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The International Journal of Film & Digital Production Techniques
On Our Cover: James
Bond (Daniel Craig) ponders his next move after polishing off a vodka martini in Quantum of Solace, shot by Roberto Schaefer, ASC. (Photo by Ka ren Ballard.)
Features
28 42 54 64 74
Departments
Forging a Bond Roberto Schaefer, ASC accepts 007’s latest assignment on Quantum of Solace
The Making of a President Phedon Papamichael, ASC and Oliver Stone examine the life of George W. Bush in W.
Thunder Down Under Mandy Walker, ACS brings epic sweep to Baz Luhrmann’s Australia Luhrmann’s Australia
40
Habitat for Inhumanity David Geddes, CSC assesses the performance of the Red One on the series Sanctuary
Saluting Television’s Top Talents A review of this year’s Emmy Award winners winners and nominees for cinematography cinematography
8 12 14 16
Editor’s Note Letters Short Takes: Singularity Production Slate: Changeling
76 78 90 91 92 94 96
New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up: Victor Goss
54
Megan is Missing Post Focus: Avid’s Avid’s Media Composer 3.0
64
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N o v e m b e r 2 0 0 8 V o l . 8 9 , N o . 1 1 The Internatio International nal Journal Journal of Film & Digital Digital Product Production ion Techni Techniques ques • Since Since 1920
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BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Harris Savides, ASC
For up-to-the-minute screening information and more on this extraordinary film go to: www.FilmInFocus.com/awards08 ARTWORK ©2008 FOCUS FEATURES, LLC. ALL RIGHTS R ESERVED.
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The ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but an educational, cultural and pro fes pro fes sional sional or gani gani zation. zation. Membership is by invitation to those who are actively en gaged en gaged as direc directors tors of photography and have demon demon strated strated out out stand standing ability. ASC membership has become be come one of the highest honors that can be bestowed upon a pro fes sional sional cine cinematog matogra ra pher — a mark mark of prestige and excellence. OFFICERS - 2008/2009
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Directed by Jean Sebastien Di Fruscia / Produced by Veronica Bautista
Editor’s Note J
ames Bond renewed his license to kill with the 2006 blockbuster “reboot” Casino Royale, which introduced Daniel Craig as a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, rock-ribbed version of Ian Fleming’s superspy. For 007’s latest adventure — his 22nd overall — the franchise was entrusted to director Marc Forster and cinematographer Roberto Schaefer, ASC, neither of whom had ever tackled action-adventure on such a scale. Neither was daunted by the prospect, however. “When Marc told me he had been offered this movie, my response was, ‘How could you not do a Bond film?’” Schaefer tells London correspondent Mark Hope-Jones (“Forging a Bond,” page 28). Schaefer, who has shot all eight of the features Forster has directed, did his utmost to showcase the elaborate sets created by production designer Dennis Gassner and his crew, environments that hark back to the stylistic daring of Ken Adam’s spectacular Sixties and Seventies sets. As Forster notes, “Those movies were so much about style, design and clothing. I wanted to go back to that and yet still make a modern Bond.” To ensure the action would meet fans’ expectations, the first unit paired with a second unit led by two alums from The Bourne Ultimatum: director Ultimatum: director Dan Bradley and cinematographer Shaun O’Dell. They also benefited from the input of other crack teammates, including visual-effects cinematographer David Stump, ASC (see sidebar on page 32); visual-effects supervisor Kevin Tod Haug; aerial experts David B. Nowell, ASC, and Ron Goodman; and camera operators George Richmond and Mark Milsome. Oedipal rivalry and White House politics are the focal points of W., an intriguing biopic that examines the life of U.S. President George W. Bush. Phedon Papamichael, ASC shot the project for director Oliver Stone, who infuses the film with liberal doses of satire and sympathy (pun intended). “Working with Oliver is a very intense but super-creative process,” Papamichael tells Patricia Thomson (“The Making of a President,” page 42). “This was probably the most demanding picture I’ve ever done, [but] I’d definitely jump in and do it again.” Mandy Walker, ACS also faced creative wrangling on Baz Luhrmann’s sweeping, scenic Australia, which shows the filmmakers’ native land in its very best light. As Walker explains to Aussie correspondent Simon Gray (“Thunder Down Under,” page 54), “Baz’s trademark camera flourishes are still evident, but the camerawork is also very much in the spirit of epic movies.” Many readers have been eager to see production-oriented coverage of the Red One in our pages, and Douglas Bankston’s piece on the TV series Sanctuary (“Habitat Sanctuary (“Habitat for Inhumanity,” page 64), delivers first-hand observations from cinematographer David Geddes, CSC and visual-effects supervisor Lee Wilson. “I had been following the One’s development but had never put the camera through its paces,” notes Geddes, who has also lent his eye to the series Men in Trees, Dark Angel and 21 Jump Street . “Sanctuary “Sanctuary offered a chance to make a virtual-reality series with new camera technology that had never been used in this situation before. The challenge was impossible to resist.” Other examples of must-see TV are a re lauded in our annual a nnual recap of the year’ ye ar’ss Emmynominated cinematographers (“Saluting Television’s Top Talents,” page 74), which includes snapshots from Eastman Kodak’s annual dinner at the Bistro Garden restaurant. As the saying goes, what happens at the Bistro stays at the Bistro — until the photos appear in AC .
