JANUARY 2011
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The International Journal of Motion Imaging
On Our Cover: A divorced father of two (Javier Bardem) confronts his mortality in Biutiful, shot by Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC. (Photo by José Haro, courtesy of Roadside Attractions.)
FEATURES 30 42 52 64
Letting Go
Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC and Alejandro González Iñárritu make spiritual connections on Biutiful
Tough Love
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Hoyte van Hoytema, NSC, FSF works David O. Russell’s corner on The Fighter
Back to the Grid
Claudio Miranda, ASC enters futuristic arena with Tron: Legacy
A League of His Own
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Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC explains the path that led him to the Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award
DEPARTMENTS 8 10 12 18 78 82 84 88 89 90 92 94 96
Editor’s Note President’s Desk Short Takes: “Eye of the Storm” Production Slate: The Tempest • All Good Things Post Focus: EFilm at Universal• HPA Awards Filmmakers’ Forum: Jody Lee Lipes New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index In Memoriam: Michel Hugo, ASC Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up: Jack Couffer
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— VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM TO ENJOY THESE WEB EXCLUSIVES — Podcast: Phedon Papamichael, ASC on Knight and Day DVD Playback: Psycho • Videodrome
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The International Journal ofMotion Imaging
Visit us online at
www.theasc.com ———————————————————————————————————— PUBLISHER Martha Winterhalter ————————————————————————————————————
EDITORIAL
EXECUTIVE EDITOR Stephen Pizzello SENIOR EDITOR Rachael K. Bosley ASSOCIATE EDITOR Jon D. Witmer TECHNICAL EDITOR Christopher Probst CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Stephanie Argy, Benjamin B, Douglas Bankston, Robert S. Birchard, John Calhoun, Bob Fisher, Michael Goldman, Simon Gray, Jim Hemphill, David Heuring, Jay Holben, Mark Hope-Jones, Noah Kadner, Jean Oppenheimer, John Pavlus, Chris Pizzello, Jon Silberg, Iain Stasukevich, Kenneth Sweeney, Patricia Thomson ————————————————————————————————————
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CIRCULATION, BOOKS & PRODUCTS CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Saul Molina CIRCULATION MANAGER Alex Lopez SHIPPING MANAGER Miguel Madrigal ———————————————————————————————————— ASC GENERAL MANAGER Brett Grauman ASC EVENTS COORDINATOR Patricia Armacost ASC PRESIDENT’S ASSISTANT Kim Weston ASC ACCOUNTING MANAGER Mila Basely ASC ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE Corey Clark ————————————————————————————————————
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American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 91st year of publication, is published monthly in Hollywood by ASC Holding Corp., 1782 N. Orange Dr., Hollywood, CA 90028, U.S.A., (800) 448-0145, (323) 969-4333, Fax (323) 876-4973, direct line for subscription inquiries (323) 969-4344. Subscriptions: U.S. $50; Canada/Mexico $70; all other foreign countries $95 a year (remit international Money Order or other exchange payable in U.S. $). Advertising: Rate card upon request from Hollywood office. Article Reprints: Requests for high-quality article reprints (or electronic reprints) should be made to Sheridan Reprints at (800) 635-7181 ext. 8065 or by e-mail
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American Society of Cine matographers The ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but an educational, cultural and pro fes sion al or ga ni za tion. Membership is by invitation to those who are actively en gaged as di rec tors of photography and have dem on strated out stand ing ability. ASC membership has be come one of the highest honors that can be bestowed upon a pro fes sional cin e ma tog ra pher — a mark of prestige and excellence.
OFFICERS - 2010/2011 Michael Goi President
Richard Crudo Vice President
Owen Roizman Vice President
John C. Flinn III Vice President
Matthew Leonetti Treasurer
Rodney Taylor Secretary
Ron Garcia
Sergeant At Arms
MEMBERS OF THE BOARD John Bailey Stephen Burum Curtis Clark George Spiro Dibie Richard Edlund John C. Flinn III Michael Goi Stephen Lighthill Isidore Mankofsky Daryn Okada Robert Primes Nancy Schreiber Kees Van Oostrum Haskell Wexler Vilmos Zsigmond
ALTERNATES Fred Elmes Rodney Taylor Michael D. O’Shea Sol Negrin Michael B. Negrin MUSEUM CURATOR 6
Steve Gainer
Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC is clearly held in high esteem by his collaborators. Oliver Stone sang his praises in our October coverage of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and within this month’s overview of Biutiful (“Letting Go,”page 30), director Alejandro González Iñárritu offers his own endorsement in a sidebar commentary (“Iñárritu on Method,” page 38). “The visual grammar of this film was very delicate and sophisticated because it had to combine the social, the physical, the metaphysical and a hyper-realistic approach,” Iñárritu notes. “To me, Biutiful is by far Rodrigo’s most lyrical and poetic work. Realistically and metaphorically, he found light in the darkest places possible.” The film offered Prieto ample opportunity to be creative. The emotional journey of the main character, Uxbal (Javier Bardem), led Prieto to suggest the unusual strategy of shifting from 1.85:1 to anamorphic 2.40:1, with a transition point that combined the 1.85 format with anamorphic lenses. “I suggested we test starting at 1.85 and eventually opening up to 2.40 to represent the transition from [Uxbal’s] tight control to ultimate release,” he says. “There was some concern that the shift would be too jarring, but we decided it worked.” That spirit of experimentation is also evident in David O. Russell’s boxing drama The Fighter, which allowed cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, NSC, FSF to blend drama scenes shot on 2-perf 35mm with fight sequences shot on Betacam-SP. For the former, van Hoytema used Aaton’s Penelope camera, and for the latter, he employed vintage Sony video cameras. “When shooting 2-perf for [2.40:1] output, you expose far less negative than 4perf, saving a lot of money, and if you are interested in getting grain and texture, it’s the way to go,” the cinematographer tells Michael Goldman (“Tough Love,” page 42). The sci-fi spectacle Tron: Legacy required Claudio Miranda, ASC to combine a variety of strategies, including 3-D camera rigs, LED and Electro Luminescent lighting technology, high-speed cameras and face-replacement animation effects. As Miranda explains to Noah Kadner (“Back to the Grid,” page 52), some of the lighting was built directly into the futuristic costumes worn by characters in the computer environment known as the Grid: “The suits really drove the pastel look of the digital world. We wanted to see the suit lights casting interactive light from character to character and have everything look as luminous as possible, like the glow of a computer monitor.” Further insights into the production are offered in a sidebar Q&A with Digital Domain’s visual-effects supervisor, Eric Barba, and head of animation, Steve Preeg (“Barba and Preeg on Tron: Legacy,” page 60). This issue also offers a heartfelt salute to cinematographer Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC, a longtime friend of the magazine who will receive the Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award on Feb. 13. Though still in his prime and shooting as artfully as ever, the seemingly tireless Deakins has built a legacy of excellence that simply demanded the ASC’s highest honor. Pat Thomson’s account of his remarkable career (“A League of His Own,” page 64) offers illuminating details about his formative years, insights earned after decades of experience, and a sidebar on True Grit, Roger’s latest collaboration with the Coen brothers.
Stephen Pizzello Executive Editor 8
Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.
Editor’s Note
As the new year kicks into gear, there is a lot happening in the industry: more new digital cameras, higher-resolution post workflows, 3-D proceeding full steam, and more sophisticated virtual production. How is a humble cinematographer supposed to keep up with all this? Because the production and distribution of feature films, television programming and Web content are a global business, it is more important than ever that we all be on the same page at the same time on technology, and that we understand where the craft of cinematography is going. For this reason, the ASC will host an International Cinematography Summit Conference from May 2-5, 2011. Every cinematography society in the world has been invited to send a representative to this milestone event. This is not a film festival, nor is it a trade show. It is a work group of the leading practitioners of our craft designed as a means to discover where our differences and common ground lie; it is an opportunity to learn from the tools and techniques that are being used on the other side of the world; and it is a forum to establish more open communication among those who have chosen cinematography as our life passion. The conference is especially significant at this moment, although it has been in the planning stages for almost 18 months. When Mauro Fiore, ASC won the Oscar forAvatar last year, it seemed to amplify speculation about the future of cinematography. This conference will address where we are going and, more importantly, help all of us understand how changes and trends in our profession affect our countries’ industries. It is the necessary next step in coordinating our common goals. Part of the conference will be devoted to demonstrations of current technology, such as virtual production and 3-D, and there will be a detailed analysis of various film and digital archival methods used by innovators in the preservation field. The Acad emy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will present a new capture-medium/post paradigm designed to enable the maximum input of a camera’s resolution and color-space capabilities into a common post workflow. Leading developers of digital cameras and film emulsions will speak about what is coming in the next five years, not from a marketing perspective, but with an emphasis on stabili zing the industry. But the most important part of the ICSC will be the dialogue it will create among cinematographers worldwide. We’re not inviting people to come and listen to a bunch of lectures; we want to hear what everyone has to say. There are issues and concerns in some countries that other countries have already resolved. Let’s share that knowledge. Though we exist in a global industry, we tend to work in an insular way. The extraordinarily innovative artistry that many of our fellow lighting masters have accomplis hed, and the means by which they have achieved their results, may never be seen by the world or acknowledged for its originality. If we are to live and grow as artists, and harness the potential that new technologies offer us, we must open our eyes to what our fellow craftspeople are doing in other parts of the world. I have been traveling a lot recently, speaking to cinematographers and students in many countries, and I have been amazed by the common elements of our aesthetic approach, regardless of region, and by the bold visions of those who see the world from a different perspective. Festivals such as Camerimage and the efforts of organizations such as Imago have kept the flame of vis ual artistry burning brightly for many years. And the bond that the Korean Society of Cinematographers and the Japanese Society of Cinematographers have shared over the last 25 years is truly inspiring. The artistic interchange that results from simple commu nication between countries opens the door for all of us to learn and grow, to reach for new forms of visual expression. For the ICSC, each society has been asked to bring a five-minute reel of the best work its members have produced, spanning the entire history of their industry. All of these pieces will be screened as part of our welcome dinner on the first night ofthe conference. If that evening has even a fraction of the magic I felt when I watched a young student’s cinematography during my trip to India, this will prove to be a most magical gathering.
Michael Goi, ASC President
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Portrait by Owen Roizman, ASC.
President’s Desk
Short Takes
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Creating an Animated “Eye of the Storm” By Iain Stasukevich
“A couple of years ago, I saw a short animated film by Anthony Lucas called TheMysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello , and it blew me away,” recalls director Christopher Alender. “The animation was done with silhouettes and collage backgrounds, and it got me wondering if I could do the same thing with live action.” Alender put the idea on hold until singer/songwriter Ben Lovett, a close friend, asked him to produce a music video for a song on his album The Fear. When Alender listened to the album, the track “Eye of the Storm” jumped out at him. “It’s like a soundscape with a very cinematic feel,” he observes. Like Jasper Morello, the video for “Eye of the Storm” is set in a steampunk world, a highly technological Victorian society powered 12
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by steam. The video tells the story of a lonely captain (played by Lovett) battling to keep his airship afloat in the midst of a raging tempest. Alender decided to shoot all of the action against bluescreen, using minimal set pieces and props, and he asked cinematographer Craig Kief, a fellow Florida State University alumnus, to step behind the camera. “Craig is always game when I call him, even when we’re doing something weird,” says Alender. Kief says he was immediately drawn to the images Alender proposed. “A lot of the work I do, mostly commercials and music videos, has extensive visual effects, so this seemed like a natural fit,” says the cinematographer. The visual effects for “Eye of the Storm” called for the creation of the airship and all of the weather effects, and also for picking out specific details in Lovett’s costume and the props. Typically, this would be accomplished by chroma-keying the bluescreen elements of the frame, but Alender intended to shoot 4K with the Red One MX (recording to Red Drives and Compact Flash cards), and he didn’t want the CPU-hogging process to impede the post workflow. “It really slows you down, especially if you’re experimenting and working with high-resolution imagery,” he says. “We worked with the 4K sources but mastered in a 2K comp.” Alender and Kief came up with a way to isolate the elements they wanted to remove by shooting under black lights and using a luma key instead. The idea is based on an RGB image being split into three separate monochrome channels, with each channel containing a separate luma key based on a defined level of exposure. Kief and Alender experimented with different kinds of fluorescent tape and paint until they found the ones that reacted best to ultraviolet light. “Green fluorescent tape was the most powerful, so we used it to build part of the captain’s wardrobe,” says Alender. “Orange
American Cinematographer
Photos by Craig Cantey. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Soapbox Films.
Singer Ben Lovett pilots an airship into a fierce storm in the music video for his song “Eye of the Storm.” Cinematographer Craig Kief utilized bluescreens, black lights and fluorescent tape to isolate key elements of the imagery that would later be combined with CG effects.
To create the impression of the singer’s scarf blowing in the wind, the scarf was puppeteered with monofilament as Lovett walked on a treadmill. Electric fans were also used in conjunction with the monofilament.
reacted powerfully in the red channel. That left blue, which we used for the background and treated like regular bluescreen.” While shooting, Kief used a Sony BVM-L230 HD reference monitor, which allowed him to view one color at a time, giving him a preview of what the individual luma keys were going to look like. (The filmmakers also monitored an RGB composite for keying white elements.) “When you look at the different channels, the most saturated colors become bright white, and everything else falls pretty close to black,” says Kief. “My primary goal was to give each color as much separation as possible.” Kief and Alender are aware of the similarities between their process and the photochemical bluescreen process, where composites were achieved by taking shots with bluescreen elements and rephotographing them through a blue filter in black and white so only those elements are 14
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exposed. This creates the holdout matte that cuts out the area of the background plate dedicated to the foreground when the two are combined. “We did a lot of experimenting,” says Kief. “We weren’t 100percent sure what the shot was going to look like in the end, particularly the backgrounds, but Chris was meticulous about storyboarding every single shot, and we followed those boards exactly.” The airship set, which was placed in a corner of Soapbox Films’ 10,000-squarefoot soundstage in Burbank, Calif., comprised little more than a ship’s wheel, a captain’s chair and a treadmill (for walking shots). The skeleton crew included producer/puppeteer Kris Eber, who hides in plain sight, puppeteering Lovett’s scarf with filament from atop stepladders or crouching behind flags, catching the books he tosses into a furnace. (The furnace is CG.) The team didn’t shy away from dramatic camera moves, despite the extra American Cinematographer
work required to track the shots in post. Creating digital moves in post was briefly considered, but, Kief notes, “Chris and I prefer to create a move in-camera because a move created in post never looks as good — the three-dimensional perspective doesn’t change.” The Digi Blue background was lit with Kino Flo bluescreen tubes, and the foreground was lit with a pair of 4x4 Kino Flo heads outfitted with black-light tubes. Kief brought the black-light Kinos as close and flat to the lens plane as possible for the cleanest reflectance; if the lights were even slightly off axis, he’d get shadows on the fluorescent tape. In the shots where Kief wanted to pull some detail out of Lovett’s face, he’d use tungsten lights. Two 2K Mighty Moles were outfitted with Mole Shutters for lightning effects, a couple of 1K nook lights on dimmers provided the illumination from the roaring fire in the airship’s furnace, and various tungsten sources were placed at strategic angles to bring out reflective highlights on bits of metal in Lovett’s costume and the props. “The black light was actually strong enough that we were also getting a lot of fill directly from the fluorescent tape,” recalls Kief. In some scenes, the reflectance is so bright, the collar almost serves as a bounce surface. The production’s Red One MX was provided by Keslow Camera in Culver City, Calif. “It’s a real step forward and a real joy to be able to work with the Red at 500
SonyPictures.com/Awards
Top and middle: Lovett positions himself for a shot as a crewmember operates a small fan. The Digi Blue background was lit with Kino Flo bluescreen tubes, and the foreground was lit with a pair of 4x4 Kino Flo heads outfitted with black-light tubes. Bottom: Kief takes the helm on set.
ASA,” says Kief. “Before the MX, rating the Red at anything higher than 200 would start to introduce a lot of noise, and a good signal-to-noise ratio is important when you’re trying to pull keys. The new sensor is so clean that I can start at 500 ASA and have no problem going to 800 ASA.” Alender concurs, “Using a Red with the original 16
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chip would have been really problematic because there’s so much junk in the blue channel. If we hadn’t had access to the MX, we would’ve picked a different camera altogether.” Kief used T1.9 Zeiss Ultra Prime lenses, shooting as wide as possible to accentuate the graphic compositions and American Cinematographer
lend a slight distortion to the close-ups. Most of the video was shot with a 14mm lens. Kief also wanted to keep a shallow depth-of-field, so he shot every scene by setting the frame, opening the iris all the way and then lighting for the proper exposure level. In post, Alender started with the raw 4K frames, which look a lot like screen shots from Tron (1982): orange for the small details in Lovett’s shoes, jacket and helmet; green for his goggles and bits of detail on his jacket; and blue for the outline of the singer and the props. Alender peeled apart the RGB channels in Adobe After Effects, handling most of the rotoscoping, including crew and wire removal, and some of the compositing and 3-D animation. “Wes Ball and his company, Oddball Animation, stepped in to help with a lot of the final product, and they’re really taking it to the next level with gorgeous sky environments and realistic particle effects,” says Alender. “They also did the character animation for the demon creature. As more and more talented specialists jumped onboard, I evolved into more of an art director on the post side of things — I roughed out a lot of the stuff that others executed.” Kief and Alender see projects such as “Eye of the Storm” as great opportunities to experiment with art, media and technology. “We both love pushing the envelope creatively and technically,” says Kief. “It’s a lot of fun working with Chris. He’s been at the helm on some of my most unique projects.” ●
F OR YOU R CON SIDER ATION
Best Picture Best Cinematography
The Company Men
PLEA SE VISIT
www.thecompanymenfilm.com and www.twcawards.com FOR MORE INFORM ATION Artwork © 2010 The Weinstein Company. All Rights Reserved.
Production Slate Prospera (Helen Mirren) summons all the forces of nature to whip up a storm and sink her enemies’ ship in The Tempest, a production that involved extensive location work in Hawaii.
