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The International Journal of Film & Digital Production Techniques

Features 32 44 54 62

Let There Be Light Alwin Küchler, BSC launches a life-or-death space mission in the sci-fi epic Sunshine

Rock ’Em, Sock ’Em Robots Mitch Amundsen uses big toys to bring Transformers to the big screen

Ghost Writer Benoît Delhomme, AFC creates a haunted hotel room for 1408

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Dance Fever Bojan Bazelli brings a stylized Sixties aesthetic to the lively musical Hairspray

Departments On Our Cover: A physicist named Capa (Cillian Murphy) joins a group of astronauts on a mission to reignite Earth’s dying sun in Sunshine, shot by Alwin Küchler, BSC. (Photo by Alex Bailey, courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures.)

8 10 16 22 72 76 86 88 90 91 92 94 96

Editor’s Note Global Village DVD Playback Production Slate Short Takes Post Focus New Products & Services Points East International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up

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The International Journal of Film & Digital Production Techniques • Since 1920

Visit us online at

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

EDITORIAL EXECUTIVE EDITOR Stephen Pizzello SENIOR EDITOR Rachael K. Bosley ASSOCIATE EDITOR Douglas Bankston TECHNICAL EDITOR Christopher Probst CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Benjamin B, Robert S. Birchard, John Calhoun, Bob Davis, Bob Fisher, Simon Gray, Jim Hemphill, David Heuring, Jay Holben, Noah Kadner,Ron Magid, Jean Oppenheimer, John Pavlus, Chris Pizzello, Elina Shatkin, Jon Silberg, Iain Stasukevich, Kenneth Sweeney, Patricia Thomson, David E. Williams, Jon D. Witmer ————————————————————————————————————

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CIRCULATION, BOOKS & PRODUCTS CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Saul Molina CIRCULATION MANAGER Alex Lopez SHIPPING MANAGER Miguel Madrigal ———————————————————————————————————— ASC GENERAL MANAGER Brett Grauman ASC EVENTS COORDINATOR Patricia Armacost ASC PRESIDENT’S ASSISTANT Kim Weston ASC ACCOUNTING MANAGER Mila Basely ASC ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE Corey Clark ———————————————————————————————————— American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 88th year of publication, is published monthly in Hollywood by ASC Holding Corp., 1782 N. Orange Dr., Hollywood, CA 90028, U.S.A., (800) 448-0145, (323) 969-4333, Fax (323) 876-4973, direct line for subscription inquiries (323) 969-4344. Subscriptions: U.S. $50; Canada/Mexico $70; all other foreign countries $95 a year (remit international Money Order or other exchange payable in U.S. $). Advertising: Rate card upon request from Hollywood office. Article Reprints: Requests for high-quality article reprints should be made to Sheridan Reprints at (800) 394-5157 ext. 28. Copyright 2007 ASC Holding Corp. (All rights reserved.) Periodicals postage paid at Los Angeles, CA and at additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA. POSTMASTER: Send address change to American Cinematographer, P.O. Box 2230, Hollywood, CA 90078.

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We make the movies American Society of Cinematographers “Intelligent” Products, Saving Time and Money Production through Post

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

OFFICERS - 2007/2008 Daryn Okada President

Michael Goi Vice President

Richard Crudo Vice President

Owen Roizman Vice President

Victor J. Kemper Treasurer

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ALTERNATES John Hora Stephen Lighthill Matthew Leonetti Russ Alsobrook Sol Negrin MUSEUM CURATOR

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Stephen Pizzello Executive Editor

Photo by Douglas Kirkland.

L

ight is the primary tool of all cinematographers, and this month’s cover movie generates suspense with their biggest source: the sun. In Sunshine, a visually ambitious sci-fi thriller shot by Alwin Küchler, BSC for director Danny Boyle, a group of astronauts is sent on a life-ordeath mission to revive Earth’s dying star. But before the crewmembers of the spacecraft Icarus II can save the world, they must confront not only daunting logistical problems, but horrific fallout from a previous failed mission. In Jay Holben’s detailed piece on the production (“Let There Be Light,” page 32), Boyle says he “became very interested in not just washing the audience with light, but actually reaching out to them, through them, with light.” To accomplish this, Küchler employed a number of clever techniques, including the capture of dazzling “sun flares” that could be incorporated into the show’s CG elements by visual-effects supervisor Tom Wood. “I think the relationship between the cinematographer and the visual-effects supervisor should be just as close as the relationship between the cinematographer and the production designer,” says Küchler. “Everyone brings a different taste, aesthetic and experience to a film, and it’s important that you’re all working from the same philosophy and toward the same goals.” The goal of integrating CG effects into live-action photography is this month’s special theme, and few films highlight the challenges more than Transformers. Cinematographer Mitch Amundsen knew director Michael Bay would stop at nothing in his pursuit of explosive action involving the tale’s giant robot combatants, and he interfaced closely with visual-effects supervisor Scott Farrar and special-effects supervisor John Frazier to realize Bay’s vision. Having previously served in the trenches on Bay’s second units, Amundsen clearly understood the importance of good preparation: “Michael never stops shooting,” he tells AC scribe Noah Kadner (“Rock ’Em, Sock ’Em Robots,” page 44). “We were often doing more than 50 setups a day.” Benoît Delhomme, AFC also confronted the specter of CG effects on the horror film 1408, in which a skeptical writer (John Cusack) must endure a nightmarish stay in an aggressively haunted hotel room. The movie contains some 350 effects shots, but Delhomme had already forged a smooth working relationship with visual-effects supervisor Sean Farrow on a previous project. This time around, they worked together to lend extra menace to the evil room’s paranormal attacks. “Many elements normally associated with exteriors, such as rain, fire and ice, all come into play in this interior,” Delhomme notes in his interview with London-based correspondent Mark Hope-Jones (“Ghost Writer,” page 54). Hairspray uses much merrier strategies to entertain audiences. In helping to adapt the 2002 Tony Award-winning Broadway musical for the big screen, cinematographer Bojan Bazelli came to the conclusion that “every element — lighting, costumes, choreography, and so on — had to be slightly surreal in order to make it not seem so strange that the characters were singing to each other rather than talking.” Bazelli saved a dance for AC senior editor Rachael Bosley, who put him through his paces during an impressively thorough interview (“Dance Fever,” page 70).

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Global Village Day Watch Continues Russia’s Supernatural Showdown by David E. Williams

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he recently released Russian film Day Watch continues the story introduced in Night Watch, which was a major box-office success upon its release in Russia in 2004. Day Watch (Dnevnoi dozor) finds our hero, the vampiric Anton (Konstantin Khabensky), being hunted by dark forces as he tries to locate the Chalk of Fate, a magical relic with the power to change history. Meanwhile, he also grapples with the notion that his son,

10 August 2007

Yegor (Dmitry Martynov), has become a powerful dark force. Directed by Timur Bekmambetov and photographed by Sergei Trofimov, Night Watch and Day Watch are based on a trilogy of best-selling novels by Sergei Lukyanenko. The premise is that members of a supernatural race (witches, vampires, lycanthropes, etc.) must choose between a life of good or evil, light or darkness. A delicate state of détente exists between the opposing forces, casting mere mortals in the middle. In Night Watch, Anton decided to join the light and become a member of the Night Watch, a vigilant team tasked with patrolling the streets of modern-day Moscow and keeping dark evildoers on their side of the law. When Trofimov met Bekmambetov, the cinematographer was on a very different career path. He had recently graduated from the Moscow Institute of Management and was working at an automobile factory, “but I knew my career in management was over,” he

says. “I wanted creative freedom, and I had started to learn about still photography and cinematography from two teachers, Arkady Nissky and Yakov Davidovich Feldman.” At the time, Bekmambetov was working on a TV movie in Odessa, and Trofimov joined the production as a camera assistant, “though my real job was shooting stills.” Trofimov gained experience observing cinematographer Rifkat Ibragimov. “He was one of the most famous Soviet cinematographers in Central Asia, and he was a real artist and very expressive in his work.” Trofimov later found work as a camera operator at a state-controlled TV station. “Three years of that gave me the foundation I needed,” he says. “When I was 28, I got my first assignment as a cinematographer.” The project was Bekmambetov’s directorial debut, Peshawar Waltz, a drama about Soviet POWs trapped in Afghanistan. “I was the second-unit director of photography, and it was a great opportunity: four months of hand-

Photos courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures.

Right: Tamerlan and his warriors battle their way to the Chalk of Fate, whose bearer can change the course of history. Below: Director of photography Sergei Trofimov makes a point about his next composition.

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“Because the F350 has time lapse, slow shutter and over and undercranking, I got more creative options and my client got higher production value for the budget,” Humeau says.

“With XDCAM HD, we shot a big show on a tight budget.” Thierry Humeau, director of photography and president of Télécam Films recently used his PDW-F350 XDCAM HD camcorders to create Bombs, Bullets & Fraud, a documentary on the US Postal Service Inspectors for Smithsonian Networks, a new HD TV channel from Smithsonian Institution and Showtime Networks. “They needed a big movie that had to meet their high standards of quality on a fairly tight budget,” Humeau says.“Some scenes we shot movie-style with a big crew, dollies and jibs. Some are ENG-style, following cops at night. Some are highly produced interviews. In every instance, the XDCAM HD camcorder came through.” The show’s producer, Tim Baney of Baney Media is also a fan. He says, “The camcorder is very producer-friendly. You can instantly play back a scene on the LCD monitor and say okay, good, let’s move on to the next take. It’s a huge time saver and safety net that gave me confidence, knowing we got it in the can.” And the Smithsonian Networks’ reaction? “They love it,” says Baney.“In fact, they’re already talking to us about another film.” To see a trailer of Bombs, Bullets & Fraud and find out how to receive up to $500 back on the purchase of an XDCAM HD camcorder, visit sony.com/xdcam.

© 2007 Sony Electronics Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Features and specifications are subject to change without notice. Sony and XDCAM are trademarks of Sony. Smithsonian Networks is a joint venture of Smithsonian Institution and Showtime Networks.

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Right: Yegor (Dima Martynov) and Alisa (Zhanna Friske) celebrate the boy’s birthday, when he will become a Great Other with formidable powers. Below: Yegor’s transformation begins.

held night shooting in Kazakhstan in the mud and dirt, with all this war action going on.” At this time, the capitalist market in Russia was just taking off, and there was a sudden need for commercials. “I call it Russia’s ‘romantic period’ of commercial production, because we worked directly with clients, and they all wanted something extraordinary,” says Trofimov. “Timur and I started a production company with a composer, Alexan-

12 August 2007

der Voitinsky, and a producer, Dmitry Yourkov, and we started shooting.” Of the nearly 350 ads to his credit, Trofimov points to a 16-spot series they did for Imperial Bank as a favorite. “They were short historical movies about czars and emperors, and they were shot in different countries on good budgets.” In 2003, Trofimov and Bekmambetov started production on Night Watch. “Originally, it was going to be one feature film followed by a TV series,” recalls Trofimov. “The budget was very tight, so we divided the picture into sections, with interiors to be shot on 35mm and exteriors on 16mm. The first scenes we shot were winter exteriors that actually ended up in Day Watch. So we started production on Night Watch by shooting its sequel!” Using Arri cameras and Zeiss Ultra Prime lenses, Trofimov began shooting with Kodak Vision 320T 7277, “but when Kodak introduced the Vision2 line I moved over to [500T] 7218, which had even less grain and more latitude. I never had to push it because it had

enough sensitivity to shoot even in the nighttime streets of Moscow. For one car chase, we couldn’t use any additional light, so we just shot at 18 fps, which gave us enough exposure using fast [T1.3] lenses. I shot interiors on 5218.” He adds that most of Day Watch was shot in Super 35mm. “The most difficult part of the production was trying to find a balance between reality and an ‘art-house’ look, because all these mystical events in the film take place in the real Moscow. For that purpose, I tried to be realistic with the lighting, especially with Anton, as he is the hero. We also purposefully tried to use real locations or build sets that could exist. We also decided that everything would be very colorful, very contrasty; this was a large responsibility for our production designers, from the bright green offices of the Night Watch to the golden wallpaper of the Hotel Cosmos.” Built for the 1980 Olympic Games, the Cosmos was just one major Moscow landmark used in the films.

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Right: Eyepopping stuntwork lends energy to the narrative. Below: The budding romance between Svetlana (Maria Poroshina, left) and her Light Other mentor, Anton (Konstantin Khabensky, right), takes a surreal turn when Anton exchanges bodies with one of Svetlana’s female colleagues.

“We tried to use familiar and famous places whenever possible, from the Kremlin to the subways, because that reality would help the fantasy elements stand out.” However, one real-world dilemma faced by the filmmakers was solved by the addition of fantasy. “In the film, there is a parallel universe where Anton chases a Dark Other. This sequence was shot at dusk in very low light, and focus was very difficult, so a few shots were a little too soft. We couldn’t reshoot the scene, but Timur came up with a way to solve the problem: adding clouds of mosquitoes. So as the main image goes soft, mosquitoes fill the frame in sharp focus! It was a good solution, and we used it a couple

14 August 2007

times when we had focus trouble.” Trofimov credits his second-unit cinematographers — Levan Kapanadze, Maxim Shinkarenko, Lena Ivanova and Ruslan Gerasimenko — with helping both films run smoothly. “As we moved further into production, I learned how to more effectively use the second unit, and to trust them,” he says. “When we

started, I thought I could do it all myself, like on commercials, but that’s very difficult, especially when time is tight.” He also credits Ulugbek Khamraev for shooting the extensive period flashback filmed in Kazakhstan that opens Day Watch, and Andrey Makarov for the outlandish scene in which a character races a sports car across the curved façade of the Hotel Cosmos. Trofimov recently completed Mongol, which he shot in China and Kazakhstan for director Sergei Bodrov. The film, which depicts the 12th-century exploits of Genghis Khan, is scheduled for U.S. release in December. “I never thought I would become a cinematographer,” he muses. “I always loved movies, and cinema always played a great role in the old Soviet Union. In the famous words of Lenin, ‘Cinema is the most important of all arts.’ But I never thought I would have the opportunities I have now.” I

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DVD Playback The Sergio Leone Anthology: A Fistful of Dollars; For a Few Dollars More; The Good, The Bad and The Ugly; Duck, You Sucker! (1964-1971) 2.35:1 (16x9 Enhanced) Dolby Digital 5.1 MGM Home Entertainment, $89.98 In an interview featured on The Sergio Leone Anthology, biographer Christopher Frayling asserts that Leone deserves to be ranked in the pantheon of great directors with John Ford and Stanley Kubrick. After watching the four classics contained in this boxed set, few movie buffs will find it possible to argue with Frayling’s claim. These classics from the director’s most creatively fertile period have been given fine new transfers and are accompanied by hours of previously unreleased supplementary material. (MGM is also selling the titles separately.) The set begins with A Fistful of Dollars, a Western remake of Yojimbo that established Leone and star Clint Eastwood as international icons. It also introduced the director’s characteristic motifs: an impressionistic manipulation of time and space, human experience stripped to its most brutal impulses, and sound design aiming for emotional truth over literal reality. In this film and its sequel, For a Few Dollars More, cinematographer Massimo Dallamano (cred16 August 2007

ited in the first movie as Jack Dalmas) used the 2-perf Techniscope format, a widescreen process that was both economical and aesthetically appropriate. In an insightful commentary track, Frayling analyzes the style and provides details about the production. Like all of the films in this set, A Fistful of Dollars includes a second disc packed with supplements that are educational and entertaining. Frayling contributes a featurette in which he expands upon some of the ideas addressed in the commentary track, and Eastwood provides further context in a separate interview. Another featurette includes remembrances by three of Leone’s collaborators: producer Alberto Grimaldi, screenwriter Sergio Donati, and actor Mickey Knox. (Additional interviews with Frayling, Eastwood, Grimaldi, Donati and Knox are featured on the disc of supplements that accompanies For a Few Dollars More.) For the 1977 TV broadcast of A Fistful of Dollars, network execs required a new prologue that would give the film’s violence a moral justification, and to that end they hired Monte Hellman to direct some new footage. The filmmaker created an opening in which he shot around a new actor — disguising the fact that it wasn’t Eastwood by framing the hero from the back and below the waist — and gave all the lines to a lawman played by Harry Dean Stanton. This sequence and an interview with Hellman are included in this package. Dallamano’s dynamic juxtaposition of faces in extreme close-up and landscapes in glorious long shots continues in For a Few Dollars More, which features more densely composed frames and even more elliptical storytelling than Fistful. In addition to the aforementioned supplements, For a Few Dollars More contains a commentary track by Frayling and a featurette on the alternate release

versions of the film. The movie’s epic scope allows it to serve as a transition to the even grander The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (photographed by Tonino Delli Colli, ASC, AIC), which appears in this set in the same extras-laden special edition that was released in 2004. The highlight of the set for Leone enthusiasts is the DVD debut of the 1971 release Duck, You Sucker! (a.k.a. A Fistful of Dynamite). This ambitious tale of the collaboration between an apolitical thief and a troubled ex-IRA explosives expert is perhaps Leone’s most underrated film. Cinematographer Giuseppe Ruzzolini keeps the intimate and the social elements in perfect balance, often contextualizing interpersonal relationships against epic backdrops in a logistically elaborate tale of revolution’s implications for society and the individual. Frayling discusses the film’s politics and Leone’s aesthetic development on his commentary track and in a separate interview. Other supplements include an interview with Donati, a look at the Leone exhibition that was mounted in 2005 at the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, and featurettes on the movie’s restoration and locations. (Locations featurettes accompany both Dollars pictures as well.) An additional documentary explores the different cuts of Duck, You Sucker! The film was drastically shortened for its U.S. release, and Leone’s original 157-minute cut is the version presented on this DVD. This set’s bonus materials also include radio spots and theatrical trailers for all four films. Aside from some unfortunate flaws in the source material (particularly in Duck, You Sucker!), the transfers are generally solid, with great tonal range and subtlety in the evocatively lit

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close-ups as well as clarity and detail in the sweeping vistas. The soundtracks have all been superbly remastered; the psychological complexity of Leone’s stylized sound design remains intact, with separation that is effective but not distracting. — Jim Hemphill

Matador (1986) 1.85:1 (16x9 Enhanced) Dolby Digital Monaural Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, $117.95 (Viva Pedro boxed set) In a key scene in Pedro Almodóvar’s brazen thriller Matador, beautiful, high-powered attorney Maria (Assumpta Serna) sits in her car applying lipstick on a steamy afternoon in Madrid. In her mirror, she catches a glimpse of a sinister man whom she hopes is following her. He is. Maestro Diego Montes (Nacho Martinez), a retired matador who now teaches aspiring bullfighters, is infatuated with Maria, and follows her into a movie theater where Duel in the Sun is playing. During the final sequences of the torrid melodrama, Maria and Diego exchange smoldering glances and comments, then flee to his mansion. There, among Diego’s matador paraphernalia, these two sexual predators begin a dark and passionate affair. Both are obsessive-compulsive murderers; he is sexually aroused by killing some of his female students, and she, a longtime fan of his, emulates his deft bull-killing skills on unsuspecting young men. They make a great match, but their affair is complicated by one thing: Maria is representing one of Diego’s students, Angel (Antonio Banderas), who has turned himself in for attempting to rape Diego’s girlfriend, Eva (Eva Cobo). 18

Filled with shame and self-hatred, Angel begins to boast that he has killed the women who have disappeared from his matador class and buried them in Diego’s garden. With several women missing, young men turning up dead, and a confused Angel claiming to be responsible, the local detectives know something doesn’t add up. Fortunately, an imminent solar eclipse will present the key to all of these mysteries. Unusual plot devices, over-the-top melodrama, and exotic sexual obsessions are all trademarks of Almodóvar’s work, but his acute sense of visual style and his flair for light and color are perhaps his most acclaimed gifts. Matador, his sixth feature, has a rich color scheme that favors violent, passionate reds, ranging from Diego’s alluring cape to Maria’s provocative lipstick. To make the film, Almodóvar turned to cinematographer Ángel Luiz Fernández, AEC, who had previously shot four of his features, including Dark Habits and Labyrinth of Passion. Matador’s lighting scheme, while generally soft and romantic, is filled with noirish shadows that help underscore the sense of danger and intrigue. This passionate, beguiling cult film has been unavailable for U.S. home screens for several years, existing only in scarce VHS and laserdisc versions. It recently made its Stateside DVD debut in Sony’s boxed set Viva Pedro: The Almodóvar Collection. (It is not for sale as a single title.) This picture transfer is the best homevideo version to date, a marked improvement over the cheaply pressed laserdisc and the Region 2 DVD released in Europe, both of which suffered from poor contrast and muted colors. This new DVD fully fleshes out Fernandez’s layered reds and warm shadows, and although red is a color often plagued with chroma noise problems in the digital domain, Sony has done a good job of re-creating the correct image balance; there is barely a trace of chroma noise in the deepest hues. Slightly tight framing of the 1.85:1 image trims a sliver of picture information — a flaw that was also present on the laserdisc and European DVD. Although this flaw is seldom noticeable during the feature presentation, it slightly crops the end titles. The monaural soundtrack is solid

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S U P E R M A N R E T U R N S — DP: Newton Thomas Sigel, ASC . D: Bryan Singer C L I C K — DP: Dean Semler, ACS, ASC . D: Frank Coraci • FLYBOYS—DP: Henry Braham, BSC . D: Tony Bill • SCARY MOVIE 4—DP: Thomas E. Ackerman, ASC . D: David Zucker A P O C A LY P T O — DP: Dean Semler, ACS, ASC . D: Mel Gibson • L A M A I S O N D U B O N H E U R — DP: Jean-Marie Dreujou, AFC . D: Dany Boon • E M P T Y C I T Y — DP: Russ T Alsobrook, ASC D: Mike Binder • G R I N D H O U S E — DP: Robert Rodriguez . Ds: Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino A T I G E R ’ S TA L E — DP: Seamus Deasy . D: John Boorman • D E J À V U — DP: Paul Cameron D: Tony Scott • NEXT—DP: David Tattersall, BSC . D: Lee Tamahori • THE LOOKOUT—DP: Alar Kivilo, ASC D: Scott Frank • T H E F E R RY M A N — DP: Aaron Morton . D: Chris Graham • A S T É R I X — DP: Theirry Arbogast, AFC . D: Frederic Forestier • B A L L S O F F U R Y — DP: Thomas Ackerman, ASC D: Robert Ben Garant • BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD— DP: Ron Fortunato . D: Sidney Lumet • C O N D E M N E D — DP: Ross Emery . D: Scott Wiper • H I S M A J E S T Y M I N O R — D & DP: Jean-Jacques Annaud • S L I P S T R E A M — DP: Dante Spinotti, AIC, ASC . D: Anthony Hopkins R E V E N G E O F T H E N E R D S — DP: Lukas Ettlin . D: Kyle Newman • T H E C O M E B A C K S — DP: Tony Richmond . D: Tom Brady • T H E O T H E R B O L E Y N G I R L — DP: Kieran McGuigan . D: Justin Chadwick I N O W P R O N O U N C E Y O U C H U C K A N D L A R RY — DP: Dean Semler, ACS, ASC . D: Dennis Dugan S U P E R B A D — DP: Russ T. Alsobrook, ASC . D: Greg Mottola • I K N O W W H O K I L L E D M E — DP: John R. Leonetti . D: Chris Sivertson • T H E T O U R I S T — DP: Dante Spinotti, AIC, ASC D: Marcel Langenegger