Stephen Pizzello Executive Editor 8
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Letters Another “Grumpy” Cinematographer Speaks Out I’m writing in regard to the recent letter penned by Jim Stinson in response to “The DI Dilemma, or: Why I Still Love Celluloid,” the Filmmakers’ Forum written by John Bailey, ASC, that was published in your June 2008 issue. I hereby request that my name be added to Stinson’s list of grumpy cinematographers, behind Charles G. Clarke, ASC, and Bailey. (Apparently, in Stinson’s opinion, cinematographers expressing their reservations about a shift to digital capture, finish and exhibition of theatrical feature films are “grumpy.”) I believe when highly experienced and thoughtful cinematographers like Bailey have views regarding the control of the quality and the integrity of the images they create, we should give those views serious consideration. Bailey expressed his disdain for high-definition video as a capture medium in feature-film production, comparing it unfavorably to 35mm motion-picture film. Stinson responds, “He criticizes the qualities of digital recordings. Granted, but look at the technical progress in the last decade; the development of digital recording is far from mature.” Maybe I missed something, but I thought this was exactly the point. Why change to a capture technology that is far from “mature” when you are now using something that is? Not only is 35mm motion-picture film a mature and excellent capture medium, but it also keeps improving with the introduction of new negative, positive and intermediate stocks. The fact that film is not yet dead (or has not been murdered) speaks volumes about the preference of cinematographers in the choice of tools they use to create high-quality imagery. However, there is no doubt in my mind that when digital formats emerge that cinematographers decide are superior to film, we will happily start using them. Bailey related that some cinematographers complain they have lost control of their work in the digital world of postproduction or are being forced out of the DI process by producers, studio executives and 12 Novemb November er 2008 2008
others. To this, Stinson responds, “Maybe, but the cinematographer’s level of control depends on his or her contractual and personal relations within the production. So get control, already.” Cinematographers know the situations Bailey describes. The DI suites seem to be getting more crowded by the day. Collaborators who show up eager to help with color correction, strong proponents of “We’ll fix it in post,” and the many-faceted postproduction demands of modern film companies sometimes make the quality of the image secondary to competing agendas. I’ve never met Stinson, and I don’t know anything about his work experience or history, but I’m wondering if he will share his experiences in getting control of his latest production or DI color-correction sessions. Bailey also described a report by the Science and Technology Council of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences relating to archiving and storing motion pictures. The report, “The Digital Dilemma,” addresses the high cost of safe storage of digital files and the considerable expense of the migration of digital masters every five to seven years to ensure data is not lost due to upgrades in digital formats, and it compares these figures to the lower costs of film storage. Bailey related the successful retrieval and remastering of 40-year-old original film footage for a new video release of a film he worked on, Two-Lane Blacktop . Stinson comments, “He worries about the archival quality of digital vs. film elements. Has he forgotten the number of film-based movies lost to decay? Has he looked at a type 5254 or even 5247 negative recently? (You know, the kind that retains only magenta information?)” I’m not an expert in film restoration, but I know of two films restored earlier this year from the original film negatives, The Godfather and The Godfather Part II . Both were shot on 5254. The people who accomplished this restoration report that the negatives,
though physically damaged, delivered stunning results. The negatives were scanned, and both films were finished in the DI process. No fade or color-shift problems were reported. The restoration of these two films is a great example of how existing film technology and digital technology can be used together to preserve and even enhance the work of the cinematographer. Historically, cinematographers have taken the leading role in the choice of tools and the supervision of creating and finishing their work. Discussions about how or why this role is being affected by technological change should be taken seriously.
John Toll, ASC Los Angeles, Calif. Cropping for HDTV Seeing the letter from Walter Lassally, BSC, in the August 2008 issue made me think American Cinematogra- pher might address a concern of mine: HDTV channels are increasingly showing movies in the incorrect aspect ratio. More specifically, ’Scope films or films generally released in 2.40:1 are being broadcast at 1.78:1. Recent examples I have noticed are Superman Returns and the musicals Hairspray and The Producers . This is very disturbing to me, as I imagine it would be to cinematographers. Like 1.33:1, 1.78:1 isn’t how they intended their movies to be seen! Matt Vance Northridge, Calif.
Letters to the editor can be sent to: Letters, American Cine- matographer , 1782 N. Orange Dr., Hollywood, CA, 90028. Submissions must include your name, address and telephone number; letters without this information will not be considered. AC reserves the right to edit letters for length and clarity.
Short Takes A Dystopian View of the Future by Iain Stasukevich
Guardians patrol the plagueridden, nearfuture world of Singularity . Cinematographer Eduardo Mayén and director Sean Stone found inspiration for the film’s visuals in The Conformist and Gattaca .
U
nless your name is Quentin Tarantino, the local video store may not sound like the best place to start a career as a filmmaker, but the strategy also worked for cinematographer Eduardo Mayén. In 1998, Mayén was studying at the Escuela Monica Herrera, a college in El Salvador, while working behind the counter at Mr. Video to make ends meet. What he really wanted to do was make movies, and it just so happened that one of his regular customers, David Pinto, was a prolific commercials director who agreed to hire Mayén as a production assistant on a job for a Central American airline. While working on the commercial, Mayén found himself captivated by the work of the project’s then-unknown director of photography. “I remember being so impressed with him,” Mayén recalls. “His name was Rodrigo Prieto.” After meeting Prieto, who later became a member of the ASC and AMC, Mayén shifted his focus from directing to cinematography. Once he finished his classes at Monica Herrera, he moved to the States to study film at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. Throughout his
14 Novemb November er 2008 2008
studies, Mayén kept in touch with Prieto, and after graduation, he joined the cinematographer’s crew; since then, they have worked together on such films as 21 Grams , Alexander and Alexander and Babel . During the five months of production on Alexander ( Alexander (AC Nov. ’04), Mayén shot reference stills for color correction and developed a friendship with Sean Stone, the son of director Oliver Stone. “We started hanging out and talking about movies, and we got along,” says Mayén. “We joked around that if we ever did [a project of our own], we would call each other, and that’s what Sean did.” Stone offers, “I knew there must be something to this guy because Rodrigo trusted him, but I didn’t actually know how good he was until I got to work with him.” The young Stone had written a short screenplay titled Singularity, which was based on one of his father’s father’s student projects, Michael and Marie . Set in the near future amid a neo-fascist society ravaged by a deadly plague, Singularity tells the story of three friends — Michael (Jonathan Charis), Marie (Sinta Weisz) and Wells (Wyatt Denny) —
whose loyalties are tested in the face of infidelity and infection. One of the skills Mayén picked up from Prieto is the ability to interpret a screenplay in visual terms. “Rodrigo takes so much time to visualize a script in terms of color, lenses, stock and texture,” Mayén notes. “For him, everything’s in the script; that gives him all the answers as to how the movie’s going to look. “That was a big lesson for me,” Mayén continues. “Even if the audience doesn’t specifically notice the cinematography, they’ll at least feel something happening with it, and that’s very important. The cinematographer’s work shouldn’t be evident; it should tell the story.” Upon reading the Singularity script, Mayén thought about utilizing the anamorphic format and exploiting its inherently shallow depth of field to create a sense of increasing separation between the characters. He first experimented with anamorphic while shooting lens tests for Prieto for the Tokyo sequences of Babel (AC Nov. ’06), and he fell in love with the results. “There is something inherent in the anamorphic lens that just makes it stand alone,” he says. Mayén decided to shoot Singu- larity with larity with a vintage set of Panavision CSeries lenses and a Panaflex Millennium XL. “My plan was to use the anamorphic lenses to place the actors at opposite ends of the frame,” he explains. “I also wanted to use depth of field to underline their relationship. At the beginning, I photographed them at T4 or T5.6, and as the friendships start to fall apart, I began to open up the stop on the lens until we got to the point where if there was a shift in focus at
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Above: Michael (Jonathan Charis) begins asking troubling questions of the outside world while Marie (Sinta Weisz) tries to sleep away the tension in their relationship. Below, left to right: Steadicam operator Michael Alba, Mayén, gaffer Mike Kelly and Stone work out a setup inside the apartment. When facing away from the window, Mayén created a sunlight effect with Kino Flo Image 80s and Source Four Lekos.