The Tempest Hits Hawaii By Iain Stasukevich
The Tempest opens with one of Dryburgh’s shots, made on that first morning in Hawaii: a close-up of a sandcastle with storm clouds looming in the distance as violent waves crash on coastal In William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the Duke of Milan, shelves of volcanic rock. A downpour begins, melting the castle in the Prospero, is usurped by his traitorous brother, Antonio, and Alonso, hand of Miranda (Felicity Jones), Prospera’s daughter. In the distance, the king of Naples, and exiled to an island where, some years later, he a raging tempest threatens a ship carrying Antonio (Chris Cooper), is able to exact his revenge. Julie Taymor’s film adaptation stars Helen Alonso (David Strathairn), some members of Alonso’s family, and Mirren as Prospera, the wife of Milan’s duke. In this version of the tale, their entourage. the duke is killed by Antonio, and Prospera is accused of murdering Prospera appears to command the elements, but it’s really the her husband with witchcraft. She is exiled to a distant island, and from sprite Ariel (Ben Wishaw) who does her dirty work. Visual-effects that point on, the story hews fairly closely to Shakespeare’s original supervisor Kyle Cooper directed the sequence in which Ariel, with the plot. aid of computer-generated water, wind and fire, wrecks the CG ship. The Tempest’s cinematographer, Stuart Dryburgh, ASC, and (The film’s visual effects were created by Cooper’s company, Prologue production designer, Mark Friedberg, had worked together on a Films.) On Hawaii’s Big Island, Dryburgh shot the live-action portion number of projects, including Taymor’s Across the Universe , shot by of the scene, which required a full-sized mockup of the period ship, Bruno Delbonnel, ASC, AFC. (Dryburgh did some additional photogcomplete with mast, deck and practical cabin. Dump tanks flooded raphy on that film, collaborating closely with animation director Kyle the set with water and giant fans sprayed it in every direction, and Cooper on the “Strawberry Fields” sequence.) When The Tempest’s 18K HMIs backlit a thick layer of smoke to create the impression of a original director of photography, Christopher Doyle, HKSC, departed stormy day exterior. the film after a few weeks of shooting, Friedberg campaigned on The Hawaiian island of Lanai, with its lava flows, craters and Dryburgh’s behalf, and just two days after getting the call, Dryburgh rocky cliffs, stands in for Prospera’s isle. (All of the photography on was on a plane to Hawaii with the script in hand. Lanai was done by Doyle. Dryburgh completed the location filming He showed up to set the next morning and dove right in. “I on Big Island.) Throughout the shoot, the filmmakers exploited each felt like I’d seen enough Shakespeare to know how it could work on location’s unique topography to accentuate the story’s supernatural film,” says Dryburgh, citing Peter Brook’s King Lear, Franco Zeffirelli elements. “There’s a sense that the island is all things to all people,” and Baz Luhrmann’s very different interpretations of Romeo and says Dryburgh. “It has a very diverse landscape: there’s seashore, Juliet, and Taymor’s Titus (AC Feb. ’00) as notable cinematic translaswamps, deep forests, high deserts, bare rock and orange-red earth. tions of the Bard. We weren’t worried about one scene matching the next.” ➣ 18
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The Tempest photos by Melinda Sue Gordon, SMPSP, courtesy of Tempest Productions, LLC.
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Once location photography wrapped, production moved to Steiner Studios in Brooklyn, N.Y., where Dryburgh’s collaborators included key grip Rick Maroquin, gaffer Bill O’Leary, A-camera operator Lukasz Jogalla, and B-camera/Steadicam operator Carlos Guerra. (A-camera 1st AC Glenn Kaplan stayed with the production from start to finish.) Taymor wanted to set The Tempest in a fantasy world that would feature costumes and imagery from many different periods of history. Technical accuracy wasn’t as important as the emotions the images would elicit. “We went from a speck of rock in the middle of the Pacific to an industrial warehouse in the middle of Brooklyn, but Julie didn’t want us to worry about discrepancies,” says Friedberg. Rather, the director encouraged her lead creatives to design their work to stand out. The goal with the subterranean grotto where Prospera and Miranda reside was a feel that was “sparkly and magical, not dark and scary,” says Dryburgh. “The cave and the courtyard are almost 100-percent practical, and a lot of my conversations with Mark were about how to light the volcanic rock, which was made of Styrofoam and paint.” To create low, slanting sunlight, “as if the sun is just peeping over the edge of the cliffs,” O’Leary and his crew rigged four Nine-Light MaxiBrutes in a lift in a cross configuration “and just peeked them over the set wall at quite a shallow angle,” recalls the gaffer. “They were through a light diffusion just to fuzz out the edges, and an effect color was used instead of the usual CTO to add warmth.” Dryburgh adds, “We also used Maxi-Brutes through diffusion to push ‘daylight’ through the mouth of the cave, and we had narrow-beam [Source Four] Lekos on a pipe grid overhead to create small, intense beams of light to suggest light creeping into the cave through shafts in the rock.” Other scenes required a less realistic approach. When Prospera recalls Antonio’s act of treason, the film flashes back to the events in Milan, which appears to be seen through a hazy filter. To create this effect, Dryburgh actually placed sheets of scratched Mylar, supplied by the art department in different patterns and textures, in front of the lens. Friedberg had a miniaturescale mockup built out of cardboard cutouts in forced perspective. These models were
Top: Rear projection provides the background in a flashback to Prospera’s life in Milan. Middle: Prospera counsels her daughter (Felicity Jones) in their underground home. Bottom: Cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh, ASC.
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Near right: The filmmakers prepare to shoot actor Ben Wishaw beneath a shallow water tank to create the illusion that the fairy Ariel is underwater. Far right: Greenscreen was used for a sequence in which Ariel transforms into a scary, feathered creature.
photographed and then digitally rearprojected or composited into full-size liveaction scenes. “I really like those scenes because I had complete control over the lighting, and the final effect is not quite perfect, which gives it a lovely, magical feel,” says Dryburgh. Friedberg concurs, “Sometimes you don’t have any option but to imply things. It’s like poetry, and when you work with Julie, exercising poetic license is part of the job.” Rendering the character of Ariel required the combined efforts of the cinematographer, production designer and visual-effects team. Wishaw was unable to travel to Hawaii, but he appears in many of the island’s exterior scenes, where Ariel frequently interacts with Prospera. Taymor was keen to film these scenes with both Mirren and Wishaw present, so only background plates and a few wide shots were photographed on location. Dryburgh filmed the actors together at Steiner, and Cooper later separated them. “We tried to not overlap them physically, because those effects can be more difficult,” Dryburgh remarks. Difficult or not, Cooper approached the process with a strictly can-do attitude. “Julie had a lot of fantastic ideas — they were good and also kind of outrageous,” he says. “Some of the things she described would have called for industrial-strength effects were it not for her affinity for a handcrafted look. The goal wasn’t seamless, highgloss visual effects. It was about something more spirited.” Some character effects didn’t involve 22
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any digital work at all. For scenes that show Prospera conversing with Ariel through the reflecting pool in her courtyard, the filmmakers suspended a shallow, glassbottomed water tank 4'-6' off the floor with pulleys, and Wishaw was placed beneath the tank and photographed through a layer of rippling water. Rear-projected reflections on the water and the use of foreground elements tie the effect into the real world. (In most cases, however, some CG was used for compositing purposes. All in all,The Tempest contains approximately 330 visual-effects shots.) Just as Ariel takes the shape of the elements, he can also transform into other creatures. A key sequence sees him lure the king and his men onto a barren volcanic shelf with a mirage of lavish food and drink. When the men try to pick up the food, the banquet table explodes, revealing Ariel in the form of a horrifying, black harpy. The transformation begins when Prospera drops a black feather into a vial of strange liquid. The glass explodes in slow motion (shot at 1,000 fps with a Phantom HD by 2nd-unit cinematographer David Dunlap), and the single feather becomes many, each taking the shape of an individual Ariel. “Then we cut to Ben in his costume, covered in black, oily makeup with these huge wings suspended on cables from the roof, and he’s sitting on a pile of Mark’s glassy volcanic rock in front of a greenscreen,” explains Dryburgh. Creating the hundreds of screeching harpies was as simple as capturing Wishaw on a wire rig in American Cinematographer
front of a greenscreen and multiplying the image. Dryburgh’s goal in the digital grade, which was handled by senior colorist Yvan Lucas at EFilm in Hollywood, was to let each scene stand apart rather than try to tie everything together visually. “Each location was chosen by Julie to convey the feeling she wanted for that scene,” explains the cinematographer. “In the DI, we tried to enhance and support the ideas that were formulated in these choices; we tried to support the uniqueness of each location with our grading choices.” Dryburgh supervised Lucas’ work from New York, transmitting notes and then assessing the results. “It was more like working with the old-time film timers, where you’d look at the work print, discuss the look, and then say, ‘See you in three days when the first print is ready.’ Even when I can physically supervise the grade, I prefer to let the colorist make a contribution based on my briefing, rather than sit there and call every light. If you’re working with someone who knows his stuff, you’d do well to let his knowledge and creativity come into play.”
TECHNICAL SPECS 2.40:1 3-perf Super 35mm Arricam Lite Angenieux and Cooke lenses Fujifilm Eterna 500 8573; Kodak Vision3 500T 5219 Digital Intermediate
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B e c a u s e
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I
Dark Family Dynamics By Ted Elrick
Robert Durst seemed to have everything, including financial success, courtesy of his family’s real-estate dynasty in Manhattan, and a beautiful and loving wife, Kathleen McCormack. When Kathleen mysteriously disappeared in 1982, some family and friends suspected Robert of murder. Her body has never been found, and her disappearance remains the most notorious missing-person’s case in New York history. Intrigued by the unresolved aspects of the Durst case, director Andrew Jarecki (Capturing the Friedmans ) teamed with producer/writer Marc Smerling and writer 24
January 2011
Marcus Hinchey to develop a fictional thriller based on the events. The result is All Good Things, which focuses on the Marks family: David (Ryan Gosling); his wife, Katie (Kirsten Dunst); and his real-estate mogul father, Sanford (Frank Langella). “I’m always attracted by monster stories,” says Jarecki. “When you look at the truth behind a monster, you often find a real person who had hopes and dreams, and then things turned out differently. I think we tend to take people who do dark, awful things and put them in a box, saying, ‘That person is obviously totally different from me, and I don’t have to worry about anything because I don’t have a shred of that person in me.’ But the reality is that we American Cinematographer
All Good Things photos courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
Above: Katie (Kirsten Dunst) becomes increasingly unhappy in her marriage to David (Ryan Gosling) in All Good Things, shot by Michael Seresin, BSC. Right: The early days of the young couple’s marriage are rendered in a brighter, more colorful palette.
all have a shred of that person in us.” After interviewing a number of young cinematographers for All Good Things , Jarecki decided he wanted a cameraman with considerable experience. “The young ones seemed like they would come up with clever ideas every second, and I felt the film might become gimmicky,” he explains. He thought of Michael Seresin, BSC, and called Alan Parker ( Angel Heart ) and Alfonso Cuarón ( Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban; AC June ’04), who said his instinct was correct. “Michael’s powerful images in films like Angel Heart and Angela’s Ashes , and even The Prisoner of Azkaban , which I feel is the most cinematic of the Potter films, show that he is someone who cares deeply about the mystery of film,” Jarecki observes. “His work suggests that he thinks a film should not just be a continuation of reality.” After several long-distance discussions about the script — with Jarecki in New York and Seresin at home in New Zealand — Seresin decided to sign on. “I like a dark story because it demands more from an audience,” says the cinematographer. “I like movies that gravitate toward the underlit, darker side of life. When there are a lot of shadows, the audience isn’t quite sure if they can see something or not, and their imagination starts to work.” The story covers about 30 years, from the mid-1970s to 2001, and Seresin was keen to differentiate the periods subtly. “I very consciously did not want the film to have a ‘then’ and ‘now’ feel in terms of a grainier Seventies and a slicker present day — that would have been too intrusive,” he says. “We lit the two distinct periods in quite different ways. For the Seventies, we used brighter, high-key lighting, as well as brighter colors in the wardrobe and art direction. The latter period, around 2001, was lower key, with more contrast and deeper shadows, and with darker clothes and set colors. “The Seventies was when the world sort of changed from black-and-white to color,” continues the cinematographer. “It’s a bit of a cliché to have the story start with bright, sunny colors, but that’s how it was for people who were young then. As the story progresses, we gradually start introducing the idea that things aren’t quite right. We keep some of the bright colors as a counterpoint, but I felt that some of the images could still
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Above: David reluctantly takes a position at his father’s multimillion-dollar business. Right: Katie offers comfort as the stress of his job starts to take a toll.
suggest something a bit darker to the audience. We get more and more into night photography as the story gets darker.” During prep, Seresin did extensive testing at Technicolor New York, “more to show Andrew a few ideas for the look of the film,” he says. “Tech New York is family, and I love working with them.” Seresin tested the digital equivalent of Technicolor’s ENR process, but, he notes, “this was more of a guide for lighting contrast ratios, and reminded me of an approach rather than serving as a blueprint for the look of the film. I love the photochemical ENR process, which is hard to do these days. But the digital version is getting close.” (The final digital grade was done at Company 3 by colorist Matt Turner.) Apart from some home-movie footage, which was shot on Super 16mm, 26
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Seresin decided to shoot All Good Things on Kodak Vision3 500T 5219. “I love some of the older film stocks because you can get a sort of lovely patina — some call it grain — and I was tempted to try and find some older stock [for this movie], but I decided I preferred the challenge of working with a modern stock,” he observes. “I think so much of today’s film stock looks too perfect, too glossy, and I think we managed to get some of that patina in 5219. Somehow, it arrived. “I recently had a showing of Angel Heart on film, and it looks so different from the DVD,” he adds. “The digital transfer looks so slick, smooth and sharp. It’s missing that texture from the film stock.” The production’s camera package, provided by Panavision, comprised an Arricam Studio and Lite and a backup American Cinematographer
Moviecam Compact. For the home-movie footage, Seresin used a Bolex H-16 Rex-5 “and mostly a 10mm Switar lens. That seemed truer and more appropriate than shooting 35mm and degrading it in post. “Cameras are not a big deal to me,” Seresin continues. “I like the new Arris, but to be dead honest, if I had a chip in my head and could just imagine the picture and then download it, I would. I’m not the world’s most technical cinematographer!” Lenses are another matter, however. “I have a set of Cooke S4 primes and Cooke zooms that follow me everywhere. They came out of JDC [Joe Dunton Co.]. Joe is a technical genius and a great friend, and I’ve used his spherical and anamorphic lenses on pretty much every movie I’ve done.” On All Good Things , Seresin used a full set of S4s and the Cooke 18-100mm zoom. Although the shoot took place in Connecticut and New York, Seresin was able to bring Peter Bloor, his longtime gaffer in Great Britain, aboard as the lighting consultant. “Peter and I first worked together on Midnight Express when he was just an electrician,” notes the cinematographer. “I finally persuaded him to work as a gaffer, and we’ve done more than a dozen movies together.” Seresin has high praise for the rest of the crew, which included Acamera/Steadicam operator Gerard Sava, Acamera 1st AC Stanley Fernandez, B-camera operator Tom Weston and B-camera 1st AC Paul Colangelo, all out of New York. “I am tough on a crew, and they were brilliant,” says Seresin. “We had a lot of handheld and Steadicam work, and a lot of location work. Some days we had two [company] moves, so you end up working at the speed of your slowest truck. We were filming at a time when everyone was taking advantage of New York’s tax breaks, so we were lucky to get such a great team.” Bloor agrees, adding, “We worked some incredible hours, and the crew never moaned or groaned; we just all got on with it.” Connecticut stood in for much of the New York photography, with a large, vacant house standing in for three different locations: David and Katie’s Manhattan apartment, Sanford Marks’ stately home, and the den where David practices “scream therapy.” Of the latter room, Seresin recalls, “There was a crazy quality to the design of the ceil-
Director Andrew Jarecki (foreground) and Seresin line up a shot alongside 1st AD David Wechsler.
ing tiles, which is why we chose that room. We had to shoot a really low angle to show it, but it worked.” Another prominent Connecticut location is the lakefront house where David and Katie escape the city. Fortunately for the crew, the production
found a house whose interior did not require much alteration to resemble a 1970s-era residence. “They even had a yellow Princess telephone,” says Jarecki. “All the phones in the house were dial, not push-button.”
The homeowner was very accommodating, but drew the line when the filmmakers asked if they could remove some tiles and part of the wall from the shower so they could shoot through the wall when Katie joins her husband in the shower. When the owner refused to allow the modification, Bloor suggested building a working shower outside the house: an interior in the exterior. “It was a freezing night in Connecticut, but the shower was boiling hot and full of steam, sufficient so that Ryan and Kirsten, who were nude, felt protected and comfortable,” says Jarecki. “It’s an extremely emotional moment in the story that required a lot of innovative thinking to pull off, and I think it’s one of the most unique images of the movie.” To light the shower, two 18" 3,200°K Kino Flos were positioned behind the actors to silhouette their bodies, and a 650-watt spot through Lee 129 Heavy Frost diffusion was rigged overhead. Another key sequence involves the disposal of a body from a bridge. The filmmakers originally thought of setting the action on a causeway bridge, with lighting
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sourced by streetlights. “I suggested that we instead try to find a disused railway bridge, which are pretty common in upstate New York and Connecticut,” says Seresin. “We spotted one when we were driving back to the hotel one day and did a quick U-turn to check it out. That scene was big-scale cinema for a film with this budget!” According to Bloor, the crew rigged a mix of 12K and 6K HMIs, “anything we could get our hands on,” to light the bridge from the side opposite the action. “We actually had a very limited area to light because the goal was to make it creepy,” says Bloor. Seresin adds, “What’s great is that we got a sharp outline of the profile of the bridge against the night sky with mist and smoke.” Seresin says he was particularly pleased to work with Gosling and Dunst. “What I love about actors like Ryan and Kirsten is that they sort of suggest stuff to you — you watch them, and you suddenly get an idea,” he says. “For instance, for the scene where David drags Katie out of her family’s party by her hair, the conventional way to shoot it would have been to look straight at
her and then look straight back at him. But as I was walking past Ryan, I caught a glint from the glasses he was wearing, and I thought it made him look really evil. I usually don’t like asking actors to do stuff for the camera, but I asked him, ‘Have you ever seen Rear Window?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, a long time ago.’ And I said, ‘Remember how the reflection on Thorwald’s glasses made him look really evil? Do you mind if I just ask you to move your head a bit left?’ He said, ‘No, that’s fine.’ So we shot him in profile using a long lens to isolate him from the background. It strongly suggests that underneath it all, David really is quite evil.”
TECHNICAL SPECS 1.85:1 35mm and 16mm Arricam Studio, Lite; Moviecam Compact; Bolex H-16 Rex-5 Cooke and Switar lenses Kodak Vision3 500T 5219/7219, Vision2 50D 7201 Digital Intermediate ●
ERRATA Some of the text in our November tribute to William A. Fraker, ASC, BSC (“King of Cool,” p. 64) was altered and/or omitted because of a production error. The statement by Fraker that begins at the bottom of page 67 should read, “And that’s one thing that’s lacking in some of the films I’ve seen lately — there’s a vague plot, but you don’t care about the characters.” The sentence after that should read, “In another career-spanning interview with Bob Fisher, he stressed the single-mindedness required to succeed in such a glamorous but demanding profession.” Also, a quote from Warren Beatty that begins at the bottom of page 76 should read, “To Billy’s credit, we got it done. The crowd had no idea what was going on when two teams came out wearing different uniforms.”
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LettingGo
Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC discusses his approach to Biutiful, his latest collaboration with director Alejandro González Iñárritu. By Benjamin B •|•
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he new film Biutiful is the latest collaboration between director Alejandro González Iñárritu and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC, and although it does not feature the kind of fractured narrative that characterized their previous features, Amores Perros (AC April ’01), 21 Grams (AC Dec. ’03) and Babel (AC Nov. ’06), it nonetheless offers a similarly rich tapestry of characters and subplots. The film focuses on Uxbal (Javier Bardem), a divorced father of two, who hustles a living in Barcelona by selling goods from a Chinese sweatshop to African street vendors, and by moonlighting as a kind of messenger between the dead and the living — he possesses the eerie ability to see ghosts. When Uxbal learns that he has a terminal illness, he struggles to come to terms with his fate, all the while concealing his ill-
American Cinematographer
Unit photography by José Haro. Photos and HD frame grabs courtesy of Roadside Attractions.