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NIGHT STALKER—DPs: Bob Primes, ASC, Rick Maguire, Sandy Sissel, ASC (SERIES) C O N V I C T I O N — DPs: Ernie Holzman, ASC ( P I L O T ) . John Thomas, ASC ( S E R I E S ) W H AT A B O U T B R I A N — DPs: Russ Alsobrook, ASC, Joe Pennella ( S E R I E S ) • FA C E L E S S — DP: Mauro Fiore, ASC ( P I L O T ) ) • I N C A S E O F E M E R G E N C Y — DP: Victor Hammer ( P I L O T ) • BROTHERS & SISTERS—DP: Tom Yatsko (PILOT)) • 52 FIGHTS—DP: David Hennings (PILOT) P R O T É G É —DP: Adam Sliwinski ( P I L O T ) • J U S T I C E — DP: Dermott Downs ( S E R I E S ) ) • 3 L B S . — DP: Dejan Georgevich, ASC ( S E R I E S )

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and seems free of age-related wear. The Matador disc includes no supplements, but the boxed set in which it is packaged contains a DVD of worthy bonus material. In addition to a smattering of trailers for upcoming Sony releases, there are three well-developed documentary featurettes about Almodóvar’s work: the 51-minute “Deconstructing Almodóvar,” the 27-minute “Directed by Almodóvar,” and the 24-minute “Viva Pedro.” Each includes substantive interviews with actors and key crew, who speak to numerous aspects of the director’s unique vision. Film scholar Richard Peña also offers interesting conjecture. Matador was eclipsed by the popularity and critical acclaim of Almodóvar’s followup feature, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, but it has attracted a loyal following over the years, and fans who have long awaited this DVD will not be disappointed. The reasonably priced Viva Pedro set offers seven other features, including another DVD first, the erotic comedy Law of Desire. Also included are the previously issued DVDs The Flower of My Secret, Live Flesh, Talk to Her and Bad Education, and remastered editions of Women on the Verge and All About My Mother. Full of romance and eroticism, kaleidoscopic imagery and unpredictable characterizations, this terrific cross-section of Almodóvar’s oeuvre is a wonderful addition to any DVD collection. — Kenneth Sweeney

The Chocolate War (1988) 1.85:1 (16x9 Enhanced) Dolby Digital 5.1 Fox Home Entertainment/MGM, $19.95 The ongoing collaboration of director Keith Gordon and cinematographer Tom Richmond has so far yielded one of the 20 August 2007

best love stories of recent years (Waking the Dead), two incisive World War II films (A Midnight Clear and Mother Night), and an inventive postmodern musical (The Singing Detective). This pristine DVD of their first collaboration, The Chocolate War, indicates that right from the beginning, the duo was interested in big ideas and original ways of visualizing them. Based on the novel by Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War tells the story of Jerry, a loner at a Catholic high school who clashes with his conformist classmates and with Brother Leon, the oppressive authority figure who controls them. When Jerry refuses to sell chocolates as part of Brother Leon’s annual fundraising initiative, the administrator and his minions do everything they can to crush Jerry’s spirit before his independent ways can spread throughout the school. Gordon uses the battle of the title as a metaphor for all forms of struggle between individuals and institutions, and the film’s framing emphasizes this premise. Many of the compositions are almost oppressively symmetrical, as though the students are being suffocated by the very order of the school, and these rigid images are juxtaposed with handheld camerawork that symbolizes the kids’ desire to break free. One can read larger societal implications into Jerry’s war against his peers and Brother Leon, but The Chocolate War is most effective as a beautifully observed tale of a young man’s struggle for self-definition. Gordon gets the details of adolescent growing pains exactly right, from Jerry’s awkward interactions with girls to his disillusionment when he discovers what his skirmish has really accomplished. The complexity of characterization is mirrored in the nuances of Richmond’s lighting, which is impeccably rendered on this DVD. (For years the film was only available on murky VHS and laserdisc editions.) In a strange way, the film’s examination of power and control makes it a kind of teen version of The Godfather, and Richmond’s images are extremely reminiscent of that film in their reliance on shadows to convey the darkness of the characters’ souls and their pervasive

secrecy. This transfer preserves the rich blacks of Richmond’s palette without obscuring the subtle details his lighting reveals, and the day exteriors nicely convey the sense of harsh cold that the filmmakers sought to achieve even in sunny scenes. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is equally layered, offering a clear and powerful balance between dialogue, effects and a great soundtrack. The Chocolate War was mixed by Mark Berger (The Right Stuff, Amadeus), and the sound is as detailed and purposeful as every other aspect of the film, with understated effects that add definition to characters and relationships. The Chocolate War is a remarkably assured debut feature, visually dynamic without being overly selfconscious. On his commentary track, Gordon credits Richmond with helping him develop this style, explaining how the cinematographer would take Gordon’s more flamboyant ideas for shots and modify them so they were beautiful and expressive. The disc also contains an outstanding 50-minute interview with Gordon in which he discusses The Chocolate War in the context of all the artistic and pragmatic considerations that influence a first-time director. There’s some repetition between the commentary track and the interview, but Gordon’s observations are unique and intelligent. His account of The Chocolate War’s journey to the screen and the excellent transfer make this DVD a must for fans of independent cinema. — Jim Hemphill I

NEXT MONTH’S REVIEWS The Third Man (1949) Cinematographer: Robert Krasker Straight Time (1978) Cinematographer: Owen Roizman, ASC Prince of the City (1981) Cinematographer: Andrzej Bartkowiak, ASC

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Production Slate

Father Lorenzo (Javier Bardem) is one of the priests who play a central role in the Spanish Inquisition in Goya’s Ghosts.

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Immortalizing Spanish Strife by Jean Oppenheimer One of the artists who dared to address the Spanish Inquisition in his work was 18th-century painter Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, who witnessed its horrors firsthand. Goya’s Ghosts hews closely to details of the artist’s life, but it is less a biopic than a look at the tumultuous period through which he lived, one that saw not only the inquisition but also Napoleon’s invasion of Spain and, five years later, the restoration of the Spanish crown. These events are explored through the relationship that Goya (Stellan Skarsgård) has with two fictitious characters: the smug priest Father Lorenzo (Javier Bardem), and Inés (Natalie Portman), a woman wrongly imprisoned for heresy. Goya’s Ghosts marks the first collaboration between cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe, AEC and director Milos Forman. A graduate of the Official

Film School in Madrid, Aguirresarobe has worked predominantly in Europe on such features as The Others, The Sea Inside and Talk to Her. In American Cinematographer’s 80th anniversary issue (March ’99), his film Secrets of the Heart was listed as one of the best-shot films of the latter 20th century. AC recently spoke to Aguirresarobe with the assistance of translator Mary Kay McCoy. “At one of our first meetings, Milos told me he wanted an image with strong contrasts, where the black was really black and the skin tones looked like skin,” the cinematographer recalls. “That was the premise that guided my work.” Of course, Goya’s paintings were also key, and Aguirresarobe spent hours at the Prado in Madrid, studying not only Goya’s work but also that of classical predecessors such as Velázquez and Ribera. The paintings inspired the filmmakers’ choice of format (standard 1.85:1) and Aguirresarobe’s approach to

lighting and choice of lenses. He shot the picture with an Arricam package (provided by EPC in Madrid) that included Cooke S4 prime lenses and an Angenieux Optimo zoom. He relied primarily on what he calls “the noble lenses”: 32mm, 40mm, 50mm and 75mm. “Their optical ‘nobility’ or quality is due to the fact that they do not deform the space they represent,” he notes. “They come close to seeing the way the human eye sees and they approach the spatial [rendering] of the classical painters.” He praises the Optimo for “its extraordinary quality” but acknowledges that he favors fixed lenses. A strong proponent of realism in lighting, he works almost exclusively with Softlights, fluorescent fixtures he discovered in Paris while shooting the 1999 film Salsa. “I consider them an essential lighting tool for close-ups and medium shots. They save considerable time on a shoot and the quality of their light is extraordinary. Each T5 lamp contains eight tubes that are much thinner than standard fluorescents. Each unit is very lightweight and very practical. They have incorporated ballasts and their dimensions are such that they can be situated in the most difficult places. “Another advantage is that each unit can be connected to a dimmer [board], so the intensity of light can be varied easily. This proved extremely useful on The Others, allowing me to fluctuate the light in relation to the candles, as well as to lower the intensity of the ambience when Nicole Kidman’s character closed the curtains, leaving the space in semi-darkness.” One of the first sequences in Goya’s Ghosts finds a conclave of monks arguing over Goya’s work. They are gathered in a cavernous room in the

Goya’s Ghosts photos by Phil Bray, courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films.

A Portrait of an Artist and a Secret History of the CIA

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Right: Imprisoned for heresy, Inés (Natalie Portman) tries to convince Father Lorenzo she is on the right side of the law. Below: Actor Cayetano Martinez de Irujo (in costume as the Duke of Wellington) and focus puller Pepe Martinez look on as director of photography Javier Aguirresarobe, AEC finalizes his plan.

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Monastery of Veruela, a magnificent Gothic monastery with high, narrow windows covered by alabaster and two skylights in the ceiling. The morning sunlight streaming through the skylights was so intense that Aguirresarobe used Tiffen Pure Gray filters to knock it down. Even then, the scene required digital manipulation to further cut the light’s intensity. (The film was finished photochemically, but the DI process was used on select scenes.) “A [bigger] problem for me was the strange and dominating color reflected from the alabaster, a translucent yellowish stone. I had to correct the fill light to try to match its chromatic characteristics; I used an LLD filter.” The cinematographer acknowl-

edges that his realist philosophy about lighting was “complicated” by the lowintensity light sources of the period: candles and oil lamps. One night interior, a tavern scene in which Inés and her brothers celebrate her birthday, was filmed in a 15th-century cellar that was almost entirely underground. The space featured a couple of very high windows, and Aguirresarobe wanted to contrast the cold, blue tones filtering through the windows with the pub’s colorful, candlelit interior. “When there are two complementary color tones in a scene, you have to ask yourself what the difference in color temperature between the two should be. I usually will not go over 1500°K.” Ambient light came from fluorescents gelled with 1⁄4 CTO that were taped to the ceiling at irregular intervals; the faces in the foreground were lit by eye-level fluorescents gelled with 1⁄4 CTO. “I am somewhat fussy when it comes to the color temperature of the lights,” says Aguirresarobe. “I always have Minus and Plus Green [filters] on hand when I work with fluorescents and HMIs, although on Goya’s Ghosts there weren’t any sequences that required their use.” He adds that a 1⁄8 or 1⁄4 Tiffen Black Pro-Mist was always on the lens. Aguirresarobe prefers to shoot a picture on a single stock, and Goya’s Ghosts was no exception. He used Kodak Vision2 500T 5218 and occasionally pull-processed it one stop to soften

contrast. The footage was processed at Technicolor Madrid, where the filmmakers also carried out the final color timing. The movie was shot over 12 weeks in the fall of 2005, and thanks to Spain’s National Heritage Foundation, the production was able to film in locations that had rarely opened their doors to filmmakers — “spaces that emanate truth,” Aguirresarobe offers. These included the aforementioned Monastery of Veruela in Aragon, where most inquisition scenes were shot. “We were able to bring the monks’ meetings to life inside the monastery’s nooks and crannies,” says the cinematographer. Napoleon’s rousing speech to his generals was filmed in the palace at Aranjuez, and Veláquez’s Las Meninas, Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Delights and Goya’s portrait of the royal family were filmed where they hung inside the Prado. Forman still can’t believe the production’s good fortune. Speaking to AC from New York, he says with a laugh, “I was naïve — I thought we could rent those priceless paintings, put them in a studio, and shoot our scenes with the actors in front of them. But the insurance for the paintings would have been more than the entire budget of the film! To my amazement, we were allowed to shoot the actors and the paintings in the Prado.” In the end, only three sets had to be built; everything else was an actual location. Of course, shooting inside historic buildings comes with certain restrictions. “Light cables had to be protected and laid at least 10 centimeters from the walls,” recalls Aguirresarobe. “If they accidentally touched anything, loud words of disapproval were heard from the employees, who guarded our every move. As you can imagine, setting up lights proved to be a real feat. We managed to hide little metal bars in the drapes without touching anything; we then mounted structures on the bars that could support our lightweight fluorescent tubes.” An old wine cellar doubled as the inquisition dungeon. “The walls

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America’s ill-fated invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs is one of the events depicted in the TNT miniseries The Company, which follows young agent Jack McCauliffe (Chris O’Donnell, foreground) as it surveys the history of the CIA. 26 August 2007

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were whitewashed, and we were not allowed to paint them any other color,” notes the cinematographer. “That was a real handicap for me. I had to use a gloomy, sinister light tightly [focused on] the actors so that not even a speck would escape onto the walls and ruin the atmosphere. It was perhaps the most complicated location to work in. The result doesn’t suggest the meticulous work that went into it!” Aesthetically, Goya’s Ghosts comprises two parts: the grim period of the monasteries, and the French occupation (when Father Lorenzo returns from exile as a proponent of the Enlightenment.) “The sets change considerably,” says Aguirresarobe. He credits production designer Patrizia von Brandenstein and costume designer Yvonne Blake “for making everything look more brilliant, less sinister. The set decorations and the costumes have much livelier colors.” He notes that the real energy of the story comes from the actors rather than the camerawork, which tends to remain subtle and serene. He praises his regular A-camera/Steadicam operator, Josu Inchaustegui, as well as “all my new collaborators, such as [focus puller] Pepe Martinez, [gaffer] Arcadio Sequeira, and [best boy] Alberto Sánchez, who gave their best.” The cinematographer is particularly pleased with two scenes: Lorenzo’s execution and Inés’ release from prison. The execution is a complicated sequence that lasts nearly 12 minutes onscreen and took four days to shoot. “Using four 6K HMIs, we had to create and maintain an atmosphere of dusk throughout the sequence,” he recalls. “I had to plan the order of the shots meticulously. I should add that I always use a remote control to vary the iris on the lens; I find it to be an indispensable piece of equipment.” Inés is released from the dungeon after 16 years of imprisonment. Stumbling into the open light, she has clearly lost her sanity. “The scene was shot in Salamanca on a very cold morning. The natural fog that enveloped the area lasted throughout the scene. It

looks as if we used smoke, but we didn’t. It was pure luck. The Steadicam follows Inés from the dark threshold of the door out into the middle of the square. The camera moves around her. Sometimes it reveals her surprised expression before this new reality; at other times, the camera becomes her POV. The day’s natural light was extraordinary, diffused by the fog. My job was to adjust the iris as we moved from one place to another, or when the background proved too bright. This was one of those scenes when ideal conditions occurred and all we had to do was start rolling. That doesn’t happen very often.” Covert Ops by Simon Gray Directed by Mikael Salomon, ASC and shot by Ben Nott, ACS, the miniseries The Company, which will air this month on TNT, examines the internal intrigue of the Central Intelligence Agency. The story follows freshman agent Jack McCauliffe (Chris O’Donnell) as he strives to maintain his humanity in the murky world of international espionage. Set against events that defined and delineated the Cold War, such as the Warsaw Pact, the Bay of Pigs debacle, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, The Company is described by Salomon as “a complex 40-year story of courage, betrayal and cowardice.” Salomon and Nott had previously

collaborated on Salem’s Lot (see AC June ’04), which garnered Nott an ASC Award nomination, and Nightmares and Dreamscapes: The End of the Whole Mess. Both of those projects originated on 35mm film, whereas The Company was shot mostly on high-definition (HD) digital video. “I decided that if we where going shoot digitally, I wanted to use the Arri D-20 because of its Super 35-sized 6-megapixel CMOS sensor and optical viewfinder,” explains Salomon. “That way we could use lenses designed for 35mm photography, which was the first step in achieving a look as good as film.” (The camera package, supplied by Arri Munich, comprised three D-20s and an Arri 235 and 435.) The A and B cameras rolled on nearly every setup, while the third was stripped down for use on the Steadicam. The D-20 was used in log mode, outputting a 10-bit-log DPX signal at 2K resolution. The Company was Nott’s first HD production. “Ben is a very talented image-maker, and I knew he’d take to shooting digitally like a duck to water,” notes Salomon, who had previously directed a pilot shot on HD. Nott observes that a hi-def Super Grade Monitor and a waveform are tools that provide distinct advantages with digital acquisition. “It was very beneficial to have an HD image so I could trim with the gaffer and key grip during the setup,” Nott says. “Also, removing the

The Company photos by Erik Heinila, courtesy of TNT.

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Above: McCauliffe finds himself in hot water on the other side of the world. Below: Director of photography Ben Nott, ACS on location in Budapest.

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dailies colorist from the post process meant I controlled the subtleties of light and shade, so there were no surprises in the dailies.” At first Nott used his light meter, but then he began working by eye, using the monitor to finesse the lighting. “Given the tightness of the schedule and the fact that we sometimes had two or more moves in a day, I needed to start lighting as soon as I walked in the door,” he says. “The camera and monitoring system can take awhile to put into place and power up, so I referred to the monitor only for final checks. It was a great way to work.” Principal photography spanned 88 days and required no second unit. The main locations were filmed in Canada, Budapest and Puerto Rico, and much of

Nott’s prep time was spent scouting locations. “Essentially projects of this magnitude have to be lit on the scout,” he says. “This was doubly true for The Company. After discussing with Mikael what the general blocking would be at each location, I worked out the positions for the Condors and decided what practical lighting would have to be changed or introduced.” The shadowy world of Cold War espionage suggested a specific visual style. “The subject matter required a high-contrast look similar to black-andwhite photography, with separation of densities rather than colors,” says Salomon. Nott took as inspiration the chiaroscuro techniques of artists such as Rembrandt, Caravaggio and van Honthorst. “Rather than use backlight, I

crosslit the actors with a fairly dynamic contrast range and then silhouetted the dark side against a lit area on the background. This gave the images a strong sense of depth and a cohesive style.” This was also the best approach to take to the HD format, he adds. “During testing, I established that the images looked great if I didn’t emphasize the midtones but instead operated at the ends of the curve.” He used Kino Flos to light the actors and employed Molebeams to create hot spots and patches of light on backgrounds. The D-20 offers approximations of characteristic curves for 50-ASA, 100-ASA, 200-ASA and 320-ASA film stocks, and Nott found rating the camera at 200 ASA for interior and night exteriors and 100 ASA for day exteriors provided the best results. “Those two settings had the most latitude, but there were implications for the amount of lighting required, particularly on night exteriors. To avoid the blacks blocking up, I was lighting into the toe of the curve more than I was accustomed to. I created a base ambience above the location sets with Dinettes mounted facing down on Condors; these were pushed through full grid cloth that was wrapped with a Duvatyn skirt. Attached to the same bucket was a cluster of Very Narrow Par 64s that I used to shape the architecture. To obtain a pleasing wrap of light on an actor, three lamps of differing intensities were required rather than one. The crosslight came from the side, with another placed three-quarters in front, and a third, the least intense, right by the mattebox. It was a bit more work, but the results are really pleasing.” The favored lenses were Arri Master Primes; an Arri Master Zoom and Optimo zooms were also in the kit. The Master Primes were used at T1.3 and T2 during night scenes and interiors. “They’re the best pieces of glass I’ve ever had the pleasure of looking through,” says Nott. “They performed so well without compromising the contrast at the wide apertures that the shallow depth of field became a significant part of the photographic philoso-

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Two 25K cube balloons provided base ambience for the Bay of Pigs sequence, which was shot in Puerto Rico.

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phy.” Nott singles out 1st AC Christopher Raucamp for his work: “Working at T1.3 is very difficult, particularly with Mikael’s predilection to keep each shot moving. Without Chris’ technical ability we’d probably still be shooting!” One of the main lenses used was a 35mm Master Prime. “We often shot our master and occasionally the close-up on that focal length. The wider angle of view really keeps the viewer involved with the geography of the location, which is an integral part of The

Company’s visual style.” Nott used several types of diffusion on the production. In front of the lens, he used Tiffen Classic Soft filters to “pull back the inherent sharpness of the digital image so as to slightly mimic the film stocks produced before the advent of anti-halation backing. I felt the up-front diffusion would make the images more suggestive of the 1950s and 1960s, when much of our story is set. On focal lengths of 25mm to 50mm I used a 1⁄4, and for 75mm to 135mm a 1⁄8. Although the diffusion was light, the Classic Softs have a pronounced halo signature in the highlights yet maintain the integrity of the blacks. Overall, the image appears sharp, but the fine details of skin imperfections are smoothed out.” The combination of Classic Soft filters and a shallow depth of field in close-ups proved helpful to the hair and makeup departments, who had to age the cast over the 40-year span of the story. Apart from Raucamp, 1st AD

Michael Zimbrich, production designer Marek Dobrowolski and HD technician Jasper Vrakking, crewmembers were hired locally in each country. “It’s difficult on a TV schedule because there is simply no time to get into the swing of things, but we had three very professional and enthusiastic crews,” says Nott. “In Toronto, gaffer Franco Tata and key grip Mark Manchester were absolutely brilliant; they ran their teams wonderfully and relieved much of the logistical pressure, allowing me to concentrate on the task at hand. In Europe, key grip Mark Ramsey and gaffer Gabor Hevesi were also first class. With Mark’s help in particular, we were able to finish our work in Budapest half a day early.” In Hungary, Nott and his crew contended with winter temperatures and short days, as well as “working in buildings whose architects were obviously challenged by the whole notion of elevators!” Shooting on location offered authenticity and variety, however. “Mikael felt using interior locations such

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as those in Budapest offered more depth, detail and variety than we could have achieved onstage,” says Nott. “The textures inherent in European architecture brought so much to the look of the show.” Muted colors and dark tones in the production design achieved what the cinematographer describes as “a pool-oflight philosophy. I was constantly dealing with ceilings, so we didn’t use toplight much on interiors. Instead we concentrated on a combination of window and practical sources. Marek Dobrowolski and I did exhaustive tests to find sconces that would provide interesting patterns on the walls, and we deliberately chose light shades that were a little denser in both color and material so they wouldn’t overexpose too much in the digital image.” Given that daylight in Hungary ended around 3 p.m., the production would either shoot “French hours,” working straight through until there was no light, or move to an interior location to continue shooting. “The natural light in Europe at that time of the year is so soft

and beautiful the D-20 just loved it, and it was easy to get fantastic images,” recalls Nott. Shooting exteriors in Puerto Rico, which doubled for Cuba, was another matter. “With the clean air and the strong overhead quality of the light, shooting day exteriors was almost like working with a completely different medium!” says the cinematographer. “To cope with this extended dynamic range, I used a lot more fill and shot on deeper stops to control the highlights.” The major sequence shot there recreated the Bay of Pigs invasion, an abortive attempt by the Kennedy administration to overthrow Fidel Castro. “That was a pretty big setup,” recalls Nott. “Gaffer Leslie Colombani mounted two 25K cube balloons [set at 4500°K] in a truss framework on the end of a 200-foot construction crane to create the base ambience. Four Condors along the beach, each containing an 18K and a Dino [corrected to 4200°K], gave us a back edge and could be used to light the

background when required. The cube balloons are great units; their shape makes rigging easier, and coupled with the massive reach of the crane they saved us a great deal of time by providing a broad, soft, top source we could move quickly over any part of the set. “Given that we had to shoot six hours of material on a tight schedule across three countries with three different crews, I asked myself what could go wrong,” he concludes. “In the end, it was surprisingly little!” I

Director Mikael Salomon, ASC lines up a shot.

