience, Miranda notes, “The intention was to be as naturalistic as possible. Our initial influence for textures and framing was [painter] Andrew Wyeth.” Of course, the filmmakers also had to come up with a way to make their main character age and regress believably, which involved some complex technologies. Miranda and post supervisor Peter Mavromates pull back the curtain in their comments to contributing writer Douglas Bankston (“An Old Soul,” page 42). World War II is the timeframe explored in Defiance, shot by Eduardo Serra, ASC, AFC for director Ed Zwick. In telling a true story of Jewish resistance fighters who take refuge in a forest, Serra rebuts the notion that exterior cinematography offers fewer opportunities to be creative. By pushing Kodak’s tungsten-balanced 5279 stock two stops and eschewing an 85 filter, he added grain and contrast to exterior images and created unpredictable changes in the negative’s red, green and blue curves. “The changes are subtle, but they’re there,” Serra explains to Paris-based correspondent Benjamin B (“Brothers in Arms,” page 58). “With film, it’s important to have the three color curves perfectly parallel, and in this picture, they really aren’t.” Bold choices are often rewarding, as ASC member Jack Green quickly learned after he gave up barbering for a life behind the camera. What the world lost in tonsorial technique it has gained in memorable Hollywood moments. Green entered into a long and rewarding collaboration with Clint Eastwood, beginning as a camera operator and eventually advancing to cinematographer on a number of Eastwood’s films, including Bird, Unforgiven and The Bridges of Madison County. His record of excellence has earned him this year’s ASC Lifetime Achievement Award, and Green shares some of his recollections with contributing writer Jon Silberg (“A Cut Above,” page 70).
Stephen Pizzello Executive Editor 8
Photo by Douglas Kirkland.
D
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Short Takes Forging Triangle of Need for Catherine Sullivan
Above: Mistresses bid farewell from a barge in Triangle of Need, an installation piece directed by Catherine Sullivan and photographed by Raoul Germain. Below: One of the installation’s three rooms at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
10 January 2009
n 2002, five years after Catherine Sullivan transitioned from live theater to producing and directing conceptualvideo works, she began developing her first commission, which became Five Economies (big hunt/little hunt). With a larger budget than she had previously enjoyed, she decided to expand her work into a multi-screen project that would replicate the experience of watching a theater piece. To capture the complex
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imagery the project required, Sullivan turned to cinematographer Raoul Germain, whom she had met when Germain was gaffing an independent feature for a mutual friend. When their collaboration began on Five Economies, Sullivan was a bit cryptic about the subject matter, says Germain. “Most of the time, she would just say, ‘These are the images we’re going to shoot.’” Germain was finally able to see
Five Economies from Sullivan’s perspective when the piece premiered at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles — on five 20'-tall screens. “I was astounded,” he says. “I got the concept and the way it moved around you as a viewer in the center of it all. Once I saw the fruits of our labor, I was so excited and proud of the work that I really wanted to keep the relationship going.” Four collaborations later, in August 2007, Sullivan and Germain introduced their latest and largest installation, Triangle of Need, at Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center. Like Five Economies, Triangle was conceived as a multi-screen fine-art experience involving the layering of many different storylines and locations playing simultaneously on multiple projectors and television screens. According to the artist’s statement, Triangle “delves into corporate corruption and the idea of conforming old ideals to new ones in a modern age.” Triangle’s genesis can be traced to when Sullivan was invited to make a piece at the Villa Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, a 16th-century Italian-style estate built as a winter home for American industrialist James Deering in Biscayne Bay, Fla. When Sullivan first encountered Vizcaya’s main house, formal gardens, lagoon and derelict village, she was inspired by its potential as a location for one of the pieces. The project comprises several short films that form a cohesive whole. In one room, a six-minute looped projection intercuts 16mm shots of a spinning figure skater with blown-up Super 8mm footage from a Quinceañera (a traditional Latino coming-of-age celebration for young women) at Vizcaya. In an adjoining chamber, three flat-screen
Photos and frame grabs courtesy of the filmmakers.
by Iain Stasukevich
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Top to bottom: A production still showing Neanderthals cleansed by mistresses in the secret garden at Florida’s Villa Vizcaya Museum and Gardens; an orphan passes on in a color segment shot at Villa Vizcaya; a frame grab of the Neanderthals’ arrival at Villa Vizcaya, shot on Kodak Double-X 7222; a frame grab from the Quinceañera sequence, which was shot with Porst 40D Super 8 film.