Opposite: Uxbal (Javier Bardem) helps his daughter, Ana (Hanaa Bouchaib), with her homework in a scene from Biutiful, shot by Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC. This page, top: An HD frame grab from the scene that introduces Uxbal’s tempestuous exwife, Marambra (Maricel Alvarez), illustrates the film’s naturalistic lighting and intimate camera style. Middle: In another scene, Marambra is bereft after a confrontation with her ex. Bottom: Prieto scopes out his options in a narrow alley.
ness from his loved ones, including his children, his tempestuous ex-wife, Marambra (Maricel Alvarez), and his brother, Tito (Eduard Fernández). A few months after the film’s premiere at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, AC caught up with Prieto to discuss the project. In a separate conversation, Iñárritu shared some observations about Biutiful and his approach to filmmaking. (See page 38.) American Cinematographer: The supernatural is an element that you and Iñarritu haven’t tackled before, and you chose to represent it in an unusually naturalistic way. Why? Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC: On this film, we were aiming for a subjective point of view that would emphasize Uxbal’s perspective, and we always wanted to stay believable, to portray his environment the way he would see it. His ability to see and hear the dead is part of his reality, so we didn’t want to depict that differently in terms of the visuals. The metaphysical is part of his everyday life, so I did not emphasize it through special lighting or camera gags for these moments. On the whole film overall, I did allow myself to be a little bit more stylized with the lighting, but it’s always based on real sources. I wanted the film to feel naturalistic, but I did heighten the atmosww.theasc.com w
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Letting Go Top: Prieto (shouldering a Panaflex Millennium XL2) and 1st AC Arturo Castañeda (center, with his back to camera) stay close to the action as Ekweme (Cheikh Ndiaye, far left) and other African street vendors scatter during a police raid. Typical of his work with director Alejandro González Iñárritu, Prieto shot most of Biutiful handheld. Bottom: Prieto captures the climax of the police chase.
phere of certain scenes through lighting to align the viewer with Uxbal’s thoughts. One stylistic carryover from your previous collaborations is the emphasis on a handheld camera. Prieto: Yes. I shot about 95 percent of the film handheld, but many of the moves were carefully choreographed. We designed complex shots that would tell the story without the need to cut; the rhythm of the camera 32
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Alejandro, he described Uxbal as someone who is uptight and controlling at the beginning of the film, and then, as he is forced by his circumstances to accept his fate, he is finally able to let go. Alejandro wanted to find a way to represent this transition visually. At first, we talked about using tighter compositions in the beginning and then going wider as the story progressed. After that conversation, I thought about it some more and wondered if we could take that a step further and play with the aspect ratio. I suggested we test starting at 1.85 and eventually opening up to 2.40 to represent the transition from tight control to ultimate release. There movement was meant to represent was some concern that the shift would Uxbal’s emotional state. We tried to be too jarring, but we decided it worked, keep him in frame most of the time, and and we thought it was subtle enough the way the camera moves around him is that the average viewer wouldn’t notice motivated by what he is focusing on. it. We start the transition with the tragic There is a very unusual format scene in the Chinese sweatshop, where change from 1.85:1 to 2.40:1, and from we stay with the 1.85 aspect ratio but spherical to anamorphic, partway switch to anamorphic lenses. This through the story. What motivated marks a very powerful, crucial moment that choice? for Uxbal; his world truly starts to Prieto: So you noticed? [Laughs.] unravel, and it’s the point where he In one of the first discussions I had with either falls apart or decides to take American Cinematographer
Top: This HD frame grab shows part of the film’s transition from spherical 1.85:1 to anamorphic 2.40:1. Prieto shot this sequence in 1.85 with anamorphic lenses. Middle and bottom: Uxbal’s long walk ends at a garish, surreal nightclub, where he seeks solace in alcohol and the opposite sex.
charge of putting his life in order. I felt that anamorphic lenses would help isolate him and convey his despair because they would slightly alter the texture of the image. I wanted the backgrounds at this point to have that softfocus texture, that slightly liquid feel of anamorphic. We made the aspect-ratio transition a few scenes later on a crane shot at the beach, using an angle of the ocean to open the edges of the screen to 2:40. I shot most of the movie with Panavision Ultra Speed [Z Series] MKIIs, and for most of the anamorphic work I used Panavision’s G-Series lenses. Whenever there was a source of light in frame, like a window, the MKIIs would cause a slight flare, and they gave the image a hard edge and contrasty feel that we liked. For certain moments, we enhanced the flare of bright sources with a Tiffen Smoque Filter on the camera. The 1.85 anamorphic passage in the film is very impressionistic, with Uxbal crossing the bridge at sunset, roaming the streets at night, and then going to meet his brother at the nightclub. Prieto: He is going through a deeply traumatic moment, so we ww.theasc.com w
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Letting Go
The HD frame grabs on these pages show a late-afternoon interlude in which Uxbal and Marambra enjoy ice cream with their children, and then quiet time as the day comes to an end. The filmmakers’ sleight of hand in this location included placing greenscreen outside the window for the sunset scene and comping in the background later, and shooting the evening scene day-for-night to accommodate child actors Bouchaib and Guillermo Estrella.
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American Cinematographer
wanted to use different techniques to create the sense that things are out of balance, that he’s confused and doesn’t know where to go or what to do. We wanted to create images that weren’t straightforward, so we would, for example, pass split diopters in front of the lens to defocus some elements in the frame. The film has a very rough, powerful texture and a grainy, saturated image. How did you achieve that? Prieto: From the beginning, Alejandro felt it was important to have film grain permeating the air. In part, it was his reaction to all the digital developments — he feels that more and more, movies tend to look too clean and plastic. But film grain has actually been an important part of the visual palette in all our films, going back to Amores Perros. Because Biutiful tells one story, I didn’t want to mix as many film stocks as I have on our other films. The stock I tested in the beginning was Kodak [Vision 500T] 5279, which we liked, but it was being discontinued. So we used [Kodak Vision2 500T] 5260, which is similar to 5279 but has better color reproduction. We found that pushing 5260 by 1 stop, combined with the USZ MKII lenses, gave us a texture that we really loved. Pushing enhanced the grain but also enhanced the contrast and the color saturation, and that became an integral part of the movie’s look. However, I found that for night scenes, when there’s a lot of black in the frame, the pushed 5260 became a little too milky and a little too blue in the blacks. So for those scenes, I used [Kodak Vision3 500T] 5219 pushed 1 stop; that gave the night scenes a little less grain, but in the very dark, highcontrast night scenes, it delivered deeper, cleaner blacks. I rated both film stocks at 640 ASA. The film is bookended by scenes set in the snow, and for those I used [Kodak Vision2 50D] 5201, which has a very clean grain. It’s the only part of the movie that’s not pushed. I wanted those scenes to be clean and pristine, to have a very different feel. Like all of your films with
Iñárritu, Biutiful was shot on location. What kind of lighting did you bring to the locations? Prieto: I use Kino Flos a lot. They’re very practical; they don’t require much space or a lot of electricity, they don’t get hot, and you can rig them quickly. I use many different types, including Flathead 80s and the 6-by-6 Blanket-Lite. Using a separate diffusion in front of the Blanket-Lite, like an 8by-8 Full Grid cloth, gives you a very soft source inside a location. We also built 4-by-4-foot soft boxes with eight
“If you can find a solution that’s simple, it’s probably the most effective, so whenever possible, I do it the simplest way.”
Kino Flo bulbs to rig either on ceilings or, for sidelight in tight spaces, against a wall. I also used 1-by-1 Litepanels LED units configured in a square of four, usually diffused with Full Grid, to simulate soft lamp light, hiding the shallow fixture behind lampshades or tucking it behind bedside tables. For HMIs, I used the K5600 400-watt and 800-watt Jokers extensively; I can bounce them for fill, or I’ll use the soft tube adapter, which creates a powerful but narrow light source that’s easily hidden behind a doorframe. The 4K Alpha came in handy to light through Full Grid diffusion frames of different sizes. We used 18K HMI Fresnels through windows to create sunlight. For tungsten, I also used the Barger-Baglite DV-3 with Chimera Medium Video Pro Shallow Bank, as
well as the 1K [Lowel] Rifa light. I use Dedolights for accent lighting. How did you light the scene that introduces us to Uxbal’s ex-wife, Marambra, where she bursts into Tito’s bedroom, dances on the bed and pours wine on him? Prieto: That location was a tiny room on the sixth floor that had a balcony. My only lighting opportunity was the window. The camera basically does a 270-degree move in the scene. I started on Tito waking up with my back to the window, so we begin with frontal light, and then I end up on the other side of the bed, facing Marambra, with the window behind her. We placed an 18K Fresnel on the balcony about 10 feet from the window, with a flag cutting the direct light on Marambra ww.theasc.com w
but allowing direct sunlight on Tito. I used the sheers on the window to bloom the light coming in, which created a soft ambient light. So with one light source, we had soft light for Marambra and a hard light for Tito. We put white show cards on the ceiling to create fill, and when the camera came around on Marambra, we opened up the lens 2 stops, ending up with a fill light that was 2 stops under. My focus puller, Arturo Castañeda, has a feel for focus that’s just incredible, and that gives me the confidence to move freely. Luis Lattanzi, the second AC, was doing the stop change. It was a very small room, and they all danced behind me as I moved around with the camera, along with the boom operator. We encountered this kind of situation often in the cramped locations, January 2011
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Letting Go
At a key moment late in the film, Ekweme’s wife, Igé (Diaryatou Daff), opens the shutters in Uxbal’s bedroom. Light from two 18Ks outside the windows, diffused by the sheer curtains, flares the lens as she opens the shutters.
but we somehow managed! That’s a very simple lighting setup. Prieto: Yes, and it’s one of my favorite scenes in the movie. If you can find a solution that’s simple, it’s probably the most effective, so whenever possible, I do it the simplest way. I used a similar approach in Uxbal’s bedroom, for example when Igé [Diaryatou Daff] opens the shutters. I had Condor lifts outside with two 18Ks, one for each window. When she opens the shutters, the light comes in through the sheers, fills the room and flares the lens. I also had a 4-foot-2-lamp Kino Flo just out of frame above the windows, so that when the shutters were closed, we’d have some ambient light representing the daylight seeping in around the shutters. I also put a 12K Par on scaffolding outside the window that was exclusively 36
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bouncing off the white shutter to light Igé when she’s standing in the dark room. It’s a very natural-looking source, but to get the exposure I had to use a very powerful light. So you used the shutters as a bounce board? Prieto: Yes, using the set itself to bounce light in frame is something I did quite a bit on this film. How did you light the happy scene involving Uxbal, Marambra and their children eating ice cream in her apartment? Prieto: That was a practical location on the fourth floor. I lit the scene as sunset, as we wanted this to be a precious moment for the family. We didn’t like the view outside the window much, and it wasn’t oriented toward the sun, so we had to hang a greenscreen outside the window and ask Daniel American Cinematographer
Aranyó, our B-camera operator and second-unit cinematographer, to shoot a background plate with the sun at the right position for our interior location. We had an 18K gelled with Full CTO on a scissor lift just next to the greenscreen creating the ‘sunset’ light. We put Marambra close to the window so the backlight would hit her hair and make her more alluring. Uxbal has just a little bit of sunlight on his face. It’s a mix of color temperatures, which is what happens at sunset — you get the warm sun combined with the reflection of the bluish sky. So there’s golden sun on the bottom part of Uxbal’s face, while the top of his face and the background are cooler, lit by fill with a little bit of blue in it — a 4-by-4 soft box overhead with eight Kino Flo daylight tubes with ¼ CTB and Full Grid diffusion. For the evening scene that follows the icecream scene, we shot day-for-night, blacking out the windows, and used the same soft box with tungsten bulbs, but with an egg crate made from strips of black coreplex to make it a little more directional and keep it off the walls. What was your approach on day exteriors, like the scene in which Uxbal follows Marambra out into the street and gives her money? Prieto: The main thing for me with exteriors is to schedule the time of day to shoot each angle. We scheduled that scene so we’d be in the shade of the surrounding buildings for every shot. I
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don’t know if I’m a masochist, but I hate soundstages, and not only because I think that they will never represent reality correctly. There’s something about the texture, the reality of walls, the smell, the story of them, the vibe. Even if the builder creates sets exactly the same, the sets don’t have soul. I think reality can never be matched in that sense. The other reason I shoot all my films on location is that there’s something uncomfortable about locations that, in a way, helps everybody feel they are in real territory and not making a film. I like that, and I think it’s a very effective psychological
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Iñárritu on Method
environment. You know, I’m not interested in reality; I’m interested in the truth of the universe that I try to portray. Like many others, I am obsessive, meticulous, a perfectionist, and as an exquisite neurotic I can be unbearable as a director because Idemand whatever number of takes to get what I, the character and the film need. (You can ask the actors. Ha, ha!) I wanted to shoot Biutiful in chronological order because that not only helps the actors travel correctly, but also helps me and Rodrigo and the rest of the crew really understand where we
American Cinematographer
•|• are in time and space, which is what a film is really made of. Film, for me, is made of the tension and rhythm that one image creates against another, and if all of us are traveling in time and space with the characters, we suddenly begin to be affected by the film. And I have to tell you that after three months of shooting, we were completely invested. We were living the experience, and that made a big difference in the final result. It’s very difficult to describe Biutiful because in it, I played with elements that are new for me. It’s a film that explores a timeless question — Where do we go when we die? — in the very specific and complex time we are all living. It is close to a tragedy in the classical sense, but it also has a metaphysical element, and we don’t know exactly the division between reality and illusion. Visually, that was an element of the film that was very difficult to find the right balance for; I wanted to create a perfume of the metaphysical element, but I didn’t want to take the film into another territory. If I use musical analogies, I would say that Amores Perros is rock ’n’ roll, 21 Grams is jazz, Babel is operatic, and Biutiful is a requiem. The visual grammar of this film was very delicate and sophisticated because it had to combine the social, the physical, the metaphysical and a hyper-realistic approach.To me, Biutiful is by far Rodrigo’s most lyrical and poetic work. Realistically and metaphorically, he found light in the darkest places possible. Over the years, Rodrigo and I have developed a communication level that is not only effective and very productive, but also very profound. We skip all those things that you normally have to go through when you start collaborating with someone. We just go straight to the DNA. — Alejandro González Iñárritu
didn’t use any lighting, just a handheld 3-by-3 white card for the eyes. When Uxbal hugs her, I went low with the camera to catch the flare from the skylight in the moment when he relaxes for a second in her arms. The shifting color on their faces is the blue skylight combined with warmth that came from the sun bouncing off the brick buildings. Did you use any lighting in the long sequence that shows Igé’s husband and the other African street vendors getting busted by the police? Prieto: No, I didn’t. It’s all about scheduling. Whenever I can, I try not to
“Using the set itself to bounce light in frame is something I did quite a bit on this film.”
use any electrical lighting on day exteriors, as I find it can look quite fake. As you mentioned, there are many dusk scenes in the film. Can you talk about the scene that shows Uxbal crossing the bridge? Prieto: At that moment, it’s also the dusk of Uxbal’s life. With any dusk scene, it’s really tricky to schedule and rehearse it and make sure you capture the right moment. We had some MaxiBrutes gelled with Lee 013 Straw Tint uplighting the buildings in the background, representing the sodium-vapor streetlights at the location. We lit other buildings in another part of the shot with Lee 728 Steel Green, as if metalhalide streetlights were glowing up the façades. I asked the production designer, Brigitte Broch, to build in the fluores-
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Letting Go
Prieto checks the light on Bardem stand-in Francesc Sadurní.
cent fixtures that you see on the bridge, so that as Uxbal walks on the bridge, he goes in and out of pools of cyan fluorescent light with uncorrected Cool White
bulbs that contrast with the sodium hue in the background. It was an extensive lighting job; we wanted it to look real and organic but somewhat enhanced.
The shot involved a very complex choreography of the handheld camera with the different elements surrounding Uxbal. Getting everything right at the exact moment of dusk light was quite a challenge, but when we got it, it was exhilarating. I have to mention that the entire crew was great, and I think my gaffer, Jose Luis Rodriguez, is one of the best gaffers in the world. He was an amazing support for me. Can you talk about the sequence in the nightclub? The extreme colors and lighting provide a strong contrast to the rest of the film. Prieto: It was a lot of fun to design that lighting, and again, we tried to emphasize Uxbal’s point of view. Alejandro came up with the idea of having the strippers outfitted with latex breasts on different parts of their bodies. We wanted an unsettling feel; we wanted to enhance the feeling that this is the moment when Uxbal just lets go. He decides to drink and forget about
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everything. We brought in most of the lighting, gelling most of the units with Rosco 90 Green and Storaro Orange. We had robotic Mac 2000s projecting patterns and colors throughout the club, many pulsing Par cans, and a few strobe lights. As Uxbal enters the room, he is bathed in ultraviolet ‘black light,’ and we shot without a UV filter on the camera, which creates a hazy, atmospheric, indigo light that contrasts with the orange and green of the first part of the scene. I also used a video projector with bubbly images for one of the strippers climbing up a wall. To emphasize the otherworldly feel, we wanted more dramatic lens flares, so we used the special Panavision C-Series ‘Flare’ lenses in the club. I also used these lenses for the scene after the club, where a drunken Uxbal goes back home to discover that his son has been left alone by Marambra. What about the very saturated blue light that bathes the scene when
Uxbal talks to the woman in the booth? Prieto: We lit the booth with two 4-by-8 Martin LC series RGB LED panels that we positioned overhead. We could program the panels with digital video images, and I ended up choosing waves of colors. What I liked about it was that it didn’t have the hard edge of standard nightclub lighting — there’s a softer texture to the light — and we could shift the colors as the scene progressed. Mostly, I lit that area with this sort of blue cyan with waves of purple that I felt was more in tune with Uxbal’s despair, until a red light flashes as the music changes and they move to the dance floor. Mirrors seem to be a recurring motif in the film. They figure in several scenes, including the last one. Prieto: We didn’t make a conscious decision to use mirrors, but I think that the feeling you get throughout the movie is like Through the Looking Glass, as though the mirror is another
reality. Peering into another dimension is what Uxbal does; it’s his gift. We took that all the way in the last scene, which is the ultimate mirror shot. But we can’t talk about that because it would be a spoiler! ●
TECHNICAL SPECS 1.85:1 and 2.40:1 35mm Panaflex Millennium XL2 Panavision USZ MKII, G-Series and C-Series lenses Kodak Vision2 500T 5260, 50D 5201; Vision3 500T 5219 Digital Intermediate Printed on Kodak Vision Premier 2393
Hoyte van Hoytema, NSC, FSF mixes 2-perf Super 35mm and Betacam-SP for the period boxing drama The Fighter. By Michael Goldman •|•
Tough
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rom the earliest moments that producer/actor Mark Wahlberg and director David O. Russell partnered to develop The Fighter, they had raw and uniquely American visuals in mind. Ironically, they turned to a European cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema, NSC, FSF, to get that job done. Russell was impressed by van Hoytema’s work on the Swedish feature Let the Right One In, and on the blackand-white Swedish television show How Soon is Now? What Russell hired van Hoytema to shoot was, at its core, a gritty, reality-based drama. Wahlberg stars as Boston boxer “Irish” Micky Ward, who learns how to be a champion from his half brother, Dickie (Christian Bale), even as Dickie battles drug addiction. The movie is built around the framework of a real 1995 HBO documentary that covered Dickie’s descent, portions of which were re-created by the filmmakers
American Cinematographer
Unit photography by JoJo Whilden, courtesy of Paramount Pictures.Additional photos courtesy of the filmmakers.
as a framing device. Shot entirely in Lowell, Mass., The Fighter includes extended boxing sequences choreographed and shot to mimic Ward’s real fights in the late 1980s and early 1990s as they were broadcast on HBO. Because of Wahlberg’s relationship with HBO via his series Entourage, the Fighter team was given full access to the network’s sports-broadcasting unit so they could accurately re-create portions of some of these fights. HBO lent the production some personnel, and the filmmakers’ equipment included period-correct Betacam-SP standarddefinition ENG cameras (supplied by Pittsburgh’s NEP Supershooters). The filmmakers also took an unorthodox approach to the drama surrounding the boxing. Russell and van Hoytema both wanted to be improvisational to a large degree — going handheld, mobile and as light as possible — and when creative requirements and budget considerations appeared to suggest a digital format for principal photography, van Hoytema instead suggested using Aaton’s Penelope cameras to shoot 2-perf Super 35mm, an unusual move for a U.S. studio
picture. (The production prohibited the use of Super 16mm.) The cinematographer was accustomed to shooting 2-perf in Europe, and felt he could use the format to more successfully accommodate Russell’s desire to shoot mostly handheld or with a Steadicam in small locations, often in limited light, while working extremely fast. (Principal photography took 38 days.) This approach would also enable the filmmakers to capture grainy images to suit the story. “When shooting 2-perf for [2.40:1] output, you expose far less negative than 4-perf, saving a lot of money, and if you are interested in getting grain and texture, it’s the way to go,” says van Hoytema. “I prefer 2-perf over all the digital cameras I’ve tested. “I find that workflows and proven working methods are harder to change or adapt in an established industry like Hollywood’s, which may be why 2-perf hasn’t really been used here,” he adds. “In that respect, Europe seems a bit more flexible — in a smaller industry, you need to be able to adapt.” Abel Cine Tech provided the production with three new Penelopes, ww.theasc.com w
Opposite: Trainer Dickie Eklund (Christian Bale) raises the arm of his half-brother, “Irish” Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg),after a big win. This page, top: Ward takes a shine to Charlene (Amy Adams), a sharptongued bartender. Bottom: Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, NSC, FSF shoulders an Aaton Penelope.