16 Novemb November er 2008 2008
T2.8 or wide open, it was very noticeable and dramatic.” Though Singularity takes place in the future, the filmmakers didn’t want it to be a predictably stylized sciencefiction piece. The script called for a range of different looks: desaturated, bleached-out establishing shots; golden-hued flashbacks; and cold, sterile interiors. Stone and Mayén cut a wide swath through many possible interpretations, drawing inspiration from Blade Blade Runner Runner and and 2046, as well as the Cold War cloak-and-dagger stylings of The Conformist Conformist and the Brutalist architecture of Gattaca . Stone and production designer Kathleen Lorden were looking for locations with architecture that reflected a fascist aesthetic. One of the primary locations is a spartan apartment with concrete floors, black walls and a single wall-to-wall window slatted with
Venetian blinds. The ambience is distinctly modern, devoid of any personal touches, and appropriately ambiguous in terms of the time period it represents. In these scenes, Michael, Marie and Wells reveal their dark secrets and true loyalties, and Mayén uses lighting and color to create an even deeper sense of detachment between the former friends. The light in the room comes from a single source — the window — as though suggesting a myopic perspective; it’s sunlight, but it has a cold, harsh quality. On the rare occasions when characters make eye contact, one person is usually hidden in full or partial shadow. According to Mayén, the apartment location offered both benefits and challenges. One advantage was the darkly painted walls, which freed the cinematographer from worrying too much about controlling unwanted shadows. The biggest difficulty was the direction the long window was facing. All of the scenes photographed at this location (on Kodak Vision2 500T 5218) were set during the day, but Mayén could only shoot toward the window when the sun shone directly through it. During the other half of the day, he would shoot away
from the window, using Image 80s gelled with 1 ⁄ 2 or 3 ⁄ 4 CTB as a soft source; several Source Four Lekos accentuated the room with hot spots. For the film’s exterior flashbacks, Mayén and Stone sought a rich, warm tone to create visual and thematic contrast. These scenes depict Michael, Marie and Wells when they were still close, playing basketball and talking in a park, but with the oppressive facade of the Los Angeles Federal Building looming ominously in the background. To accomplish the dramatic shift in tone, Mayén employed a trick he picked up while working with Robbie Greenberg, ASC: “I shot all my exteriors with tungsten film — Kodak [Vision2 100T] 5212 — and an 85 filter, but I lit them with color-corrected tungsten lights instead of HMIs. It’s just amazing how much more pleasing it is to the skin tones.” Mayén and gaffer Mike Kelly used 1 ⁄ 2 CTB and 1 ⁄ 2 gridcloth on a 12'x12' frame in front of Nine-light Nine-light Maxi Brutes. Brutes. “The exterior represents better days,” Mayén comments, “and that’s another reason I used tungsten for the exteriors. I wanted those scenes to have a pleasing, magical look.” Finishing touches on Singularity were performed at Company 3 by colorist Ryan Greenberg. Mayén prepped Greenberg by forwarding him a copy of the script, along with stills from Gattaca and Gattaca and The Conformist . For his work on the picture, Mayén was honored with an Emerging Cinematographer Award from the International Cinematographers Guild, an Emerging Cinematographer Grant from Deluxe, and a 2K filmout by EFilm in Hollywood. He stresses, however, that the credit should be shared with rest of the crew, including Steadicam operator Michael Alba and focus pullers Tracy Viera and Ken Bender. “I’ve learned a lot working as an assistant,” Mayén reflects. “I’m proud that I’m able to tell a story visually, that I’m underlining the performances and the mood of the actors, and that I can use the cinematographer’s tools to tell the story.”
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Production Slate 2 Tales of Missing Kids
Christine (Angelina Jolie) monitors the growth of her son (Gattlin Griffith) in a scene from Changeling .
18 Novemb November er 2008 2008
Lost and Seemingly Found by David Heuring Thirty-six hours after finishing principal photography on Faubourg 36 , a French film set in Paris in 1936, cinematographer Tom Stern, ASC, AFC began shooting Clint Eastwood’s Changeling , a film set in Los Angeles in 1928. Upon completing Changeling , he began a shoot in Russia on the 16th-century story Ivan the Terrible and Metropolitan Philip . Philip . When asked if such a schedule made his head spin, Stern replies dryly, “I did find that 36 hours was a little tight.” But, he adds, it was in tune with his current philosophy. “Maybe Clint has finally gotten to me,” he says of his longtime collaborator. “He talks about the paralysis of analysis, and lately, I try not to think too much about what I’ve done; I just like to see what I feel like doing at any given moment, reacting to the material. At times, it feels like performing without a net, and it’s invigorating. I’m very fortunate to have great crews and all the tools we need.” Changeling is Changeling is the sixth film Stern has photographed for Eastwood, follow-
ing Blood Work, Mystic River (AC Dec. ’03), ’03), Million Dollar Baby, Flags of Our Fathers (AC Nov. AC Nov. ’06) and Letters From ’07). Set in Los Iwo Jima (AC March ’07). Angeles and based on actual events, Changeling chronicles the disappearance of a 9-year-old boy, Walter Collins, who seems to reappear six months later, except that his mother, Christine (Angelina Jolie), believes he is not her son. After turning the boy in at the police station, she is briefly institutionalized, and the facts of the case soon emerge. Stern describes the look he envisioned as “sort of a cool jazz version of The Day of the Locust — not that that I have have the talent of Conrad Hall [ASC], but that’s what I was attempting. We also tried to achieve the leanness of Mystic River . This film has a little more color than some of our recent films — it’s a rich yet muted palette — and the art department did a spectacular job. On a period film like this, they have to work very hard to pull a world out of thin air. Our task is to not screw it up.” During prep, a fat book of reference images was gathered and studied. “It was a little like seeing these events
through the lens of a photojournalist,” says Stern. “There is a directness to these images, an ‘in-your-face’ quality, but the story is not large-scale; it’s really about one woman’s agony and journey. The objective was to give the artists room to act. That’s why we’re there: to record a performance. “It’s well known that Clint really likes getting it on the first take,” he continues. “After the actors settle in, they begin to feel empowered or liberated by this. If you take it to its logical conclusion, it means you don’t get to fiddle; you’d better do your fiddling before we roll because there’s a good chance that will be it!” Gaffer Ross Dunkerley, who has made 13 movies with Stern, eight of them with Eastwood, notes, “Honestly, we don’t discuss things very much. Often, we don’t even see a rehearsal. We get an idea of what the scene is, and we have to come up with a plan very quickly. Chances are we’ll talk about it for a minute or two, and then we’re executing it.” Simplicity is the watchword. “Changeling was like Mystic River in that it was a struggle to make it as simple as possible,” says Stern. “When you have an actor like Angelina, it’s really about the performance. You put the light somewhere, and she goes into it. You don’t have to give her a mark; she finds it. She can feel and play with it. That makes it great for me, because I tend not to use fill light. I’ve been extremely fortunate because it’s almost always the case that I have a cast that can do that.” Stern shot Changeling in anamorphic 2.40:1 using Panavision’s CSeries lenses, and he used only one stock, Kodak Vision 500T 5279. When necessary, ND filters were mounted
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Above left: Director Clint Eastwood (left) uses a handheld monitor to check the shot as Acamera/Steadicam operator Stephen Campanelli films Jolie running for the trolley. Above right: Certain the boy returned to her is not her son, Christine turns to Rev. Briegleb (John Malkovich) for help. Below: Cinematographer Tom Stern, ASC, AFC checks Malkovich’s light.