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Let There Be

Light Alwin Küchler, BSC uses three formats and creative visual effects to realize Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, which sends a team of astronauts on a mission to revive the dying sun. by Jay Holben Unit photography by Alex Bailey 32 August 2007

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he sci-fi drama Sunshine is set 50 years from now, and global warming is no longer a threat. In fact, the sun is dying and the world has started to freeze. In an attempt to reverse the sun’s slow fade, a team of scientists has been sent into space aboard the Icarus II with a large nuclear bomb that they hope will reignite the dying star. Capa (Cillian Murphy), the crew’s physicist and the film’s narrator, explains that another crew set out on an identical mission several years earlier and disappeared before reaching the sun. Sunshine marks the first

feature collaboration between director Danny Boyle and Alwin Küchler, BSC, whose credits include The Claim (AC March ’01), Code 46 (AC Sept. ’04), The Mother and Proof. A native of Düsseldorf, Germany, who has lived in England since 1989, Küchler worked with Boyle briefly in 2002, when he shot some pickups on 28 Days Later (AC July ’03) for Anthony Dod Mantle, DFF, BSC. According to Boyle, the first of many challenges the team confronted on Sunshine was how to craft visuals that would differentiate the film from its well-known predecessors. “If you’re going to make a

Photos courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures. Additional photos courtesy of Reuben Garrett.

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space movie, you’ve got to make something a bit different — you can’t just remake Alien,” says Boyle. “In other genres there’s a lot of terrain to work with, but in space movies you can’t escape tight corridors and little rooms surrounded by metal. And when you’re working in those tight corridors, you’re keenly aware of all the filmmakers who’ve done amazing work before you in the same kind of corridors; you can feel them right there with you, and that challenges you to make your own mark in that corridor for future filmmakers to bump into.” Although Alien was a reference for the filmmakers, the German film Das Boot was more influential, according to Küchler. “That movie really helped us lock onto the idea of a very claustrophobic world and the tension that can arise when a group of people have to share a tight space for a long period of time,” he says. Boyle adds, “Space is infinite but claustrophobic at the same time. There’s no real reprieve — you can’t step outside for a breath of fresh air.” To heighten the sense of claustrophobia aboard the Icarus II, produc-

tion designer Mark Tildesley built hard ceilings into the sets, and Küchler slowly increased the focal length of the lenses as the story progressed to compress the space further. “Danny wanted to play around with scale,” recalls the cinematographer. “As they approach the sun, the sun takes up more space in each character’s psyche and the tension ratchets up.” Another challenge was “how to sustain a film about light, especially when that light has to become

more powerful as the characters get closer to it,” says Boyle. “In a movie theater you can only get so bright, and you can only sustain that kind of white-out brightness for a second or so before the effect is totally lost. We had to very carefully parcel out when the audience was able to go into the light, yet we always had to keep light alive as a character in the film.” Part of the solution was the use of color.“We had the color police on set every day, making sure that no orange or yellow or red was

Opposite: As the Icarus II approaches the sun, crewmember Searle (Cliff Curtis) studies the dying star through a filtered window in the ship’s observation room. This page, top: The sidelit actor plays the scene to a greenscreen backing. To give the actors more to interact with during reverses, cinematographer Alwin Küchler, BSC and gaffer Reuben Garrett created a “disco curtain” that can be seen on page 34. Bottom: Director Danny Boyle (far right) blocks out a scene with Küchler.

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Let There Be Light

Above: The mission’s physicist, Capa (Cillian Murphy), joins Searle in the observation room. Below: The “disco curtain” gave the show’s actors something tangible to react to. The curtain was made from thin strips of gold Mylar hung behind hundreds of gold discs attached to fishing lines. Dinos and Source Four Lekos provided lighting for the setup, and fans were used to create fluttering reflections.

34 August 2007

anywhere in sight,” recalls Boyle. “The film’s gray-blue palette is a convention of space movies; it’s a diet the audience expects. We take it a step further and starve them of any warm colors until they see the sun itself.” Notes Küchler, “There are certain things you plan, like starving the audience of warm colors to make the visuals of the sun more powerful, but there are some things

you just stumble across that almost end up being more important. For example, we started shooting macro close-ups of eyes now and then, and without even talking about it we started shooting more and more of them. We realized the pupil of the eye is like a negative image of the sun itself, and looking into someone’s eye like that is like looking into his soul. You find these abstract images that express a lot, and it’s a lot of fun to

discover them.” To suggest the sun’s presence when it isn’t onscreen, the filmmakers decided to make lens flares a significant player in the visual scheme. “A flare is atoms of light coming into your eyes, a moment when the surface of the screen seems to be broken and things are out of control and the relationship between the audience and the screen is penetrated,” says Boyle. “I became very

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To create the impression of a fireball tearing through the payload area toward Capa (left), Küchler and Garrett created a 60'-wide traveling rig of 180 Par cans that could be moved toward the actor at a rate of 5-7 mph (below). The foreground hardware was part of the set; the wall of Par cans is suspended on four tracks mounted to the stage ceiling.

interested in not just washing the audience with light, but actually reaching out to them, through them, with light.”Küchler shot anamorphic and Super 35mm to create two different types of flares, using Hawk anamorphic lenses to film the ship’s artificially lit interiors and Zeiss Ultra and Master Primes to film any scenes featuring sunlight (including ship exteriors and interiors such as the observation room). “Mixing formats enabled us to get horizontal flares in interiors and circular flares for all the scenes involving the sun,” says Küchler. “This was my first anamorphic shoot, and I tortured myself for three weeks over which lenses to choose, but in the end the Hawks won, mainly because we wanted to look different than Alien and Event Horizon.” Küchler’s main cameras were an Arricam Studio, two Arri 435 Xtremes, and an Arri 235, and Arri Munich manufactured a special ground glass that marked a 2.40:1 anamorphic center extraction on the Super 35mm area so he wouldn’t need another camera for anamor-

phic work. “I tend to favor Arri cameras when I’m dealing with tight spaces because I find Panavision cameras aren’t as advanced in adaptability — you can’t move the viewfinder from one side of the camera to the other, for example, and in tight spaces that can be a lifesaver. We used the 235 in tight spaces and when we had to be very physical and

fast, like in the fight scenes where we got into the action.” The rule on the set was no protection for the lens — no matteboxes, no flags around the lens. Küchler chose lights specifically for their flaring potential, selecting mainly smaller bulbs with small filaments to hit the lens with hard, point sources. “We collected flares like

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Let There Be Light Mace (Chris Evans), Capa and Harvey (Troy Garity) take stock of their grim predicament after another crewmember’s mistake forces them to make a difficult choice.

people collect butterflies!” he says. “We collected anything that was interesting and used it when necessary for the right effect.” In one scene, Capa awakens from a nightmare in which he is falling to the surface of the sun. Fellow crewmember Cassie (Rose Byrne), the ship’s pilot, is there to commiserate with him. Both actors are shot in singles, and a prominent flare takes up a large portion of the frame in both shots, suggesting Capa’s unsettled mental condition. Küchler created the effect by holding a small, low-voltage Luxeon LED light with a spot lens at the end of a flexible wire and positioning it for the best flare. “At that point in the film, everybody’s consciousness is slightly warped because the presence of the sun has become overwhelming,” he explains.“The flares, the feeling of light out of control, really helped express that feeling.” Flares were also incorporated into the film’s digital effects, which were created at The Moving Picture Co. (MPC) in London under the 36 August 2007

direction of visual-effects supervisor Tom Wood. However, most of the flares utilized in the CG elements were real, taken from Küchler’s test footage and from additional flare footage he filmed specifically for Wood’s team. “CG lens flares often look too processed and clean, so I prefer using proper camera flares when possible,” says Wood.“We used almost every flare Alwin had shot in his tests, and when we started to run out of them, he spent a day shooting hundreds of feet of flares specifically for us. He shot all of the flare work on black, so they were incredibly easy to composite into our work.” Prior to Sunshine, neither Küchler nor Boyle had worked on a CGI-heavy project, and the cinematographer says the experience “was a huge learning curve for both of us. We both felt we should try to do as much as possible in camera and fill in the blanks with CG effects, and Tom Wood agreed. I think the relationship between the cinematographer and the visual-effects supervisor should be just as close as the

relationship between the cinematographer and the production designer; everyone brings a different taste, aesthetic and experience to a film, and it’s important that you’re all working from the same philosophy and toward the same goals. With Tom, we were definitely all on the same page.” Wood adds, “I wanted everything we created to look like something Alwin had shot. Most visual-effects supervisors will say they’re working to achieve the director’s vision, and that’s true, but I think that making it look like the director’s vision shot through the cinematographer’s camera is the key to great effects work.” The filmmakers used 65mm to achieve one particularly surreal effect. In the scene, volatile crewmember Mace (Chris Evans) is trying to chill out in the “Earth Room,” a virtual-reality environment designed to simulate earthly environments that relax the spectator. Mace appears to be present as massive waves crash into a pier and spray bystanders with water; the

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After the ship’s heat shields are damaged in a mishap, Capa and his commanding officer, Kaneda (Hiroyuki Sanada), don spacesuits and make emergency repairs. Notes Boyle, “We had some big sets, but we also had the smallest sets possible, like inside a space helmet where there’s just a face and a camera. It doesn’t get more intimate than that.”

scene changes briefly to a forest, then back to the pier. “We wanted to give the Earth Room a surreal feel, so we decided to shoot the plates and Chris on 65mm,” says Küchler. “That footage was scanned and integrated into the final film in the digital intermediate [DI].” During the DI, which was also handled by MPC, most of the footage was scanned at 4K through the Spirit DataCine, but visualeffects sequences were scanned on a Northlight. The 65mm sequences were scanned at 5K and downrezzed to 2K for integration into the final, which was filmed out on an Arrilaser. Küchler shot the picture on a single stock, Kodak Vision2 500T 5218, but notes he would have liked another option. “I would have loved to use reversal stock for our most extreme images, but Kodak stopped making its 400 [ISO] reversals,” he laments. “Reversal stock has such a great palette, and it behaves so differently than negative stocks. I tested removing the remjet backing on the emulsion to get a different kind of chemical reaction to highlights, but American Cinematographer 37

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Let There Be Light Right: The injured Capa races through the ship during his surreal confrontation with Pinbacker, the grotesquely transformed captain of Icarus I. Below: The cast and crew take a break on one of the show’s cramped sets.

unfortunately, the insurance companies won’t cover the negative if you do that, so I was left with negative stock. The blessing and curse is that today’s stocks are really good; I could overexpose a scene by 5 or 6 stops and easily bring it back to normal in the digital grade. When we wanted the image to really burn out, I had to overexpose by 8, 9, even 10 stops to really burn the information away to

38 August 2007

the point where we couldn’t get it back. We wanted to physically attack the stock with light to get the right effect. When Searle [played by Cliff Curtis] is exposed to the sun, that’s 10 stops overexposed, and what you see is literally the only information left on the negative — there’s nothing else there.” Küchler decided to light the interior of the Icarus II primarily

with practical fixtures built into the sets, which were constructed at 3 Mills Studios in London. “About 80 percent of the lighting in the ship is practicals,” says Küchler.“We worked really hard with Mark Tildesley to design the lighting into the set. Most of the sets were so tight there wasn’t any room for us to bring in a 2K or big Kino Flos, so we decided to integrate the lighting and supplement it with small floor instruments when necessary.” Working with practical-lighting specialist Joe McGee, Küchler and his gaffer, Reuben Garrett, chose a lot of Osram compact fluorescent tubes, which were integrated into custom fixtures and housings throughout the set, as well as a number of hi-tech LED fixtures. “The Osrams have a really high output in a small, low-power fitting,” notes Garrett. “They were built into the ceilings in housings that could be adjusted up and down, and most of them had louver-like eggcrate honeycombs on them to control spill

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and direct the light. You can get the Osram and Phillips bulbs in a range of colors; 930s are tungsten, 940s are around 4500°K, and 950s are daylight. They all have a very high CRI, so there’s no green spike, and they can all be dimmed down to about 30 percent.” McGee and Garrett hooked all of the fluorescent fixtures into DMX-addressable high-frequency ballasts that all ran back to a Light by Numbers dimmer-control board operated by Stephen Mathie. “Light by Numbers was really important to us,” states Küchler. “We had more than 800 practicals in the set, all individually controlled by that dimmer board.” Garrett adds, “We had all sorts of macros programmed that we could trigger with the press of a button and dim up or down, whatever we needed. It’s fantastic to be able to have the board operator next to you with a little PDA in his hands and have full and immediate control over everything. “In the walls of the social quarters, we also used long, skinny cathode fixtures, bulbs that were about 1⁄4-inch in diameter and 14 inches long,” continues Garrett. “We also used a number of the Luxeon 1and 3-watt LED lights in special fixtures that allowed us to choose the lenses we wanted so we could get some punchy, hot backlights or kicks where needed. Also, Osram makes these great strips of LEDs about 1⁄4inch wide with an adhesive backing. We could slap that up anywhere. In prep, Joe McGee gave us a wealth of lights and fixtures to pick from.” When supplemental lighting was required, Küchler and Garrett used 15" Kino Flos and Kino fixtures lamped with the same compact fluorescent U-tube bulbs used in the practicals, and a smattering of Dedo lights for extra punch.“We often had several actors in a scene and were trying to squeeze three or four of them into each shot, and the floor fixtures helped fill in the gaps and

pick out faces,” notes the gaffer. “I have to say we had a great collaboration with Mark Tildesley and his crew. It was a tight partnership that we certainly pushed to the limits in prep. While they were building the set, Alwin and I walked around with a Kino Flo and said, ‘We need a light here, and here, and here …’ and they cut the holes where we needed them.” Although most of the set is filled with carefully placed soft sources, Küchler occasionally used very hard sources to accentuate the emotions of a scene. “I generally use soft light, but there are times when I want to make something scream a bit. It’s very much like a dissonant chord in music, something that gets into your head. That’s what hard lighting can be. Sometimes you want that hot, noisy light to really punctuate a moment. Sometimes you want it to be ugly because it’s what the scene is about. That’s usually when I turn to harder, hotter lighting.” Küchler strove to create a delicate balance between bright and dim areas throughout the Icarus II. The ship’s oxygen garden, where masses of plants are grown to produce natural oxygen for the crew, is bright and open, in contrast to the dark and moody bridge. “Some areas in a ship

are naturally dark, like the rooms where they need to read lots of instrument panels,” he notes. “Also, the crew of a ship like this would want to conserve energy and not use unnecessary lighting. We felt we couldn’t totally starve the audience of light, of course, but we did try to design periods of darkness before scenes that featured the sun, stretches of maybe 10 minutes or so, so that the light of the sun would be that much more impressive when it appeared.” The sunlight — or lack thereof — was a significant challenge for Wood and his team on shots of the ship’s exterior. “Usually in space movies, the ship at hand is lit by an apparent solar light source, but in Sunshine the ship is traveling behind a huge shield that protects it from the sun’s intensity,” says Wood. “That took awhile to get our heads around. We had to create a ship that was traveling in the shadow of the universe’s only light source, but, of course, we had to see it. That meant the ship had to be entirely self-illuminated. I took a page out of Alwin’s book and put a lot of little lights on the exterior that we allowed to flare the lens and help fill in the shadows. It continued the visual concept of uncontrolled light that the camera is struggling to cope

The bright, open look of the ship’s oxygen garden provides contrast with the ship’s darker, more confined areas.

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Let There Be Light Capa’s showdown with Pinbacker reaches its climax in the ship’s cavernous bomb-payload area, where the scientist has no escape. Spotty overhead lighting provides an ominous ambience while emphasizing the enormity of the space.

with, even artificial light generated by the ship itself. “We had to be very literal in our interpretation of how the sun looked onscreen because it’s our sun,” continues Wood. “There’s a massive amount of footage available, especially from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, which has a satellite that sits between Earth and the sun. We wanted to hold on to familiar images but add less familiar ones, such as gamma radiation views, extreme X-rays and extreme ultraviolet images all combined into a single image. We wanted to create an image of the sun that was familiar but also awe-inspiring.” Sunshine opens with Searle, the ship’s psychologist, sitting in the observation room looking at the sun. We soon learn we’re seeing a highly filtered image of the sun, about 2 percent of its intensity. Searle asks the ship’s computer to dial down the filtration as far as is safe, and he then sees the sun at 3.2 percent of its intensity, which is blindingly bright. “From that point forward,” says Wood, “it’s understood that we’re looking at a manip40 August 2007

ulated image of the sun throughout the film, a filtered image, even when we’re outside of the ship, so the audience can see detail in sun’s surface, which wouldn’t otherwise be possible.” Although some might expect filmmakers to merely bring in a lot of very bright lights to represent the sun, Küchler and Boyle wanted to give the sunlight texture, life and animation. “In the observation room, Danny was nervous about shooting the actors in front of a big greenscreen and not giving them anything to react to when they’re supposed to be experiencing the majesty of the sun,” recalls the cinematographer. Küchler decided to create a large, animated light source that was actually thousands of small lights put together. Early in prep, he had spotted a vendor’s sign made up of hundreds of tiny reflective circles that fluttered in the wind. He decided to integrate this concept into his version of sunlight in the observation room. Garrett recalls, “During testing, we brought in a board covered with tiny reflectors, bounced a light into it and got a lot

of movement and individual flares from hundreds of specular reflections. The light seemed to be dancing all around the room, and that was exactly the effect Alwin wanted.” Creating a large-scale reflector board covered with thousands of miniature reflectors turned out to be too expensive, so Küchler and Garrett had to improvise. They ended up hanging a “disco curtain” made of thin strips of gold Mylar across the front of the observation room, an area 35' high and 60' wide. In front of that, they suspended several hundred gold discs in various sizes on fishing line. They split the curtain in half and then angled the halves at 45° so they could bounce several Dinos into each side, and placed fans on the curtain to flutter the reflections. “We had 10 Dinos on each side and another six across the top, along with a number of Source Four Lekos randomly placed to add extra punch,” details Garrett. “The Dinos were lamped with CP62 medium-spot bulbs and were all on dimmers. For shots when they’re getting really close to the sun, we put a 20K Molebeam in the middle of the

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Left: Suspended from a truss and supported by two crewmembers, Küchler captures a handheld view of Murphy while filming the movie’s climax. Below: A collection of lighting fixtures used on the show. Clockwise from top are a T5 compact fluorescent “U-Tube”; a Luxeon LED; and two strips of Osram LED “tape.”

curtain and aimed it straight into the observation room through the wall.” “We dimmed down all the Wendy lights [Dinos] to about 10 percent for normal sun viewing in the room, but when they turn up the brightness, we brought up the lights, and you could really feel the sudden increase in heat in the room,” notes Kuchler. “That certainly gave the actors something real to react to! Having the support of the director for an effect like this was crucial, because it was not cheap.” At the end of Sunshine, Capa is on a part of the ship that is suddenly directly exposed to the sun. The walls are literally ripped open and a fireball tears through the ship toward Capa. To achieve this effect, Küchler and Garrett created a 60'wide traveling rig of 180 Par cans that could be flown at the actor. “We wanted to move a whole wall of light right at Cillian,” says Küchler. The Par cans were rigged in sets of six on standard Par can bars, then six sets of bars were lined up to create 24 lights across. At its largest point, the rig was 10 Par cans high by 24 wide. The whole grid was

suspended on rollers attached to Ibeams on the stage’s ceiling. Some of the Par cans were lamped with CP62 medium-spot bulbs, while others were lamped with CP61 spot bulbs. Garrett used a mix of gels — Yellow, Primary Red, and CTO ranging from 1⁄ 2 to Double Full — and placed them at random throughout the rig. All of the fixtures were connected to the Light by Numbers dimmer board, and a series of chases was programmed to create a fire effect. The rig itself was cable-controlled

and could move at 5-7 mph down its 60' track toward Murphy. “When we moved that massive light closer to Cillian, it would start to wrap around his face and go from a fairly direct source to a very large soft source, and you could feel it traveling toward him like the fireball is supposed to do,” says Garrett. During their mission, the crew comes across the original Icarus still orbiting the sun. Theorizing that two bombs are better than one, they decide to dock with the dead ship

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Let There Be Light Küchler frames the cosmos.

and try to obtain the original bomb to double their chances of a successful mission. But the plan is a bust: the ship’s power supply and controls have been destroyed, and there is no means of capturing or controlling the bomb aboard. Upon returning to the Icarus II, the crew discovers a

lethal stowaway: Capt. Pinbacker (Mark Strong), the original mission’s only survivor. Having lived alone in close proximity to the sun for seven years, Pinbacker has become something not entirely human, and he is perhaps Sunshine’s most unique and perplexing visual effect — one

THE ART OF LIGHT

achieved entirely in camera. “Pinbacker is a human being, but the forces of light he’s been exposed to have reorganized his protons and neutrons,” says Boyle. “It’s something I’m not sure I can explain. He’s seriously burned by prolonged exposure to the sun, but the light has changed him in other ways as well. Imagine the power the sun has, the energy, and what might be gained by being in close proximity to that power for seven years. He’s not a god, but he has been exposed to the extraordinary. The way he’s seen onscreen represents how the characters see him — they can’t quite focus on him. It’s like trying to stare at the sun for too long.” Because Pinbacker appears in some two-shots, Küchler had to find a way to create the effect that wouldn’t affect anyone else in the frame. “We did a lot of testing and finally came up with a fairly simple

Tel: 818-238-1220 www.leefiltersusa.com 42

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solution: we put a prism in front of the lens to distort the image and manipulated it manually,” he says. He utilized a front-projection beam splitter with a 45° half (50-percent transparent) mirror. On the other side, instead of a projector, Küchler and key grip Adrian McCarthy mounted a second camera so that both cameras would shoot exactly the same image through the aid of the 45° half mirror. Each camera had the same focal-length lens on it, and Küchler handheld Schneider 10" diopters in front of one of the cameras to distort the image of Pinbacker while the second camera remained clean. “We moved the diopters in and out and twisted them,” explains Kuchler. “The rig was very large — it required two focus pullers and one person operating the diopters, usually me or my loader. Of course, we had to tent in the lenses to avoid

any extra reflections on the 45degree mirror. In addition, Danny wanted to Dutch the shots, but the rig was so big and heavy we actually broke our Dutch head after the first week of working with it! Adrian made a new Dutch head out of an old heavy-duty video head and combined that with our OConnor head; that was the only way to withstand the weight of the rig and get the shots Danny wanted. We used two cameras so the images could be combined later, and Danny could pick and choose when he wanted the effect and where it would fall in the frame.” “Making a film like Sunshine is a bit like setting out on a journey to the Arctic: you’ve got to have everything you need when you set off because there’s no going back,” says Boyle. “A film like this takes an incredible amount of preparation and planning. There’s a great quote

from John Boorman:‘Filmmaking is the process of turning money into light.’ Making Sunshine was literally taking all of our lives, and a lot of money, and turning it into light.” I

TECHNICAL SPECS 2.40:1 35mm and 65mm Arricam Studio; Arri 435 Xtreme, 235; Arriflex 765 Hawk anamorphic; Zeiss Ultra Prime, Master Prime lenses Kodak Vision2 500T 5218 Digital Intermediate

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Rock’Em,Sock’Em

Robots T

Mitch Amundsen captures large-scale action as the Transformers wage intergalactic war on Earth. by Noah Kadner

Unit photography by Phil Bray, SMPSP; Robert Zuckerman; and Stephen Vaughan, SMPSP 44 August 2007

ransformers is a sci-fi action film based on the animated television series about warring factions of cybernetic robots who transform into cars, aircraft, animals and a variety of other items, even household appliances. The robots are divided into two opposing camps that broaden their conflict to Earth: the heroic Autobots, led by Optimus Prime, and the villainous Decepticons, led by Megatron. The popularity of the original series led to many waves of tiein merchandise, more series and, in

1986, an animated theatrical feature. Its latest incarnation, a liveaction feature directed by Michael Bay, offered cinematographer Mitch Amundsen (The Transporter 2) a chance to take over director of photography duties for Bay for the first time. (He performed additional photography with secondary units on Bay’s previous films.) “I’ve shot on all of Michael’s second units,” says Amundsen. “I operated on Armageddon [see AC July ’98] and was second-unit director of photography on Pearl Harbor [AC May ’01]. He has a very unique

Photos courtesy of DreamWorks LLC/Paramount.