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Tough Love
Right: During a key bout, Eklund urges Ward to dig deeper and follow their fight strategy. Below: Ward’s feisty mother, Alice (Melissa Leo), also serves as his manager, but he eventually concludes that her career guidance isn’t optimizing his prospects.
Angenieux Optimo 28-76mm zoom lenses, and a set of Arri Master Primes (ranging from 14mm to 150mm). Van Hoytema chose three Fujifilm stocks that he knew well, Eterna 250T 8553, 250D 8563 and 500T 8573. “I felt the Fuji would respond well to lots of different colors, and I had used it before, so the choice was a comfort thing,” he says. “It’s good to be acquainted with the limits of your film stock; it gives you less 44
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to worry about and more time to focus on what’s in front of the camera. “The Penelope allowed us to use a small zoom, and with the Steadicam rig this became a versatile and flexible tool,” he continues. “I often handled the remote zoom to make small adjustments in movements and close-ups. The Steadicam is very handy, but it often also smoothes out moves and becomes a bit too clinical or predictable. American Cinematographer
The zooming added a new axis to the equation and occasionally gave us unexpected results. Sometimes it added that extra bit of tension and dirt.” It was important to Russell that the images “not look designed,” according to van Hoytema. “We even wanted things to look a bit messy, a little eclectic,” he says. “We didn’t want people to watch this film and directly pinpoint a look or an obvious intention. For me, [the visuals] had to be more closely linked to the direct, emotional side, sort of like jamming in a band.” Because The Fighter is a period piece, Russell wanted it to evoke the palette and style of the early 1990s, which meant lots of color in parts of the frame and little color in other parts. “We used some of the saturated look of the big colors from the late Eighties, but we also picked a palette for each scene with [production designer] Judy Becker so that we’d have only one bold color in each frame, with the rest being fairly monochromatic,” says Russell. “Each [bold] color has a purpose, and we use red very selectively. For example, Micky wears a red shirt when he confronts his family, and red also shows
After a violent confrontation with the police (top), Eklund lands in prison (middle), where he urges Ward to follow his advice for an upcoming bout with a formidable opponent. Bottom: Ward’s parents console him after he suffers a brutal beating at the hands of a much heavier fighter.
up as blood in the ring.” A-camera operator Geoff Haley captured most of the drama sequences with a Steadicam. Haley says this was a direct result of Russell and van Hoytema’s desire to improvise without stopping frequently for reloads. “I’d say this was the most difficult shoot I’ve ever done as an operator,” Haley observes. “We used the camera almost in a stream-of-consciousness fashion, which David excels at. He didn’t storyboard, per se, or design shot lists ahead of time. Instead, he would show up on the day with the actors and allow the scene to organically play itself out. He and Hoyte were adamant about wanting a camera style that could adapt quickly and easily with little or no down time.” In fact, he continues, “David rarely called ‘Cut.’ We just called ‘roll out,’ so takes lasted as long as there was film in the camera. But there was one occasion, in the middle of a take, when we were shooting in Dickie’s apartment on a wide prime lens. We were about five minutes into the take, and David asked me to go to a longer lens and move around Christian. I said, ‘Okay, let’s cut and quickly change lenses,’ and David yelled, ‘No, don’t cut!’ So, for the first time in my career, I stopped and ww.theasc.com w
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Tough Love
Right: Ward goes nose-to-nose with WBU champion Shea Neary (Anthony Molinari) during the prefight introductions for their2000 lightwelterweight title bout in England. The production lent the fight scenes extra authenticity by employingperiodcorrect Betacam-SP standard-definition cameras, which are frequently visible in frame. Below: Ward exults after defeating Neary on an eighthround technical knockout.
changed lenses on the Steadicam while the film was still rolling through the camera!” Many settings were dingy, tight locations such as apartments, gyms, jail cells and police stations, and van Hoytema’s source-lighting schemes were central to the realism Russell was pursuing. Indeed, gaffer Mike Moyer 46
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calls van Hoytema one of the most talented source lighters he has ever seen. “Hoyte believes that if there’s a window, he should light through the window, and if there’s a door, he should light through the door,” says Moyer. “The way he achieves this is by creating large ‘eyebrows,’ basically reflective material over every window or whatever the American Cinematographer
source is, and then bouncing a large light, in this case reflector flood Arrimax 18Ks, into that reflective material. We hardly ever put a light up in the air; lights always stayed on the ground, and we used large bounces. One bounce was 120-by-12 feet, rigged off trusses and motors over the side of a building, and we had large lights on the street below, over the face of the building, bouncing up into it. By adjusting the angle of the truss frame, we created a wonderful, natural-looking bounce through the windows that was very controllable. With the bounce material in place, we could just move lights to different positions on the ground to get different angles of attack with soft light coming through the windows.” Van Hoytema says it was almost a steadfast rule to light from the outside, with very few exceptions for drama sequences. The “eyebrow” is something he has been utilizing for years, and he suggests it’s a “simple way of lighting a set while still being able to look out windows. The floor is clean of lights, so the camera can move around freely. You
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Tough Love Right: An overhead grid of Par 64 cans illuminates the ring in Lowell’s Paul Tsongas Arena, where all of the fight scenes were shot over three days. Below: Large “eyebrow” reflectors suspended above location windows allowed van Hoytema to bounce lighting into the interiors, creating realistic ambience.
can throw light into the room without blocking the view outside. The light will fall off quite fast the farther it goes into the room, so there is quite a dynamic when the actors move around. We just let them go dark away from windows, and a bit of smoke helped carry the light a bit further, reducing the contrast.” Van Hoytema was equally dynamic with the film’s extensive streetlighting work during night filming, because numerous sequences take place 48
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on the urban streets of Lowell. In keeping with the story’s period, van Hoytema was committed to avoiding a sodium look on the streets, so all streetlights close to the filming were fitted with metal-halide lamps (250-watt 4,000°K 90CRI) that were more neutral. Again, the goal was to light as naturally as possible, bouncing light across and around sections of streets when actors were interacting up against American Cinematographer
or near buildings. Moyer says such scenes were largely lit with three Condors; one lifted a 20'x20' Ultrabounce, one lifted a 48-light spot Dino, and one lifted another 20'x20' Ultrabounce to capture and bounce spill from light shooting across the street. For action in boxing arenas, however, the shooting and lighting paradigm changed to emulate HBO broadcasts of three of those fights. All of the boxing scenes were shot over three days in Lowell’s Paul Tsongas Arena. This was mainly because Wahlberg wanted to do all choreographed fighting himself, and that work left him exhausted, so the filmmakers didn’t want to prolong it. Russell was also keen to find an approach to the boxing scenes that would be different from the stylized imagery in Raging Bull and Rocky. Thus, he decided to avoid bringing cameras inside the ring and close to the actors, except for a brief montage in the middle of the film and a few shots in the climactic fight. “Mark really wanted to shoot the boxing scenes so they flowed in one big sequence, rather than setting them up shot by shot,” recalls Russell. “We did shoot a small fight sequence that was stylized from the
actor’s point-of-view, and I enjoyed that, but otherwise, we shot those scenes as if they were broadcasts of real matches. There was a certain flow to shooting in one movement with the [Betacam] cameras rather than stopping and starting. That gave a rawness and realness to the flow of the fights. Because we used older video cameras that were clearly meant for the small screen, there was some banding in the images when they were blown up, but I feel that gives it a historical feel.” The team used the same kind of Sony BVP-900 and BVP-950 Betacam-SP cameras that were used to capture Ward’s fights, and some of the original HBO cameramen and technicians also worked on these scenes. (The network even provided the same boxing ring, ropes and arena advertisements used for those televised matches.) “The technique is essentially how HBO still covers boxing matches,” notes Haley. “There were two long-lens cameras perched basically halfway up the stadium stairs to get long-lens and wide shots, and then they had two apron cameras, handheld cameras just outside the ropes to get more intimate coverage of the fight. Those four cameras were taping to isolated tape decks in the production truck but were also being cut together live by an HBO technical director. That gave them a line cut they could use as a starting point and that David could use in editing, with additional material to choose from on tape. Then, [B-camera operator] Dana Gonzalez and I came in, abandoning our film cameras and using Sony [UVW-500] Betacams to cover all the events happening outside the ring and around the arena.” Van Hoytema notes that he had never shot or even watched boxing before making The Fighter. He says HBO’s guidelines for how to shoot these scenes were easy to follow. “David would sit at a table with monitors from all the camera outputs, and let things happen,” recalls the cinematographer. “We’d work in sequences rather than moments or beats. It was tough for
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Tough Love action. “It was a box grid the dimensions of the boxing ring, with about 35 medium Par 64 cans for each side of the ring,” Moyer explains. “All the lenses were turned, every other light, so that one lens was horizontal and one was vertical.” The project’s post workflow was handled at Technicolor facilities in New York and Hollywood. The New York house provided dailies, and the Hollywood house handled the digital intermediate, including up-rezzing and converting the Beta-SP images. According to post supervisor Christopher Kulikowski, the standard-definition video footage blew up to 24-fps Wahlberg, Bale and crewmembers prepare to shoot the movie’s opening scene on the streets of high-definition nicely while retaining Lowell. Wahlberg, a Massachusetts native and one of the project’s producers, insisted that the “the gritty quality of the video, which is film be shot in his home state to capture the local flavor. what David wanted. David to see everything live on all the Lighting in the arena was largely “It was basically a two-step monitors we had, so there was a lot of configured exactly as it was for HBO process,” Kulikowski continues. “They playback on set. It was a bit of different broadcasts, creating what Russell calls “a shot in the Beta-SP format at 30 fps, thinking for us to make the drama fit an harsh feel” on the big screen. A basic and then we converted it to HD at 24 established sports style.” truss grid over the ring lit most of the fps by running it through a Terranex
In the shimmering heat, a glassy surface will soon be shattered.
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conversion box, and then later converted all the video material to DPX files to be incorporated into the DI files, retaining the noise and imperfections of the original Beta-SP. It was an enormous undertaking largely because they shot six to eight video cameras inside the arena; organizing all that footage was challenging. The tapes were actually sent to Los Angeles, where the conversion work was done by Technicolor Creative Services.” As far as massaging the 2-perf 35mm footage went, Kulikowski suggests that today’s DI tools have made those adjustments fairly straightforward. “The DI requires everything to be turned into a 4-perf anamorphic negative and print, so the optical-blowup issue has gone away,” he says. “As far as removing imperfections, you treat it like a visual-effects sequence and paint those out. Technicolor has great restoration tools for that sort of work. Shooting 2perf means you have to take some more time in post, but on the other hand, it
made their lives so much easier in production for this kind of a movie.” The DI, handled by colorist Tony Dustin, was the first of Russell’s career. This time, in a departure from the extensive post manipulation he has requested on films like Three Kings (AC Nov. ’99), the director asked Dustin to be subtle, because he was satisfied that van Hoytema had largely achieved the desired look in-camera. That was true even with the Betacam footage, which van Hoytema describes as “strangely sharp and rough at the same time” on the big screen — exactly what he and Russell wanted. “Something really interesting happens with the texture when you convert Betacam to film,” says the cinematographer, “and when we tested it in prep, David and I thought that looked better than the HD tests we made. We felt this was an obvious and quite logical way to do it, actually.” Russell says his creative synergy with van Hoytema was so complete that
he regards the cinematographer as “someone I think I can work with for a long time. He’s a very special guy. I like people with a fresh eye who are not cynical or hungry.” ●
TECHNICAL SPECS 2.40:1 2-perf Super 35mm and Digital Capture Aaton Penelope; Sony BVP-900, BVP-950 Angenieux Optimo and Arri Master Prime lenses Fujifilm Eterna 250T 8553, 250D 8563, 500T 8573 Digital Intermediate Printed on Fujifilm Eterna-CP 3514DI
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Tron: Legacy, shot by Claudio Miranda, ASC, mixes 2-D and 3-D to update the environments of the 1982 sci-fi hit. By Noah Kadner •|•
Back tothe Grid I
t’s been nearly three decades since Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) first entered the high-stakes digital world of the Grid in Tron. The sequel Tron: Legacy reveals that Kevin disappeared in the Grid 20 years ago, leaving behind his son, Sam (Garrett Hedlund), who has become an aimless extreme-sports enthusiast. Legacy, directed by first-timer Joseph Kosinski and shot by Claudio Miranda, ASC, takes Sam into the Grid, where he is finally reunited with his father. Among other challenges, the action-packed journey required Miranda to shoot both 2-D and 3-D and help to further evolve the digital facial-replacement techniques that played heavily into his previous feature, David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (AC Jan.’09). Fincher introduced Kosinski to Miranda in 2005 when Kosinski was looking for a cinematographer to shoot a
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commercial in Los Angeles. “Claudio and I have done another 14 or so commercials together since then,” says Kosinski. “He has been a great friend and partner. He’s an amazing artist with a great technical mind, and he’s always up for tinkering with something new.” The first steps toward realizing Legacy included the creation of a teaser trailer, which premiered at Comic-Con in 2008. “At the time, [Disney] wasn’t sure there was demand for a Tron sequel, and we knew that if we failed [at Comic-Con], the project would be put on hold,” says Kosinski. But the trailer was a hit, and the feature received a green light. Principal photography commenced in April 2009 and was done primarily onstage at the Canadian Motion Picture Park outside Vancouver; location work for sequences set in the real world was done around the city.
American Cinematographer
Unit photography by Douglas Curran. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Disney Enterprises, Inc.
Opposite: Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) follows in his father’s footsteps and races a light cycle within the world of the Grid in Tron: Legacy, directed by Joseph Kosinski and shot by Claudio Miranda, ASC. This page, top: Twenty years after disappearing into the Grid, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) is reunited with his son. Bottom: The filmmakers utilized digital face-replacement technology to create Legacy’s antagonist, CLU 2.0.
AC visited the Legacy set in June 2009,as the filmmakers prepared to shoot a major action sequence and close-ups of Hedlund simultaneously on different stages. Kosinski started the day by showing off the Comic-Con trailer in high quality and then reviewing storyboards and cutout models of key set pieces, many of which paid subtle homage to the original film. The groundbreaking visual effects in the original Tron, shot by Bruce Logan, ASC ( AC Aug. ’82), were achieved primarily by painstakingly rotoscoping and colorizing black-andwhite 70mm film and incorporating state-of-the-art computer animation. To enhance the sense of technological progress that has marked the intervening decades, the Legacy team chose to embrace high-definition video, and in order to further distinguish the digital world created by Kevin Flynn from the real world, they shot sequences set in the Grid in stereoscopic 3-D. After testing a number of options, Miranda decided to work with Pace’s Fusion 3-D system, using a pair of Sony CineAlta F35 cameras. An earlier iteration of the Fusion
system, fitted with Sony HDC-F950s, was used on James Cameron’s Avatar (AC Jan. ’10), and although the Legacy team tested that rig, “we really preferred the 35mm-sized sensor in the F35,” Miranda says during a break in filming. “I loved its shallow depth of field and softer, more pleasing 3-D effect.” When shooting with the 3-D rig, 1st AC Jonas Steadman supported camera operator John Clothier from a specially converted digital-imaging-technician station, where he used a Camnet touch-screen ww.theasc.com w
system designed by Pace to handle interocular/convergence, mirror corrections and iris; in addition, Steadman pulled focus with a Preston remote-focus handset. Recording 1080p HD to Codex hard drives, the filmmakers devised their own guidelines for their 3-D work. For example, referring to the point in space where the two cameras’ lenses are aimed, and which determines whether objects appear to float in front of or behind the screen plane, “we decided to January 2011
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Back to the Grid
Top: Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner) informs Sam that he received a page from the longabandoned Flynn’s Arcade. Middle and bottom: Aided by digital extensions, Flynn’s Arcade was constructed at the Canadian Motion Picture Park outside Vancouver.
not lock convergence with focus,” Miranda explains. “We treated convergence as a fixed point in 3-D space that moves independently from focus, which makes the screen appear like a box you’re looking into, and keeps things from leaping out unnaturally. Additionally, we went against the ‘rule’ of deep-focus depth-of-field for 3-D and let our backgrounds go really soft, which helps guide the eye along with the depth cues.” The filmmakers framed for 2.35:1, and “we protected the top and bottom of the 2.35 frame in order to keep items from breaking the horizontal frame lines,” notes Kosinski. “When the brain perceives a depth cue disrupted by those edges, it tends to ruin the illusion.” Given the complexity and weight of the dual-F35 3-D rig, Miranda ruled out handheld and Steadicam shots. “I would have needed Arnold Schwarzenegger to carry that rig,” he says with a laugh. “The style of cinematography we envisioned for Legacy was well suited to dolly and crane shots. Joe liked nodal shots on axis and linear, deliberate camera moves from point A to point B, which is logical for a movie set inside a computer. Many of our sets were elevated, and we spent a lot of time on a Hydrascope telescoping arm combined with a Titan crane and a 54
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American Cinematographer
Chapman G3 stabilized head. We also modified a Graphlite, designed by Pacific Motion Control, to work as a gantry motion-control crane. Instead of laying motion-control track on the ground, the track and crane were inverted to come from the ceiling. This gave us great flexibility; I could reach anywhere on set without laying track. It also allowed me to create a perfect highspeed circle track.” Some of the action set in Legacy’s digital world also required high-speed photography. For this, Pace supplied the production with a modified 3-D mirror rig fitted with two optically linked Vision Research Phantom HD cameras, allowing Miranda to shoot at up to 1,000 fps while closely matching the F35 material. Legacy opens with a prologue set in 1989 and then jumps ahead to the present day; these sequences were shot in 2-D with a single F35 on location in Vancouver. The prologue features a young Sam (Owen Best) and Kevin, and Bridges was able to play his younger self thanks to the facial-replacement technology pioneered by Digital Domain for Benjamin Button . Button’s visual-effects supervisor, Eric Barba, again collaborated with Miranda for Legacy. “Jeff was on set to digitally drive the facial animation, and then we
Top: Miranda motivated the lighting inside Flynn’s Arcade from hanging practicals, arcadegame machines and the street outside. Bottom: Sam discovers his father’s secret lab, where he inadvertently triggers a laser that digitizes him and transports him into the Grid, cuing the film’s switch from 2-D to 3-D.
shot with a body double mimicking his physical movements,” explains Miranda. Bridges’ facial movements were captured by means of a headmounted rig with four witness cameras, and the body double, Miranda notes, “wore a gray mask to facilitate the replacement process. The double had a hairstyle and build similar to Jeff’s younger self, so we could go without the mask on over-the-shoulder shots. As on Benjamin Button, the idea was to treat the lighting no differently from any ww.theasc.com w
other scene; we didn’t want to draw any special attention to the effect.” In Legacy’s present day, Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner, reprising his role from Tron) prompts Sam, now 27, to check on Kevin’s long-abandoned arcade. In the first Tron, Flynn’s Arcade was a real location in Culver City, Calif., and production designer Darren Gilford painstakingly re-created the set at the Vancouver studio for Legacy. Inside the arcade, “I didn’t use the original film as a reference,” says Miranda. January 2011
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Back to the Grid
Top: Sam is discovered by a Recognizer, which casts a blinding beam of light akin to a helicopter searchlight. Miranda used a digital projector to give the light a subtle computer-grid effect. Middle and bottom: Bridges wore a head-mounted rig fitted with witness cameras to capture facial movements for CLU 2.0; the digitized face was then mapped onto a body double.