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high-definition TVs show the “Chicago” portion of the work, set in a tenement apartment inhabited by early 20th century workers from Deering’s agricultural-equipment factory; these three scenes (each running 20 minutes) were filmed in black-and-white and focus on a family of Gypsies, a trio of Neanderthals, and French emperor Napoleon and his wife, Josephine. The third and largest room features four hi-def digital projectors showing color and black-and-white scenes shot in and around the Vizcaya estate. In these scenes, each of which runs about 30 minutes, the “Chicago” characters appear opposite a new cast of what the filmmakers describe as “anachronistic degenerates.” For the 16mm footage of the figure skater, shot inside the Chicago Ice arena, Germain used Kodak Double-X 7222 black-and-white film. He recalls that these shots were relatively uncomplicated, while the Quinceañera footage was much more involved. On a conceptual level, a lot of Triangle’s content deals with matters of extinction, and Sullivan felt it would be interesting to work with an expired film stock. Via the Internet, she discovered a subculture dedicated to obsolete Super 8 stocks, and she acquired several rolls of discontinued Porst 40D film. Germain was game, but he wasn’t sure what kind of image he would get — if any — from a film stock that went bad in 1982. His plan was to overexpose and overdevelop the film by 2 stops, and he planned to do a snip test at Film Rescue in Indian Head, Saskatchewan. Even though it was her idea, Sullivan went into the test less optimistic than Germain, but her fears were ultimately dispelled. “It looked very much like an impressionist painting,” she says. “The image broke down to these blunt formations of shapes and lines.” “When we got to the telecine [at Color Lab in Rockville, Md.], we didn’t want to correct it at all,” says Germain. “We just wanted to let it do what it was doing. The colorists were trying to get the best image out of it, and they were complaining that the grain was gargan-
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Steadicam operator B.J. McDonnell maneuvers through the main house at Villa Vizcaya.
tuan and the color completely shifted from one shot to the next. The emulsion was extremely degraded, but we ended up getting a really beautiful texture.” (Ben Hadden, Ben Kolak and Sean Tice provided additional Super 8 photography for the project.) The “Chicago” portion of the work is closer to the style of Sullivan and Germain’s earlier collaborations, which often featured extensive use of the Steadicam. When Sullivan was developing Five Economies, her goal was to capture long, meandering takes, and the same was true for Triangle, where the action in the Chicago tenement moved through hallways and followed characters in and out of apartments. For some shots, Steadicam operator B.J. McDonnel had to stand stock-still for three or four minutes before beginning a threeminute move across a 30' span of apartment while sidestepping actors in the wings and on the ground. Using Germain’s Aaton XTRprod, a Canon 11-165mm zoom and a set of Zeiss Super Speed primes, the filmmakers planned to photograph 360 degrees of the tenement location, meaning all lighting had to be off the floor or dressed as part of the set. Adding to the complexity, Sullivan worked out precise blocking for as many as 13 actors at a time, and if the actors missed their marks, they would end up in total darkness. Fortunately, the building they were shooting in was being renovated, 14 January 2009
leaving the crew free to knock out ceilings and walls. To speed the filmmakers’ progress from one room to the next, gaffer Andy Cook created a wood grid with 2-by-4s above the ceiling line and strung cables through holes in the ceiling and walls to other grids in adjacent rooms. Germain and Cook fitted the grids with a mix of 650-watt, 350-watt, 150-watt and 1K tungsten units on Variac dimmers, while a 1.2K HMI was stationed on a lift outside the secondstory window to push hard “daylight” into the rooms. All lights were left clean to produce hard shadows, and these scenes were also shot on Double-X 7222. As Triangle’s cycle concludes, the Chicago workers, Gypsies and French sovereigns find themselves transported to Vizcaya, where they engage in reconstructions of scenes from old Pathéscope films as a tribe of Neanderthals is forced by the villa’s lord to reproduce. (Deering ordered silent-film reels from Pathéscope for screening at Vizcaya.) Because Sullivan was working on a commission, she and her crew had unlimited access to the entire estate. “The villa drove a lot of the content,” she notes. For the exteriors, Germain planned to shoot Kodak EXR 50D 7245 with an Arri 16SR-3 and the same lenses he used in Chicago, but he and Sullivan hadn’t accounted for Miami’s unpredictable weather. On a clear day, the color stock provided vibrant, satu-