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behind the lens. “You’ve got to whack 3 stops off it at least just to get started outside,” notes the cinematographer. “We felt the blacks seemed more informed with 5279 — the toe was of interest to us — so we stuck with it.” Changeling required more built sets than recent Eastwood projects, and as a result, the lighting rigs were a little more extensive than usual. “There were a number of sets where we used bleached-muslin ceiling pieces to create a constant soft, warm toplight,” says Dunkerley. “It’s a subtle warmth that isn’t quite antique or sepia, but it pushed us toward a period feel. Each ceiling piece was lit from above with up to four 6K space lights, and the grips skirted each cluster with Duvatyn from top to bottom to prevent stray light from falling on the neighboring ceiling piece. All of the toplight was run to a dimmer board, and if any of the various ceiling pieces was seen by the camera, we simply turned the corresponding lights off at the dimmer board, and that piece would go dark. Because we had that
soft, warm base level, we ended up using more soft lights for keylight, including 2K and 4K Zips.” Dunkerley notes that he and Stern, who worked together with Hall on pictures such as American Beauty (AC May ’00) and Road to Perdition (AC Aug. ’02), now use projected rain shadows as part of their visual vocabulary. “In Changeling , the rain effects are often seen during the day, which necessitated a slightly different approach,” says the gaffer. “We started using Skypans in those situations; the single source gives you hard shadows, while the white reflector through the water fills things in a bit and gives the images a less contrasty look. We were using 5K, 10K and even 20K Skypans, which you rarely see used as a keylight.” Aerolight Hybrid balloons came in handy for scenes taking place in the City Council chambers, which was actually a large room on the third floor of the Park Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. “In those conditions, it would have been very difficult to go strictly with HMIs or
daylight,” says Dunkerley. “The room had a lot of chandeliers and practicals, as well as natural daylight coming through the windows. The wood walls and tungsten practicals gave the room a warm feel. These hybrid balloons have two 1,200-watt HMI globes and two 1K tungsten fixtures, all dimmable. We could dial in the color we wanted. I think it worked well.” Stern says that overall, the period setting had very little effect on his on-set photography choices. “[The look] was mostly achieved in production design and in the digital-intermediate [DI] timing,” he says. “My impression from my years as a gaffer is that cinematographers used to do a lot more gelling and things like that, and I find we do hardly any now. If I want to shape the images in terms of chroma and contrast, I do it all in the DI.” Stern carried out that work at Technicolor Digital Intermediates with colorist Jill Bogdanowicz; he viewed reference images via e-mail in Russia and was present in person for a day or two of finishing touches. “I’ve done five pictures with Jill, and we understand each other completely,” he says. “I didn’t have to do too much to the grade except sort of thematically.” Stern feels strongly that becoming obsessed with equipment is a crucial mistake. “Working in Russia reminded me that what has legs, what lives, is the idea. Very few of us probably know what the film stock was on Vertigo , yet it’s a tremendously important artistic work. Talking about this toy or that toy takes me away from what really interests me about the whole process: telling a story through a visual medium.”
Right: In an early scene in Megan is Missing , Megan (Rachel Quinn, right) uses her cell-phone camera to check her makeup as she chats with her best friend, Amy (Amber Perkins). “I wanted to establish early on that the kids use new technology in innovative ways so as to remove any doubt later on that something was ‘possible,’” says Michael Goi, ASC, the film’s director. Below: One of the girls’ many cellphone chats depicted in split screen.
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A Fateful Connection by Rachael K. Bosley The independent film Megan is Missing tells of two 14-year-old friends, Megan (Rachel Quinn) and Amy (Amber Perkins), who fall victim to a sexual predator that Megan, the more outgoing of the two, meets in an online chat room. Masquerading as a teenager named Josh, the predator sets up a date with Megan from which she never returns. Three weeks later, after sharing her suspicions about “Josh” with the police, Amy disappears, too. The movie is fictional, but its writer/director, Michael Goi, ASC, culled all of the plot details from seven real cases of child abduction, and in designing the picture, he was determined to craft a presentation unadorned by many of the devices fictional films employ. Featuring only diegetic sound, and designed to resemble footage captured mainly with the characters’ Web-chat cameras, cell-phone cameras and camcorders, Megan achieves a degree of intimacy and verisimilitude
that even documentary filmmakers might envy, qualities that serve to magnify the suspense and horror as the story progresses. “I wanted the film to have such an air of reality that you can’t help feeling you’re watching something happening now ,” ,” says Goi. A combination of creative and practical considerations led Goi, who also co-produced and edited the movie, to restrict the visuals to images that could conceivably be captured by the characters with their own cameras or, in a few instances, shown on a local TV newscast. He explains, “[Producers] Mark Gragnani and Melanie Harrison came in with a budget parameter that would enable them to finance the movie themselves, and the challenge was how to tell this story within that budget. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that in order to get the kind of personal perspective I wanted the movie to have, I would need to create a point of view privileged only to the characters in those situations. I decided we wouldn’t really venture beyond that structure; we wouldn’t, for example, jump outside of
the Web-chat camera and show the girl in front of her computer. That style fit within our budget and time parameters — I only had two weeks off between shows to do this — so it became the style of the movie.” The only departure from this style is the TV-news coverage that appears in the latter half of the film; Megan’s disappearance is an instant local sensation, prompting news bulletins and a special edition of the melodramatic segment “My Child is Missing!” It was, in fact, the media’s treatment of child abductions that motivated Goi to tackle the subject in the first place. “There was a long period where I was coming home from shooting and seeing all these reports about abducted children turned into reality TV, complete with teasers advertising exclusive footage,” he recalls. “I’m not against the media — I think they can sometimes be genuinely helpful — but I felt angry and frustrated that such a serious subject was being turned into a homogenized product. I wanted to present the media in a believable way in this movie, and Lauren Leah Mitchell, who plays our news anchor, does a great job of coming across as just sincere enough.” Goi, a two-time ASC Award nominee (for the telefilms Judas and The Fixer ) and a recent Emmy nominee (for the series My Name is Earl ), originally planned to serve as Megan ’s ’s cinematographer, too, but as planning progressed, he realized he would need to run two cameras most of the time, so he asked Keith Eisberg and Joshua Harrison, who had assisted and operated for him on a number of shows, to share cinematographer duties. “I wanted to give Keith and Josh an opportunity to take on more responsibility than I’d been able to give them on other projects, and they both seemed like the right fit for what I wanted to do,” says Goi. “This movie wasn’t easy for them because conceptually, I didn’t want it to be ‘everything perfect,’” continues the director. “I wanted a feel of ultra-realism. We used no movie
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Above left: In another split-screen conversation, Megan, Kathy (Kara Wang, center) and Lexie (Jael Elizabeth Steinmeyer) chat with Ben (Rudy Galvan) about his upcoming party. Above right: Cocinematographer Joshua Harrison films the girls’ side of the conversation as Goi (far left) and Galvan look on. Below: Amy records a segment for her video diary. “I wanted the home-video sections of the movie to look like everyone’s home videos, so no color-correction was employed, and in most cases, the cameras were set to auto-focus so they would search for focus realistically,” notes Goi.