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“Our version of the look is less saturated and has warmer tones. The place is supposed to be dilapidated now, and it’s lit by the glow of covered arcade-game machines and sodium-vapor lights motivated by the street outside. We used conventional lights outside the arcade — the big light through the door was a 20K gelled with ½ CTO. In the arcade, we put R40 tungsten lamps inside the hanging practicals, creating pools of light. The arcade machines lit themselves, though I did augment them a bit with some Blue Green Kinos around the machine for lighting Garrett. For ambience, we had a few four-bank Kino Flos in soft boxes overhead, but they were used very minimally.” Hidden behind the Tron video game, which serves as a focal point in the arcade, Sam finds a passageway that leads to his father’s secret lab. “We put a bunch of practicals in the lab, but turned them all off in the end because we decided to play things darker and more mysterious. The only lights were the 20K [with ½ CTO] outside the window and, for fill, a couple of 4-foot single Kino Flos gelled with ½ CTO for fill.”The lab contains a laser capable of digitizing a human and transporting him or her into the Grid — the same mechanism that launched Kevin into
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Back to the Grid
Sam is pressed into play in the lethal Disc Arena, which was constructed onstage as a mostly bluescreen set.
the digital realm in Tron. When Sam inadvertently triggers the laser, he, too, is transported to the Grid, at which point the film transitions to stereoscopic 3-D. The world of the Grid includes city streets, with long stretches of roadways and façades, which were built as backlot sets with interactive lighting. “We avoided traditional 1K and 2K units,” says Miranda. Instead, he and gaffer Drew Davidson employed Image 80s with Kino Flo 55 tubes for a 40'x40' overhead soft box and some Philips Color Kinetics lights. The latter “had 5,500°K and 3,200°K LEDs hooked to a dimmer so we could mix color temperatures, but we mainly used only the 5,500°K side,” notes Miranda. 58
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“Instead of streetlamps, we integrated Vision X 4-foot off-road-racing LED headlamps everywhere,” says Miranda. “They looked beautiful.” Lost on the Grid, Sam is discovered by a Recognizer, a U-shaped flying troop carrier/prisoner transport that appeared in a more primitive form in Tron. The Recognizer casts a blinding beam of light onto Sam, and Miranda “wanted it to feel like a helicopter searchlight, but a little different — the beam has a subtle computer-grid effect over it. We used a digital projector with the grid pattern loaded up, and we beamed it all around Sam to create the effect.” After being picked up, Sam is American Cinematographer
taken to a room and fitted with a skintight latex suit accented with glowing piping, the uniform of all of the Grid’s inhabitants. (Quantum Creation FX supplied the suits.) In Tron, the glowing effect was created in post through frame-by-frame cel animation; for Legacy, the filmmakers were determined to create the effect in-camera. Gilford explains, “The primary lighting in the costumes was EL [Electro Luminescent] technology derived from cell-phone displays; it’s a very thin lamp sandwiched in a film laminate. The suits were sculpted in 3-D using [Luxology’s] Modo and [Pixologic’s] ZBrush, and then sent directly to manufacturing and cast in latex. The actors wore lithium battery packs, and we controlled the lights wirelessly to conserve power; we’d turn the lights on as the cameras started rolling and switch them off right at ‘cut.’” “The suits really drove the pastel look of the digital world,” notes Miranda. “We wanted to see the suit lights casting interactive light from character to chara cter and have everything look as luminous as possible, like the glow of a computer monitor. The good guys have cool tones — blues, purples and greens — while the bad guys have the warmer reds and oranges. “We really wanted the suits to read bright, and we wanted to capture their interaction with the sets and characters,” the cinematographer continues. The suits’ low light output necessitated shooting with minimum levels of fill light and keeping lenses at their widest apertures. Miranda worked with a selection of Arri Master Primes, favoring the 25mm and 32mm. He turned to the 14mm and 18mm to take in the sets’ full scope. The cinematographer also eschewed filtration in order to minimize light loss and deliver pristine imagery for post. “I generally lit to the monitors and didn’t carry a light meter,” says Miranda. “After a while, you get used to lighting to the waveform.” Once in the Grid, Sam is introduced to the film’s antagonist, CLU 2.0, who looks exactly like Kevin Flynn circa
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Barba and Preeg on Tron: Legacy
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he following are excerpts from a recent conversation with Digital Domain visual-effects supervisor Eric Barba and head of animation Steve Preeg about their contributions to Tron: Legacy. American Cinematographer: The original Tron was a watershed moment for motion-picture visual effects. Did you approach Legacy with the goal of doing something no one had ever done? Steve Preeg: It was certainly a concern that we live up to the original, but any major visual-effects film requires some level of new software development, and we wrote a number of tools specifically for Tron: Legacy , including new acquisition techniques for animating CLU, and new render technologies and tracking software. Eric Barba: Our first step was to build a previsualization team. This was in 2008, before the live-action team was hired. We started planning what we were going to shoot and how we would shoot it. We built art-department assets into the previz to get an idea of how things would work in front of a stereoscopic lens. We planned out every sequence and every shot, determining what would be synthetic and what would be practical and how to build both. The disc game was an early sequence that helped us establish the look of the Grid. What do the discs look like when they hit a wall? What effect do they leave behind? How hot should they be optically? The other thing that helped us establish the Grid’s look was the first shot of the new Recognizer. I kept telling my crew, ‘This is the first time people will see a Recognizer. It needs to be massive, and it needs to be the coolest thing we’ve never seen before.’ We did 120-odd versions of that shot before Joe [Kosinski] and I were both happy with it. Let’s talk about the CLU character, a photo-real re-creation of a
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young Jeff Bridges. Preeg: The first time Eric and I did something like that was on Benjamin Button , but CLU was more difficult because everyone has seen Jeff Bridges in his thirties, whereas no one has seen Brad Pitt at 80. We looked at different films and pictures of Jeff from that era and tried to figure out the things about him that are constant. What new techniques did you develop for this process? Preeg: Jeff wanted to be on set interacting with the other actors, so we developed a system that used four helmet-mounted cameras, similar to what was done on Avatar, to capture his performance. While Jeff performed his CLU scenes with the other actors, his body double, John Reardon, studied Jeff’s movements and performance. When it came time to shoot, John, wearing a gray hood covered with tracking dots, would mimic Jeff, and then we would replace John’s head with Jeff’s CG features, based on performance data we captured with the helmet cameras. We also built a library of facial performance motions based on the Facial Action Coding System Paul Ekman developed in the 1970s — it’s a 140-point map of hundreds of human facial expressions. The points represent the regions of the face that move in relation to one another, and they let us determine what muscles were activated
American Cinematographer
to move those points to a given position. We walked Jeff through a FACS session, recorded his face, and built a database of expressions, and then [our propriety program] Faceplant transplanted Jeff’s muscle system to CLU’s. Barba: We did some face replacement for Sam [Garrett Hedlund] as well. During the lightcycle scenes, we used a four-camera Red One array to photograph Garrett’s face and project it back into Sam’s helmet. That whole system came from Joe wanting to shoot from any direction. How do you know when you’ve successfully animated a believablelooking CG human? Preeg: That’s for the audience to decide. I’m proud of my work, but I’m so close to it that all I see are the imperfections. Barba: It’s hard to put down that paintbrush — they have to rip it out of your hand! We had an amazing team. All 1,500 visual-effects shots came through Digital Domain in Venice, but we also worked with our Vancouver office and companies in Northern California, Mexico City, Mumbai, Toronto and Thailand. When it comes together on the big screen, all you can do is cross your fingers and hope the audience loves it. — Iain Stasukevich
1982. Once again, face-replacement was employed to capture Bridges’ facial movements and map them onto a body double. “The CLU character could only exist post- Benjamin Button ,” says Kosinski. “With other digital creatures, you can get away with a lot, but with a digital human being, 99 percent isn’t good enough. It’s a gut reaction when something’s not right in a shot of a digital human — it could be an eyeline, a lighting match or lip sync. The actors all understood we were pushing the envelope with this process.” CLU 2.0 keeps his command center on the bridge of the Rectifier, a huge, floating battle cruiser. The bridge set incorporated extensive practical LEDs covered with orange-tinted film and milk Plexiglas over which heads-up display graphics were placed in post. “We placed a big soft box with Image 80s overhead and had LED ribbons in the floors and walls,” Miranda details. “There were literally miles of LED lighting strung all over the place. We also installed 4-foot and 2-foot single Kinos in the walls, and we had sheens of light everywhere.” After he receives his “digital duds,” Sam is taken to the Disc Arena, where he is forced into a deadly game in which players fling light discs at one another. Being hit by a disc is fatal. In anticipation of the sequence’s extensive visual effects, the Disc Arena footage was shot almost entirely against bluescreen, which Miranda lit with overhead soft boxes fitted with Image 80s with KF55 tubes. During AC’s set visit, Miranda deployed the 3-D-linked Phantom HD camera rig to capture shots of martial artist Anis Cheurfa as Rinzler, CLU’s main enforcer. Miranda and Kosinski asked for a few extra takes to enable Cheurfa, hurtling through the air on a wire harness, to time his flying kick perfectly into the Phantom’s Lexan-protected lenses. Gilford explains the various lighting setups: “Depending on the shot requirements, we used different floor surfaces to get the interactions right. At certain angles, we’d use mirrored floors to see the
The set for Kevin’s safehouse recalls the “alien zoo” from 2001: A Space Odyssey, with a low ceiling and a glass floor lit from underneath with Kino Flo Image 80s controlled by a GrandMA dimmer board.
complete reflections of the actors, which would later be mapped onto the virtual set extensions. If the angle got too high, we’d switch to pure glass floors for more muted reflectivity.” Once he survives the games in the Disc Arena, Sam meets Quorra (Olivia Wilde), who takes him to a safe house, where, at last, he meets his father. The minimalist abode is reminiscent of the “alien zoo” from the final scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Davidson recalls, “Most of the other sets were built with high ceilings, but the safe house had a low ceiling, along with a floor consisting entirely of 6-by-6-foot glass panels. We used Image 80s to light each panel from ww.theasc.com w
below.” Each Image 80 was individually connected to a GrandMA dimmer board, which enabled Miranda to create geometric chase patterns for various effects. “Once the floor panels were going, the safe house didn’t need much augmentation,” says Miranda. “We shot one of my favorite scenes in there, when Sam speaks with Quorra and their suits are actually lighting and interacting with each other.” Sam and Kevin unite to escape the Grid and return to the real world, a journey that leads them to the End of Line nightclub,which was still under construction when AC visited the production. Eschewing the trend of January 2011
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Kosinski (lying on the floor) works out an angle with Miranda (right) and Hedlund.
partial sets surrounded by bluescreen in large-scale visual-effects movies, the filmmakers chose to construct almost the entire set with a minimum of bluescreen outside the club’s windows, providing a more realistic stage for the performers and camera. “We initially
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thought of doing some handheld or Steadicam shots leading into the club, but the rig’s weight made that too challenging,” says Miranda. Instead, Miranda and key grip Kim Olson employed the overhead Graphlite rig, programming it with automated moves
to create a Steadicam-style feel. Operated by the extravagant Castor (Michael Sheen), the End of Line club features interlocking LED panels laid directly into the walls and ceiling. The club’s floor, measuring approximately 20'x20', was fitted with Barco panels, and the media the filmmakers ran was clouds. “We also used the Barcos to simulate elevator effects,” notes Miranda. “We used two 4-by-20foot Barco panels placed to the actors’ left and right, and on those panels we ran media to simulate the elevator traveling up or down. This was a lighting effect only and not in shot.” Miranda and Kosinski monitored their work in 3-D while shooting with specially calibrated 50" Hyundai HDTV monitors that offered a halfresolution representation of their work. They also watched full-resolution 3-D dailies each day in Pace’s 3-D mobileprojection trailer, which was parked just outside the stage. “The on-set monitors
allowed us to see what was working in 2-D vs. 3-D in real time,” says Kosinski, “but the projected dailies we watched at lunchtime were where we’d really get a feeling for what we were getting in terms of depth and detail.” AC was invited into the Pace trailer to review an assembly of dailies in 3-D, as well as special-unit still photography also shot in 3-D. Miranda and Kosinski pointed out that because the Pace trailer uses two optically interlinked projectors, they could actually alter the convergence of footage after filming to determine where shots might work better with a different level of depth. During prep, Miranda developed a look-up table that the filmmakers could toggle on and off on their monitors during production to get a sense of the intended look. “It added a bit of contrast to the raw footage and served as a one-light correction for our dailies,” he says. To emphasize the cool feel
within the Grid, Miranda typically lit for a 5,500°K color temperature and kept the camera balanced for 3,200°K. “I wouldn’t recommend that strategy for other digital cameras,” he cautions, “but the F35 is really soft in that transition. I’d also occasionally take a piece of footage and grade it myself in Apple’s Color as a reference.” The final digital grade was completed at Laser Pacific with colorist David Cole. “I was able to sit in on a few of the sessions and gave some notes,” says Miranda. “I did not spend as much time there as I would have liked, however, because I was committed to another project.” After working on Legacy for nearly four years, Kosinski enthuses, “I’m really impressed with the work the entire team has done; their level of commitment exceeded my expectations. It’s been a tremendous, fun challenge, and I’m very happy with how things worked out.” Miranda adds, “There was a unified camaraderie from the studio
on down. This was truly one of the best teams I’ve worked with, and it feels like there’s a lot of excitement for this movie out there.” ●
TECHNICAL SPECS 2.40:1 3-D and 2-D Digital Capture Sony F35; Vision Research Phantom HD Arri Master Prime lenses Digital Intermediate
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A League of
His Own Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC receives the Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award for a body of work that reflects vision, purpose and a personal perspective. By Patricia Thomson •|•
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fter four decades behind the camera, Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC, is at the top of his game. “I think I’m doing work now that’s as good as I’ve ever done,” he says. His peers in the ASC clearly agree, as they will honor him next month with the Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The ASC honor is the latest in an incredible run that has included double ASC Award nominations for two consecutive years, 2008 (for Revolutionary Road and The Reader) and 2007 (for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and No Country for Old Men). Indeed, Deakins’ presence looms so large at these ceremonies that when Robert Elswit, ASC accepted the 2007 ASC Award for There Will Be Blood, he suggested that the Society establish a special category for “films shot by Roger Deakins.” The four films that earned Deakins his double nominations reflect his special niche as a shape-shifting cinematogra-
American Cinematographer
AC file photos by François Duhamel, SMPSP; Melinda Sue Gordon, SMPSP; Frank Masi, SMPSP; Mario Tursi; Merie Wallace; Bruce Birmelin, and Michael Weinstein. Additional photos courtesy of Roger Deakins.
pher for auteur directors with substantive, character-driven scripts. “That’s a very small niche right now,” he says with a laugh. But it’s one that many cinematographers would envy, as it has led him to collaborate with filmmakers such as Joel and Ethan Coen, Sam Mendes, John Sayles, Martin Scorsese, Bob Rafelson and Norman Jewison. Of course, he is most closely identified with the Coens, America’s most idiosyncratic auteurs; he has shot 11 films for them since Barton Fink (1991), including the current release True Grit. None of this was in the crystal ball when Deakins was a young lad in Torquay, a fishing town on England’s southwest coast. Once a Victorian resort, the town didn’t offer many career options for a youth with artistic inclinations. Deakins’ father ran a construction company, and his grandfather was a fisherman. “My dad wanted me to take over his business,” Deakins recalls. “For many years,when I was working in London in the film industry, my father still thought I’d come back and take over!” Instead, Deakins took after his artistically inclined mother, an actress and amateur painter. He also took up the brush, painting realistic renderings of people and landscapes. “They were pretty depressing, actually,” he says. But they led him to still photography. “I suppose I took up still photography
Opposite: Surrounded by some of his signature soft light, Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC awaits the next shot on the set of Revolutionary Road (2008). This page, top left: In the mid1970s, Deakins takes the helm while working on one of his first documentaries for British TV, about a yacht race that circumnavigated the globe. Top right: As a student at England’s National Film School, Deakins (at far left) works on The Penal Colony (1972/1973), directed by Neil Levenson (at camera). Middle: In another Penal Colony still, Deakins preps a dolly shot. Bottom: During filming of Alex Cox’s Sid and Nancy (1986), Deakins practices his punk-rock sneer while surrounded by actors (from left) Tony London, Gary Oldman and Graham FletcherCook.