rated shots of the blue skies and green gardens, but footage from hazy days was lackluster — unless it was shot in black-and-white. (Night exteriors, lit with 4K HMIs and 10K tungsten fixtures, were shot on 7222.) The main house at Vizcaya is part of the villa’s museum, which made shooting interiors problematic. An allseeing Steadicam was required for more than 90 percent of the camerawork, and everything in the house was a valuable antique, and no one was allowed to move or touch anything. To make matters worse, heavy storm grates outside every window acted as “huge scrims that just stopped down light,” says Germain. Unable to bring in big fixtures or rig anything to the walls or ceilings, he had to carefully strategize his lamp placement on the floor and shoot with a fast stock, in this case Kodak Vision2 500T 7218. “For some scenes, I had to simply shoot wide open [T1.3] and hope the film would saturate enough for our needs,” says the cinematographer. “Sometimes I’d bounce a single 1.2K HMI into the ceiling for fill. When we lost light, I had to place 2.5Ks outside windows that were dressed with 216 diffusion to simulate the blowout of bright daylight.” In post, all the Super 16 footage was mastered at 2K resolution by Nolo Digital Film in Chicago and down-rezzed to 1080p for digital projection. Nolo also handled the integration of Color Lab’s 1080p Super 8 transfer with the 2K footage of the figure skater for output to 16mm. Asked what the best way is to view the work, Sullivan pauses, then says, “A lot of it is about your judgment as a viewer — what you connect to. It really is an experience that’s ultimately driven by your own connection to the work.” For Germain, Triangle of Need was “a dream job. It isn’t often a cinematographer can create images simply for the sake of creating them, without any selling of products or movie stars. There were no producers telling us we needed more skin or action. It’s just pretty pictures.” I
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Production Slate Right: British talk-show host David Frost (Michael Sheen, left) listens as former U.S. President Richard M. Nixon (Frank Langella) analyzes his tenure in the White House. Below: Assisted by Mark Santoni, A-camera operator Andrew Rowlands, SOC captures the reverse angle on Sheen as a second camera stands at the ready. Cinematographer Salvatore Totino, ASC often employs two cameras in dialogue scenes, noting, “I especially like to do ‘overs’ with two cameras; I feel you get great performances out of the actors … it gives them a ‘live’ feeling, almost as though they’re onstage and this is their one performance.”
16 January 2009
Historic Conversations by Jean Oppenheimer A full year after wrapping Frost/Nixon, cinematographer Salvatore Totino, ASC is still jazzed about shooting
it. His enthusiasm is palpable, even on the phone. “Do you know how much fun that was?” he exclaims after describing a particularly tricky shot. Adapted from Peter Morgan’s stage play, Frost/Nixon recreates the
1977 television interviews that British talk-show host David Frost (Michael Sheen) conducted with Richard M. Nixon (Frank Langella) three years after Nixon resigned from the U.S. presidency in the wake of the Watergate scandal. The film also covers the leadup to the interviews, including the initial contacts and the subsequent preparations made by each camp. Frost/Nixon is Totino’s fourth collaboration with director Ron Howard, following The Missing, Cinderella Man (AC June ’05) and The Da Vinci Code (AC June ’06). Since wrapping the picture, the two have made a fifth feature together, Angels and Demons, the sequel to The Da Vinci Code. “Ron is 10 years older than I am, but he has the energy of somebody 20 years younger,” the cinematographer says with a laugh. “Keeping up with him is a challenge ¢ unto itself.”