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lights apart from the ones in the TV studio, no grip equipment and no filters, and most of the time, I wanted the cameras left on auto-focus and autoexposure. It’s difficult for a trained cameraperson to let things go like that; it goes against every instinct you have.” Harrison acknowledges that Goi’s directive “was one of the tougher things for an operator to do: make it look like it was shot by a 14-year-old but not make it look bad. That’s a fine line.” Eisberg observes, “We were breaking the rules, but breaking them in a way that fit the project. Michael wanted to tell this story in a certain way, and he took the bull by the horns and did it.” Both sides of the Web-chat and phone-camera conversations, which are shown in split-screen, were shot simultaneously with the participants, who were usually in separate locations, addressing the lens and listening to each other via ear buds. “Some of the chats are five to seven minutes long, and because they weren’t going to have coverage, we needed the people talking to be able to hear each other,” notes Goi. “I wore headphones that mixed all the dialogue. The kids were performing
to the lens, and they really sold the idea that they were looking at each other. “Although I could hear both sides of the conversation, I couldn’t see both cameras — we had no video village,” he continues. “In every scene, I had to choose which camera to stay with, and I needed the person on the other camera to not only monitor the technical aspects but also tell me if the performance was what we needed. Having Josh and Keith made it work.” Band Pro Digital in Burbank provided the production’s main cameras, a Canon XH-A1 and a Canon XH-G1, along with 16x9 Inc.’s EX 0.75x Wide Converter and 1.5x Tele Converter. Panavision Hollywood supplied the Sony HDW-F900 used for the newscast material, and Bogen Imaging provided support equipment and matte boxes. The shoot ran 81 ⁄ 2 days and took place almost entirely at locations in the San Fernando Valley. Most of the Web chats showing characters at home were actually shot in a single day at the producers’ home, where several rooms were dressed to look like different locations. “We had to do 32 pages that day, and we got it all done in 101 ⁄ 2 hours,”
recalls Goi. “I credit that entirely to the fact that those kids were prepared.” For the first few days of the shoot, Eisberg turned up on set with a small lighting kit. “Keith figured I would need something, but I didn’t want to use any of that,” says Goi. “We mostly shot with the practicals that were there and covered windows with garbage bags to darken backgrounds. In two instances, we tipped a [practical] lamp over offcamera to get exposure on a face, but I think it would have been interesting to not even do that. “I think it was a little frustrating for Keith at first,” he muses. “For one chat, he was shooting Amber in the house, and I was out on the street with Josh and Rachel, shooting the other side of the conversation. I’d gone through Amber’s blocking inside, and when we got back to the house, I noticed Keith had moved some of the floor lamps around to help with her lighting during the shot. I said, ‘You cheated!’ But he just wanted to make sure I was covered. In the same vein, he also suggested recording sound on DAT as backup; I was going to just use the camera mics, and in the end, about 80 percent of the audio came from that, but there were instances where the DAT track was helpful.” The production’s “biggest setup,” he notes wryly, was a rave-style house party Megan and Amy attend early in the story. Ostensibly shot by an unidentified teen wandering through the party with a camcorder, these scenes were lit with a couple of 1,000-watt floodlights from Home Depot and flashlights held by some of the partygoers. “We didn’t swap out any bulbs — the flashlights were more than enough light for those cameras,” says Harrison. “I found some
Near right: The local newscast trumpets the discovery of surveillancecamera footage of Megan’s abduction. Far right: Goi (on ladder) checks the frame as (from left) sound recordist Seth Eubanks, camera assistant Senda Bonnet and cocinematographer Keith Eisberg prepare to film the scene. “We put the camera on a tripod and a monopod to get it high enough to approximate the surveillancecam perspective,” recalls Goi. Below: Goi (foreground) and camera assistant Rohan Chitraker check a shot of Perkins. This was one of the few times a practical fixture was repositioned offcamera to help focus the light.
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glow sticks in my car, and we tossed those in for a little color.” The party sequence was shot during the day, with garbage bags placed over the windows to keep out the light. Working handheld, Eisberg took one side of the room and Harrison took the other. “I wanted the camerawork to feel like the person had walked into that situation and had no idea what would happen, but the scene has a couple of long mobile takes, and certain action had to happen in certain areas at certain times,” says Goi. “We had to work out all those details, and making it look spontaneous was tough, but I think we captured the feel. We got it all done so fast we actually had to wait two hours for night to fall to shoot the last scene, which shows the girls coming to the door.” If the party was the biggest lighting setup, the final 22 minutes of the movie represent the smallest. After kidnapping Amy while she’s working on her video diary, the predator (Dean Waite) takes up the girl’s camera and records her fate, which unfolds partly in
his subterranean lair and partly in a forest; the flashlight he carries is the only source for these scenes, and Waite handled the source himself for most of the shots. “The kind of person who commits these crimes is most interested in the amount of distress he’s inflicting on another human being, and given the opportunity, he would naturally shoot these things,” notes Goi. Although Goi had directed other projects, Megan posed a bit of a learning curve because it combined the frank depiction of a grim subject with a young cast that had no film experience; Quinn and Perkins had just turned 18 when the shoot began, and the other kids ranged from 12 to 16. “I wanted to be sure I was talking to them in the right way, and I found it best to treat them like professionals rather than baby them or try to coax a performance out of them,” says Goi. “I said, ‘This is what I need, so this is what you need to get to.’ I had to corral them in a specific direction because many scenes play several minutes with no cuts, so the pacing would depend on the performance. I was very happy with their work. “For scenes of explicit violence, I always made sure the girls understood what would happen, how it would happen and why it was happening, and I made it clear to them and their parents that they should tell me if they were uncomfortable with something. I didn’t want the kids’ enthusiasm or desire to please me to take precedence over their own morals.” Megan was shot and mastered in 16x9, and it was transferred in 16x9
within the 1.85:1 frame because Goi felt “that subtle difference looked more like home-video and news aspect ratios than 1.85.” Throughout the post process, which included a hi-def master at LaserPacific, an HDCam-to-35mm transfer at EFilm, and a 35mm print at Deluxe Laboratories, he was asked to confirm that he did indeed want the image quality to remain as raw as it was. “Very diligent lab people brought up certain scenes and asked if I wanted to ‘fix’ the color, but I chose not to do any color correction in order to preserve the real feel,” he says. That air of authenticity, he notes, helps foster a connection to Megan and Amy that is critical. “If you don’t feel like these girls could be your daughters or your sisters or even girls you once knew, the movie won’t work.” Coupled with that familiarity, the unblinking eye the film turns toward terrible deeds feels especially pitiless. That, says Goi, is the point: “We’ve all seen the way violence is depicted in movies, and most cinematographers, including me, have shot those kinds of images. I didn’t want to avoid [the girls’ suffering] or have it obscured or blurred; I wanted the camera to stare at what it’s like to go through that. Evil perseveres in the world if you allow it to, and to combat evil, you have to know what evil is — you have to stare it in the face.”