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style; you can watch a movie and recognize his composition, lighting, camera movement and cutting. We both came from music videos, where it’s all about a lot of quick shots. Michael never stops shooting — we were often doing more than 50 setups a day on Transformers. It’s a language and film style we’ve been using for years.” Amundsen shot Transformers in anamorphic 2.40:1 using a Panavision camera package. There were multiple units, but the primary crew comprised other Bay veterans, including gaffer Andy Ryan, 1st AC Todd Schlopy, camera operator David Emmerichs and key grip Les Tomita. “Most of the time we had eight or nine cameras available on our truck,” recalls Schlopy. “The A and B cameras were Panaflex Platinums, the C was a Millennium XL, the D was an Arri 435 Xtreme and the E was an Arri 235. We also had two modified Arri 2-Cs and some Eyemos.” Tomita adds, “Michael loves to use an array of toys, so it’s like having Showbiz Expo everywhere we go! We used an Ultimate Arm quite a bit to do high-speed 360-degree moves remotely. We also used a 50-foot Technocrane with a Libra head, often mounted on camera cars.”

Amundsen shot the picture on two Kodak Vision2 stocks, 250D 5205 (day exteriors) and 500T 5218 (everything else). “We shot about 1.3 million feet of 5218, and Mitchell often rated it at [ISO] 1,000,” recalls Schlopy. “He had no problem pushing it; it held up great.” The production’s lenses included C-Series anamorphic lenses, Cooke 3:1 and 10:1 zooms, and some lenses custom-designed for Transformers by Dan Sasaki, senior technical adviser at

Panavision. “Michael likes to shoot very wide and very long,” notes Amundsen. “Some of our lenses were the only sets in existence. We had an amazing flat 25mm, which is normally about a 12mm in the spherical world. Panavision also reworked a lot of lenses for us. We used a 60mm close-focus lens and an extremely long [zoom] that went from 2400-3800mm. It was incredibly flat with a lot of compression.” “For filtration we used mostly NDs, 85s and flats to protect the

Opposite page: Optimus Prime, a shapeshifting robot from an alien race called the Autobots, comes to Earth’s defense against the marauding Decepticons. This page, top: A Decepticon known as Bonecrusher goes on a destructive freeway rampage. Below: Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) turns to Optimus Prime for help during the battle.

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Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots

Above: Bonecrusher (left) and Optimus Prime square off for a showdown on the freeway. Right: The titans’ clash has fiery consequences for nearby vehicles.

lenses,” says Schlopy. “To save money, we often used Lexan and clear glass flats. If we were shooting with a tungsten stock outside, we’d use an 85. Michael and Mitchell also like the Polarizer, but we never use it fully saturated, where things start looking too dark and weird — we’d just dial an in-between setting to give the sky a little pop.” “I wanted a lot of contrast in terms of blue nights, and I wanted it edgy at times,” explains Bay. “We opted for a lot of flares. I like the old-school anamorphic lenses; I like a big negative. I also wanted a lot of aggressive, handheld camera movement, to get that speed that really creates the sensation you’re 46 August 2007

being chased.” Amundsen and his crew worked out a stylized approach to lighting and photographing the robots, which were CG creations added to shots in post by Industrial Light & Magic. (See sidebar on page 50.) “The challenge was preparing and lighting for 30-foot robots that weren’t there on set,” recalls Ryan. “The Transformers needed to look like part of our world, so they couldn’t be lit up like Christmas trees. Mitch and I talked a lot about the look of car commercials, and in keeping with that kind of approach we created kickers and worked out interactive lighting so there was something for

ILM artists to go on.” When operating on such shots, says Emmerichs, “the trick was making sure there was enough extra room in the shot. I was sometimes doing a whip-pan from an actor’s face to empty air, or to a guy holding a tennis ball. And I had to be careful to not end up tracking right through a robot’s head!” Transformers opens with a prologue set in the 1890s, as an icebreaker ship exploring the Arctic Circle comes across the gigantic Megatron frozen in a cave. The scene combined stage work with second-unit location work in Alaska. “There were fissures in the sides of the ice-cave set that we filled with 7K Xenons and beam projectors to make the cave look like it was glowing,” says Amundsen. Ryan adds, “We also hung blue-gelled space lights above the set, positioned some Dinos on the floor and then moved a bounce card around for fill.” Bay notes that lights were set on both sides of the cave “so we could do flip-arounds very quickly. We had to accomplish a lot in not much time — 103 shooting days — and the only way to do that was with pre-rigged sets, which Andy [Ryan] does really well.

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It’s worth it to spend the extra money pre-rigging so you can save time on your $300,000 days.” The action transitions to the present with the mysterious crash landings of objects that appear to be meteorites. Curious teenager Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf) investigates one crash site with his girlfriend, Mikaela (Megan Fox). The couple quickly discovers the Transformers have arrived and begun wreaking havoc. The mayhem continues as a rogue helicopter approaches an airbase in Qatar at dusk and is ordered to land. (Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico provided the location.) As the helicopter lands, it transforms and reveals itself as Blackout, a nasty Decepticon who proceeds to make short work of soldiers and military hardware alike. Capt. Lennox (Josh Duhamel) and Sgt. Epps (Tyrese Gibson) fend off the robot, but not before he launches Scorponok, a burrowing Decepticon, who takes the form of a scorpion. “We used three BeBee Night Lights for the broad strokes, with nine or 15 6K Pars on their remote heads,” says Ryan. “With Michael, you have to figure out ways to light so it’s not going to take an incredible amount of time to re-light, and so you can photograph the units if necessary. So we incorporated the lighting into the scene. We put little Honda generators in the backs of jeeps and then mounted four 1K Par cans and 1,200-watt HMIs on them. When they drive up, they’re actually lighting the shot, and you buy them as military vehicles.” Bay adds, “When Andy told me that idea, I thought it was brilliant. We had to shoot right as the sun was going down, two days in a row. Also, you don’t get military equipment for long, just a day or two.” Aerial cinematographer David B. Nowell, ASC helped capture the action using a gyrostabi-

lized SpaceCam mounted to the nose of an A-Star helicopter. “The SpaceCam uses a modified Mitchell Mark II pin-registered camera, typically with a Panavision-mount Angenieux HR 10:1 zoom with an anamorphic back end,” says Nowell. “For the nighttime battles we switched the 10:1 back to spherical and pushed the 5218 one stop so we could shoot at around a T4. For some daytime desert scenes, we covered an A-10 Thunderbolt air strike and also brought in some V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.” A subsequent scene takes place the next morning at a desert Bedouin camp and garrison; this was filmed at the White Sands Missile Range near Alamogordo, New Mexico. “The week before we got there, two of the construction guys were sent to the hospital with sunburn,” says Amundsen. “It’s all white sand, and the reflected light is incredibly powerful. And we had to wrap our cameras carefully because the sand went everywhere.” Ryan recalls, “We were out in 115-degree heat for four days. The sky was blue, the sun was out and the sand was white, so there wasn’t a lot of extra lighting there! Michael rarely let us put up a diffusion frame to take an actor out of direct sun

because that would have taken too much time. So we decided to go with the toplight and use bounce cards to add fill on the actors’ closeups. It ended up making for a better look.” The scene features a centerpiece shot of Scorponok bursting out of the sand in slow motion to ambush Lennox and Epps. “It was done in three passes at 360 fps on a Photo-Sonics 4ER [with a spherical Primo 4:1 zoom],” says Amundsen. “First, we had the actors run at us in slow motion. Then we did a second pass with a big explosion in the sand, and finally we shot a clean pass. ILM added Scorponok flying out of the sand. We figured out that shot in a previz animatic long

Above: Human soldiers attempt to fend off the powerful robots amid the sandscapes of Qatar. These scenes were shot at Halloman Air Force Base and the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, where the temperature reached 115°F. Below: Director Michael Bay (right) leads his troops through the desert.

American Cinematographer 47

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Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots

Above: While exploring the Arctic Circle, the crew of an icebreaker ship discovers Megatron, the Decepticon leader, frozen in a cave. Below: Director of photography Mitch Amundsen finds his angle in the icy set.

48 August 2007

before we got there, and it turned out even better than we’d planned.” The filmmakers relied greatly on previsualization to test action sequences and provide for proper composition and camera movement for capturing giant robots. “Michael took the time in prep to figure every scene out, and his animatics were invaluable,” says Ryan. “He was literally directing to the animatics. They helped us prepare for everything each scene required.” The previz supervisor was Steve Yamamoto. “We use Autodesk

Maya, so everything was in 3-D,” says Yamamoto. “Michael tends to come up with signature shots that are pivotal to a scene and then build off those. He wanted everything to have that visceral, highspeed feel. For example, the Autobots aren’t just standing still when they transform; they’re cars moving at 70 mph that then transform into robot form while keeping that high speed.” Bay notes, “Steve is one of the rare [previz] guys who has a real sense of camera motion in his animatics. It can be

frustrating to try to explain to somebody with a cursor how the camera works. We were also very judicious and used the ‘less is more’ approach in terms of our big effects shots. It’s all about how you tease the robots, because the shots are really, really expensive.” ILM’s Scott Farrar provided on-set visual-effects supervision and stand-in reference devices to allow Amundsen and Bay to properly set up compositions and predict camera movement. “I’m a big fan of simple tools,” says Farrar. “For occasional shots we had fully 3-D robot heads on set, but most of the time we used simple poles — the kind used for window-washing — and extended them to match the robots’ height. Michael shoots everything with multiple moving cameras, so we’d do one take with the poles to give the operators a good sense of where the robots would eventually be.” Emmerichs wryly observes, “It looked a little like a Cirque du Soleil act, but it really helped us get the headroom right and figure out the scale. The 25mm flat lens allowed us to get wide enough to see multiple robots and still have people in the frame that didn’t look like ants.”

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Left: A lighting diagram shows Amundsen’s approach to the hangar set. “There were fissures in the sides of the icecave set that we filled with 7K Xenons and beam projectors to make the cave look like it was glowing,” says Amundsen. Gaffer Andy Ryan adds, “We also hung bluegelled space lights above the set, positioned some Dinos on the floor and then moved a bounce card around for fill.” Below: Crewmembers use a broom to create a mini “avalanche.”

Farrar, who started his career as a visual-effects camera operator on films such as Cocoon and Return of the Jedi, brought a strong appreciation of physics and photorealism to Transformers’ visual effects. “We’d create cutters, flags and nets in the computer for the robots to move around in, even though they weren’t physically on the set,” he notes. “We gave them interesting shadows, kickers and backlights so it would all blend together with the live-action photography.” Although Transformers leans heavily on the action side, there are a handful of lighter moments. In one whimsical night scene, a little girl who believes the Tooth Fairy has paid her a visit soon discovers an Autobot named Ironhide has taken refuge in the family swimming pool. Amundsen recalls, “That was one of Michael’s favorite scenes, and we knew he wanted to use it in the film’s first trailer, so it had to be shot and sent to ILM ear-

lier than the rest of the material. The pool was half-filled with water, with steam rising above it. We set up a Technocrane shot that wraps around the action with a few separate passes, sometimes clean, sometimes with the girl in the frame.” “We did the scene over a night at a house in Chatsworth that’s been shot a million times,” says Ryan. “I couldn’t get a BeBee

into the backyard because it was up on a hill, so I put one far away to backlight the steam rising from the pool and some smoke we added to help pull out the trees. I put Redheads as up-shooters on trees, along with some HMI Pars on the ground and a lot of architectural lighting. We also floated a tungsten 8K helium balloon to create an overall ambience.” ­

American Cinematographer 49

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Unleashing CG Robots in the Real World

Starscream clears a path through traffic.

50 August 2007

I

LM’s goal on Transformers was to achieve photo-realistic 30'-tall CG robots that had believable physicality, and visual-effects supervisor Scott Farrar worked closely with cinematographer Mitch Amundsen and director Michael Bay to ensure the careful integration of live-action cinematography with this CG work. Farrar began by looking at how other sci-fi movies had incorporated robots. He found most had used an actual mechanical figure, like Robby the Robot in Forbidden Planet, or an actor in a costume, like C-3PO in Star Wars. “Robby the Robot was simple but it really worked, and C3PO was one of the best-looking man-in-a-suit robots,” says Farrar, “but the movies with giant robots were mostly done with very simplistic stop-motion animation.” Because the Transformers were to be composited into shots in post, Farrar used on-set reference devices to give Bay, Amundsen and camera operator David Emmerichs guidance. “I spent most of my time with Michael and David,” says Farrar. “I’d recommend how wide they needed to be, or say, ‘It’s okay if you see part of the robot here.’ They were always trying for messy compositions because that helps you

believe the robots are really there. We were all thrilled when we saw the first shots come in.” Amundsen added touches such as interactive flares and shadows to help incorporate the robots into his photography. “There’s an alley scene where all of the Transformers show themselves, and Optimus Prime rolls up to Sam and Mikaela,” he says. “We shot clean plates of the alley, often shooting right into the BeBee Night Lights and getting flares. We’d create shadows and knock lights out with flags, knowing the shape would eventually be something else.” “Michael likes to have the camera moving, and in this film the camera is often rising and swirling around a robot,” says Farrar. “So we’d dress the robots to the camera, with gears, wheels and pistons moving into position as the camera sees them. That made the transformations look more complicated and more real.” On the set, ILM relied on its longtime practice of extensive reference photography and notation to integrate its virtual camera with the live-action work. “Most important was getting the reflection of the environment each scene takes place

in,” says Farrar. “Our match-mover, Duncan Blackman, was on set with a digital still camera to photograph the surroundings for each scene. From that, we stitched together a 360-degree background sphere environment that could be reflected on the robots’ shiny chrome surface. “Michael didn’t want clunky robots,” he continues. “He had [stunt coordinator] Kenny Bates devise different styles of fighting for the different robots. We also looked at real-world physics and considered the weight and speed of something so big. On top of that, we needed to make the robots look cool. We had to walk a fine line, and sometimes we threw away the physics!” Bay wanted to film all of the action involving the Transformers with as many real elements as possible. This approach proved especially successful during a freeway chase that finds Decepticon Bonecrusher smashing through a city bus, triggering an explosion. “That bus is real, all of it,” says Amundsen. “The special-effects team spent a lot of time rigging the explosion. I operated the hero shot, and we were leading just 20 feet in front of that bus. When it blew, we thought the explo-

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sion might catch up with us!” Despite the project’s reliance on CGI, the filmmakers found that practical iterations of the robots were occasionally useful. “The question was always, ‘Can we get decent mileage out of it if we build it for real?’” recalls Farrar. “[Special-effects coordinator] John Frazier made a full-sized [16'-tall] model of Bumblebee, Sam’s Autobot buddy, for a sequence where Bumblebee is tied down to a train car. His movement was restricted in this case because he was covered with a cargo net, and the model could be photographed multiple times.” Also, a puppet for Soundbyte, a devilish stainless-steel Decepticon, was used for certain shots where the camera was up close or he wasn’t moving around much. Finally, the lower part of Megatron’s body was built practically in the government-facility set; they shot a lot of live-action material of the actors walking around those giant legs.” “At one point Megatron breaks loose,” says Amundsen. “We had some debris flying around the set and tried to make it look like his legs were bending a little, but most of the big action was ILM’s work. We didn’t do much greenscreen or bluescreen because ILM was adding so much into all of our shooting environments, even through explosions and dust.” Adds Farrar,“For the final battle, we had layers and layers of dust, debris, fire and smoke, along with bullets and missile trails, and bricksand-mortar chunks of buildings blowing off. All of that had to be simulated or shot as real elements and composited in. The city fight is dirty and messy, and making it all look real required incredibly complex work. A lot of pieces have to be put together to make everything look good in the end.” — Noah Kadner

Although much of Transformers was shot on location, several sets were built at the former aircraft hangars in Playa Vista that have played host to a number of studio productions. Transformers’ stage sets included a secret government facility that holds Megatron while he is still in cryogenic stasis (from the Arctic prologue). “We built Megatron from the waist down and ILM added the upper half,” recalls Ryan.“Michael wanted to be able to photograph the lighting units, so we built 12 Art-Decostyle lighting clusters, each consisting of six MolePars. Above Megatron I put eight Mac 2000 motorized lights, which we could quickly reset as keylights, down-

lights or backlights. On the day, we also used a couple of 10Ks, one as a key through a diffusion frame, the other as a hard edge.” Back on location, a huge freeway chase scene showcases Optimus Prime as he takes on a bus-swatting Decepticon named Bonecrusher. The filmmakers used a special rig, dubbed the “BayBuster,” which was originally built for the director during Bad Boys II by special-effects supervisor John Frazier. “It’s a 3⁄4-ton truck driven by a stunt driver that has a cowcatcher type of attachment on the front and roll cages all around that house fixed remote cameras,” says Tomita. “It can drive through anything and flip other cars and debris

Above: Crewmembers add some finishing touches to the chaos and mayhem on a street set. According to Ryan, “The challenge was preparing and lighting for 30foot robots that weren’t there on set.” Below: The camera dollies rapidly to capture a dynamic shot of a special-effects explosion.

American Cinematographer 51

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Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots right over it. For Michael, it’s all about putting viewers in the middle of the action.” The film’s finale takes place in the downtown area of a major city, where a pitched air and ground battle between the Transformers is joined by Sam and the U.S. military. The sequence includes shots filmed in Los Angeles and Detroit and on Universal Studios’ New York Street. “The setting is Anytown, U.S.A.,” says Amundsen. “Michael loves Detroit because it’s a great-looking city that’s accessible and easy to lock up [for shooting]. ILM created CG set extensions to help tie everything together.” Bay notes, “It was one of the most complicated climaxes I’ve ever shot; there were many stories going on at the same time. What made it bearable was that we were only able to shoot it over weekends, so I had time to cut scenes together during the week and see what I

needed the following weekend.” In downtown L.A., Amundsen employed a Coptervision radio-controlled miniature helicopter rigged with an Arri 2-C, shooting Super 35mm. “We used the Coptervision to shoot low-flying plates for scenes where F-22 jets are supposed to be flying above the streets,” he notes. “We flew it down Broadway as fast as it could go. Then we could composite whatever we wanted into the shot, like an F-22 piece or an overthe-shoulder of a missile. We got some very cool plates.” “The beauty of a 103-day schedule with Michael is that we shoot every frame of film,” notes Ryan. “Most days we were first unit, but occasionally we were second or visual-effects unit; we ran those units with a reduced first-unit crew. That way the look of the film remained consistent.” Colorist Stefan Sonnenfeld at

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Sonnenfeld also provided ILM with color-corrected background plates as 2K DPX files. “We established a process on Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End that we wanted to repeat on Transformers,” says the colorist.“We always corrected the plate shots before sending them to the effects house. Michael was in touch with ILM every day during post, and as we got further along he’d look at shots on our Barco DP-100 2K projector and make comments, approve or disapprove.” For the DI on Transformers, negatives were scanned on Arri scanners at 2K, and sometimes at 4K or 6K for shots requiring enlargements or additional detail. “We work with a da Vinci 2K Plus, Autodesk’s Smoke, and Backdraft Conform,” says Sonnenfeld. “The DI process took four or five weeks, and Michael was very hands-on.

EFilm will do the filmout and send the digital negative to Deluxe for release printing.”Amundsen wasn’t able to participate in the DI every day because of a prior commitment, but he notes that Sonnenfeld “is probably the best colorist there is, and he’s done all of Michael’s movies. We talked all the time during dailies. He has great taste.” “It’s hard to go from being a second-unit director of photography to the main cinematographer on a monster movie like this, but Mitch did a great job,” says Bay. “Andy Ryan also made it easier because he’s done so many big shows and has worked with both of us for so long. Transformers was a great experience.” Amundsen has similarly warm words for the crew: “I was spoiled rotten on Transformers, working with people who are so good at what they do. I’d come up

with an idea and the execution just came together flawlessly. We had one of the best crews ever put together. Good stuff just happened all the time.” I

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Ghost

Writer

1408, shot by Benoît Delhomme, AFC, traps a horror author in a haunted hotel room. by Mark Hope-Jones Unit photography by Melinda Sue Gordon, SMPSP

“D

on’t enter 1408.” This warning, scrawled on a postcard from New York’s Dolphin Hotel, is enough to lure skeptical horror writer Mike Enslin (John Cusack) back to the city where his infant daughter succumbed to a fatal illness and his marriage fell apart.When the anonymous warning arrives at his new home in California, Enslin real54 August 2007

izes the Dolphin might provide an ideal final chapter for his latest book, a cynical survey of 10 supposedly haunted rooms, nine of which he has occupied for an uneventful night. When Enslin arrives at the Dolphin, the hotel manager, Olin (Samuel L. Jackson), begs him to change his plans; he claims 56 people have died in room 1408, all of them in less than an hour. Undeterred and unbeliev-

ing, Enslin demands the key and, armed with his trusty minicassette recorder, heads to the room. Stephen King’s novels have provided source material for dozens of film and television projects, including the features Carrie, The Shining and The Shawshank Redemption. The new film 1408, directed by Mikael Håfström and shot by Benoît Delhomme, AFC, is

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Photos courtesy of Weinstein Co. Frame grabs courtesy of Framestore CFC. Additional photos courtesy of Benoît Delhomme.