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Top: Director John Sayles works out a shot with Deakins on location for Passion Fish (1992). Right: The cinematographer at work on Michael Apted’s Thunderheart (1992).
because I always had an interest in [seeing] people within their environments.” Deakins had the opportunity to soak up art-house movies through the Torquay film society. He and his brother trudged miles to watch everything from Italian neorealist films to Peter Watkins’ faux vérité documentaries. Seeing a woman faint during TheWar Game , Watkins’ vivid scenario about a nuclear explosion in London, deeply impressed Deakins, but the idea of making a career out of film hadn’t yet coalesced in his mind. 66
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Intending to become a painter, he enrolled in the Bath Academy of Art, but found himself assigned to the graphic-design department. “I guess they didn’t like my naturalistic paintings,” he says. “Abstract was in, and I didn’t do much of that.” But there was a small film department. “I wanted to get involved in that, but only two or three students were allowed to play with film cameras, and I didn’t get the chance.” Instead, he discovered still photography — in a big way. “I used to spend nights in a darkroom printing, then days out, American Cinematographer
just wandering around towns and seaside communities taking pictures.” He even pinched the school’s darkroom key to make a copy for himself. Curiously, photography itself was not part of Bath’s curriculum. “It was just a way of recording images to be used in graphic design— if you were designing book covers, for instance,” says Deakins. When the academy brought in professional photographers as guest teachers, Deakins soaked up the lessons, particularly those imparted by Roger Mayne. “He was one of the first photographers to go out in the street and photograph the lives of people in London,” says Deakins. “He was quite a big influence on the way I started to see things.” After college, Deakins wasn’t sure what to do. A friend told him about a new school opening up in London called the National Film School. “I thought that really made sense, because my photography was tending towards documentary, so I applied along with my friend,” he says. Neither of them got in. Deakins made an appointment with the school’s headmaster, Colin Young, to find out why. He recalls, “On the wall behind Colin’s deskwas this photograph of a horse and car. It was blurred because it was a time exposure. Colin said, ‘Well,your photographs are not really very filmic.’ He pointed to the photo behind him and said, ‘ That’s filmic.’ I said, ‘No, that’s a blurred photograph.’” Deakins laughs at his youthful chutzpah. “I disputed his idea of what was filmic and what wasn’t.” Because it was the school’s first year, it was seeking an entry class of 25 students who already had some filmmaking experience and could self-start in an unstructured educational environment. So, with the implicit promise that he would be admitted the next year if he acquired some practical experience, Deakins looked for a job. The Bath Academy principal told him about an arts center that wanted to create a photographic record of rural life in North Devon. For the next year, Deakins wandered around the country-
side,photographing farmers, woodsmen, county fair-goers and other rural folk in their element. (Some of these black-and-white images are posted on his website, www.rogerdeakins.com.) He had no supervisor. “It was very much make-it-up-as-you-go,”he recalls. At the NFS, which Deakins entered in 1972 as part of its second class, practical instruction was not part of the deal. “I’ve had no formal training, even though I went to film school and art college!” he says with a laugh. “Both were places of anarchy, really. They just gave you an opportunity to find your own way of doing things, which I think is the best training.” As one of the few students who wanted to shoot, Deakins kept quite busy. “I shot something like 15 films in three years,” he says. “One was a 90-minute gangster movie! Most were on 16mm, but one or two were on 35mm.” Deakins’ own first film was a documentary about stag hunting in Devon. “In the rural community there, stag hunting used to be a very big focal point of social life, so the film wasn’t just about stag hunting,” he notes. “In the end, I took the film to North Devon, and they showed it in village halls for quite awhile.” Director Michael Radford remembers his NFS schoolmate vividly: “Roger was clearly one of the most talented guys, a cut above everybody else. It became very apparent very quickly, not so much in what he did but just in his approach to things, that he was a very, very serious guy.” Deakins graduated with the idea of making documentaries, long-form observational films in the vein of Frederick Wiseman and Richard Leacock. “For many months, I looked for work as a camera assistant, and I didn’t get any. So I started looking for work as a cameraman.” The jobs gradually came: industrial films, music videos, and then, in his first big break, a documentary about the war in Rhodesia. For the next seven years, Deakins shot and sometimes directed documentaries for British television. He spent nine
Above: Firsttime director Frank Darabont poses with Deakins on location for the period drama The Shawshank Redemption (1994), which brought the cinematographer his first ASC Award. Left: Deakins checks the camera as the crew readies a dolly/crane shot in Shawshank’s main set.
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Deakins prepares to take to the skies to capture a shot for Courage Under Fire (1996), his first collaboration with director Ed Zwick. They reteamed two years later for The Siege (1998).
months on a yacht during an aroundthe-world race. He came under mortar fire in Ethiopia during its guerrilla war. He filmed anthropological documentaries in India and Sudan. Working with 16mm and an Éclair NPR, he became increasingly adept as a camera operator. Radford was among his early collaborators. One of their documentaries followed Van Morrison on tour through Ireland( Van Morrison in Ireland). “Roger’s camerawork was amazing,” the director says. “For the first concert in Belfast, we’d hired six cameramen, and they all missed the plane, so Roger literally shot the first half of the concert on his own, and every single foot of it was useful!‘How to shoot a concert with one camera’ was what that lesson was about.” For Deakins, a turning point came on a documentary about schizophrenia that followed eight patients after their release from a London hospital. When one suffered a horrendous breakdown in her apartment, his partner wanted to keep filming, but Deakins instead put the camera down to assist the woman. After that, he stopped shooting documentaries. “I began to feel 68
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that what I was doing was very voyeuristic,” he recalls. “I questioned how much effect I was having, or whether it was just me trying to further
“I’ve had no formal training, even though I went to film school and art college. Both were places of anarchy, really.”
my own career. I was quite conflicted. So when I got the chance to shoot dramas, I decided that was more me.” His first dramatic project was a TV miniseries called Wolcott, which came through a friend of a friend. Soon thereafter, Radford called. He was planAmerican Cinematographer
ning to direct his first theatrical feature, Another Time, Another Place, a love triangle set in Scotland during World War II, and he’d been impressed by Deakins’ work on the miniseries. “It was also an instinct that he was going to deliver,” says Radford, who adds with a laugh, “Then I had terrible second thoughts! I thought, ‘What am I doing? I know the guy, I’ve seen this TV series, but it doesn’t tell me anything,really,about what we’re going to do now.’But in the end, the decision paid off in spades. The film worked very well, and not at all solely because of my direction, but because of Roger’s stunning photography— in Super 16mm! At that time, Super 16 was very marginal. You had about half a stop of variation on it, so Roger had to light very precisely, with a forest of little lights in these very tiny spaces. The film was a real success in Europe; it got a 10-minute standing ovation at Cannes. It was really a big break for both of us.” “I never looked back after that,” says Deakins. He reteamed with Radford on 1984, an adaptation of George Orwell’s novel. “That was a big movie,” says Radford.“I remember
driving with Roger to the set of the rally with 2,000 extras, six camera units, 25 assistants. It was just huge, and it was at night. As we drove onto the set, we looked at each other and said, ‘Yep, this is it.’ It was the big time, where we were going to show whether we’d got it or not.” Deakins was subsequently admitted to the British Society of Cinematographers, and 1984 won numerous awards for special effects, “but there were absolutely no special effects whatsoever,” Radford notes with amusement. “Everything was shot in-camera,” including the ubiquitous front-projection newsreels (“horrendously complicated”) and the menacing helicopters. Deakins achieved the film’s bold, unusual palette photochemically with the bleach-bypass process, the first time a cinematographer had used the technique. Radford and Deakins made one more film together, White Mischief. The director says he was always impressed by Deakins’ investment in the content of the film and his close observation of the actors. “Roger was a great foil,” says Radford. “You could always go to him and ask, ‘What did you think of that take?’ and his answer would address more than mechanics. You’d have a proper discussion.” Deakins worked steadily in England, including features with Alex Cox ( Sid and Nancy ), Terry Jones (Personal Services ),Mike Figgis ( Stormy Monday), James Deardon ( Pascali’s Island) and Bob Rafelson ( Mountains of the Moon).One film that helped Deakins clarify what he didn’t want to do was Air America, directed by Roger Spottiswoode and starring Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr. The story was about a pilot recruited into a corrupt CIA airlift operation in Laos. “I thought we were going to make some sort of subversive, M.A.S.H.-style comedy, but it didn’t turn out that way,” says Deakins. Rather, it wound up as a buddy film. “That film was a great opportunity,but it was a bit too big for its own good, really,” says the cinematographer. “At one point
These photos show Deakins at work on Martin Scorsese’s Kundun (1998), a highly unusual telling of the story of Tibet’s Dalai Lama. Deakins has likened the film to a poem, and he told AC, “The story is really about the child, and it’s seen primarily from his point of view .” He earned an ASC Award nomination for his work on the film.
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Displaying True Grit
n the face of it, True Grit appears to be one of the simpler stories that Joel and Ethan Coen have tackled, but “it’s probably the most difficult film we’ve ever done together,” says Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC. Adapted from Charles Portis’ novel of the same name, the film is narrated by 14-year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), who tries to track down her father’s killer, Chaney (Josh Brolin), with the help of a one-eyed marshal, Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges). The two are joined by a Texas Ranger (Matt Damon) who has his own reasons for hunting Chaney, who is hiding in Indian Territory with his gang. Deakins found Portis’ book “meditative and melancholy, gritty and real,” and the Coens’ script called for a bleak, wintry look. Shooting on location in the Southwest, the filmmakers got what they wished for, but impetuous weather, far-flung locations and harsh terrain created a challenging 55-day shoot.“People were saying, ‘It’s three people and their horses. What could be so difficult?’” Deakins recalls with some amusement. The pattern was set on day one, when the filmmakers woke up to discover that a nighttime blizzard had dumped 2' of snow on them. “I looked around and thought, ‘What the hell can we shoot today?’” recalls Deakins. Only
one scene called for snow, and that location was 150 miles away. Deakins figured he could capture the scene with a Libra head and an electric cart, so the team loaded the equipment onto a stake bed and plowed through the snow. “We managed to make it there just by afternoon,and we got the scene,” he says. Deakins stayed nimble with the help of his core collaborators, 1stAC Andy Harris, key grip Mitch Lillian, dolly grip Bruce Hamme and gaffer Chris Napolitano. “They were brilliant,” he says. “Under those conditions, you really had to float with it.” True Grit required extremes of lighting: minimal (flame-lit cabins) and maximal (nighttime gunfights and other action). “Imagine you’re on an electric cart with a stabilizing head tracking with a galloping horse at night, some of it through forest and some of it on an open, empty plain — and you’ve got to light it!” Deakins says, wincing. “The only way to do that is to get as big a light as you can afford and put it as far away as you can.” That was his approach to a major sequence in which Mattie and her compatriots seek refuge from a snowstorm in a mountain cabin. When they discover that the dwelling is occupied by two members of Chaney’s gang, they set up a stakeout on the surrounding hills. When the rest of the gang arrives, a
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shootout erupts. The Coens set this sequence entirely at night, requiring Deakins to light a half-mile swath of valley. “I didn’t want a hard, singlesource moonlight effect, but something softer because of the oncoming snow,” he says. Because the sequence comprised three parts, each with a different eyeline, he had to design three separate lighting setups, all without benefit of cranes because of the rocky location. “Rumor went around that I was using 55big HMIs, and it was partly true, but I wasn’t using them all at once!” says the cinematographer. Rather, they were divided among three hillside platforms, each stretching 120'-150'and holding more than 20 12Ks and 18Ks. The crew then leapfrogged the lights. “We had the first and second sequence ready to go, and then,while we were shooting the second sequence, our rigging crew was moving lights from the first position to the third,” says Deakins. “It’s hard to move around at night, especially on the side of a rocky hill. That’s when preparation really counts.” — Patricia Thomson
True Grit photos by Lorey Sebastian and Wilson Webb, courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
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we had three crews working. Things get away from you, and you pile money into shooting stuff that’s never used. It made me decide that smaller, more contained movies were for me.” He put his London apartment on the market and bought a flat in Devon. “I just thought I’d get out of London and do things that I really wanted to do,” he says. Then his agent received the script for Barton Fink, the Coens’ fourth film, about a pretentious New York playwright (John Turturro) who moves to Hollywood in 1941 to take a screenwriting job, winds up suffering writer’s block, and unknowingly befriends a serial killer (John Goodman), his gregarious next-door neighbor. Deakins’ agent recommended he turn the film down. “She said it was very strange, and that it seemed to be two different movies,” recalls Deakins. “But I’d heard of the Coen brothers by then, so I said, ‘Wait a minute!’” The Coens recall that they had been tracking Deakins for awhile by the time their first cinematographer, Barry Sonnenfeld, decided to move on to directing. Because Barton Fink would be a low-budget, nonunion production, they narrowed the field to foreign cinematographers. “We wanted someone with experience whose work we could look at,” says Joel Coen. “Of the people we were talking to, Roger had done the most by far and had the most impressive work.”Deakins had just come off Air America, so they called that film’s producers to inquire about him. The response was not enthusiastic. As
All of these photos were taken on location in Mississippi during filming of the period comedy O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), which brought Deakins another ASC nomination. Clockwise from top left: Ethan Coen (left) and Joel Coen join Deakins at the camera; Deakins and Andy Harris, his longtime first assistant, during a break in filming; the cinematographer stoops to capture some action with a chicken; the filmmakers dolly down a row of prisoners. ww.theasc.com w
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Top: Deakins and Harris capture a close-up of Frances McDormand’s legs for a scene in the Coens’ period noir comedy The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001), which brought Deakins his second ASC Award. Bottom: Deakins lines up a shot of Jennifer Connelly for Vadim Perelman’s House of Sand and Fog (2003), which required the creation of some convincing exteriors onstage at Culver Studios.
Deakins relates, “They said, ‘He doesn’t like working with multiple cameras, he doesn’t like using a zoom lens, and he likes to operate,’ as though these were criticisms.” But this assessment was music to the Coens’ ears. And from their very first encounter, the match felt right. “We just seemed to be on the same wavelength,” says Deakins. “They’re very straightforward, unpretentious people.” Barton Fink established a work 72
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Deakins in that process early on, usually as soon as they’ve drafted the first set of storyboards. “We use Roger as a sounding board for the movie in its entirety — he’s the third collaborator,” says Joel. Ethan adds, “After we do a draft [of the storyboards] ourselves, we’ll do another draft with Roger so we can talk about each scene and incorporate his ideas.” Typically,five weeks are allotted to preproduction, during which the storyboards continue to evolve as the filmmakers secure locations and discuss ideas. By the time the Coens and Deakins are on set, there’s little need for them to talk. “Their sets are very quiet,” says the cinematographer. “They don’t do a lot of takes. They know what they pattern that continues to this day. As want, and they know when they’ve got screenwriters, the Coens use very visual it. They work very economically.” language, so the film’s look is established Deakins’ input continues during in the script. The film is then storyproduction. “From shot design, to lightboarded in its entirety with longtime ing, to how and when you move the storyboard artist J. Todd Anderson, a camera, Roger is brilliant at bringing habit that originally sprang from the some extra dimension that changes the brothers’ budget-consciousness. “They entire feeling of what you’re doing,” says still like to storyboard,” Deakins says. “It Joel. “Even when he’s shooting inserts, helps them focus on what’s really he’s always looking for a more effective important in the scene, and it’s a good or idiosyncratic way to shoot. For examway of working.” The brothers involve ple, in No Country for Old Men [AC Oct. American Cinematographer
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A League of His Own
’07], we were shooting just an insert of a watch — it’s when Llewelyn [Josh Brolin] is waiting for that wounded guy to die under the tree — and Roger framed it in such a way that it was as much about the landscape as it was about the watch.” Ethan notes, “We cut our own movies, and as an editor, you think, ‘Oh, it’s an insert of a watch,’or you think about the information that has to be relayed: it’s an hour’s passage. You think [the shot] is about the watch face. But instead of framing it against the ground, which is how we both thought of it, Roger put it against a big landscape with the trees.” Joel adds, “And in a movie all about landscapes, that’s kind of interesting and important.” In addition to marking the start of his collaboration with the Coens, the 1990s were significant for Deakins for other professional reasons. He moved to the United States in 1992, settling in Santa Monica, Calif.; he became an ASC member in 1994, after being proposed for membership by John Bailey, Allen Daviau and Steven Poster; and he earned his first Academy Award nomination and won his first ASC Award for 1994’s The Shawshank Redemption (AC June ’95) . He shot another dozen films that decade, including the Coens’ Fargo (AC March ’96), which showed the brothers’ more naturalistic, observational side, and Martin Scorsese’s Kundun (AC Feb.
Top left: Deakins, Harris and other crew members chase Bryce Dallas Howard for a shot on M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village (2004). Top right: Deakins and Shyamalan plot their approach. Middle: The cinematographer stands beneath a grid of space lights onstage at Universal Studios for Sam Mendes’ Jarhead (2005). Bottom: At ease in the muck, Deakins waits to capture a shot for Jarhead.
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’98), which told the story of the Dalai Lama. For the latter film, Deakins’ documentary background was key. He recalls, “There weren’t any professional actors in the movie, just Tibetans [reenacting] their own heritage, so Marty was concerned about the relationship between the cameraman and subject,” he says. The following decade was equally busy. Deakins completed 19 features, including two technically pioneering films for the Coens, O Brother, Where Art Thou? (AC Oct. ’00) and The Man Who Wasn’t There (AC Oct. ’01). O Brother quickly gained fame for being the first U.S. studio feature to be digitally colorcorrected in its entirety, and Deakins spent almost two months on the process, using the technology to drain every trace of green from the lush Mississippi landscape.For The Man Who Wasn’t There , the goal was luminescent black-andwhite imagery, but the filmmakers were contractually obligated to create a color master for foreign markets. In a novel solution,Deakins shot on color stock and printed on Kodak 5269, a blackand-white stock designed for film titles. He won his second ASC Award for The Man Who Wasn’t There. In addition to his ongoing collaboration with the Coens, Deakins’ recent credits include several features with new creative partners, including Ron Howard ( A Beautiful Mind ), Vadim Perelman ( House of Sand and Fog ; AC Jan. ’04), M. Night Shyamalan ( The Village; AC Aug. ’04) and Paul Haggis (In the Valley of Elah ), as well as forays into animation as a technical consultant on Wall-E (AC July ’08) and How to Train Your Dragon. It’s diverse work, to be sure, but his résuméhas some underlying consistencies that can be traced back to his roots in documentary filmmaking. First and foremost is the fact that he always operates the camera. (To satisfy union requirements, he hires an operator, but he often picks a new member of the local, essentially providing an apprenticeship.) He has repeatedly stated that composition is the most critical part of
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Well known for carrying an array of his own gag lights, Deakins is also quick to improvise a camera solution or two. Here, seated on an ATV for a shot tracking through the woods on Revolutionary Road, he has stabilized the camera with a beach ball — “a poorman’s Wescam, if you like.” He earned an ASC nomination for his work on the film, his second collaboration with Mendes.
the cinematographer’s job. “It’s much more important than lighting,” he told AC. “The balance of the frame— the way an actor is relating to the space in the frame— is the most important factor in helping the audience feel what the character is thinking.” Shooting
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Deakins has also maintained his interest in “people within their environments,” and that documentary leitmotif carries over into his dramatic work in subtle ways. Heprefers Super 35mm over anamorphic for widescreen movies because “I like being close to people, and I like to feel somebody’s presence in a space. I don’t like the distortion of anamorphic or the depth-of-field. I don’t like backgrounds being out of focus.” Because he operates, Deakins tries to pre-rig lighting as much as possible. “I don’t want the lighting to get in the way of operating,” he says. “I want to be able to say, ‘Okay, I’m lit,’ so I can then concentrate on the framing and documentaries no doubt honed what the actor is doing. By the time we Deakins’ skills, but,as Joel Coen says, come to shoot, I’ve got a whole file on “Composition in movies is often an on- every location, and scene breakdowns the-fly, instinctual thing. You either and lighting diagrams for everything. have it or you don’t. We’ve worked with Not that I necessarily stick to those a lot of operators, and Roger is by far the plans, but they’re a good place to start. best.” I’m one of those people who believe that
the more organized you are at the beginning, the more freedom it gives you to play around when you’re on set.” Gaffer Christopher Napolitano recalls that on House of Sand and Fog , “Roger handed me a stack of notes, I rigged everything to his notes, and nothing ever changed, which seemed really unique. He had everything down to exactly how many lights he wanted somewhere, and he used every one of them.” That kind of precision is possible on a single-camera production, another common thread in Deakins’ work, along with his preference for prime lenses. “[Shooting with primes] forces you to move the camera and think about where the camera needs to be,” he says. Filming only with zooms, he contends, is “a sloppy way of shooting.” Since 2005, Deakins has freely shared his opinions and advice in a forum on his website. “Most of my comments end with, ‘There are no
On location in New Mexico for the Coens’ True Grit (2010), Deakins captures some river action, assisted by Harris.
rules,’” he says. “Every shot and every movie is different. There’s no right and wrong. Cinematography is personal; it’s something you have to develop yourself, and there’s no easy way to do that. It’s just a matter of spending time on your ownand finding it. You can’t learn it
from somebody else. It’s not just technique. In fact, it’s less about technique and more about a way of seeing.” ●
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EFilm recently opened a DI suite within Universal Studios’ post facility, allowing filmmakers to digitally grade their projects under the same roof as Universal’s full sound services.