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Forging a
Bond Roberto Schaefer, ASC and director Marc Forster continue their filmmaking partnership with Quantum of Solace, the 22nd James Bond feature. by Mark Hope-Jones Unit photography by Karen Ballard and Susie Allnut
J
ames Bond needs no introduction. Conceived by his creator, Ian Fleming, as “an anonymous blunt instrument” wielded by the British government, the suave but ruthless secret agent is perhaps Britain’s bestknown fictional character. char acter. Because it was based on the first Bond novel, the last Bond film, Casino Royale AC Dec. ’06), presented an oppor( AC tunity to not only usher in a new lead actor, Daniel Craig, but also 28 Novemb November er 2008 2008
start afresh with the character. Emotionally hardened by his first mission as a licensed-to-kill operative, Bond returns to the screen this Solace, month in Quantum of Solace, directed by Marc Forster and shot by Roberto Schaefer, ASC. “When Marc told me he had been offered this movie, my response was, ‘How could you not do a Bond film?’” recalls Schaefer, who has shot all of Forster’s films. “He wasn’t sure because the script didn’t really exist
at that time, but I told him that to be part of a Bond film is every boy’s dream. Our editor, Matt Chesse, said exactly the same thing. The dream of doing Bond sort of sucked us into the reality of it.” Once onboard, Forster envisioned a stylistic approach that combined elements of early Bond films with a more contemporary look. “I loved the Bond films with Ken Adam’s production design,” says the director. “Those movies were so
American Cinematographe Cinematographerr magazine is the world's leading journal on film and digital production techniques. American Cinematographer serves filmmakers by exploring the artistic thought processes of the film industry's most innovative and talented directors of photography, and explaining the technical means by which they realize their creative visions. In addition, we strive to keep our readers abreast of advances in motion-picture imaging technology – the tools cinematographers use to ply their trade – and to info inform rm them of visu visually ally extra extraordin ordinary ary prod productio uctions. ns.
Our subjects include:
American Cinematographe Cinematographerr magazine is the world's leading journal on film and digital production techniques. American Cinematographer serves filmmakers by exploring the artistic thought processes of the film industry's most innovative and talented directors of photography, and explaining the technical means by which they realize their creative visions. In addition, we strive to keep our readers abreast of advances in motion-picture imaging technology – the tools cinematographers use to ply their trade – and to info inform rm them of visu visually ally extra extraordin ordinary ary prod productio uctions. ns.
Our subjects include: Feature Films • Television Productions • Commercials • Music Videos New Products & Services • Postproduction • New DVD Releases www.theASC.com
Opposite: Agent 007 (Daniel Craig) takes a call from M., his superior on Her Majesty’s Secret Service. This page, top: In a modern homage to the 1964 Bond classic Goldfinger, Agent Fields (Gemma Arterton) is killed after being drowned in oil in the honeymoon suite of the Andean Grand Hotel in Bolivia — a sequence that was actually shot on Stage S at Pinewood Studios in England. Bottom: Director Marc Forster (far left)
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much about style, design and clothing. I wanted to go back to that and yet still still make make a modern modern Bond. Bond.” Crucial to achieving this look was production designer Dennis Gassner (The (The Golden Compass, Compass, AC Dec. ’07), who was making his first foray into the world of 007. “Dennis is really collaborative, maybe more so than anyone I’ve ever worked with,” notes Schaefer. “So often on films, there are incredible sets, but [shots] end up being fairly close and you don’t don’t really really see them. them. When When I see see beautiful architecture, I want to show it off; without being gratuitous, I like to find a way to work good sets into a film.” In practical terms, this meant frequently using the wider end of the filmmakers’ set of Arri/Zeiss Master Primes. According to A-camera operator George Richmond, “Our hero sizes were between a 21mm and a 35mm. We would use them to show the sets and develop master shots, and then we might punch in and use longer lenses to bring the performances out for key moments in a scene.” Another of the filmmakers’
ideas was to deliberately compose partially obscured frames, in the spirit of Roman Polanski’s famous shot of Ruth Gordon sitting halfconcealed by a door in Rosemary’s Baby (1968). “I think those sorts of obscurities increase tension, because everything you don’t see is left to the imagination of the audience,”
explains Forster. “It applies not just to framing, but also to characters and the things they reveal or don’t reveal. That’s what makes Bond so interesting: he is hidden from us.” Schaefer encouraged various departments to let things be obscured occasionally, but found “it sort of goes against everyone’s instincts, so we
Opposite: Agent 007 (Daniel Craig) takes a call from M., his superior on Her Majesty’s Secret Service. This page, top: In a modern homage to the 1964 Bond classic Goldfinger, Agent Fields (Gemma Arterton) is killed after being drowned in oil in the honeymoon suite of the Andean Grand Hotel in Bolivia — a sequence that was actually shot on Stage S at Pinewood Studios in England. Bottom: Director Marc Forster (far left) runs through a scene with actors Mathieu Almaric (portraying the villainous Dominic Greene), Olga Kurylenko (as Camille) and Craig.
American Cinematographer 29
Forging a Bo Bond Right: The show’s sets, created by production designer Dennis Gassner and his crew, were intended to hark back to the expansive look of 1960s and ’70s Bond films, which showcased spectacular spaces imagined by renowned production designer Ken Adam. Below left: Greene steps aboard a CIA jet for a meeting with operatives of the American agency, including Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright). Below right: An injured Bond and Camille arrive at an airfield in Bolivia. This sequence was actually shot at a Chilean airstrip.
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had to fight to let things stack up in the frame without people moving them out of the way. We probably didn’t get quite as much of that as we hoped to, but we al also so didn’t want the first-unit material to stand out from the second-unit footage.” As is typical on a Bond film, the second unit’s work was extensive, and this influenced the filmmakers’ decision to shoot Super 35mm. (The second unit was led by director Dan Bradley and director of photography Shaun O’Dell, collabo-
rators on The Bourne Ultimatum .) Schaefer initially considered 2-perf, which was ruled out because of the unforgiving lack of space between frames, and anamorphic, a favorite on previous Bond films. “Marc and I really wanted anamorphic, and the effects team could have worked with it, but in the end, we went with spherical because the post schedule was so tight we knew kne w they’d be delivering effects up to the last day of my final grade,” says the cinematographer. “We didn’t want to be a week
away from the film being shown and still getting effects shots delivered that we weren’t happy with yet. “On the other hand, my difficulty with spherical and specifically the digital-intermediate [DI] process is that anybody can go in and change everything — editors can reframe to make an edit work without paying sufficient attention to composition,” composition,” he continues. “If you shoot anamorphic, you’ve got the top and bottom of the frame, and that’s it. Spherical was a double-edged sword; certain
things worked to my advantage, but I was also fighting to protect my compositions.” While the main unit shot 3perf Super 35mm, the second unit shot 4-perf using a centered 2.40:1 ground glass. “I couldn’t be sure they would frame to my liking, and that gave me a lot of room to rack up and down,” explains Schaefer. “Also, there was a lot of action, so if a fastmoving object goes out of your frame and then comes back again, there’s something you can do about it later.” An Arricam Studio served as the A camera, and an Arricam Lite was the B, which was used both for studio and handheld setups. A second Lite was dedicated to Steadicam work, while an Arri 235 was employed in particularly demanding handheld situations. In addition, several Arri 435s were used for high-speed filming. George Richmond and his brother, focus puller Jonathan “Chunky” Richmond, have a unique way of configuring the 235 to give them as much maneuverability as possible. “We use a bag strap that enables you to wear the camera almost like a banjo, with handles attached to each side,” says George. “We take the eyepiece off and use a monitor instead. If you’re nimble, you can get lens heights from just below the knees to just above the eyes all in one go. It’s basically a very strippeddown version of the camera, with a small lightweight battery and a transmitter that keep us free and untethered. Chunky was on remote focus, and we could dart around the actors to get interesting positions very quickly.” Although many scenes required multiple cameras, the filmmakers shot one-camera setups whenever they the y could. “I like shooting single-camera,” notes Schaefer. “The idea of using two cameras often comes up for cross-dialogue shooting because it saves time and helps
Top: In a sequence staged in Panama City’s Calle Rochet, Camille watches Bond embrace a fallen colleague, Mathis (Giancarlo Giannini). Middle: Bond and M. (Judi Dench) interrogate Mr. White (Jesper Christensen) in an MI6 safe house. Bottom: Cinematographer Roberto Schaefer, ASC uses a finder to scope out a composition as Forster (standing, in black shirt) and members of the crew strategize.