Opposite: The Dolphin Hotel’s haunted room 1408 ensures that cynical author Mike Enslin (John Cusack), who’s made a career of discrediting the paranormal, is in for a long night. This page: At first, Enslin finds the room rather ordinary, but soon ghosts of 1408’s previous victims begin to appear (below).

based on a short story by King that first appeared in audiobook form in 1999 (as part of Blood and Smoke) and later surfaced as one of 14 dark tales in the book Everything’s Eventual. Delhomme was in Buenos Aires on a break from a commercial when he read the script for 1408. “As I read, I realized that for half the year I was just like Mike Enslin — sitting in a hotel room, far from home, with nothing but memories — so I was really scared by the story,” says the cinematographer. He was intrigued by the project’s visual potential; most of the tale takes place in one room, though it goes through a series of

dramatic changes. “Many elements normally associated with exteriors, such as rain, fire and ice, all come into play in this interior,” he says. At the time, Delhomme was still savoring his experiences working in the Australian Outback on The Proposition (see AC May ’06), and 1408 presented a radical change of environment and genre.“I like doing different genres, the way actors do,” he says. “I thought doing a horror movie after a Western would be great.” Except for a few scenes, 1408 was filmed in London, mainly onstage at Elstree Studios. Delhomme decided to exaggerate

the differences between East Coast and West Coast climates and cultures in order to accentuate the idea that Enslin is being drawn back into a painful past.“Mike’s life in California is a bit like the cliché — he’s relaxed, he surfs, it’s warm. He moved to Los Angeles to escape what happened in New York, to be in a place where the sun shines every day and the sky is always blue. I wanted to associate the sun with positive thinking, so that when he goes back to New York, we could create a contrast to that with darker and less saturated images.” In L.A., Delhomme shot on Kodak Vision2 200T 5217 and 100T 5212 and used Tiffen White Pro-Mist fil-

American Cinematographer 55

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Ghost Writer After nursing a hand wound (right) caused by an apparently cognizant window, Enslin attempts a treacherous escape (below) but finds no way back into the building except through 1408. Because 1408 was shot mainly on stage in London, New York City backdrops were added in post.

ters to accentuate highlights. For scenes set in New York, he used Vision2 500T 5218 and Black ProMist filters for all scenes set in room 1408, as well as night shots. (Only one New York scene was actually shot there: when Enslin’s cab stops in front of the Dolphin Hotel. Delhomme notes the Dolphin exterior was actually two different hotels; the bottom was the Roosevelt and the top was a Marriott. “The two were combined in one tilting establishing shot by the visual-effects team,” he says.) Håfström and Delhomme had not worked together before, but they quickly established a good rapport.“When I met Mikael, I was reassured,” says Delhomme. “I wasn’t sure if a horror-film director might 56 August 2007

be kind of creepy, but Mikael was so normal and sensitive and warm. It felt like meeting an old friend, in a way.” Their visual references for 1408 included the films of Roman Polanski and Alfred Hitchcock,“and, of course, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, which is a masterpiece of this kind of psychological horror movie.” Kubrick’s picture, shot by John Alcott, BSC, came to provide inspiration for the filmmakers’ technical approach. “I love the wide shots in The Shining and was so impressed by the lighting,” enthuses Delhomme. “The angles are so wide that you see the ceilings and wonder how on earth they lit it.” While serving as director of photography of the New York unit on The Talented Mr.

Ripley, Delhomme had met Roy Walker, the production designer on The Shining. “We spent entire nights talking about The Shining because I wanted to know everything about it,” recalls Delhomme.“He explained that Stanley loved to work with practicals and to have ceilings everywhere, with light boxes you couldn’t see, so he could move from wide shots to closeups without having to relight. Roy told me about the thousands of lampshades he bought for Stanley that quickly got burned by powerful Photofloods!” Delhomme worked with production designer Andrew Laws to achieve similar freedom on 1408.“We knew light was going to be a big part of the character of the room,” says Laws. The art department provided practical lamps for the hotel suite; some were rewired by gaffer David Smith and his crew to accommodate more powerful bulbs.“When the ceilings were built, we worked out camera angles with Mikael and made openings in the ceilings as big as we could without the camera seeing them,” says Smith.“We built softboxes to fit exactly in those openings.” Each softbox contained two to six space lights above layers of diffusion and was surrounded by a skirt to keep spill off the walls. These, in combination with the practicals, provided sufficient light levels in the suite for Delhomme to expose at T2.5 on 5218.

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This stop proved ideal “because I wanted to have John Cusack a little sharper than the walls, and working with wide lenses at T2.5 was giving me more than enough depth of field! The walls were always so close that I wanted some separation.” Sometimes he used a Chinese lantern on a boom or in his hands to get a little more light on Cusack’s face.“Occasionally we put some Chinese lanterns or Kino Flos behind furniture, but there were mirrors in the room, and in general it was nearly impossible to hide conventional movie lamps,” he adds. For much of the shoot, Cusack had to play scenes entirely on his own. “It was very challenging,” recalls Håfström, “because actors tend to draw energy from other actors, but he got used to it.” The decision to make heavy use of a Steadicam rig allowed the director to give Cusack greater freedom to explore the space. “There were a lot of things going on that were very hard to plan, so we had to go with the flow, and the Steadicam made it very easy for us to improvise,” says Delhomme. Although the cinematographer typically does his own operating, using a Steadicam meant he was often separated from the camera. “I’d never worked with a camera operator for a whole film before,” he notes. “I interviewed several [Steadicam operators], and I chose Gerry Vasbenter

because we had the best communication. It was funny — Mikael directed John and I directed Gerry like he was an actor, too! After a take, Mikael would make a suggestion to John, and I would make an immediate suggestion to Gerry. I wanted him to react like John’s doppelgänger. It was a fantastic experience.” Working in Super 35mm, Delhomme used Panaflex Millennium XL cameras and Primo lenses supplied by Panavision U.K.“I always tried to put two cameras on the set, but it wasn’t easy with the Steadicam because it was on a wide angle and very close to John. But there was always [another operator] standing by with a camera in case he could grab something. For the action

sequences, we often had three cameras. In a way, this is a mini-action movie that takes place in one room.” Delhomme prefers working with a small range of prime lenses. On The Proposition he stuck mainly to the 35mm, 50mm and 75mm, but 1408 necessitated much shorter focal lengths. “I wanted to work with wider angles on this film — 14.5mm, 17.5mm and 21mm. At times we even used a 10mm Primo, a beautiful lens. We never really used a long lens.” He also used a Primo 14.5-50mm Macro Zoom, not so much on the Steadicam, but for contra-zooms, usually on a dolly. “We did this quite a lot, but not with the full zoom range; I just made short changes of focal length, often with-

Once Enslin is trapped inside 1408, the room tests the author’s resolve by drenching him (above) and then freezing him (below). Note Delhomme’s switch to ambient fluorescent lighting.

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Ghost Writer

Above left: Enslin comes face to face with another ghost while trying to escape through the air-conditioning ductwork. Above right: Delhomme (right) directs the lighting for the ghost-in-aduct shot. Below: Delhomme takes a meter reading at Enslin’s possessed laptop computer.

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out telling anyone. I like to play with the zoom myself.” The combination of wide angles and Steadicam made it almost impossible for Delhomme to move props around for individual shots. “We designed the room big enough to work around all the furniture. We didn’t really have the option to pull walls, because with the wide angles we often had three walls in shot. I also wanted to give John the feeling he was in a real room so he could fill the space.” Focus puller Dermot Hickey had his work cut out for him, thanks to the physical obstacles in the room, the relatively wide aperture setting, and the roving camera.

“Dermot had a lot to do because you don’t use any marks with a Steadicam,” says Delhomme. “After some time in the room, he got to know the dimensions and the distances between pieces of furniture. It was a difficult job, probably the hardest job on this crew. “One of the main ideas of the story is that Enslin is seemingly on his own in this room, but really isn’t; he’s surrounded by ghosts or spirits. When you’re on your own somewhere, it’s scary when you suddenly see someone where no one should be. We wanted to use the Steadicam to create tension around John all the time, to suggest another character is

there with him. Sometimes the Steadicam is Enslin’s POV, and sometimes it seems to be someone else’s. Handheld would have been too much, too specifically like a person. I wanted the images to have ambiguity because that increases the tension.” The filmmakers also wanted to create the impression that the room itself is sentient, and everything in it possessed by the same sinister consciousness. “The walls are characters, every prop and lamp is a character,” says Delhomme. “Once, John suddenly grabbed a lamp and swung it around, and after the take he asked me, ‘Did you like what I did? I was lighting myself!’” Delhomme was quick to encourage such improvisation because it drew the light into the story.“John was very good with that,” he recalls. “The light is a character in the film — when it flickers, it’s alive, pushing to be something different.” Keen for the light to make transitions through the film, just as the room does, Delhomme proposed gradually altering the color of the walls with his lighting “so they would become brighter than Enslin, and he would be silhouetted against them. One of my favorite things when working in a soundstage is to give several different looks to the same space. This makes me think of the painter who works all his life with the same background: his studio.” The

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lighting transition was motivated in part by the fact that the room’s thermostat never works properly; the first look is warm, and once the room’s temperature rises and Enslin becomes uncomfortable, the maintenance man “fixes”the thermostat and it goes wrong in the opposite direction, making the room quite cold. Laws installed specially built mouldings between the walls and ceilings that were substantial enough to conceal egg crates and fluorescent tubes. “When I started using fluorescent light all around the room, suddenly the walls were colder, more graphic and more lit,” notes Delhomme. “All the lighting effects were on keyboards, so I could go from one setup to another very quickly; only the gel on the light box in the ceiling had to be changed. For the first look, I used dimmers to make the light box match the practicals. For the second look, as the fluorescents were about 4000°K, I used some blue gel in the light box.” By changing the nature of the

light, Delhomme realized the color transitions without the art department having to re-dress the set for the second look. “We played with a few different ideas of color in the early stages,” says Laws. “We considered whether the color of the room should actually change when the light shifted from incandescent to fluorescent. Ultimately, we came up with a couple of colors that were neutral but had enough tone that when we shifted from one form of light to another, they picked up that change and exaggerated it.” 1408 contains about 350 visual-effects shots, more than Håfström had contended with on previous projects. Visual-effects supervisor Sean Farrow was brought onboard fairly early in the film’s development to assist the director. “After Mikael and I worked on storyboards, we developed them into animatics or previz, depending on the complexity of the sequence,” says Farrow. The previz helped them decide camera,

crane and track positions, and calculate how much bluescreen they wanted in different places. Farrow had worked with Delhomme before, on The Merchant of Venice (AC Jan. ’05). Therefore they did not have to have what Farrow calls “the regular discussions that every cinematographer and visual-effects supervisor have at the beginning of a shoot: film stock, bluescreen vs. greenscreen, spill and lighting — the stuff we have to compromise on one way or another.” Delhomme knew he would have to photograph some of 1408’s bluescreen shots with the 200speed 5217, though this would not be easy on a set lit by practicals. In order to minimize delays when Cusack was on set, a TransLite was used behind the hotel-room window for as many shots as possible. On the other five sets for room 1408, bluescreen was outside. Farrow was able to conduct tests for the bluescreen lighting during the shoot, which helped save time. For

Six sets for room 1408 were constructed onstage at Elstree Studios. In this diagram the large gray circles centered in each room represent space lights, each containing six 800-watt bulbs. The blue bars around the edges of the rooms are TLD 840 fluorescent tubes on Tridonic Ballasts and are controlled by a Digital Addressable Lighting Interface system. The small green circles represent practical wall fixtures containing 60-watt candlestyle bulbs. The small yellow rectangles are practical lamps containing 100-watt pearl bulbs. The small red circle in the middle of the diagram is a Par 30 that illuminates the minibar. The pink circles represent practical wall fixtures that light hanging wall art.

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Ghost Writer Manning the overhead camera, Delhomme prepares to shoot Cusack playing a scene in which Enslin finally concedes that the paranormal may exist after all.

the first setups, he tried two different bluescreen materials and two different lighting approaches, then rushed through a scan of the negatives in order to compare their suitability. He notes, “I worked with Dave Smith, the gaffer, on using tungsten fixtures and lighting more traditionally, and on a technique he had developed

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using Kino Flos with special bluescreen gels. Ultimately we used the Kino process for about 80 percent of the bluescreen work. For closer shots, where blue spill was an issue, we used tungstens. We were fortunate to have those minor bluescreen shots to test the setups for the bigger ones.” Being on set enabled him to ensure that

images slated for 2-D effects were not shot in a way that would necessitate motion-control. The visual-effects work was divided among a number of companies, including The Moving Picture Co. (MPC), LipSync Post, The Senate, and Rainmaker, and Farrow assigned shots to the facilities he thought were best suited to the work. For example, he gave the water shots to MPC, whose artists had recently refined CG water for Poseidon (AC June ’06). He was also conscious that the production might add more CG shots later in the shoot, and he didn’t want a single facility to be working at maximum capacity. At one point in the film, Enslin opens the small refrigerator in room 1408 and sees Olin walking down a long corridor toward him. Farrow recalls, “There were all kinds of concerns about how we could make a character inside a minibar seem threatening. We did a lot of previz and

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storyboarding just to draw out how we could present the two characters in the same frame.” Ultimately, a bluescreen corridor was built, and liveaction images of Jackson and Cusack were shot with a small motion-control rig. The CG corridor, designed to reflect the general look of the hotel, was assembled in LightWave 3D and Maya before being rendered through Mental Ray. Farrow’s team captured more than 1,000 high-dynamic-range images of Olin’s office set so they could incorporate every textual and architectural detail. “It was mostly done with a small amount of geometry, and then projected textures that were matte-painted to add extra depth, detail and ruggedness,”explains Farrow. Delhomme participated in all the discussions about matching the CG and live-action elements. “I am so obsessed that the lighting should be real and logical,” notes the cinematographer.

1408 was finished with a digital intermediate (DI) at Framestore CFC, where it was graded in a Baselight 8 suite, using an NEC iS8 projector with Texas Instruments chip and the Truelight color-management system. Delhomme requested colorist Adam Glasman, with whom he had successfully collaborated on The Proposition and Breaking and Entering. “Adam is part of my team,” he says. “He knows my taste and how I work. In a way, it’s like continuing the relationship you have with your gaffer on the set. Adam sometimes created the ‘top chop’ we had no time to fix during the shoot!” Knowing that the film would finish with a DI gave Delhomme the freedom to light with broad strokes on set, ignoring time-consuming subtleties such as elaborate flags.“I created the suggestion of the lighting on set and did all the finessing in the DI,” he says.“I’ve

become used to it.” He emphasizes, however, that there are limits to the DI process:“I never go against what I have done on set, I just take it further. There is one thing the DI can’t do for sure: change the direction of the light you created on the set. Digital tools can alter the mood of your lighting — you can make it harder, softer, warmer or cooler — but they’re not a magic wand.” I

TECHNICAL SPECS 2.40:1 Super 35mm Panaflex Millennium Primo lenses Kodak Vision2 100T 5212, 200T 5217, 500T 5218 Digital Intermediate Printed on Kodak Vision 2383

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DanceFever Director of photography Bojan Bazelli revisits the Sixties for Hairspray, a musical about an optimistic teen who’s determined to make a difference. by Rachael K. Bosley Unit photography by David James, SMPSP

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hallenging to make and rarely attempted, film musicals rank close to Westerns as the genre cinematographers would most like to try, and when Bojan Bazelli read the script for Hairspray, an adaptation of the 2002 Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, he was pleased to discover how much substance lay behind its sunny façade. Set in Baltimore in 1962, the story follows Tracy Turnblad (Nikki Blonsky), a heavyset teen who dances her way to television stardom and then uses the 62 August 2007

platform to campaign for racial integration. “The film has a really strong message about America in the Sixties, and that made it an unusual musical script,” says Bazelli. “The Cold War is going on, there’s racial segregation, and alongside those elements is the simple story of a girl who wants to belong but is told she can’t because she’s too fat. It’s a great story that operates on many levels.” Despite the film’s roots in reality, however, there was no getting around the fact that “every element

— lighting, costumes, choreography, and so on — had to be slightly surreal in order to make it not seem so strange that the characters were singing to each other rather than talking,” he continues. “This isn’t like Chicago, where the reality is normal and the fantasy sequences are musical numbers. In our movie, the reality is the musical, and that complicated things quite a bit. When actors begin singing to each other, it immediately throws you into another sphere. That was my first reaction to the script: this can’t

Photos courtesy of New Line Cinema.

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look too real.” Hairspray is not only the first musical on Bazelli’s résumé — which includes Mr. & Mrs. Smith (see AC July ’05), The Ring (AC Nov. ’02), Kalifornia and Body Snatchers — it is also the first comedy, and that posed another set of questions. “Comedy is usually scary to cinematographers because it’s hard to know what that should look like,”he observes. “Should it be light, shiny, colorful? It’s much harder to shoot light images, transparent images, than dramatic ones. There’s more to it.” Indeed, there was quite a bit more to it on Hairspray. In addition to designing ways to photograph energetic dance numbers in a variety of settings, Bazelli had to contend with an unconventional-looking lead actress; a key supporting actor (John Travolta) who was in drag as a 300-pound woman (Tracy’s mother, Edna); a middleaged actress (Michelle Pfeiffer) whose look had to clearly suggest her character’s beauty-queen past; and, as the film’s title suggests, a multitude of wigs. “Every scene had difficulties,” says Bazelli. “If it was a simple dialogue scene, Travolta was in it. If it wasn’t, it was a dance number with 30 people in the shot, or a scene where everyone was wearing a wig, or a scene where a black actor with really dark skin was next to a girl in a white dress. And Nikki, who is naturally plump, couldn’t be photographed from every angle because she had to look cute all the time. Michelle also had to look a certain way, and she was often moving through the set and interacting with others. Technically speaking it was a very complicated shoot, even though we didn’t use any amazing rigs.” Bazelli and his collaborators were also tasked with re-creating the look of the televised dance shows that were must-see after-school viewing for teens in the early Sixties.

Much of Hairspray’s story unfolds in the studio of the Corny Collins show, a local Baltimore program showcasing the latest dance crazes. After Tracy’s moves catch Collins’ eye at a school dance, she lands a spot on his show, much to the chagrin of Amber von Tussle (Brittany Snow), and her mother, Velma (Pfeiffer), the show’s producer. “We didn’t want to copy the look of those shows exactly, but we wanted to feature the same fixtures, those scoop lights on panagraphs, because you can see them in every photo of those programs,” says Bazelli. “We made a great effort find them, and we ended up with 60 or 70. They added a wonderful graphic element

to our compositions.” Hairspray was filmed in Toronto over 65 days beginning in September 2006, and about three months prior to that, Bazelli began sorting out how to achieve a period look that would also suggest Tracy’s rosy view of the world. “Tracy is happy and excited about everything, and the film’s tonality and palette are shaped by the fact that it’s presenting her point of view,” he says. “She’s a charming, happy person who sees Baltimore differently than others do. There are rats in the street and drunks on the corner, but the tonality is clean and happy because that’s how she sees it.” The goal was to create a look that was “polished

Opposite: Tracy Turnblad (Nikki Blonsky) makes an instant impression on the Corny Collins show. This page, top: Performing “Good Morning, Baltimore,” Tracy applies the finishing touch to her trendy “do.” For most of Blonsky’s shots, there were six to eight small lights devoted to her wig. “This is a movie about hair, and I felt every curve of her hair should show,” says cinematographer Bojan Bazelli. Left: Bazelli (right) stays in step with director Adam Shankman as he runs through a number, and videographer Gordon Weiske captures the moment.

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Dance Fever

Anxious to keep all eyes on her daughter, eagle-eyed Corny Collins producer Velma von Tussle (Michelle Pfeiffer, left) spots and swiftly deflates another dancer’s unusually generous bustline.

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but not modern. We tried to give the photography and the lighting an older feel. It doesn’t have a realistic Sixties look, but it has the residue of that era. This meant working with lower-contrast images and a limited palette of mostly pale greens, pale blues and ochres — nothing too saturated. “During prep, we also decided to build hard ceilings into most of the sets,”he continues.“We found in our research that lots of homes in Baltimore in the Sixties had design elements in their ceilings, and I figured if they’re great to photograph, why not photograph them? So when [production designer] David Gropman asked me what I wanted to do about ceilings, I suggested he build them for real. He was thrilled, and said the only other cinematographer who had ever proposed that to him was Conrad Hall [ASC]. I said, ‘Well, that settles it!’ It’s like committing to painting a picture with a certain brush. It’s an intriguing challenge, and that’s what keeps things interesting.” When he wasn’t attending to such details, Bazelli was observing and videotaping rehearsals of the picture’s 27 musical numbers with

the film’s director, Adam Shankman. “By the end of prep, every number had been mapped on the floor of the rehearsal room,” he recalls. “If they were rehearsing a number that would take place in the street, the floor was mapped to match the dimensions of the street where it would be staged, and we framed accordingly.” Bazelli initially proposed shooting in standard 1.85:1 in order to best showcase the dancing, and because there were several scenes calling for 4'7" Blonsky to share the frame with 6'5" Travolta. “In order to put Nikki and John in the same shot in widescreen, the shot would have to be fairly long and fairly wide, and the same would be true if you wanted to show dancers from head to toe,” he explains. But Shankman was keen on widescreen, and after seeing tests comparing 1.85 to Super 35mm, the studio agreed with him. “We studied musicals such as All That Jazz and Chicago, but West Side Story was a key reference, and Adam liked its mix of bigger-than-life wide shots and medium shots,” says Bazelli.“When we watched the comparison tests, everyone agreed 1.85 was a better frame for us, but they

felt the movie somehow wouldn’t be as ‘big.’ I didn’t agree, but in the end I think widescreen does give the picture a sort of presence.” Although shooting Super 35mm meant a digital intermediate (DI) would be used for the final anamorphic transfer, Bazelli decided early on that he would not achieve any element of the palette digitally. “What distinguishes really good photography from mediocrity is that it’s there in the negative,” he says. “The more you do in camera, the better the result. If Hairspray were 1.85, we wouldn’t have needed a DI.” During prep, Bazelli tested film stocks at Deluxe in Toronto with the three sets of lenses he planned to use on the show: Cooke Panchro and S4 primes and Arri Master Primes.“I used the Panchros on the Corny Collins set because Michelle is a regular presence there, and our goal was to be very gentle to her. Her character is a glamorous diva whose glamour is mostly in her imagination, and the Panchros are a bit softer than modern lenses. We used Master Primes for night material because I wanted to see lots of detail in the shadows. None of the black-and-white pictures from that era have deep blacks; there’s a transparency to the shadows, and I thought [mimicking that] would help our film look older. So the rule was: if something is in the shadows, it has to be visible.” He used Cooke S4s for the rest of the picture, as well as an Angenieux Optimo 12:1 (24290mm) zoom that was used as a long lens. “Our longest prime was 150mm, and I used the zoom for anything longer than that. “We were almost always shooting wide open so the focus would fall off as fast as possible — we wanted to have the pictorial quality of anamorphic without the pain of anamorphic — and thanks to our great focus pullers, Russel

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Bowie [A camera] and Ciaran Copelin [B camera], there wasn’t a single soft shot in the dailies. “I tried something with twocamera coverage on this film that I hadn’t done before,” he continues. “On most of the straight [dialogue] scenes, instead of doing the traditional wide and tight versions of the same shot, I decided to try putting the B camera in a totally different area, out of the shot space, to find a perspective that was nobody’s point of view. For example, if there was a dialogue scene on the street, the A camera [operated by Candide Franklyn] covered the main angle, and the B camera [operated by Roger Finlay] would step back with a long lens and shoot the scene through a car window or through the steering wheel, a neutral angle that reflected something of the period. It was an independent angle that was cuttable to other shots, and the editor [Michael Tronick] loved it. Pretty soon everyone started calling the B camera ‘the peeping camera.’” Bazelli used three Kodak Vision2 stocks, 50D 5201 for day exteriors, 500T 5218 for night exteriors, and 200T 5217 for all other material; these were rated normally and pull-processed one stop. “I found that [underdeveloping] really helped emphasize the period. When I overexposed to compensate for it, my printing lights were only about 5 points lower, so I thought I’d see what happened without compensating, and that gave me printer lights around 28-30. That would be fairly low for a photochemical finish, but my tests showed that a thinner negative yielded a better DI filmout; I wanted to create a range of transparent blacks that was reflective of the period. But to play it safe, I overexposed by 1⁄3 of a stop. “On projects finished photochemically I’ve done lots of overexposure — my lights would be in the high 40s or low 50s — but I’ve found it’s pretty much a waste of

The production took over a big intersection in Toronto to film “Welcome to the ‘60s,” a duet between Tracy and her mother, Edna (John Travolta), that turns into a big ensemble number on the streets of downtown Baltimore. Even on big exteriors such as this, Bazelli and his collaborators strove to keep cool tones in the background to help flesh tones stand out. The bottom photo illustrates Bazelli’s lowangle approach to dance numbers.