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EFilm Opens DI Suite at Universal By Simon Wakelin
Digital lab EFilm has opened a digital-intermediate suite at Universal Studios’ postproduction facility. Thanks to the new suite, clients can now access uncompressed 2K 4:4:4 scans, dailies or trailers, and do digital grading while situated next to Universal’s soundmixing stages, sound editorial, picture-editing suites and other sound services. (Film scanning and filmouts will still be done at EFilm’s Hollywood facility.) “This will be far more efficient,” explains Kevin Dillon, executive vice president and general manager of EFilm. “With so many post services in one location, it will be easier for clients to finish products in a timely manner. It’s also a great opportunity for us to build our business model for remote services.” Universal also benefits from the new on-lot service, as directors and cinematographers alike have often lamented the time they spend traveling back and forth between DI facilities and Universal’s sound department. “Directors used to have to run around Los Angeles to perform their DIs,” says Chris Jenkins, senior vice president of Universal Studios Sound. “They often said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to simply walk out the door here and go into a DI suite?’ It’s just practical. It’s important for Universal to expand its capabilities this way.” Recent projects that were finished at EFilm’s Universal suite include Paul Weitz’s comedy Little Fockers, shot by Remi Adefarasin, BSC. Before the suite officially opened, the director of another feature popped into the grading suite to oversee the finessing of a visual-effects shot. “It was the kind of tweak that only takes five minutes to perform, and having the suite on the lot meant he didn’t 78
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have to drive across town to sign off on a simple task,” says Josh Haynie, EFilm’s vice president of operations. Interactive sessions with EFilm and Deluxe Laboratories’ other locations in New York and London are also possible, allowing real-time access to scans and media over a secure, private, dedicated fiberoptic connection that is fully encrypted. “We can transmit anywhere we need to go,” says Haynie. “We just had a session where we piped information over to a cinematographer in London. He worked on images, all with absolute accuracy, while we were watching at EFilm in Hollywood.” Interchangeable film-projection and digital-projection systems are in place at Universal’s Alfred Hitchcock Theatre. The DI suite offers white and silver screens available to accommodate both 2-D and 3-D XpanD and RealD systems. Haynie notes that involving EFilm early in production through the CinemaScan process in Hollywood always leads to the best results. “For Ron Howard’s movie The Dilemma, shot by Salvatore Totino, ASC, we understood what was going on very early in the production because we were providing CinemaScan dailies,” he says. “It’s only going to help the DI process if we come in early and are involved in camera tests and hair and makeup tests as well.” Although digitally captured features are becoming increasingly common, EFilm is still seeing many productions originate on film, says Haynie. “We’re seeing a lot of 3-perf and 4-perf coming through CinemaScan dailies,” he says. “Film has such a wonderful dynamic range. Plus, once it becomes a file, it’s as easy to work with in the digital domain as any digital-capture format.” As for the future, EFilm is considering 4K dailies, but not until scanning technology advances far enough to make for a quick turnaround. “Right now, turning around 4K scans at a fast enough rate for dailies deliverables isn’t possible,” says Haynie. “Of course, everyone’s goal is 4K dailies. From a data standpoint, we can do it, but we’re waiting for the scanning technology to catch up.” EFilm’s parent company, Deluxe Entertainment Services Group, Inc., recently entered into an exclusive multi-year filmprocessing and printing agreement with Universal. The print deal will see the studio utilizing Deluxe facilities in Hollywood, Toronto, London, Rome, Barcelona and Sydney.
American Cinematographer
EFilm photo by Gary Krueger, courtesy of Deluxe and Universal. HPA photos by Ryan Miller, courtesy of Capture Imaging.
Post Focus
HPA Honors Outstanding Achievements in Post By Jon D. Witmer The Hollywood Post Alliance recently presented its fifth annual HPA Awards, which honor outstanding achievements in post processes for features, television and commercials. The judges for the awards included ASC members Stephen Lighthill, Yuri Neyman and Daryn Okada. HPA President Leon Silverman, the general manager of Walt Disney Studios and an ASC associate member, served as the master of ceremonies at Skirball Cultural Center’s Cotsen Auditorium. He noted how the awards have grown since their inception — the Awards Committee received more submissions this year than ever before — and, after musing about the unsung importance of post professionals, he passed the baton to the evening’s presenters with the proclamation, “Get ready to be proud to be in post!” Echoing Silverman’s review of the past five years, Richard Crudo, ASC reflected on the technological evolution that has marked color correction’s recent history, marveling at the rapid changeover from the predominance of photochemical finishing to the now ubiquitous digital-intermediate process. Crudo then presented awards for Outstanding Color Grading to ASC associate Stefan Sonnenfeld of Company 3 for Alice in Wonderland (AC April ’10), Steve Porter of Riot for “Episode Five” from the miniseries The Pacific (AC March ’10), and Siggy Ferstl of Company 3 for the AT&T commercial “Legends.” Ferstl was also nominated for his work on ESPN’s Robben Island. Also nominated were Maxine Gervais of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging (The Book of Eli ); ASC associate Steven J. Scott of EFilm ( Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief ); Natasha Leonnet of EFilm ( Get Low; AC Aug. ’10); Skip Kimball of Modern VideoFilm ( Avatar; AC Jan. ’10); Scott Klein of Technicolor (True Blood, “Bad Blood”); Kevin O’Connor of Deluxe Digital Media (Temple Grandin); Tim Vincent of LaserPacific ( Mad Men , “Souvenir”; AC Oct. ’09); Tom Poole of Company 3 NY (Dos Equis, “Ice Fishing”; Dos Equis, “Cliff Diver”); Dave Hussey of Company 3 (Chevy, “We Can Carry”); and
Richard Crudo, ASC (center) presented HPA Awards for Outstanding Color Grading to Stefan Sonnenfeld (left), Siggy Ferstl (right) and Steve Porter (not pictured).
Tim Masick of Company 3 NY (ESPN, “Robben Island Promo”). Avid Technology sponsored the Outstanding Editing awards, which were presented to Lee Smith, ACE, for Inception; Mark J. Goldman and ACE members Christopher Nelson, Stephen Semel and Henk van Eeghen of Touchstone Tele-
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vision for Lost, “The End”; and Chris Franklin of Big Sky Editorial for American Express, “Geoffrey Canada.” Outstanding Compositing awards went to Erik Winquist, Robin Hollander, Erich Eder and Giuseppe Tagliavini of Weta Digital for Avatar; and Diramid Harrison Murray, Russell Dodgson, Tim Osborne and Adam Rowland of Frame-
store for Kia Soul, “This or That.” Outstanding Sound awards were presented to Michael Hedges, Gilbert Lake, Brent Burge and Chris Ward of Park Road Post Production for District 9; Brad North, Joe DeAngelis, Luis Galdames and Jackie Oster of Universal Sound for House, M.D., “Help Me”; and David Brolin of Universal Studios and Phil Daccord of Giaronomo for Devil, “Theatrical Trailer #1.” The NAB Show sponsored the Engineering Excellence Awards, which were presented to three companies. Arri earned an award for its Alexa digital-cinema camera, which supports the recording of Apple ProRes 4444, 422 (HQ), LT or Proxy encoded images onto onboard SxS memory cards for direct editorial delivery. Cine-tal earned an award for its Davio Signal Processor, which boasts a flexible architecture supported by a library of software packages that enable a wide range of tasks, including color-management processing, display calibration and 3-D stereo workflows. Digital Vision earned an award for its Open EXR color workflow,
which utilizes 16-bit “Half Float” OpenEXRs to support true, real-time high-dynamicrange content grading. Additionally, Texas Instruments earned a special recognition for its DLP Cinema Technology, which is used for color management and mastering in post facilities around the globe. Four HPA Judges Awards for Creativity and Innovation in Postproduction were also handed out during the ceremony. FotoKem picked up an award for its NextLab Mobile proprietary software and commodity hardware system, which presents an advanced toolset for file-based post. Reliance MediaWorks earned an award for its Custom Image Processing software applications for film, video and digital sources. Gradient Effects earned an award for its Gradient Location-Optimized Workflow (GLOW) previsualization and nonlinear production system for 2-D and stereoscopic 3-D. Additionally, LightIron Digital picked up an award for its Outpost and Lightstream systems; Outpost allows operators to verify, backup, render one lights of and transcode footage simultane-
ously on set, while Lightstream distributes those files. Capping the evening’s festivities, Ted Gagliano, 20th Century Fox’s president of feature post, was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award. Since joining Fox in 1991, Gagliano has shepherded more than 600 features through post, including Titanic, the X-Men series, the special editions of the original Star Wars trilogy, and Avatar. Deluxe President and CEO Cyril Drabinsky, an ASC associate member, shared the stage with producer Jon Landau and composer Patrick Doyle to introduce Gagliano by way of personal anecdotes from years of collaboration and friendship. “Movies are still light and sound [in combination with] great stories — science intertwined with art,” Gagliano enthused as he accepted the award. Pledging to return to the office the next morning to begin “the second half” of his career, Gagliano also noted, “Movies are harder to make now than ever; the stakes are higher, yet the rewards have never been so great.” ●
HPA President Leon Silverman reprised his role as the awards’ master of ceremonies.
Filmmakers’ Forum
Left: Writer/director Lena Dunham (holding cage) and cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes (at camera) line up a shot for the the feat ure film Tiny Furniture, which was shot with the Canon EOS 7D. Right: Dunham also stars in the film as Aura, who develops a crush on her co-worker Keith (David Ca ll).
mostly the latter. I often tried to use the architecture of the location to give shots more visual interest. One example is the scene in which Aura (played by Lena) and Jed, the Nietzschean Cowboy (Alex Karpovsky), One of the reasons I was interested in working on Tiny Furni- visit her apartment. They enter through Aura’s mother’s studio, and ture is that it’s a very traditional story in a lot of ways, and I respond it’s a wide shot that shows them coming in and turning on the lights to films that are plotted in a conventional way but use unconvenin this big, white space. To us, the wide shot tells the story best tional methods of visualizing the story. Most of the features I’ve because it forces the audience to think about the characters in their worked on, nonfiction and fiction, have been more abstract, and with environment, and it also enhances the comedic moment with the an abstract screenplay, most of the time you’re working against the dead hamster; you can’t see it but want to, and hearing them story to help it make more sense to the audience. describe it in detail makes that moment funnier. Writer/director Lena Dunham’s script was dialogue heavy, with For the scene between Aura and her sister (played by Lena’s very little action, so we asked ourselves how we could turn that into sister, Grace), I set up the camera in such a way that the wall between a visual experience. We both like Woody Allen’s films,so we decided their rooms splits the shot down the middle. That’s where the camera that talking about Manhattan was a good place to start. On that film, had to be to convey that their two bedrooms are basically the same Gordon Willis, ASC and Woody Allen did a great job of making bold room, but divided. There was no other way to illustrate the proximvisual choices that make the audience forget they’re essentially ity of their rooms, which says a lot about their relationship. watching people have conversations. One great example is the epic We wanted to give Tiny Furniture a clean, high-key look. We shot of the Queensboro Bridge right before the sun rises. It’s a shot day interiors at 200 ASA and used fast Canon EF lenses, all dialogue scene between two people sitting, but we only see their primes, which got us into a bit of trouble because we didn’t have a backs in a single extreme-wide shot. It becomes more about the envi- chance to test them, and they ended up distorting the image around ronment and the tone than the specific words and facial expressions the edges when we opened them up. Joe Anderson, my friend, first that are often emphasized in this kind of scene. assistant and operator, did an amazing job pulling focus with a very For Tiny Furniture, we decided we should also strive to keep difficult camera system. things wide and do a lot of one-shot scenes. We chose to shoot on We used a lot of natural light or added to what was there the Canon EOS 7D two weeks after it was released. When we with a couple of Kino Flos, paper lanterns or very small tungsten watched our tests projected off HDCam-SR at Technicolor New York, lamps. We shot night interiors at 400 ASA. Most of the action takes the camera’s CMOS rolling shutter was very apparent, so we were place in Aura’s all-white apartment, and it looks kind of like an art hesitant to move the camera. We also couldn’t afford a Steadicam or gallery. We generally wanted soft light, so we bounced lamps or dolly of any kind, so the shots were either handheld or locked off, pushed through 8-by rags and used a lot of practicals to light deep 82
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Photos by Joe Anderson, courtesy of IFC Films.
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The Challenges of Shooting a Feature With the Canon 7D By Jody Lee Lipes
into the background. It was simple, straightforward stuff, and my gaffer, Jeff Peixoto, a true artist, did most of the lighting by himself because we couldn’t afford a larger crew. Even though we had a tiny crew and no equipment, it was important that the night exteriors look natural, and not like we had a single source just blasting the subject so we could see. That kind of stylization would have been very distracting with this kind of story. We had a 2K, a couple of 1Ks and rope lights, which wasn’t enough to light on the scale that the complex night work demanded. So instead we worked largely with natural light, setting the 7D to 800 ASA and sometimes going as high as 2,000 ASA. It made sense to ramp up the exposure. It looks noisy and grainy but real. I think the light quality would have been more of a distraction if I’d tried to force a clean image without the appropriate equipment or personnel. The 7D can be a helpful tool in lowlight situations, and I was very impressed by the latitude in the highlights when using the highlight-protection function. However, I would never choose to work with this camera again for a theatrical presentation. The image is very compressed, there are significant moiré problems, clean camera moves are nearly impossible, and it’s very uncomfortable to operate. (When we shot handheld, I used a Zacuto shoulder mount with handlebars, a matte box, follow focus, a lot of NDs and no diffusion filters. The camera’s look settings were all at zero.) Editor Lance Edmands and Sam Daley, my longtime colorist, came up with the workflow for posting Tiny Furniture . After converting the native 1080 24p H.264 files to ProRes for a Final Cut editorial, Lance delivered a ProRes locked picture to Technicolor New York. Technicolor up-rezzed to 10-bit uncompressed 4:2:2 QuickTime files and recorded those out to HDCam-SR. From there we did a tape-to-tape color correct from HDCam-SR to HDCam-SR on a DaVinci 2K Plus. HDCam cassettes and a QuickTime were dubbed for exhibition. Going up to 10bit was important for color correction because it gave us the bit depth necessary to create windows and secondary isolations. Sam and I were both surprised by how malleable the image was in post. ●
New Products & Services Colorfront Optimizes On-Set Dailies Colorfront has announced a partnership with Arri for Colorfront On-Set Dailies, a state-of-the-art digital-dailies tool optimized for use with Arri’s Alexa and D-21 digital cameras and their corresponding workflows. The On-Set Dailies system incorporates production-proven tools for dailies work — including playback and sync, QC, color grading, audio and metadata management, and simultaneous faster-than-realtime deliverables in common file formats — combined with Arri’s color and image science. In addition to benefiting productions working with Arri digital cameras, Colorfront’s system can be integrated into any digital-dailies workflow. On-Set Dailies has an easy-to-use, node-based operator interface, and can load media files from film scans, tape capture, disk and solid-state recorders. The system also synchronizes sound files with picture using automated and manual techniques. Its image-processing capabilities include primary and selective color correction, the application of 3-D LUTs, printer light and ASC CDL compatibility, image resizing tools, and a range of burn-in options. The system also works with stereoscopic media, allowing stereo adjustments of color and position, and it assembles takes into rolls and tapes for deliverables, screeners and archiving. Input media formats include DPX, ArriRAW, ProRes 422 and 444, Avid DNxHD, QuickTime (with various codecs) and broadcast WAV audio files. Deliverables formats include MPG4 H.264 for Web delivery, iPhone and iPad; MPG2 for authored DVDs and chaptered Blu-rays; Avid DNxHD MXF and QuickTime files; QuickTime files with various codecs, including ProRes 422 and 444 for Final Cut Pro editorial; and TIFF and JPEG stills and WAV audio. For additional information, visit www.colorfront.com and www.arri.com. DSC Labs Adds Red CamBook DSC Labs has added the Red CamBook to its popular CamBook series of charts. The Red CamBook includes three pages of charts designed specifically for the Red One and Red Epic. The CamBook includes unique Red framing formats, including one chart with the industry-standard 18-percent gray background and a second with DSC’s CamWhite background; both have Red camera framings for up to 5K. The Red CamBook also contains the Chro84
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• SUBMISSION INFORMATION • Please e-mail New Products/Services releases to:
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maDuMonde 28 chart, which features an 18-percent gray background, 24 colors, four skin tones and an 11-step crossed grayscale; the grayscale displays the exposure setting and determines exactly how gamma curves are affecting the image. “The neutral white and 18-percent gray backgrounds are great for achieving an accurate white balance,” says Graeme Nattress, problem solver for Red. “The Red CamBook allows you to achieve better exposure [and] a more accurate white balance, and it produces a record of the actual lighting on set, which helps keep you consistent in terms of colorimetry throughout postproduction.” The Red CamBook costs $480 and can be purchased directly from DSC Labs or Red, or from DSC’s worldwide reseller channels. For more information, visit http://dsclabs.com. Cinedeck Gets Extreme Cinedeck LLC has released version 2.0 of its Cinedeck Extreme cameramountable recorder, monitor and playback device. Cinedeck Extreme v2.0 offers full support for all versions of Apple’s ProRes codecs, including 4444, 422 HQ, 422 (LT) and 422 (Proxy), streamlining the camera-to-edit workflow for Final Cut Pro users. Cinedeck Extreme v2.0 enables any camera with an HDSDI or HDMI output to bypass onboard compression codecs and record to any of a number of loss-less compression standards, including all varieties of Avid DNxHD and CineForm Digital Intermediate. A FullStream Uncompressed option adds even more flexibility for uncompressed 444 and 422 recording. Cinedeck Extreme v2.0 is available for $9,995. The FullStream Uncompressed option, which includes a 256GB RAID SSD, is available for $3,495. For additional information, visit www.cinedeck.com. Panasonic Introduces P2 Storage Unit Panasonic Solutions Co. has introduced the AG-MSU10 P2 Media Storage Unit, a lightweight, mobile-workflow tool that simplifies the process of backing up P2 content. Delivering fast, stable transfer of data, the compact P2 Media Storage Unit elimi-
American Cinematographer
nates the need for larger, more expensive appliances in the field and quickly frees up P2 cards for additional shooting. The MSU10 boasts a small form factor with two slots, one for a P2 card and one for the AGMBX10 tray, which supports a 2.5" solidstate or hard drive for MSU10 backup. The MSU10 offers the flexibility of AC or battery operation, and includes USB 2.0 and eSATA interfaces for easy connection to NLEs. The MBX10 removable drive tray also includes USB 2.0 and eSATA interfaces. The bus-powered MSU10 can be easily transported from the field and connected to NLE systems, including PCs and Macs, to expedite the editing process. Content is transferred from a P2 card to the drive at four times real time. In addition to backup from the P2 card to the removable MBX10 tray drive, the MSU10 also offers Host and Device functions, allowing the unit to be a P2 card reader (when connected to a computer) or to host an external drive for copying. The MSU10 features a 3.2" LCD screen and simple one-touch operation. It provides P2 thumbnail display for confidence and metadata review and supports master-quality 10-bit AVC-Intra (100/50) and DVCPro HD, DVCPro50, DVCPro and DV recording formats. Clip-by-clip copying is also supported. Users can choose to purchase the storage unit without a drive (MSU10) or preconfigured with a 256GB 2.5" enterprise-class solid-state drive (MSU10-SSD) or a 500GB 2.5" enterprise-class hard-disk drive (MSU10-HDD). The AG-MBX10 removable disk tray can be purchased separately, and Panasonic also offers the MBX10-SSD and MBX10-HDD for further flexibility. For additional information, visit www.panasonic.com/broadcast. Photon Beard Offers Wireless Control Photon Beard has introduced the low-cost, easy-to-install, wireless Wi-Light system for studio lighting control. Designed primarily as an add-on to the company’s 86
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DMX-controlled series of Highlight fluorescents, the Wi-Light system can also control a mixture of fluorescent and incandescent lighting systems. The Wi-Light system can reduce or even eliminate the need for traditional wired DMX-controlled systems. The WiLight system consists of one master transmitter/receiver module and individual receiver modules that are added to each light source or dimmer; the master unit can be configured as a receiver for point-topoint links or as a repeater to cover wider areas. The transmitter range can vary, but generally works up to 300' and can be extended using repeaters. The small receiver modules fit to the base panel of Photon Beard’s Highlight, on the outside of the casing, and can be easily installed using only a small screwdriver. All further setup instructions are either automatic or transmitted wirelessly from the master module. The master unit provides the entry port for the system and takes a conventional DMX512 data stream from a standard control desk. An assignable block of channels are selected from the input stream and wirelessly transmitted. The original address positions of each channel in the block are preserved, so the user can easily set the receiver address on each light source. Unlike the basic DMX512 standard, which sends data continuously even when nothing has changed, the Wi-Light system utilizes a special protocol to transmit only the data that has changed. All parts of the Wi-Light system are bi-directional, and each Wi-Light unit contains a unique identity that is added to all transmissions. To close the network and eliminate interference, each receiver can be remotely set to respond to only one transmitter. The robust Wi-Light system also includes built-in error checking. All Photon Beard products are handbuilt to the highest standards. For more information, visit www.photonbeard.com. Pond5 Stocks After Effects Templates Pond5, an online marketplace for stock media, has added Adobe After Effects project templates to its collection, which includes royalty-free stock video footage and a full range of sound effects and American Cinematographer
production music. After Effects users can now save precious production time by tapping into Pond5’s cache of high-quality motion graphics templates and easily customizing them for a unique, professional end product. The Pond5 After Effects collection currently includes more than 140 dynamic templates to choose from, with prices starting at $10. The project files cover a wide range of motion-graphics needs, including advertisements, bumpers, show intros, credit sequences, video overlays and more. The Pond5 collection allows users to search for, preview, purchase and download AE templates instantly and directly from the website.