American Cinematographer Cinematographer 31
A Mighty Wind Far right: Visual-effects cinematographer David Stump, ASC checks his setup in a wind tunnel at the Bodyflight facility in Bedford, England. Middle: Visible in the windows behind Stump are some of the Dalsa and Sony cameras deployed to shoot the sequence. An Arri 435 Advanced was also handheld by operator George Richmond, who flew alongside the actors to capture closeups and other angles. Below left: Stump stands before a bank of Codex Recorders used to capture the raw 4K output from the eight shuttersynchronized Dalsa 4K cameras, resulting in over 40Tb of data being poured into the Codex systems in a single day.
O
ne key sequence in Quantum of Solace finds 007 and Bond girl Camille (Olga Kurylenko) jumping out of a DC-3 airplane with only one parachute between them. “Everyone knows that for a sequence like this, you would usually put the actor in a belly pan in front of a greenscreen and blow an e-fan in his face,” explains visual-effects cinematographer David Stump, ASC. “But director Marc Forster, visualeffects supervisor Kevin Haug and cinematographer Roberto Schaefer [ASC] wanted it to be real . They wanted a sequence where the physics were correct; the posture of the actors in free fall was correct; the wind velocity on their the ir hair, skin and clothes was correct; and the way they steer themselves to control their descent was correct.” The filmmakers’ demand for veracity led them to Bodyflight, a former military-aircraft testing facility in Bedford, England. Located outside London, the facility houses a vertical wind tunnel capable of manufacturing human terminal velocity, with air moving at more than 150 mph. To make the sequence as dynamic as possible, Stump agreed with Haug that they could incorporate the bullet-time effect, which Stump began working with even before The Matrix made it trendy. Instead of using a lineup of still cameras, or even motion-picture film
cameras, Stump suggested employing an array of Dalsa Origin 4K digital cameras. He managed to procure eight Origins with eight Codex uncompressed digital recorders, but more cameras were needed for the effect. With a thin selection to choose from in London, Stump opted to obtain seven Sony CineAlta HDWF900Rs with seven HDCam-SR decks, capable of recording 10-bit 4:2:2. The F900Rs, with their 1920x1080 image sensors, were used to gather image data that would be incorporated into CG models of the actors and fill in the gaps between the Origins. Rounding out the camera package was an Arri 435 Advanced, which was handheld by operator George Richmond, who flew in the tunnel alongside the actors to get close-ups and additional material. To pull off the bullet-time effect, each camera had to record the action at the exact same time, so each camera’s shutter had to be precisely calibrated to open at the same instant. Stump also elected to shoot the sequence with 90-degree shutters to reduce motion blur. Accepting SMPTE time code and connecting together via Ethernet cable, the Origins’ shutter timings were easily calibrated to millisecond precision. Similarly, the Arri 435 was fairly easy to calibrate on its own with the help of a Cinematography Electronics sync box generating a TTL pulse. The real challenge was synching the elec-
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tronic shutter in the F900Rs with the other two camera models; through testing, Stump determined that a black burst signal would lock the F900Rs into sync. Additionally, Stump had to determine exactly how each camera’s sync signal related to its exposure. “When dealing with the F900, I couldn’t use a strobe gun to determine shutter sync because there is no mechanical shutter,” he details. “Instead, I pointed one of the F900Rs right down the pipe of a Dalsa camera with no lens on it. By watching the Dalsa shutter through the F900, I observed the sync relationship of black burst to various shutter angles on the F900 and was able to determine that black burst always happens at one end of the accumulation cycle of the image. That gave me a locking relationship for that signal, so I shuttered the F900 down to 1 ⁄ 1000 1000 of a second and looked down the pipe of the Dalsas and the 435 to see how they shuttered in relationship to their various signals. Over the course of two days of prep, I was able to dial in mechanical and electronic offsets for all three types of cameras so the center shutter would be open in sync for all the cameras.” Once he understood those model-to-model relationships, Stump employed an Evertz 5600 World Clock, which takes atomically correct time via GPS from a cesium clock in Colorado; the World Clock served as the heartbeat generator for the sync signal for every camera. Utilizing a Dalsa sync hub, several Lockit sync generators and a host of amplifiers, Stump and his Digital Imaging Technician, Joe DiGennaro, sent out SMPTE time code, black burst and a TTL pulse. “For any cameraman — effects or otherwise — the prospect of working on a Bond film is a dream come true,” Stump concludes. “It’s the greatest flattery just to be hired to work on one of these films. This was my crack at it, and I had a great time!” — Jay Holben
the actors, but it’s just awful for the lighting, and it’s a challenge to keep each camera out of the other’s shot. With two cameras, I’d rather shoot two different focal lengths from the same direction, but then the sound department says it can’t get a microphone in for the tight shot because you’re you’re shooting shooting wide as well. Of course, [sound] is the last thing you think about as a cinematographer, but I try to help them, and I have a good relationship with [production sound mixer] Chris Munro.” Since Monster’ Monster’ss Ball (2001), Schaefer and Forster have made a habit of setting aside several weeks during prep to draw up detailed schematics of how they intend to shoot every single scene. “On the blueprint of a location, I’ll draw in the camera position and direction, specifying the lens and the shot number,” explains the cinematographer. “Next to that will be a list describing the shot from beginning to end; if there’s a dolly, I’ll mark the tracks, or if there’s a crane, I’ll show the movement. It’s like a storyboard that uses overhead schematics instead of pictures.” pictures.” These schematics become a guidebook for the entire shoot, and copies of the pages relevant to each day’s filming are circulated with the daily call sheets. “It’s a very good way of working because we communicate to the crew exactly what we want,”
says Forster.“Our first assistant director can use the pages to do a lot of the logistical planning, and that gives me time to work with the actors.” Schaefer describes the preparation as “more mentally exhausting than the shoot, just because it’s such a feat of imagination and memory to sit in a room and map out every different angle and shot of every different location. But it pays off. “Of course, being in the actual space can throw up new perspectives or problems, so we do sometimes stray from our plans,” he continues. “If I see an angle or a camera move
Left: Custom rigs provided by the Woodland Hills company Go Stunts (and built by chief operator and rigger Pat Daily) were used for several major sequences. In Siena, Italy, the rig shown here was used to capture an establishing shot of Bond’s Aston Martin driving up a hilly street. The rig was suspended from a crane that extended 150' in the air, air, and also had another contact point on the ground. The entire rig could travel parallel to the street, allowing the filmmakers to capture a traveling shot of the car from roughly a foot or so off the ground; then, to establish the surroundings, the camera ascended 110' into the air. Below: An equally inventive car rig helped the filmmakers shoot a highspeed chase. British key grip Kenny Atherfold constructed the truss rig from very light material to help the second unit capture tight shots of Bond in his Aston Martin.