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Dance Fever Over the course of the story, the Corny Collins show evolves from a local afternoon hit (top photo) into a live primetime broadcast (middle) that culminates in the big number “You Can’t Stop the Beat” (bottom). Bazelli and chief lighting technician Tony Nakonechnyj worked out a lighting scheme for the set (opposite page) that bolstered period fixtures with an array of modern instruments, including moving theatrical lights. In many shots, the TV cameras’ monitors are in frame and display a live image. Bazelli notes, “We wanted to see a real-time image on the monitor — we didn’t want to put bluescreen there and comp in an image later — so we installed a lipstick camera where the original lens was and connected it to an LCD monitor that the art department dressed to look like the original.”

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energy. You spend a certain amount of light to achieve density in the negative, and then in post you have to print it down to make it look normal. This time I decided I wouldn’t do 8 or 9 points of extra safety; I decided to save that and light only as much as we needed. But I wanted to keep a close eye on [the negative], because you can’t make fine judgments when you’re watching dailies on tape. We had print dailies for the first two weeks, and after that I could print when I wanted to. Fortunately, during prep I had developed a good relationship with both of our timers at Deluxe Toronto, [dailies colorist] Tom Engleman and [photochemical timer] Frank Leone, and after two months of testing they were clear on what I wanted. “It also helped that our schedule was determined by Travolta’s schedule,” he adds. “He works 12hour days, including travel and makeup time, and his makeup took six hours every day. When he was on set our shooting calls were usually 12 or 1 p.m., so I could go to the lab in the morning.” To portray Tracy’s obese, agoraphobic mother, Travolta donned a rubber suit that added female features and many pounds to his frame, leaving only his arms in their natural state. This was coupled with a complicated makeup-and-wig job that had to look convincing as he danced and sang. “After 30 or 40 minutes of dancing, John would start to pour sweat, and filming him became a lighting and compositional nightmare,” recalls Bazelli. “We often shot his close-ups first, when the makeup looked best, and I found myself putting up lots of little bounce cards to try to level the contrast on his face and make him look like a normal fat woman instead of a decaying plastic face. I didn’t use special filtration on him, just the 1⁄2 Tiffen Soft/FX I used on the entire picture. Nobody got anything more.”

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Diagram and photo courtesy of Tony Nakonechnyj.

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Dance Fever Near right: Robert Polidori’s photo Calle Cardenas 27 was a major influence on Bazelli’s thinking about Hairspray’s palette. “It’s the cover image of the book Moods of La Habana, and I actually took that with me into the DI suite at EFilm,” he says. Far right: Tracy gets a pep talk from her father (Christopher Walken) as her worried mother hovers nearby.

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Chief lighting technician Tony “Nako” Nakonechnyj, the only member of Bazelli’s regular crew who accompanied him to Toronto, notes that large soft sources were the norm outside of the Corny Collins set, and they were especially important with Travolta. “Any kind of prosthetic is always a challenge,” he says. “You have to be very cautious about giving it kicks and sheens because that can make it look like plastic, and you have to be especially careful with the transitions from real skin to artificial skin, like around the eyes and lips. We tended to light John with 12-light Maxis doublediffused with frames of 1⁄ 4 grid because that was a more forgiving light.” Knowing how Travolta would play the light was tricky, given that his time in the makeup chair cut into and often eliminated rehearsal time. “He was only on camera for four or five hours a day, so the moment he arrived on set we had to start shooting,” recalls Bazelli. “We were only able to rehearse a few crucial scenes with him, so we often had to just trust the director or work with our own assumption of how the scene would go. We had to anticipate quite a bit and be very flexible.” In determining angles with Shankman, Bazelli discovered a stylistic link between shooting dancing and shooting more common movie

action: not every angle works. “You have to photograph dancing properly, especially if it’s doing the storytelling. On action movies you have to place the camera at the angle that reads ‘action,’ the one that shows the punch or the jump best. It’s the same with dancing. I realized that, as with action, placing the camera low and looking up at the dancing created a much more dramatic image than keeping it at eye level. So we decided to put our cameras low — all of them. If we had three cameras on a number, we had three different angles, all low, and then, when we changed the lenses, we’d change the angle and height slightly. “For a musical, you need a lot of pieces to stitch the suit together,” he continues. “You don’t necessarily need a lot of crazy camera moves, but you need lots of shots, lots of points of view — the cutting is quick and the shots only last a few seconds. Time was of the essence; we had a 135-page script, 27 musical numbers and 65 days. So rather than spend time designing big dolly or crane moves that would only be cut to pieces [in the edit], we worked out a strategy that enabled us to move three or four cameras very quickly. We often set up three layers of dolly track for each camera, one for close shots, one for medium, one for wide. For every change of lens we had a change of dolly track;

if we had three different focal lengths, we had three different camera positions. That way each camera was capturing six to nine angles.” The filmmakers were especially keen to break up the twodimensional space of the Corny Collins show. “Even though the show was televised a certain way, we wanted to see all other angles of the dancers, as well as the studio audience and the TV cameras,” says Bazelli.“We were really striving for a three-dimensional feel. We shot the numbers with three and sometimes four cameras, and at least one camera was always looking toward [the main cameras]. If we were shooting people from the front, we also shot them from the back; if we were shooting from the left, we also shot from the right. “Most of the time we were able to hide our cameras behind the big TV cameras or below the frameline — Super 35 leaves lots of room on the bottom, and I love low-angle shots, so if you look at the full negative you’ll actually see cameras and operators stashed down below the frame. We’re all in the negative, but we’re hidden because of the way it’s cropped. When we couldn’t do an angle without seeing another camera, we shot it separately, but most of the time our strategy worked.” Lighting for multiple angles is not a prospect most cinematogra-

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phers relish, but “our shooting strategy clearly established the ‘nice angle’ and the ‘not-so-nice angle,’ so our lighting was designed to look great for three cameras and acceptable for the fourth,” says Bazelli. “If the light looked flat when we were shooting the dancers’ backs, it didn’t matter, because it was a shot of their backsides. They don’t look backlit or sidelit as much as frontlit, because you always understand the direction of the light. Those shots from the back actually look interesting, because the dancers are light and the studio audience beyond them falls off into darkness, and you can see the vintage TV cameras in between. It frames a nice composition, and the editor used quite a few of those angles.” The period fixtures visible in the Corny Collins set served a practical function, providing clean, strong front fill — a throwback to the days “when you had to have 400 footcandles for TV,” says Nakonechnyj. “They’re scoop lights, 1,000-watt mogul-based incandescent globes. We picked some fixtures just because they looked cool, and some of them had to be rewired. They proved to be a frugal way for the art and lighting departments to meet their needs; they were functional, they served as part of the visual design, and they suggested the period.” The scoop lights were hung from overhead pipe on panagraphs, spring-loaded,

accordion-shaped hangers that were common in TV studios in the early Sixties. “Shows were done for longer periods of time back then, and they had to be able to maintain the lighting and do quick, subtle adjustments,” says Nakonechnyj. “They could take a gaff hook and pull the panagraph down to working height if they needed to change a globe, or if they needed to light a close shot of someone with deep eye sockets.” As Nakonechnyj’s diagram of the Corny Collins set illustrates (see page 67), hanging above the period fixtures was an array of contemporary movie lights: 5K and 10K Fresnels, Arri T-12s, Par cans, Source Four Lekos and Mac 2000s. “It was a combination of modern lights designed to achieve a period effect,” he says. “In the old days, when TV needed a lot of light, they used Inkies almost like regular lightbulbs, and we used 5K and 10K Fresnels in the same fashion. We used Par cans as curtain warmers, and to create a wash on the background cyc so we could alter its tone. We used [Mac 2000] moving lights mainly to spice up the look of the show for the finale, but we used them like they were follow spots or Lekos, little ballyhoos that would’ve been achieved with an operator and a follow spot at that time.” Bazelli adds, “We wanted to use some theatrical lighting but very subtly, while remaining respectful to the era. I think mistakes have

been made in the past with theatrical-lighting designers [on films]; if you’re not careful, they’re doing the creating and you’re just photographing someone else’s work. Our work with [theatrical-lighting designer] Jason Jennings was a true collaboration.” The Mac 2000s also helped the team achieve a period effect that had caught Bazelli’s eye during prep. He explains,“Because of the lighting they used on those shows, there were shadows everywhere, so many it looked unappealing. But I thought if we could create just a few shadows and shape them into a somewhat artistic form, it would create an interesting three-dimensional effect and help break up the monotony of that set, where we spend so much time.” Nakonechnyj elaborates, “We used movers to project shadow patterns, and we also used open-faced 5Ks and 10Ks projecting through the panagraphs, treating the period fixtures like gobos. Sometimes we had a light on the floor projecting up through the panagraphs and onto the background cyc. In one scene, the actors are walking through the set while the TV crew is changing globes on a truss in the foreground, and we actually lit through the truss to create shadows for the actors to walk through.” Another theatrical touch on the Corny Collins set is Bazelli’s lighting of tyrannical producer Velma

Left: Teen heartthrob Link Larkin (Zac Efron) entertains a racially segregated crowd at a school dance. Right: After scandalizing white classmates by trying to dance with a black friend, Tracy wows everyone with her smooth moves. The location’s handsome wood floor proved especially responsive to dancing feet, prompting the filmmakers to scour Canada for more gyrostabilized remote heads at the last minute.

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Dance Fever

Bazelli and Shankman discuss their next shot of Blonsky as 1st AD Daniel Silverberg (left) and executive producer Garrett Grant (right) stand by. Noting Shankman’s background as a choreographer, Bazelli observes, “Adam has an uncanny ability to always know where the best point is to experience the choreography. Dancing is hard to photograph; you quickly realize not every angle will work.”

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von Tussle, whose costumes occasionally dip into saturated colors. “We primarily lit Michelle with a T12 and kept her face light neutral or slightly cool, then adjusted the coloring of the background light to play off her wardrobe,” says Nakonechnyj. “If she was in a red dress, for example, we’d give her a touch of red backlight — motivated by the studio’s ‘on the air’ warning light — or rake the background with a red light.” In general, however, the filmmakers strove to maintain a palegreen hue in the background because “it always helped the flesh tones stand out a bit more,” says Bazelli. This even carried over to a big night exterior, the “Welcome to the ’60s” number that takes Tracy and Edna to downtown Baltimore for makeovers at Mr. Pinky’s Hefty Hideaway. The song starts as a mother-daughter duet but turns into a big ensemble piece when they emerge from Mr. Pinky’s and are joined by dozens of bystanders. “We shot that on a real street in Toronto, and the art department dressed about 60 storefronts,” recalls Nakonechnyj. “We were able to light from 20 rooftops, and those fixtures, Arri T-12s and 12-light Maxis, were gelled with 1⁄ 4 or 1⁄ 2 CTS and dimmed down to provide warm backlight on the actors. In addition

to the rooftop lighting, we had an LRX and a Piranha, a Condor-based unit with three 12K incandescent roboheads, from Dwight Crane; a BFL, a 150-foot construction crane with four 36-light Dinos; a 100-foot Condor with four Maxi-Brutes; and two smaller Condors, one with a 20K, the other with a Maxi-Brute. The LRX or another unit on the ground was always creating a deep, raking, blue-green background light; this was usually Lee 241 or a paler version, 1⁄2 CTB and 1⁄2 Plus Green.” Some of the production’s locations posed challenges that were totally unexpected. One of these was the high-school gymnasium where Tracy impresses Collins with her dancing. The location was chosen primarily for its period authenticity and beautiful wood floor,“and once all the kids got out there and started dancing, the floor started vibrating really hard,” recalls Bazelli. “We didn’t spot the effect in the shots right away because we started with wide shots, where it wasn’t that noticeable. But as soon as we went tighter, we spotted it. We were using three cameras, and the only one that didn’t shake was the one on a gyrostabilized Scorpio head. We immediately tried to get two more gyrostabilized heads, and we got one right away but the other had to

be sent from Vancouver. So we shot two cameras for the first day, then all three for the last two days.” The gymnasium also presented lighting difficulties because it was on the second floor of the building and had no windows or balconies. Nakonechnyj recalls, “We had to go into the ceiling and pull some panels, and the grips created a truss that spanned one side of the gym that enabled us to rig some T-12s and Par cans. It would’ve cost too much to do a truss on both sides, so on the other side we put up three towers that the art department dressed to look like elements of the dance decorations, and we put a 20K on each one.” A quick last-minute alteration was necessary in another location, a garage that was converted into Motormouth Maybelle’s (Queen Latifah) record shop, a popular hangout for black teens. During prep, the filmmakers decided on a blues-club feel — low light levels, practical sources, and smoke for atmosphere — but when the young actors arrived at the location, “they were dressed in such elegant costumes that the contrast between the gritty look of the location and their wardrobe was just too great,” recalls Bazelli, “so we changed the lighting on the spot.” Nakonechnyj details, “We spiced up the windows and gave them a little more punch, and we rigged a lot of Pars and J-Boxes, which I’d brought up from L.A. We created more fill than we initially planned on, and we used 10Ks and T-12s for hard rims and kicks. The ambience is a little over key; it’s a full look with bright, hard edges. In keeping with our overall lighting scheme, the background colors were pale blue-green and the backlights were warm.” “No matter how carefully you plan in prep, when you see a scene for the first time you can tell immediately when something isn’t right,” says Bazelli.“Things always change as you go, and you have to make it

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work. Most of the articles in American Cinematographer make it sound like everything on the shoot was perfect, but it’s never perfect. It would be interesting to see a story where the cinematographer says, ‘Everything went wrong and I had to scramble to survive.’ Most of us do.” As a final touch to the palette, Bazelli had Deluxe Hollywood underdevelop the interpositive (IP), made on Kodak 5242, by 1⁄2 a stop. “[Colorist] Steve Scott did a fantastic job at EFilm, but I was seeing a little too much contrast and saturation on the initial filmouts from the dupe neg, so I suggested we pull-process the IP slightly,” he explains. The subsequent IN was made on Fuji Eterna 4503, and release prints were made on Fuji Eterna-CP 3513DI. “Shooting on Kodak and finishing on Fuji, which has beautifully soft colors, was a little unconventional but the perfect combination,” he adds. Despite the complexities of the production, Bazelli says what really distinguished Hairspray was “our very happy set,” a vibe created in part by the genre itself. “We had all these difficulties and the usual creativity cramps, but having music present all the time and being surrounded by people who were singing and dancing lightened the daily workload. It kept me light on my feet. It beat any drama I’ve done so far.” I

TECHNICAL SPECS 2.40:1 Super 35mm Arricam Studio, Lite Cooke, Arri, Angenieux lenses Kodak Vision2 50D 5201, 200T 5217, 500T 5218 Digital Intermediate Printed on Fuji Eterna-CP 3513DI 71

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Short Takes “Writing With Light” for The Willowz by Elina Shatkin

D

irector Toben Seymour and cinematographer Ross Riege grew up together in Wisconsin, and they shared a passion for stop-motion animation and puppetry. With the “Jubilee” music video for The Willowz, they found an opportunity to try a technique they had been interested in for some time: stop-motion long-exposure photography. “We’d had the idea tucked away in our archive for a long time,” says Riege. “We wanted to find the right project, something that would allow us to really push the concept.” Inspired by Pika Pika, a group of Japanese artists who created whimsical videos from still images adorned with light doodles, Seymour and Riege began laying the groundwork for a stopmotion video composed entirely of still images. Although the images would require significant refinement in post, they wanted to create all the light-

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doodle effects in camera. “It was really important to us that the video be organic,” says Riege. “We wanted to create something that couldn’t be done in post.” Set at night, “Jubilee” begins with a series of casual shots of outdoor scenes adorned with simple light doodles (a bouncing ball, a box, a flower), and then transitions to shots of people interacting with and creating larger, more complex light doodles; for example, two people feed light-doodle fish to a light-doodle pelican, and a lightdoodle tree grows and swallows a man. As the song’s tempo picks up, the video builds to a frenzied scene of The Willowz performing amid an electronic storm of light doodles. The video was largely shot over three days in November 2006. Riege had at his disposal 12 digital still cameras: six Canon 350Ds (8 MP), four Nikon D50s

(6 MP), and two Canon 20Ds (8 MP). “I made sure the Canons were operating in the same RGB color space, but aside from that I left the cameras’ presets at their base levels. I knew I’d be performing all the color correction in post, so I decided to shoot images as clean as possible. “Most of our cameras came from contacts who were willing to rent or loan them to us, so we were all over the map in terms of lenses,” he continues. “On the 20Ds, which we used for firstunit photography, we used a package of three lenses I would have preferred to use on all the cameras: a Canon 2470mm f/2.8L, a Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L, and a Zenitar 16mm f/2.8 prime. However, we couldn’t afford to rent those lenses for everything, so we used what we had: Canon 17-85mm f/4-5.6 on the 350Ds and Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 on the D50s.

Photos courtesy of Ross Riege.

The Willowz perform amid an explosion of practical lighting effects for the video “Jubilee,” shot by Ross Riege.

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Left: Director Toben Seymour (second from left) provides guidance during filming. Below: Riege (at camera) shoots a frame for the opening setup.

“The main variable was the shutter speed, which depended more on the animators than the operators. If we had an artist drawing at a certain speed, we had to determine how long the exposure needed to be. They ranged from 8 to 30 seconds.” Riege set the ASA on all the cameras at 400 to give the operators wide latitude regardless of exposure length. “At 400 ASA, I figured the exposure would be high enough that we’d be able to maintain enough detail in the shadows while not compromising the integrity of the images in terms of noise and digital grain,” he says. His goal was to keep everything at a T4. He chose to shoot at a much higher resolution (3500x2400 JPEGs) than the video would ultimately be finished at, because, Riege says, “we wanted to shoot at the highest resolution possible while still being able to shoot efficiently. We would have shot at a higher resolution if that didn’t increase the amount of storage we needed and the turnaround from shot to shot. This was the right balance of efficiency and quality.” He shot the images at 4:3, knowing he would crop and American Cinematographer 73

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Above: A test image of incamera effects. Below left: An angel (Marin Panunzio) gains wings and a halo. Below right: Aliens surround guitarist Aric Bohn.

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reframe later as necessary. However, he opted not to shoot at full resolution because he had to maximize the number of images that could be contained on the memory cards, which ranged from 512MB to 2GB. Media manager and interactive programmer Michael Lew, who helped establish the video’s workflow, was on set to oversee the process. As soon as a memory card was full, a camera assistant would run it to Lew, who would download the images onto his laptop and organize them to preview sequences for the team. The video contains more than 60 setups, and instead of shooting one

setup at a time, the filmmakers broke the crew into small units that worked on different scenes simultaneously. “When Toben and I weren’t shooting images that were essential for the script, we spent most of our time walking around and facilitating each shot,” recalls Riege. “With so many cameras on set and an individual operator for each one, I had to step back from my normal role and focus on overseeing the technical aspects of the production.” As the production wore on, the artists became faster and more proficient at drawing the light doodles, but even so, some shots required up to six hours to complete.

The only scene that was shot with all 12 cameras was the wide setup of the band’s climactic performance. The video’s limited budget allowed for three Hensel Integra 500 strobe lights, and for this setup they were rigged with a Pocket Wizard wireless control that set off all three flashes at the push of a button. If there were fraction-of-asecond differences between when each operator pushed the shutter on his camera, it didn’t matter. “The flash of the strobes froze a single moment of the action that was recorded on each camera, regardless of the slight variation in when each shutter was depressed,” says Riege. “The strobe was the only way to accomplish what we wanted in camera; the only way we could justify the long exposures was by using flash photography. I knew we weren’t going to be lighting with hot lights that were always on and needed to have the same level of exposure.” As soon as Riege pushed the button, more than 30 animators would run in and create their light drawings using a mix of flashlights, keychain lights, LED lights, Christmas lights, neon lights, rope lights, and a remotecontrolled disc light that production designer Matt Lackie found in Chinatown. The most painstaking shots in the video were the ones that involved singing. Animation supervisor Johnny Sweeney broke down the sections of the song where Seymour wanted coverage into 13 mouth positions, and then explained to the singer which position

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his mouth needed to be in for a given shot. When all the shots were strung together, it looked like he was singing to the music. The main shoot yielded more than 10,000 raw images, and once it wrapped, Seymour and Riege continued to work in smaller groups to shoot pickups and fix problems that arose in the edit. Riege organized the images by setup and shot; he then viewed a series of thumbnails of the images in Photoshop to see how the action played. “After I previewed a series of shots, I would find a key image and create a new action that recorded a series of commands: crop, color correction, occasionally a grad filter or a vignette. I could save that as one action and apply it to an entire group of images. For me, that was the most time-consuming task.” He cropped the images to their final size of 1280x720. He passed the images to editor Ryan Bartley, who began to string out the images in Final Cut Pro, holding each shot for three frames. As he imported more images, the application slowed down almost to a halt. Bartley suggested they export each series of images as a DV clip (rendering it at DV resolution) and then bring these clips back into the timeline. Instead of working in HD, the video’s final format, Bartley had down-rezzed the images to DV so he could work at a normal pace. After Bartley finished his cut, he re-imported all the stills into FCP, laid them on top of the video, deleted the video files, changed the timeline settings to HD, and reconnected the original images. The edit then came back to Seymour and Riege, who went through the video and refined the timing of the animation, holding some shots for one frame and others for up to six frames. After picture was locked, Riege performed additional color correction in Photoshop and exported the timeline at full HD resolution to create a master. “We actually delivered the video on DV,” he says. “So far it has only aired online. The only place an HD cut exists is on my hard drive!” I

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Post Focus

Adding Hocus-Pocus to Harry Potter by Iain Stasukevich Visual-effects supervisor Tim Burke has something in common with young wizard Harry Potter, and it isn’t just an English accent: both have proven adept at magical effects. Burke has worked on all of the Harry Potter films, and for the latest installment, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, he supervised a team of visual-effects artists for 18 months; 1,400 of the resultant 1,800 shots made the final cut. Throughout this work, Burke’s collaboration with cinematographer Slawomir Idziak, PSC and gaffer James McGuire played a vital role in bringing Potter’s world to life. Idziak, a seasoned director of photography known for his creative and dramatic use of color and composition, had previously worked with Burke on Black Hawk Down (see AC June ’02), which helped them forge a strong rela76 August 2007

tionship. Idziak and McGuire, who had been his gaffer on King Arthur and The Last September (AC June ’00), were brought onto Harry Potter three months ahead of principal photography. “Three months sounds like a long time, but it’s also a time where a lot of important decisions are being made,” says Idziak. “In Poland, the cinematographer is always one of the first people to be hired. Working on Hollywood films is always a different experience.” Of course, the preceding four films had well established the Harry Potter look, whose consistency Idziak attributes in large part to production designer Stuart Craig, who has worked on all of the films. “[Production] wouldn’t let you change the look of the movies, anyway,” he notes. “My ambition was to bring a slightly different color palette to it, and to make sure the transitions between in-camera effects and digital effects were as imperceptible as possible.” By the time Idziak was brought

onboard, the film was completely storyboarded, and many of the key visualeffects sequences had been roughed out in CG animatics. One of the more challenging of these sequences involves the Weasley twins, Fred and George, and their plans to escape the wizarding school of Hogwarts once and for all. They intend to go out with a bang — literally. The scene takes place in Hogwarts’ Great Hall, one of the largest practical sets designed by Craig at Leavesden Studios, just outside of London. “[Director] David Yates described a series of small explosions that would culminate in one large event,” explains Burke. “The twins throw some fireworks into the air, and a big, dragon-shaped firework then chases and attacks the Hogwarts headmistress [played by Imelda Staunton].” Burke and Idziak began by conducting a series of practical fireworks tests. “We bought a lot of fireworks and went out onto the backlot at

Harry Potter frame grabs courtesy of Warner Bros. Diagram courtesy of Light by Numbers.