Frost/Nixon photos by Ralph Nelson, courtesy of Universal Pictures.
Confronting an Ex-President and Grappling with Reality
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Above: Frost (far left) sits down for a strategy session with his team, which includes (left to right) author James Reston Jr. (Sam Rockwell), producer John Birt (Matthew Macfadyen) and consultant Jack Zelnik (Oliver Platt). Below (from left): Santoni, Rowlands, Totino and 1st AC Dominic Aluisi at work.
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“Energy” also describes Frost/ Nixon’s guiding principle, and for Totino, that meant “moving the camera, handholding the camera whenever possible, making the viewer feel he’s in the room with the actors, and rolling on the first rehearsal and letting everything develop from there. We didn’t want a documentary feel; we just wanted to make everything feel a bit more visceral, a bit more spontaneous.” By way of example, he points to the scene in which Jack Zelnik (Oliver Platt) and James Reston Jr. (Sam Rockwell), two consultants hired to educate Frost about Nixon, meet Frost for the
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first time. The scene takes place in a suite at the Plaza Hotel, a set that was built onstage at Century Studios in Culver City. “We decided to not block the scene,” recalls Totino. “I had watched Ron rehearse the actors, and he said, ‘Let’s just start shooting and see how things fall in, and we’ll build on that.’” Acamera operator Andrew Rowlands, SOC was handholding an Arricam Lite in the room as Platt and Rockwell entered from the hallway, followed by Totino on another Lite. “I yelled out, ‘I’m coming through the door! Make sure you don’t see me!’” recounts Totino. “Andrew and I moved around the room, falling into
different shots, building the scene [as we went along]. Somehow, we never got in each other’s way. It was like excellent couple’s tennis!” Totino was working with Rowlands for the first time, and he says, “Andrew is an incredible operator. I did Angels and Demons with him after that, and I hope to do the rest of my films with him! We work well together, just instinctually.” Using two cameras is a hallmark of Totino’s style. “I especially like to do ‘overs’ with two cameras; I feel you get great performances out of the actors that way. It gives them a ‘live’ feeling, almost as though they’re onstage and this is their one performance.” One sequence — a long, late-night phone conversation between Nixon and Frost — was actually shot live, with Langella on one set and Sheen on an adjoining one. Nixon is in his San Clemente home when, fortified with a few drinks, he picks up the phone and calls Frost at the hotel. “Ron suggested we shoot both ends of the conversation at the same time, and it was a great idea,” says Totino. “The sets were right next to each other, and I put two cameras on Langella and two on Sheen.” (All four cameras were on dollies.) The cinematographer kept the lighting simple. Nixon was lit by moonlight coming through a window (5K Fresnels gelled with light CTB) and a small practical (a lamp holding a 40-watt bulb bolstered by a small Kino Flo behind it), and Frost, sitting in his hotel suite, was lit with practicals and a small Kino Flo. According to Totino, the lighting goal throughout the shoot was “to make it feel real.” Because most of the film takes place in Southern California, that meant a lot of sunshine. Nearly all day interiors, whether on location or onstage, were lit through windows with 12-light Maxi-Brutes and a 20K Fresnel. Inside, Totino occasionally added a 2K Fresnel bouncing off bleached muslin. “When I was looking toward the windows, that gave a little wrap around the actors.” Night interiors were lit with practical lamps inside and a bit of moon¢ light outside.
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