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Forging a Bo Bond A camera operator captures Craig (top) and a stuntman (middle and bottom) at the wheel of a boat during filming of an explosive boat chase in Panama.
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that simply works better, I’ll show it to Marc, and as long as he can make it flow with the scenes that come before and after, he’ll go for it.” On Quantum, Forster had a PL-mount viewfinder with either a 15-40mm or 28-76mm Angenieux Optimo zoom and a very small monitor attached to it so he could discuss how shots would work with Schaefer and others; Schaefer had the zooms marked up to exactly match the Master Prime set, so when Forster selected a focal length from his finder, there was no discrepancy between what he saw and what the camera would shoot. One of the most dramatic sequences in Quantum is an aerial chase involving a Marchetti turboprop military aircraft and a Douglas DC-3 piloted by Bond. Bradley, aerial director of photography David B. Nowell, ASC, and aerial camera operator Ron Goodman traveled to Mexico to film exteriors, some of which were captured by SpaceCam’s new SnakeHead, a stabilized optical system that mounts to the nose and tail of a Piper Aerostar plane. “The SnakeHead allowed us to get shots at speeds and angles we have never had the chance to get before,” says Nowell. “It was the perfect camera setup for shooting this exciting chase sequence, which involves fixed-wing aircraft flying down through very narrow canyons.” Also in Mexico, visualeffects designer Kevin Tod Haug (The Kite Runner; AC Nov. ’07) oversaw the photography of plate shots that would later be composited with the aircraft interiors to be shot at Pinewood Studios in England. “We knew that by the time we came to shoot the DC-3 interiors, it would be too late to go back to Mexico,” says Haug. “So we were running up and down canyons with a SpaceCam/Imax rig and a 30mm lens that gave us a 170-degree field of view, shooting everything we could. From that, we could carve out any
Forging a Bo Bond Top: During an elaborate foot chase, 007 leaps from balcony to balcony on an apartment building in Siena. Middle: Bond jumps from the building onto a moving city bus. Bottom: The crew prepares to capture another portion of the sequence on a tiled rooftop.
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section we might need later, depend- stay on their feet with the Arri 235. ing on the lenses that we chose, to “It was very claustrophobic but very use as an undistorted background.” energetic — the camera being indeOnce the second unit’s work pendent of the plane’s movement on this sequence was complete, “my really gave the footage life,” says editor put the footage together so we George Richmond. “At one stage, I could decide where we would cut to was strapped to the nose of the plane the DC-3 interior,” says Forster. “We with the 235 strapped to me, I was had part of a plane on a gimbal at looking through the window, and we Pinewood, and we programmed it had the plane go from horizontal to according to the cuts so the gimbal almost vertical. Our key grip, Dave would move exactly like the plane Appleby, was instrumental on all the moved in the exterior footage.” rigs and made it safe for me to do Inside the plane, three remote-head that kind of work.” rigs were built for a few specific Forster is a great proponent of shots; for everything else, the location filming, and, given Bond’s Richmond brothers were trying to jet-sett jet-setting ing lifestyl lifestyle, e, this this meant meant the production traveled all over the world, making long stops in Panama and Chile. “I think you feel the texture and character of a real location, and it’s very hard to re-create that on a stage,” says Forster. “I will often find a place I love that is very small and really challenging for Roberto to light, and the great thing about Roberto is that he values real locations and understands why I want to shoot in them. He adapts with all sorts of methods and is always prepared to take the chance and go with it.” “There were some restrictive locations on this film,” observes Schaefer. “For example, some of the old city streets in Panama are very narrow, and it was hard to do the cabling or get cranes in there. For lighting, we relied on Wendys, Dinos and 18Ks — pretty standard stuff. My general approach to lighting was to use a lot of fall-off. This movie features a lot more dramatic use of darkness than other Bond films.” One particularly cramped location was a run-down building in Colon that doubled for a hotel in Haiti. Bond gets caught up in a violent knife fight, and because the rooms were so small and the action so extensive, Schaefer’s only option was to light from outside. “I’d planned to use Condors with Arrimax lights and MaxMovers
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Forging a Bo Bond Top: Bond attempts to outmaneuver an armed assailant on a treacherous mountain pass. Middle: A remote camera head attached to a Giraffe crane catches a shot of a speeding vehicle. Bottom: Shots for the sequence were also captured with the help of an Ultimate Arm mounted atop an SUV.
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outside the windows, but when we got there, it was too windy,” he recalls. “One of the lights broke, and then the remote stirrups didn’t want to work. In the end, we used just one light locked in one position and secured to the surrounding buildings with wires to keep it from swaying.” The kinetic action and limited space provided George Richmond with another opportunity to make use of his 235 rig, supplemented by the B camera, operated by Mark Milsome. “The way the fight was choreographed meant the actors were everywhere,” he recalls. “We were free to dance around with the cameras as long as we didn’t get in front of the windows. The B camera would stand on the outside of the action and get individual cuts on longer lenses, up to a 65mm. I was in there, just outside of the B camera’s frame line, with an 18mm or a 21mm. When an arm moves in front of a wide lens, it travels at a great speed over a vast part of the screen, so it really makes it feel like you’re there.” In most situations, Schaefer was trying to maintain a stop of T2.8, though he often opened up to a T2. “There was a little bit of T1.3 when it was necessary,” he says. “Kodak’s [Vision3 500T] 5219 is pretty forgiving, so you can underexpose it a bit and still get a really solid negative. We We only used two stocks s tocks on this film, 5219 and [Vision2 200T] 5217. When you have that many cameras in all those locations and you start start using using three three or four four stoc stocks, ks, it becomes a nightmare for the loaders. “When we scouted Chile and Panama, I decided to use 5219 and then either 5217 or [Vision2 100T] 5212 as my other stock,” he continues. “I was drawn to 5212 for its finer grain, but I was worried about having to push it a bit too far when we were shooting into the late afternoon or when I wanted to use a polarizer, so I decided to go with