Hogwarts headmistress Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton) is chased from the Great Hall by a supernatural burst of fireworks in a scene from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, shot by Slawomir Idziak, PSC.

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Leavesden, and we were able to create a library of different fireworks that we all liked,” recalls Burke. Because using real pyrotechnics was out of the question on the indoor set, Burke, Idziak and McGuire put their heads together to come up with a way to blur the line between CG firework effects and the practical set elements. “We felt strongly about interactive lighting,” says Burke. “Sometimes you don’t need to do that and can add [the lighting effect] in post, but we thought it was important to have real lighting there, casting real shadows and bouncing off different surfaces.” “The best idea was to use moving lamp heads,” says McGuire. “What Tim was looking for when the fireworks go off was a high-intensity burst that would then spread out and diffuse, so we called in Chris Gilbertson of Light by Numbers to rig about 50 Mac 2000 rotating lamp heads in the ceiling of the Great Hall.” Burke adds, “The effect wasn’t something we could do off a traditional lighting board; we couldn’t use lamps that could be quickly dimmed up and down.” Over the course of two to three

days, the team designed a rolling lighting effect that would travel from one end of the Great Hall to the other and back, changing color as the CG fireworks explode along the neck and body of the dragon. The lighting program required six 1200-watt units at a time in spot mode and focused them in one area, using whatever colors were needed. The program fired the appropriate colors and then faded out over a two-second period. At the same time, those six units were flooding out and panning away from the set while the next group followed the same action. Despite the immense proportions of the Great Hall set, CG set extensions were required to complete the ceiling. For added realism, practical smoke was used on the set whenever the camera was set up for a shot that wouldn’t require the use of set extensions, so that the practical lighting had an atmospheric element. To enhance the effect of the Mac 2000s, McGuire programmed a cue that would drop the overall light levels in the Great Hall by 2 stops while the special lighting effects were taking place. When the dragon leaves the

hall, there is a cue to bring the levels back up very slowly, almost imperceptibly. “The result was fairly impressive,” says the gaffer. “We’re looking down at the kids at their tables and see color on their faces, and it looks as though the color is coming from the fireworks.” The spell doesn’t stop there. The Great Hall elements were merely background plates for the cause of this ruckus: the Weasleys flying around on broomsticks and setting off fireworks in their wake. To accomplish this gag, the filmmakers had to work out what would need to be filmed in order for the twins’ bluescreen elements to fit. Yates and editor Mark Day cut the sequence together using the plate elements and assembled the scene so they could determine where to put the mischief-makers — a process Burke calls “post-visualization.” He explains, “We went back to rough animatics again. Using the colors derived from the practical lighting, we designed light effects that we used when we filmed the bluescreen elements of the twins.” Once the team determined

A diagram of the Great Hall set illustrates the lighting scheme devised for the sequence by Idziak, gaffer James McGuire, visual-effects supervisor Tim Burke and Light by Numbers creator Chris Gilbertson.

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A Hogwarts student conjures her “Patronus” in another sequence that called for close collaboration between Idziak and Burke.

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where the twins would be flying, the visual-effects artists exported that information from a computer onto a motion-control camera rig and a motion-control base on which the broomsticks would be mounted. The mo-co camera was synced to the motion base, and the corresponding angles on the young actors sitting on their broomsticks were then filmed and dropped back into the live-action plate. A critical element of this process was ensuring the lighting cues working on the twins fit in with the background plates. When Burke and his team knew they wanted to do something specific, such as light off the fireworks that created the dragon effect, they triggered lights that corresponded to those effects. After compositing the foreground elements into the scene, the visual-effects team decided where to put the smaller fireworks. Additional CG smoke layers were dropped into shots to help blend the background plate, the CG elements, and the foreground action together. There are many scenes in Order of the Phoenix where CG effects play an equally large role — including the action-packed climax in the all-CG Hall of Prophecies — but there are also sequences where CGI plays only a small part of the action. In one such scene, Potter instructs Hogwarts students in how to conjure a “Patronus,” a light source that emanates from the tip of their wands and takes shape as some type of animal. “That set was full of mirrors, which made it very difficult to work on,” says Burke. “This was one of the scenes where our collaboration with Slawomir was absolutely critical.” There was no way to put a practical light source in the room because it would have reflected off all the mirrors. Also, the filmmakers weren’t entirely sure where the Patroni would go. As they shot the scene, some actors were given specific eyelines, while others were allowed to find their own. Idziak tends to make extensive use of his own colored grad filters for

dramatic effect, but he did not do so on Harry Potter because of all the effects work. “It was important to leave the image clean so the effects artists could make their changes easily,” he says. “Also, today it’s much easier to achieve the same effect using digital color correction.” Burke adds, “Slawomir always exposes a good, dense negative, and that gave us a lot of latitude to create a slightly overexposed light effect and re-light the scenes wherever the Patronus moved. “With the complexity of visual effects these days, it’s vital for effects supervisors to work closely with cinematographers,” Burke concludes. “Everyone needs to have the same aim and goal, and dialogue is very important.” The Foundry Gets Nuked Visual-effects software developer The Foundry acquired the powerful compositing application Nuke from Digital Domain and recently introduced version 4.7, the first major release of Nuke under The Foundry brand. Nuke 4.7 will feature support for The Foundry’s full range of OFX plug-ins and new Foundry FlexLM licensing. Nuke began as the in-house compositing and effects application at Digital Domain, where it won an Academy Award for Technical Achievement. It has been used in effects work on more than 45 features and hundreds of commercials and music videos. In March, Nuke became part of The Foundry’s portfolio of visual-effects products and is now being developed in London. Since the transition, Nuke has seen a number of enhancements, including a brand-new optical flow node for accurate retiming operations. Tracker sports a new user interface with enhanced tracking markers and improved selection methods. There is support for reading/writing HDRI image formats, the color wheel has been updated, and the Framecycler engine has been upgraded to Framecycler Professional 2006, offering full support for The Foundry’s visual-effects- and

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image-processing plug-ins. Launched by The Foundry in 2004, OFX (Open FX) is a free open-source plug-in standard for developing 2-D digital visual effects. It was via the OFX API that The Foundry was able to provide plug-in support for Nuke so quickly. Matt Welford, head of compositing at Weta Digital, notes, “We’re delighted The Foundry has taken on Nuke development. The integration of their tools together with Nuke can only produce a solution that will benefit the post community.” Although it is still early, The Foundry has said it will build upon the strong foundations set by the D2 Software team, and Nuke’s development will be focused toward evolution and extension of the existing product. Available on Linux, Windows and Mac platforms, Nuke delivers unparalleled speed; an extensible 64-channel, TCL-based architecture; and powerful feature-set unrivaled in the desktop market. For more information, visit www.thefoundry.co.uk. Arri’s Digital Dailies Arri’s Digital Dailies Base Package is a new option for the Arriscan. In support of a datacentric and tapeless workflow, the Arriscan team has developed new features to streamline the digital-dailies process. A new Live View option provides the Arriscan operator with a monochromatic real-time film image while winding. In combination with a jog/shuttle control one can position the film quickly and accurately from the scanner’s remote-controlled PC. The Base Package also includes an additional speed increase: 1.5 fps pinregistered for 6K double exposure oversampled to 4K and 6K oversampled to 2K, and 5 fps for 3K double exposure oversampled to 2K. Both speed increases are specified for the unique Arriscan double exposure acquisition method, where for each color the LEDs flash the film once for a low-density and once for a high-density pass. These two passes are then combined into an image that captures the full dynamic range of

film with an unmatched signal-to-noise ratio. Arri continues to offer a broad range of options to give the end user a more complete scanning toolkit. The Arriscan also operates in single-flash mode. By dismissing the second LED flash per color, the speed goes up to 8 fps for 3K oversampled to 2K resolution. Single-flash images differ from the double exposure flashes mainly in signal to noise. Other features of the Arriscan Digital Dailies Base Package include frame line detection and flash detection. Arricube Color Management With the new Arricube, Arri has enhanced its Color Management System (CMS) and improved the accuracy of results for the digital-intermediate (DI) pipeline. Using a new measurement together with new algorithms for generating 3-D look-up tables (LUTs), Arri obtains superior matches between print-film projection and digital display. The quality of 3-D LUTs mainly depends on the quality of the measurements. On the digital side standard

instruments can be used for measuring color, but on the film side it is a trickier matter. To solve this, Arri R&D invented a new machine: the Characterizer. Utilizing the basic body of an Arriscan, the Characterizer uses a monochromator instead of the camera to measure the colors of print film. The results are highly reproducible and easy to obtain. This new method is used in all three pillars of the Arricube: 1) Arricube Universal Preview LUTs for Arri’s partner companies; 2) Arricube for Video Look — image processing in Arrilaser software; and 3) Arricube Customization — print film and monitor/digital projector measurement. When working with logarithmic files, a 3-D LUT is needed in the grading session to visualize images correctly. A Universal Arricube Preview LUT is available for all of Arri’s partners on the company’s Web site. The Universal LUTs convert the digitally displayed image to a look that closely resembles that of the film-projected images. These images are based on average measurements and are not specific for certain print or American Cinematographer 79

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negative film and monitor setups. Arricube partners are Assimilate, Autodesk, Barco, Chrome, da Vinci, DVS, Iridas, Nucoda and Quantel. More than 300 companies worldwide have downloaded the Universal LUTs from the Arri site. When post is done in a video environment, the used file format will be linear. For recording linear files, colors must be converted into density values before recording. This can be done on the fly with Arrilaser software. A new image-processing node allows a user to directly apply a 3-D LUT to the outgoing data. For different display and film stock combinations, a new set of 3-D LUTs will be delivered with the next Arrilaser software upgrade. This also opens the path to Arricube customization in the Arrilaser. More than 40 companies worldwide have the Arricube for Video Look installed on their Arrilasers. To get the perfect match, a company-specific 3-D LUT can be compiled with the Arricube Customization process. Measurements from the display device and from the film will be used to build a unique 3-D LUT, which reflects all parameters in each company’s process from monitor setup to film laboratory process. This unique LUT can now be used both as preview LUT and video-look LUT in the Arrilaser. Quantel’s Genetic Engineering Quantel has introduced a major change in teamwork environments for post and DI with the introduction of Genetic Engineering, a completely open technology that overturns the limitations of SAN-based environments, finally allowing facilities to fully maximize the efficiency of collaborative workspaces. Genetic Engineering means that every new or existing EQ, IQ or Pablo has access to the same media and can work independently. It can even support multiple 4K streams. “SAN-based team-working is a continual drag on efficiency, with multiple copies of media clogging up disk space and leading to significant media80 August 2007

Arricube enhances Arri’s Color Management System by using a new measurement with new algorithms to generate 3-D LUTs.

management issues, especially when working at 2K and above,” says Steve Owen, director of marketing for Quantel. “Genetic Engineering allows multiple users to access the same clips at the same time without copying or moving media. Reliable playout is guaranteed, and Genetic Engineering handles all the different resolutions in real time and without creating any new media. Linux or Windows-based third party systems can hook into the shared space just as easily as Quantel machines, making Genetic Engineering the perfect solution for real world, multi-vendor facilities.” Genetic Engineering is made up of three components: Sam, Max and the GenePool. Available in HD RGB and 4K configurations, the GenePool can host guaranteed multiple streams, and its large RAID-protected workspace (up to 80TB) can accommodate multiple movie-length projects simultaneously. Quantel’s Resolution Co-existence technology enables media to be stored in its native resolution, color space and bit depth, converting on the fly to whatever output format is required. Meanwhile, Quantel’s FrameMagic frame level media-management technology keeps track of every frame, no matter where

it’s being worked on in the Genetic Engineering environment. The Sam data server, also shipping in HD RGB and 4K versions, provides open network access to managed media via the cross-platform CIFS (Common Internet Filing System) protocol. This enables, for example, film scanners to scan directly into the GenePool, while restoration and dustbusting applications can work on media with only modified frames being added to storage and automatically being spliced into the original. Visualeffects systems can read and write to the GenePool simultaneously, and at the end of the process, the finished media is available to authoring and film recording without interrupting production in the creative suites. “Being able to work directly with the media in this way dramatically increases efficiencies for both post and DI,” says Owen. “And with margins continually squeezed, it is those efficiencies that enable facilities to be profitable.” The final component is the Max assist station, which further increases efficiency by taking control of backroom tasks such as conforms, playouts and quality control. Also available in HD RGB and 4K models, and boasting

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100-percent project compatibility with EQ, IQ and Pablo, Max allows facilities to maximize billable time in their frontline creative suites while also increasing overall throughput. “Genetic Engineering transcends the previous limitations of collaborative environments without increasing management overheads,” says Owen. “It works on several fronts, maximizing scheduling flexibility, increasing creativity, widening capability, and, perhaps most importantly, boosting profitability for facilities.” Also, the specification for all of Quantel’s DI systems, including IQ and Pablo, will be increased to 4K. At the same time, all of its HD machines, such as the EQ editing/effects/color grading/deliverables system and Pablo HD, are also being upgraded to HD RGB. This upgrade brings Quantel’s creative systems into line with the 4K and HD RGB formats of the company’s new Genetic Engineering team-working infrastructure. “4K is an increasingly popular route for the DI, and providing real-time 4K as standard in the DI space can differentiate one facility from its competition,” comments Mark Horton, Quantel’s strategic marketing manager. “Companies looking to get into the DI market can buy Quantel equipment and be confident they are future-proof. 4K will undoubtedly be the standard of the future. The same transition to higher quality is happening in the HD market; the demand for HD RGB is rising fast as companies look to differentiate themselves from the current industry HD baseline.” I

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New Products & Services to the D.Mag2, a small, re-useable digital film magazine. Full support of 60p includes over- and undercranking variable frame rates when used with Arri’s D-20 digital camera. For more information, visit www.stwo-corp.com or contact (775) 853-9999.

Angenieux Optimo 28-76mm Thales Angenieux has introduced the Optimo 28-76mm Super 35mm-format film lens, which weighs less than 4.5 pounds, making it ideal for handheld or Steadicam applications. The lens features an extremely fast (f/2.4) and consistent aperture speed of T2.6 throughout the zoom range for improved shooting across various lighting conditions. Along with impressive contrast and color reproduction, the design of the Optimo 28-76mm lens has eliminated the potential problems of iris changes during zooming or image-size changes when the focal length is changed, with no ramping or breathing. Features designed for the professional user include a 320-degree focus rotation with more than 25 witness marks for maximum accuracy. The lens is available with both PL and Panavision mounts and has a range of 28-76mm (2.7x zoom ratio) and a closefocus range of 0.6–2'. For more information in the U.S., call (973) 812-3858, E-mail ange [email protected] or visit www.ange nieux.com. 82 August 2007

4K Recording with S.two’s DFR4K S.two Corporation recently introduced a 4K recorder based on the D.Mag digital film magazine. States Steve Roach, S.two’s vice president of marketing, “Our product was conceived as a 4K-capable platform, so this is a natural evolution of our technology, adding portability, on-set capabilities and proven workflow to a 4K production and editorial experience.” The DFR4K uses a new, single D.Mag4 disk magazine. Notes S.two President Chris Romine, “As has been our tradition, current customers will be offered an upgrade path to 4K and higher resolutions.” For more information, visit www.stwo-corp.com or contact (775) 853-9999. S.two 60p Support S.two now offers full 60p support, including variable-frame recording, with its new Take2 portable uncompressed DFR. Able to record SMPTE372M, the Take2 can record 60p at all frame rates up to 60 uncompressed progressive frames per second

OConnor 120EX Extended Capacity Fluid Head OConnor, a Vitec Group brand, is now delivering the new 120EX Extended Capacity Fluid Head. The 120EX raises the camera package payload bar with a revolutionary counterbalance mechanism that provides support to 120 pounds (54kg) in standard mode and up to 240 pounds (109kg) in EX mode. OConnor’s engineers developed EX technology to address the heavy payloads often required for some of today’s film and electronic-cinematography systems when fully loaded. With its continuous counterbalance system and ultra-smooth pan and tilt fluid drag, the 120EX is custom designed for film-style shooting. This patented head delivers counterbalance through the full ±90° forward and backward range for camera packages weighing 30-120 pounds (1454kg). As counterbalance for a camera package in excess of 120 pounds is cranked into the head, it automatically begins limiting the forward and backward tilt range. At 147 pounds (67kg), tilt is limited to ±80°, at 188 pounds (85kg) to ± 70°, and at 240 pounds (109kg) to ±60°. The 120EX is the perfect match for the OConnor Cine HD Tripod. Additionally, all existing accessories for the popular 2575C and 2060HD fluid heads are fully compatible with it. For more information, visit www.ocon.com, E-mail: sales@ ocon.com or call (714) 979-3993.

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Pro-Class LCD Monitors from ECinema The new ECinema Systems Proclass 24" and 40" LCD monitors are designed to deliver value and accuracy, with features designed for high-end hidef (HD) production and post applications. Founder and CEO Martin Euredjian says, “These are highly accurate professional monitors with dependable color calibration, the right feature set and the best value in the industry at this performance level. These are workhorses that will be at home in a wide range of applications.” ECinema Systems designed these evaluation-grade displays to deliver exceptional value. They provide a cost-effective solution for HD 4:4:4, HD 4:2:2 and standard definition, with highly accurate 16-bits-per-channel signal processing and advanced CCFL backlight technology. Euredjian adds, “The backlight is very important in evaluation-grade monitors. This is where white-point calibration and stability come from. Pro-class monitors use microprocessor-stabilized CCFL backlights controlled to 12 bits of resolution. Calibration is repeatable, stable and reliable.” Pro-class monitors are available

with a number of options, including such specialized items as yoke-based mounting for C-stand support in production environments. For more information, visit www.ecinemasys.com or call (661) 294-7444. FX-Series General-Purpose Monitors from ECinema The new FX-series generalpurpose monitors from ECinema are offered in 24" and 40" sizes, both with full 1920x1080 HD resolution. “With the proliferation of desktop video systems, it became evident that there was a need for a quality solution in monitoring,” notes Martin Euredjian, ECinema founder and CEO. “This solution had to be full-featured yet offer a level of affordability on par with the applications for which it was intended. The FX line is just that: a highly affordable monitor for desktop and general HD/SD viewing applications. It was very important to us to be able to achieve excellent price points without compromising in areas that are important to our users. Colorimetry and upgradeability, among other things, are excellent.” FX-class monitors are precali-

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brated at the factory. The displays feature an array of inputs: HD 4:2:2/SDcapable SDI, S-video, Composite Video, Analog RGB and Digital DVI. This flexibility makes them a natural fit in any multi-format system. The FX-series features an advanced 10-bit imageprocessing engine suitable for viewing and semi-critical evaluation applications. Scaling is used on all non-1080 standards. For more information, visit www.ecinemasys.com or call (661) 294-7444. Formatt Expands Line of HD Filters Formatt Filters has expanded its collection of the HD diffusion, refraction and enhancing lens filters. Designed specifically for high-definition (HD) picture acquisition, the new HD Soft Tone, Blender and Neutral Density (ND) ranges give cinematographers new creative options for HD projects. The first filters in the Soft Tone range offer a great set of options for image softening and skin enhancement. They combine a new, unique softening pattern together with a very subtle skin-tone enhancement in a range of shades, sufficient to take the edge off of HD’s harshness. The Soft Blush, Soft Lilac, Soft Pink, Soft Cool, Soft Turquoise and Soft Bronze, produced in three grades, deliver global softening of the image with subtle skintone enhancement. More filters will be added to the range later this year. “HD cameras highlight far more detail, quite harshly at times, and there’s a necessity for an enhancing range of filters for facial close-ups,” says David Stamp, managing director of Formatt Filters. “Many presenters and actors have found that their most minute facial blemishes are highlighted onscreen [in HD]. With the filters we’re launching this year, we offer cinematographers the widest choice in image enhancement for both HD and film.” Formatt is also launching a range of new Graduated Blender filters. 84 August 2007

Standard graduated filters affect the top part of the image while leaving the bottom undisturbed, and are most commonly used with skylines. The graduated filters are available in soft or hard-edged varieties. The Blender is the same as a graduated filter, but with the transition taking place gradually over the whole length of the filter rather than in the middle. They are available in all colors in which Formatt manufactures graduated filters, including NDs. All Formatt Filters are manufactured to the highest optical standards using the latest in materials technology to ensure color consistency when used in HD production. For more information, visit www.formatt.co.uk or call +44 (0) 1685 870 979. Sachtler Act 2 Spring Arm Sachtler, a Vitec Group brand, has introduced the Act 2 spring arm for camera-stabilizing systems (with industry-standard vest/arm connection) including the Artemis EFP, EFP Pro SDI HD, Cine and Cine HD. The ACT 2 delivers breakthrough functionality, easy setup and enhanced performance in a lightweight yet robust package. Sachtler’s engineering team has used new-technology springs and bearings and materials such as high-rigidity reinforced aluminum. The result is an arm that is 3 pounds lighter yet offers unmatched torsional strength to benefit daily operations and ensure a long life. The Act 2 is designed for versatile, speedy setup. Three interchangeable stainless-steel spring sets handle payloads from 24-57 pounds (11-26kg). The intuitive pretensioning capability allows the

operator to adjust spring tension to accommodate various loads simply and quickly with a single 5⁄ 32" (4mm) Allen wrench. When it’s time for action, the arm fully engages at once, even at maximum load. The arm also has a flip-over vest attachment that makes it easy to switch from right-handed to lefthanded operation (and vice versa) without disassembling the vest connection. The 5⁄ 8" gimbal mounting post, available in 6", 10" and 12" lengths, offers adjustable friction. The Act 2 housing undergoes a chemical process that hardens the aluminum and produces a smooth finish that repels scratches and nicks and sports a deep, long-lasting matte black color. The arm is crafted in Eching, Germany, alongside Sachtler’s other precision Artemis products. It is available through the Sachtler dealer network. For more information, visit www.sachtler.com. EX Super Fisheye I6x9 Inc. has introduced the EX Super Fisheye lens accessory for the Panasonic HVX200 and other compact HD camcorders. Fisheyes expand the view of the lens, providing a wide-eyed perspective that pulls the eye close to the center of the action. Images appear convex, with exaggerated angles and

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extreme barrel distortion. With .45x magnification, the new EX Super Fisheye is the widest single-element fisheye adapter on the market. Added to the HVX200 lens, it delivers a 115degree horizontal and 135-degree diagonal field of view. The EX Super Fisheye Weighs 13.75 ounces (390g) and has a front diameter of 120mm. It comes outfitted with a 72-82mm step-up ring for attachment to the HVX200. Anchored by a single set screw, the ring is mounted to the back of the adapter. With the ring removed, the Super Fisheye’s 72mm rear-thread fits neatly to the front of the Sony HVR-Z1U, Canon’s XH A1 and XH G1, or Panasonic’s AGDVX100B lens. For mounting to the Sony HVR-V1U/HDR-FX7, an optional 72-62mm step-down ring is available. Engineered and built in Japan for optimum optical performance, 16x9 Inc.’s HD-quality EX lens add-ons are crafted of the finest grade materials and feature an innovative, advanced design. Suggested price for the EX Super Fisheye is $695. For more information, call (661) 295-3313 or visit www.16x9inc.com. Critical Image Sony has introduced a new generation of professional master monitoring technology. Its new monitor series is based on Sony’s TriMaster technology, which is designed to maximize the full performance capabilities of professional flat-panel displays and to deliver higher levels of color accuracy and color reproduction, precision imaging and quality picture consistency with higher dimensions. The first model in the series is the BVM-L230 LCD video reference monitor, a 22.5" unit (viewable area, measured diagonally) that combines a full-resolution LCD panel, a newly developed high-precision backlight

y saying g 'one e day, , I'll l make e a “Constantly ' gets s tedious. . LFS S lets s you u make film' ilms s instead d of f just t talking g about t it” fi films Babak Jalali 2006 Graduate Selected for Cannes Residence 2007. Jalali’s graduation film was nominated for a BAFTA and won Best Student film at the NY City Short Film Festival.