“Our goal is to provide content creators with a palette of stock media that expands their creative options, increases their productivity and saves them time and money,” says Tom Bennett, Pond5 cofounder and CEO. “After Effects templates do exactly that, and are a great complement to our selection of stock video and audio.” Pond5 is also accepting submissions of professional-quality After Effects templates. As with video and audio on Pond5, the model is straightforward and artist-friendly: Contributing artists upload their content at no cost, set the prices themselves and earn 50 percent of the license fee each time their content is purchased. Pond5 reviews all submitted work to check quality and technical specifications. For additional information, visit www.pond5.com. ●
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Advertiser’s Index 16x9, Inc. 88 AC 92 AFI 93 Aja Video Systems, Inc. 23 Alan Gordon Enterprises 88 Arri 37 ASC 1 AZGrip 88 Backstage Equipment, Inc. 79 Barger-Lite 89 Bron Imaging Group - US 29 Camera Essentials 89 CameraImage 87 Cavision Enterprises 57 Chapman/Leonard Studio Equipment Inc. 59 Chemical Wedding 95 Cinegear Expo 91 Cinematography Electronics 6 Cinekinetic 88 Cinerover 89 Clairmont Film & Digital 25 Codex Digital Ltd., 21 Cooke Optics 28 Creative Industry Handbook 81
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Deluxe C2 Digitalvision 40 Film Gear 75 Filmtools 6 Fox Searchlight 7, 11 FTC West 89 Fujji Motion Picture 32a-d, 47
Panther Gmbh 62 Paramount Studios 5, 9, 13 PED Denz 49, 89 Pelican Products, Inc 63 Photon Beard 88 Pille Film Gmbh 89 Pro8mm 88 Professional Sound Services 83
Glidecam Industries 27
Rosco Laboratories, Inc. 41
Interlochen Center for the Arts 75
Shelton Communications 88 Sony Electronics 19 Sony Pictures Classics 39 Sony Pictures Entertainment 15 Stanton Video Services 6 Super16 Inc. 89 SXSW 76
Eastman Kodak C4
John Wells Productions 17 Kino Flo 51 Kobold 29 Konrad Wolf 39 Laffoux Solutions, Inc. 88 Lee Filters 50 Lite Panels 2 MAT-Berlin 4 Matthews 89 M. M. Mukhi and Sons 88 NAB 85 New York Film Academy 77 O’Connor 49 Oppenheimer Camera Prod. 88 Otto Nemenz 73
Technocrane 79 Tiffen C3 VF Gadgets, Inc. 88 Willy’s Widgets 88 www.theasc.com 79, 80, 83, 88, 89, 90 Zacuto Films 89
In Memoriam Emmy-nominated cinematographer Michel Hugo, ASC, an affiliate assistant professor in the film department at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, died Oct. 12 after a brief battle with cancer. He was 80 years old. Hugo was born on Jan. 13, 1930,in Paris, France. As a teenager, he aided the French Resistance during World War II. After the war, he attended the Vaugirard film school in Paris, where he focused on cinematography, following in his father’s footsteps behind the camera. Hugo graduated in 1951 and quickly found steady work as a camera assistant on numerous French productions. Before long, he climbed the ranks and began notching professional credits as a director of photography. In 1956, Hugo moved to Los Angeles, Calif., and essentially began again at the bottom of the ladder. “I don’t regret it,” he told AC in January 1990. “I just pushed ahead. I never looked behind. “I always had great admiration for the technology of American movies,” he added. “I was overwhelmed by the abundance of equipment, the size of the stages. Taking a golf cart to move from stage to stage in a big studio — this was paradise!” In 1960, Hugo became a U.S. citizen and was admitted into the camera union, then known as IATSE Local 659. By 1967, he was once again ranked as a director of photography, and he was working on the hit television series Mission: Impossible. Following Mission: Impossible, Hugo transitioned to features, where he worked with such directors as Bob Rafelson ( Head), Jacques Demy ( Model Shop), Stuart Rosenberg (April Fools) and Stanley Kramer (R.P.M. and Bless the Beasts & Children ). “Lighting for television is no different from lighting a 92
feature,” he told AC. “Good lighting, in my opinion, is pure logic, pure common sense.” He also shot more than 30 telefilms over the course of his career, including The Forgotten Man , A Tattered Web , Thief, The Night Stalker and Climb an Angry Mountain. Hugo joined the ASC in 1972, after being recommended by Society fellow Ted Voigtlander. Through that decade, Hugo continued to juggle theatrical features and MOWs, and he also returned to episodic TV on the series The Streets of San Francisco and Tales of the Unexpected. He was nominated for an Emmy Award for his work on the 1978 miniseries The Awakening Land. In the 1980s, Hugo enjoyed a long run as cinematographer on the popular series Dynasty, and he repeated the feat in the following decade on Melrose Place. Hugo was also a member of the Directors Guild of America, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. He retired from filmmaking after Melrose Place came to an end, but in 2000, he began a new career as a teacher at UNLV. He frequented his students’ sets and was often heard to say, “Always check the camera lens to make sure no one has left a Dagwood sandwich in there,” his own, unique way of encouraging students to take care of the tools of their craft. Hugo is survived by his wife, Gloria; a daughter; two sons; and two grandchildren. — Jon D. Witmer ●
Photo courtesy of Francisco Menendez.
Michel Hugo, ASC, 1930-2010
Luke Lynch (E ‘09) Editor
Georgia Archer (P ‘98) Producer/Director/ Writer Anthony Dominici (D ‘99) Executive Producer Matt Kregor (E ‘99) Co-Producer/Editor Jose Pulido (E ‘99) Editor Sam Harowitz (C ‘09) Production Manager
Darren Aronofsky (D ‘92) Director Jon Avnet (D ’72) Executive Producer Matthew Libatique (C ‘92) Director of Photography
David Lynch (D ‘70) Producer/Director/ Writer/Editor/Production Designer Frederick Elmes (D ’72) Cinematographer
Miguel Bunster (C ’06) Cinematographer
Ed Zwick (D ‘75) Producer/Director/ Co-Writer Marshall Herskovitz (D ‘75) Producer/ Co-Writer Pieter Jan Brugge (P ‘79) Producer Steven Fierberg (D ‘95) Cinematographer Steven Rosenblum (C ‘76) Editor
Nick Simon (D ‘08) Director/Writer Thomas Mahoney (P ‘08) Producer Chady Eli Mattar (P ‘08) Producer Hayden Roush (P ‘08) Producer Scott C. Silver (E ’08) Producer/ Additional Editor Robert Konowalow (P ’10) Line Producer Daniel Meersand (S ’08) Writer Kevin Duggin (C ’08) Cinematographer Katy Skjerping (E ‘ 08) Editor Noah Rosenthal (C ’08) Second Unit Director
Andrew J. Spieler (D ‘09) Director/Writer Marina Stabile (P ‘09) Producer/Writer Samuel Harowitz (C ‘09) Cinematographer Vegard H. Sorby (E ‘09) Editor Harrison Yurkiw (PD ‘09) Production Designer
Josef Lieck (D ’01) Associate Producer/Line Producer
Lisa Wiegand (C ’95) Cinematographer
Maggie Kiley (DWW ‘09) Director/Writer
Christopher Jones (E ’03) Editor
For more information about AFI Fest, AFI Conservatory and other AFI programs, go to AFI.com.
Clubhouse News
Society Welcomes Egilsson, Mooradian Eagle Egilsson and George Mooradian have joined the Society as active members. Eagle Egilsson, ASC was born in Reykjavik, Iceland. From his father, he acquired a deep interest in still photography that evolved into a love for motion pictures. Determined to work behind the camera, he attended Columbia College Hollywood and focused on cinematography. His credits include the telefilms Sweet Temptation , A Face to Die For , Business for Pleasure and Sirens, as well as the series Red Shoe Diaries, The Wire, Eleventh Hour and Miami Medical. He was twice nominated by the ASC for his work on the series CSI: Miami, and he won an ASC award in 2009 for the “Venice Kings” episode of Dark Blue. Born in Atlanta, Ga., George Mooradian, ASC briefly studied economics at the University of Georgia before changing tacks to focus on film studies at Ohio University. Following graduation, he spent two years filming his travels across the globe and 94
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Manaki Brothers Honor Zsigmond Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC received the Golden Camera 300 Lifetime Achievement Award at the 31st Manaki Brothers International Cinematographers’ Film Festival in Bitola, Republic of Macedonia. During the festival, Zsigmond led a cinematography master class and also headed the festival’s awards jury, which presented the Golden Camera 300 award to Martin Gschlacht for the film Women Without Men. Awards were also presented to Benoît Debie, AFC, forEnter the Void (AC Oct. ’10); Giora Bejach, for Lebanon (AC April ’10); Thierry Godefroy, for Winter’s Beginning ; Christoph Beaucarne, AFC, for Mr. Nobody; Ádám Fillenz, for Pál Adrienn; and Daniël Bouquet, for Nothing Personal. ASC Busy at Createasphere Createasphere recently held an Entertainment Technology Exposition in Burbank, Calif., featuring two days of panels and events in addition to an exhibitors’ hall and gear alley. ASC members Daniel Pearl and Steven Poster joined camera operators Robert Reed Altman, Paul Babin, Alexander Calzatti, Mitch Dubin, Stan McClain, Jack Messitt, Chris Tufty and Dave Frederick for the panel “How Did They Get That Shot?” Curtis Clark, ASC joined Sony’s Peter Crithary and Dhanendra Patel for a Sony-intensive discussion, “The Evolution of the HDCam-SR Format.” Additionally, Stephen Lighthill, ASC sat down with American Film Institute graduates Uta Briesewitz, Darren Genet, Petra Korner and Tommy Maddox-Upshaw for American Cinematographer
“The Cinematography Program at AFI.” ASC associate Kristin Petrovich Kennedy, president of Createasphere, noted, “We have the privilege of working and mingling with some of the smartest, most interesting people in any business, anywhere. Our show grows because the expos shine a spotlight on the broad spectrum of content creators and the companies working with them as they push the envelope of technology and creativity, every single day.” Following the exhibition, Createasphere also hosted a two-day Postproduction Master Class. ASC associate Joshua Pines participated in the class’ keynote kickoff, and David Stump, ASC added insight to the “Camera to Post” roundtable. Wexler Rides Wild River Haskell Wexler, ASCrecently joined Michael Pogorzelski, director of the Academy Film Archive; Schawn Belston, senior vice president of library and technical services for Fox Filmed Entertainment; and actor Bruce Dern for a panel discussion about Elia Kazan’s Wild River (1960) at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater. Wexler served as an additional photographer on the 20th Century Fox film, which was recently restored by the Academy Film Archive. The screening was part of “A 20th Anniversary Tribute to The Film Foundation,” a multivenue series organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Film Department. AC Editors Notch Folio Nominations All three AC editors have earned nominations for Folio Eddie Awards for Best Single Article. Executive editor Stephen Pizzello is nominated for his Oct. ’09 article about Bronson; senior editor Rachael K. Bosley is nominated for her Oct. ’09 article about Mad Men; and associate editor Jon D. Witmer is nominated for his May ’10 article about Iron Man 2 . Gold, silver and bronze prizes will be awarded Jan. 13 in New York. ●
Photo of Clubhouse by Isidore Mankofsky, ASC; lighting by Donald M. Morgan, ASC.
Right: Eagle Egilsson, ASC. Below: George Mooradian, ASC.
honing his eye for light and composition before returning to the United States and attending the Maine Photographic Workshop. Mooradian notched his first credit as a director of photography on the feature Prisoner of Rio, and has since photographed such features as Retroactive, Crazy as Hell and The Circle. He has earned Emmy nominations four years in a row for his work on the series According to Jim.
Jack Couffer, ASC
When you were a child, what film made the strongest impression on you? Wow! I’m 85 years old and you’re asking for childhood memories? I don’t recall any film experiences from my early years. Which cinematographers, past or present, do you most admire, and why? It’s almost cliché to say Conrad Hall, ASC and Haskell Wexler, ASC because they are so often mentioned as inspirational, but they hardly qualify as gurus in my case because we were good friends and grew up together in the business. Both of them were truly fine influences on my life both personally and creatively. We know all the famous names, but there are a lot of folks out there with equal talent who just haven’t garnered the praise. I’ve admired the work of so many excellent cameramen that it’s a bit unsettling to single out any individual.
What has been your most satisfying moment on a project? Falling in love with the actress. You can read all about it in my new memoir, The Lion and the Giraffe.
What sparked your interest in photography? I have a built-in fascination with animals. I was given my first still camera at the age of 11, and I stalked birds, squirrels and rabbits in the hills and felt great if I got close enough with my wide-angle lens to see that I’d captured a recognizable creature. I’ve felt the same urge ever since. Thank God for the Arriflex. Where did you train and/or study? I went to the University of Southern California on the GI Bill intending a serious study of biology. I found myself next to a student named Conrad Hall in a make-up English class. The idea of a career in the movie business wasn’t even a spark in my head, nor in Conrad’s. He hoped to walk in the footsteps of his father, a well-known writer. Just for kicks, Con suggested that we audit a class in the new Department of Cinema Arts. We sat in on one lecture by Slavko Vorkapich and were seriously hooked. Who were your early teachers or mentors? Aside from Vorkapich, for mentors I’ve got to go way back in time to Floyd Crosby, ASC. He was the next most important person in the work that would become my lifetime world. And I was an assistant for Karl Freund, ASC, a great gentleman from whom I learned a lot. How couldn’t I? What are some of your key artistic influences? I looked to the representational painters of the so-called California School, watercolorists of the 1930s and early 1950s — Rex Brandt, Tom Craig, Vernon Nye and Emil Kosa. I loved their use of color and composition. In those days, when mist-shrouded scenes, focused subjects seen through fuzzy foregrounds, and sun flares all went automatically into the trash, I learned from New York cameraman Larry Madison about the inherent value of these often stunning ‘mistakes.’ 96
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How did you get your first break in the business? I was living aboard my boat while attending USC, and Conrad Hall and another student and I decided we’d put the ideas we’d learned in class into a film. We bought a used Bolex and some outdated film from Bob Gottschalk, who ran a hole-in-the-wall camera store, and then we set sail for Catalina during the summer break to make a film we’d call Sea Theme — no dialogue or color, just a beautiful schooner, sails and seas and a score of classical music. It won an American Cinematographer Award (in 1951) and was sold to TV, and the buyer financed a series. We thought we had the world by the tail, formed a company, Canyon Films, and became entrepreneurs while still in film school.
Have you made any memorable blunders? Too many, too embarrassing and too costly to mention. What is the best professional advice you’ve ever received? From editor Irving Lerner: ‘Cut out all the comin’s and goin’s.’ What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you? Winged Migration made me jealous — all the new technology I’ve missed out on! Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like to try? The niche I have happily occupied has been predominantly films with humans interacting with animals. Well-trained animals are very good at hitting their marks. If you weren’t a cinematographer, what might you be doing instead? I would have been a stuffy biology teacher in some second-rate high school in an out-of-the-way place. Thank you, Slavko Vorkapich. Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for membership? Conrad Hall and Haskell Wexler. How has ASC membership impacted your life and career? I am proud to be a member of such a respected group, and at the same time sad not to have contributed more. My only excuse is that I’ve been based outside the country, hiding under a mossy stone, for most of my career. ●
American Cinematographer
Photo by Mike Couffer.
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