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system and a display engine which has been in development for several years. The LCD panel is the industry’s first with a 10-bit driver that’s capable of producing 1,024 levels of gray scale, making the BVM-L230 ideal for high-end applications, including digital cinema, digital intermediate, telecine and high-end postproduction, as well as program and preview monitoring in broadcast master control rooms or in OB trucks. With the BVM-L230, video professionals can achieve the critical evaluation capabilities associated with Sony’s line of BVM CRT monitors, while gaining the benefits of flat-panel technology, including lower weight, lower power consumption and a reduction in heat load. The BVM-L230 monitor incorporates key TriMaster technologies such as a newly developed wide color-gamut panel, color management system, full HD resolution (1920x1080), high grayscale gradation, motion picture response, precision-signal processing, and a calibration and feedback system. The monitor adds several features specifically designed for professional monitoring requirements, including a new color space selection function, advanced picture-in-picture display and a true interlace display mode, which helps accurately reproduce interlaced signals. The monitor’s enhanced LED backlighting system offers a wider color gamut than found in any other direct view display technology, including CRT. This new system can fully cover the range of broadcast-standard color spaces as well as support the new digital cinema standards. SMPTE C, EBU, and ITU 709 color gamuts are available via button selection. The backlight system also incorporates a uniformity control function and a color feedback system that constantly monitors and compensates for color shifts, maintaining accurate luminance uniformity equal to the BVM CRTs. Complementing the backlight system is a newly designed color management system developed specifically for the BVM-L series, offering more consistent and stable color reproduction

that uses a proprietary color feedback stability system. This technology is designed to accurately reproduce color spaces with 3-D LUT management. A black frame insertion mode significantly reduces motion blur by combining a high frame rate and black frame inserted between image frames. The monitor’s signal processing engine incorporates 12-bit accuracy, and also delivers a high-quality IP conversion algorithm for interlaced signal display and reduced processing delay. The BVM-L230 offers multiformat monitoring capabilities, displaying SD and HD formats up to 1080 60p. In addition to HDTV data, the BVM-L230 supports a range of signal formats, including 2048x1080 24p for digitalcinema applications and VGA-WUXGA (1920x1200) PC signals. The monitor offers several connectivity options, including a standard DVI-D input. Optional inputs include HD-SDI/SDI SDI (4:2:2 10-bit and 4:4:4 10- or 12-bit), composite, Y/C, RGB/YPbPr/XYZ, and dual-link HD-SDI. Sony is developing larger screen sizes for this new series of LCD monitors. A 42" version (viewable area, measured diagonally) is scheduled for availability next year. The BVM-L230 will be available this fall at a suggested list price of about $25,000. For more information, visit www.sony.com. New Super 8mm Stock Pro8mm recently introduced Pro8/43, a 160-ASA tungsten negative. The stock is cut from the new 35mm Fuji Eterna Vivid 160 and loaded by Pro8mm into the familiar 50' Super 8 cartridges at its Burbank, California, facility. Vivid is an evolved version of Eterna with even higher color saturation. It utilizes DIR-Coupler Technology that creates a fresh, translucent color palette by promoting better separation and adhesion of the colors. It also provides higher contrast and sharpness as a result of proprietary Fuji Super Nano-structured grain technology. This controls light sensitive structure and silver-halide

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grain to nanoscale, minimizing reflection and boosting sharpness. The Vivid technology optimizes performance in the studio or in outdoor daylight with an 85 filter. It is processed ECN-2 and also can be run with skip-bleach technique. Because all Super 8 cameras were originally designed to shoot 160ASA tungsten film, Pro8/43 is 100percent compatible with all existing Super 8 camera exposure systems embracing 40 years of camera design. Any make or model of Super 8 camera will read the exposure correctly. Pro8mm sells the film in the convenient 50' light-tight cartridge for $30 including processing. The negative film cannot be projected, and must be scanned to digital for viewing. An allinclusive sample (Tester) can be purchased for $88.88, which can be delivered in MPEG-2 DVD-R format for viewing or QuickTime DV on DVD for use in NLE Systems. Multiple roll value packages for film, processing and digital scanning to production formats such as MiniDV, DVCam or Digital Beta are available. Pro8mm, (818) 848-5522, Web site: www.pro8mm.com. I

Erratum In the “M.O.S. Sync Tackles Metadata” article in June’s New Products & Services, software engineer Paul Klamer’s name was misspelled.

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Points East High Comedy at Low Altitudes by John Calhoun

I

n terms of talent, if not epic debauchery, the metal-heads of Spinal Tap are given a run for their money by Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, two New Zealanders who comprise the rock duo Flight of the Conchords. After several years of escalating popularity, Bret and Jemaine have come to take New York by storm. As documented in the new HBO comedy Flight of the Conchords, they’ve had some humble success Stateside thanks to Murray, the part-time manager who has booked them a few trade-show gigs, and the avid young woman who comprises their fan club. They have even had some luck dating American women, and their romantic tribulations are a major component of their songs, which often interrupt the show’s dramatic action, music-videostyle. The latter aspect of the show was 88 August 2007

a major attraction for Los Angeles cinematographer Patrick Alexander Stewart (Hotel; see AC April ’02), who says it takes a special project to pull him away from home. “There are two reasons I chose to come out here,” he explains. One was the affability and energy of producers/writers/actors/musicians McKenzie and Clement, “who have something different to offer.” The other was the music. “I’m a musician myself, and I always appreciate projects that include music. This show involves script going into music and coming back to script, which really has never been done successfully. “The best way to approach this probably would have been to have a unit shooting the show and a separate unit preparing and shooting the videos, but we shot both with a single unit,” he continues. Each of the 12 half-hour

episodes was shot in five days except for the pilot, which was shot last summer in four. And there was no real break between shoots; production on one went right into the next, with scouting and other preproduction activities taking place whenever they could. The pilot was shot in real locations, including a tiny walkup for Bret and Jemaine’s apartment, an office for Murray, and various bars and city streets. When the show was picked up, production designer Dan Butts built replicas of key locations at Steiner Studios. “We didn’t actually shoot onstage — we were in a 50-by-100-foot Quonset hut on the left side of the lot,” notes Stewart. “We took half of Murray’s office apart to shoot larger sets and music videos!” When the time came to build a set for the band’s apartment, he contin-

Photos courtesy of HBO.

Clueless New Zealand troubadours Jemaine Clement (left) and Bret McKenzie attempt to conquer New York City in Flight of the Conchords.

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ues, “the producers and director [James Bobin] were intent on making it exactly the same, but I said, ‘Let’s think practically about shooting with 15 people and lights and equipment in the room.’ We decided to have a bigger room but shoot it smaller; whenever we shot toward the living room, we moved the kitchen stuff down toward the living room, and whenever we shot toward the kitchen, we moved the living-room stuff down that way.” Realism was the byword from the beginning, at least for scripted scenes. “It was important to me that it not look theatrical unless we were shooting a music-video segment,” says Stewart, who framed the show in 16x9 using Panasonic SDX900 cameras in 24p mode at 50Mbps. “I wanted people to believe these two guys are who they are and are doing what they’re doing. I didn’t want to smack them with a lot of backlight or other lighting that didn’t make sense in certain environments.” Stewart lit 90 percent of the show with Litepanels’ 1x1 LED spots and floods, instruments that he predicts will “change the way everything is lit” on sets and in ordinary life. “I bought a whole set of them before I shot the pilot because I knew I wasn’t going to have a lot of time, and I wanted something versatile and light that wouldn’t heat up like a normal tungsten bulb and wouldn’t take up as much space as a Kino Flo. I could do a walking scene outside with the sun backlighting the characters, and have a grip hold a 1x1 near the camera just to punch up the eyes a bit. They also came in handy in the apartment, where the base light was China balls and the punchier lights were Litepanels.” Stewart used Fujinon zoom lenses with the SDX900. “The important thing to remember when you’re shooting video is where you can and cannot point the camera,” he observes. “You can’t shoot low angles up at a cloudy sky, and you can’t shoot with the sun hitting a bright wall or sidewalk in the background without having enough balance as far as your key lights. You also can’t shoot people walking around with white clothing in bright sun.” In fact, he adds,

“White is a tone I never allowed on the set, because the second this camera gets light on something that’s white, it’s immediately 100-percent value, and you’re probably going to lose all detail.” Stewart and his collaborators demonstrated their appreciation of classic videos in the show’s musical sequences. “A lot of our videos are based on iconic videos from the past,” says Stewart. “We took a Depeche Mode approach to one song, ‘Inner City Pressure,’ and there’s a song in the pilot that’s a mixture of the Godley & Creme video where their faces are mixed on top of each other and an Abba video that’s similar. The song ‘Sally Returns’ references an old Kate Bush video, and we shot it with an old Ikegami tube camera that we got out of a production house. And, of course, there were some videos that we just shot the way we wanted to shoot them at the time. We often used a Steadicam to give them a stylized sort of look. “Our indefatigable grip and lighting crew did a fantastic job of keeping up with the constantly changing scenes and styles. Kevin Smyth, the key grip, and his crew always came through with the best solutions and rigging, whether we had to shoot multiple takes of a television set falling out of an eighth-story window, or the Conchords kneeling on a Western dolly while barreling down a wooded path with a mounted Steadicam rig and Litepanels. Petr

Hlinomaz, the gaffer, and his crew understood the constraints of our time and budget and embraced the method of using Litepanels as our principal light source in many scenes. All in all, we could not have accomplished what we did without the support of this team.” Though Flight of the Conchords was shot single-camera style by Acamera operator James Callanan, scenes were often covered by two cameras. “With this ensemble, we didn’t want to miss any coverage,” says Stewart, who operated the B camera. Since wrapping the series, Stewart has rejoined his family in L.A. If Flight of the Conchords is picked up for a second season of shooting in New York, he says, “we’ll see what happens.” I

Above: Director of photography Patrick Stewart captures a handheld shot of the deadpan duo. A realistic approach to everyday scenes paves the way for the show’s stylized musical interludes. Below: Stewart notes that the show’s musicvideo parodies are “based on iconic videos from the past.”

American Cinematographer 89

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CLASSIFIEDS ON-LINE Ads may now also be placed in the on-line Classifieds at the ASC web site. Internet ads are seen around the world at the same great rate as in print, or for slightly more you can appear both online and in print. For more information please visit www.theasc.com/advertiser, or e-mail: [email protected].

USED EQUIPMENT. PRO VIDEO & FILM EQUIPMENT COMPANY. (888) 869-9998. GUARANTEED LOWEST PRICE- Any lcd or plasma, any model. www.cinemaesque.com- 866-543-7471 • [email protected] New and Used Steadicam equipment www.whitehousesteadisales.com or call 805-498-1658. Mint 16mm and 35mm cameras, lenses, accessories, support at great prices – www.gallusproductions.com. USED EQUIPMENT. PRO VIDEO & FILM EQUIPMENT COMPANY. (888) 869-9998, [email protected]. www.ProVideoFilm.com. 8,000 USED ITEMS. PRO VIDEO & FILM EQUIPMENT COMPANY. (888) 869-9998.

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Classifieds continued Advertiser’s Index EQUIPMENT FOR SALE BUY-SELL-CONSIGN-TRADE. 40 YEARS EXPERIENCE. CALL BILL REITER. PRO VIDEO & FILM EQUIPMENT COMPANY. (972) 869-9990. PRO VIDEO & [email protected].

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Arriflex 435ES, 535B, 35 BL1, BL2, BL4 and BL4S, and Evolution Camera Packages for sale. Call Visual Products, Inc. (440) 647-4999. NEED USED EQUIPMENT? PRO VIDEO & FILM EQUIPMENT COMPANY. (888) 869-9998. www.ProVideoFilm.com. GLIDECAM SCHOOL. West Coast headquarters 323-466-3561 / [email protected] PRO VIDEO & FILM EQUIPMENT COMPANY. USED EQUIPMENT. (888) 869-9998. WORLD’S SUPERMARKET OF USED MOTION PICTURE EQUIPMENT VISUAL PRODUCTS, INC. CALL (440) 647-4999.

WANTED Wanted: Experienced motion picture lens technician. Excellent benefits and salary (depending on experience). Willing to train the right applicant. Call Scott @ 818.841.8700 Synchronous motor 1800rpm 60Hz. for vintage 16mm Auricon Cinevoice camera. [email protected] WANTED STEADICAM’S AND ACCESSORIES. [email protected] or 805-498-1658. CASH FOR YOUR EQUIPMENT NOW! MOTION PICTURE EQUIPMENT 16MM OR 35MM WANTED: CAMERAS, LENSES, TRIPODS, DOLLIES, CRANES, LIGHTING, EDITING. VISUAL PRODUCTS, INC. PH (440) 647-4999 OR FAX LIST TO (440) 6474998.

SERVICES AVAILABLE DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY GLENN ROLAND. Film. HD. Equipment. (310)475-0937 STEADICAM ARM QUALITY SERVICE OVERHAUL AND UPDATES. QUICK TURNAROUND. ROBERT LUNA (323) 9385659. W W W . G R I P A N D E L E C T R I C . C O M NY Three-ton Truck Package Rental EMAIL: [email protected] PHONE: 917.476.9967

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Abel Cine Tech 13 AC 16a-b, Alan Gordon Enterprises 90, 91 Arri 25

Filmtools 85 Flying-Cam 75 FTC/West 91 Fuji Motion Picture 5 Full Sail C3

Backstage Equipment, Inc. 6 Bardwell & McAlister, Inc. 81 Burrell Enterprises 90

Glidecam Industries 21

Cavision Enterprises 71 Chapman/Leonard Studio Equipment Inc. 15 Chesapeake Camera 85 Cinebags 90 Cinekinetic 8 CinemaGadgets.com 91 Cinema Vision 90 Cinematographer Style 17 Cinematography Electronics 87 Cooke 6 CPT Rental Inc. 90

High Eye 86 Hybrid Cases 90 Hydroflex 86 Imagica 23 Innoventive Software 6 K 5600, Inc. 30 Kino Flo 53 Laffoux Solutions, Inc. 90 Laser Pacific 29 Lee Filters 42 Lights! Action! Company 90 London Film School 85 Los Angeles Film School 9

Denecke 90

Microdolly Hollywood 90 MP&E Mayo Productions 91

Eastman Kodak C2-1, C4 EFD, USA Inc. 43

Nalpak Inc. 91 New York Film Academy 7 O’Connor 83 Oppenheimer Camera Prod. 91

Panavision 19 PED Denz 31, 91 Pille Film Gmbh 90 Pro8mm 90 Samy’s DV & Edit 52 Schneider Optics 2 Sharp Shooter 4 Slamdance 93 Sony Electronics 11 Stanton Video Services 75 Super16 Inc. 90 Sydney Film School 75 T8 Technology 61 VF Gadgets, Inc. 91 Videoassistech SNC 90 Videocraft Equipment Pty 91 Visual Products, Inc. 71 Welch Integrated 95 Willy’s Widgets 90 www.theasc.com 18, 27, 60, 87, 91, 92 ZGC, Inc. 6

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CALL FOR ENTRIES

SLAMDANCE FILM FESTIVAL JANUARY 17-25, 2008

FINAL SUBMISSION DEADLINE

OCTOBER 9, 2007

FILM FESTIVAL www.slamdance.com “It was an honor and a privilege to premiere at Slamdance. We felt like the luckiest filmmakers ever; we signed papers with New Line right after our first screening and once we could announce that sale, got to enjoy a wonderful week in Park City.” – Seth Gordon, Director, THE KING OF KONG, Slamdance 2007 world premiere documentary.

By Filmmakers, For Filmmakers

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Clubhouse News Okada Re-elected, New Board Takes Shape Daryn Okada, ASC was recently elected to a second one-year term as Society president. The other ASC members voted into office by the membership were Vice Presidents Michael Goi, Richard P. Crudo and Owen Roizman; Treasurer Victor J. Kemper; Secretary Michael Negrin; and Sergeant-at-Arms John Hora. The new Board of Governors also includes ASC members Caleb Deschanel, George Spiro Dibie, Richard Edlund, William A. Fraker,

Francis Kenny, Laszlo Kovacs, Isidore Mankofsky, Robert Primes, Dante Spinotti, Kees Van Oostrum and Haskell Wexler; alternates are Stephen Lighthill, Matthew Leonetti, Russ Alsobrook and Sol Negrin. “Just being an ASC member is a dream come true,” says Okada. “Our founders defined the mission for the ASC in 1919, when the motion-picture industry was still in its infancy. They were dedicated to providing a collegial environment where members could share ideas and solve problems for the purpose of advancing a new art form. That remains our top priority.”

94 August 2007

Poster in the Windy City Early this summer, HD Expo paid a third visit to Chicago, where International Cinematographer Guild President Steven Poster, ASC sat down for a conversation moderated by AC contributor David Heuring. The discussion covered such topics as the future of cinematography, the impact new tools and technology have on the creative process, and how to protect the filmmakers’ creative vision in this ever-changing landscape.

New Member Director of photography Christopher Baffa, ASC, a native Californian whose credits include the series Nip/Tuck and the features Running with Scissors and Unaccompanied Minors, was recently welcomed into the Society as an active member. The youngest of four children, Baffa was raised in Palos Verdes and the South Bay, where he developed an early fascination with film through his father’s 8mm home movies. After graduating from the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television, Baffa hit the ground running and began working in set lighting, where he climbed the ranks and became a gaffer. This experience, along with a stint shooting second unit for Roger Corman’s Concorde Pictures, led to a job as a first-unit cinematographer on the feature film Baby Face. Since then, Baffa has worked exclusively as a cinematographer, notching credits that also include the films Suicide Kings and Idle Hands, the TV series Popular, and the pilot for The Closer.

ASC at Cine Gear Expo To the casual observer, the ASC could be seen en masse at Cine Gear Expo in late June. Members Steven Fierberg, William Fraker and Laszlo Kovacs sat on the panel titled “The West, the Movies, and the ASC,” moderated by Bob Fisher. The panel provided insights into the complex role of the cinematographer as visual storyteller by showing clips from movies that inspired them or films they had shot. “The Visual Art of Documentary Storytelling” panel featured such ASC luminaries as Stephen Lighthill, Ellen Kuras, Rodney Charters, Robert McLachlan, Curtis Clark and James Chressanthis. In “Dialogue with ASC Cinematographers,” Daniel Pearl, Chris Baffa, James L. Carter, Isidore Mankofsky, Frederic Goodich and Bill Bennett weighed in with their thoughts on the past, present and future of the art and craft of cinematography. David Stump, ASC discussed shooting the 15-minute short film The Trident with the Dalsa Origin in “Dalsa Digital Cinema: Why Everything Looks Better When You Start in 4K.” Christian Sebaldt, ASC and director William Malone relayed their experience of shooting Super 16mm with the Arri 416 on the low-budget feature Parasomnia. I

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ASC CLOSE-UP Bill Roe, ASC When you were a child, what film made the strongest impression on you? I grew up in the business, and every summer my dad, Jack, seemed to be doing Westerns. I spent my summer vacations visiting those sets, and Westerns quickly became my favorite. Which cinematographers, past or present, do you most admire? The first names that come to mind are Owen Roizman, ASC; Michael Chapman, ASC; Gordon Willis, ASC; Caleb Deschanel, ASC; John Toll, ASC; Oliver Wood; and Joe Pytka. What sparked your interest in photography? My high-school graduation gift was a 35mm still camera. After playing two years of college football and baseball and enduring numerous cortisone shots, it wasn’t so painful to pick up the camera. Where did you train and/or study? I started off by sneaking onto the Warner Bros. lot, where I worked in the loading department for free for about a year. My first official job was as a loader on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band with Owen Roizman. My training was all on the job, and I’m still in training. Who were your early teachers or mentors? Throughout my career, every second assistant, first assistant, camera operator, and cinematographer has been a teacher. Alan Disler; Victor J. Kemper, ASC (who moved me up to operator); Owen Roizman; Michael Chapman; and Joe Pytka all made a huge impact on me. What are some of your key artistic influences? I hate this question. How did you get your first break in the business? Nepotism. What has been your most satisfying moment on a project? When I was working on The X-Files, driving home at 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning after working a long week became the norm. The feeling I had on that drive home, being so proud of what we had accomplished as a camera crew, was very cool. It doesn’t get much better than that. Have you made any memorable blunders? Forgetting to put the pressure plate in and forgetting to turn the camera on. Those are the only two blunders I’m willing to share. What’s the best professional advice you’ve ever received? Do not be afraid to push yourself and trust yourself.

96 August 2007

Bill Roe, ASC has some helping hands as he prepares to shoot with his own custom-made, hand-cranked Arri 16mm camera.

What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you? I’m constantly influenced by everything I see, from features to television shows to commercials to Sports Illustrated. Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like to try? I worked as an operator on Wyatt Earp with Owen Roizman, but I’d love to do a Western as a cinematographer. If you weren’t a cinematographer, what might you be doing instead? The PGA would have been fun! How has ASC membership impacted your life and career? Every time I step into the ASC Clubhouse, I feel awe that I’m part of such a prestigious organization. Not only is it an honor, but it also has given me the opportunity to form closer relationships with other cinematographers. To be a part of the ASC is a dream come true! I

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- UNleashed Magazine

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ONFILM D I C K

P O P E ,

B S C

“When I first became a cameraman I shot 16mm factual films for many companies including the BBC. I traveled the world often to remote and inaccessible places, including war zones, sometimes to live with so called primitive tribes, and generally having a great time along the way. Documentaries taught me so much, but it was shooting music, both concerts and promos, that acted as my springboard into cinema. I have been totally fascinated by the lighting on faces since I first picked up a camera as a boy and fell in love with taking pictures, especially portraits. The landscape of the human face is where the emotions lie. Everything else leads up to that. On set, I like a quiet and focused atmosphere around the camera conducive to giving the director and actors their very best shot. A favorite challenge for me is to create a totally believable cinematic world that our characters can inhabit, thereby sucking the audience right into their lives, and rather than self-consciously drawing attention to the camera as another player, make that audience forget there’s a camera out there at all.” Dick Pope, BSC earned both an Oscar® and American Society of Cinematographers Outstanding Achievement Award nomination for The Illusionist. His cinema credits include The Reflecting Skin, Life Is Sweet, Naked, Secrets & Lies, Topsy-Turvy, The Way Of The Gun, Thirteen Conversations, Nicholas Nickleby, Vera Drake, Man of the Year and the upcoming Honeydripper. For an extended interview with Dick Pope, visit www.kodak.com/go/onfilm. To order Kodak motion picture film, call (800) 621 - film. www.kodak.com/go/motion © Eastman Kodak Company, 2007. Photography: © 2007 Douglas Kirkland