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M E M B E R P O R T R A I T

Robert F. Liu, ASC

W W W . T H E A S C . C O M

TO SUBSCRIBE BY PHONE:

Call (800) 448-0145 (U.S. only)

(323) 969-4333 or visit the ASC Web site

hen I was in highschool, in Shanghai, Iwatched motion

pictures constantly,enthusiastically. I averagedabout 10 movies a week. Ithought film was so excitingand believed it could actuallyaffect people’s lives.

“I started readingAmerican Cinematographerbefore I was even in thebusiness. It helped me learnmore English, and it taughtme the newest techniques incinematography.

“When I came to theUnited States, AC continuedto be my handbook, and I’vebeen reading it ever since. It’sa bible to every cameraman.”

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24 Wolverine’s HourDon McAlpine, ASC, ACS brings brawny visuals to X-Men Origins: Wolverine

36 On the RecordRodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC blends film and HD on State of Play

48 Reforming a Ladies’ ManDaryn Okada, ASC conjures spirits for Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

56 A Friend in NeedSeamus McGarvey, ASC, BSC riffs on a true story for The Soloist

62 Technical KnockoutsThe Academy Sci-Tech Awards spotlight ingenuity

65 Cinematography’s SummitA photographic recap of the ASC Awards weekend

Departments

Features

V i s i t u s o n l i n e a t w w w. t h e a s c . c o m

On Our Cover: The mutant Logan (Hugh Jackman) is transformed into the indestructible Wolverinein X-Men Origins: Wolverine, shot by Donald McAlpine, ASC, ACS. (Photo by James Fisher, courtesy of20th Century Fox.)

8 Editor’s Note10 Short Takes: ASC Heritage Award Winners16 Production Slate: Grey Gardens and Adoration74 Post Focus: The Red Machine and My Suicide78 New Products & Services82 International Marketplace83 Classified Ads84 Ad Index86 Clubhouse News88 ASC Close-Up: John Lindley

56

M A Y 2 0 0 9 V O L . 9 0 N O . 5

The International Journal of Film & Digital Production Techniques

48

36

M a y 2 0 0 9 V o l . 9 0 , N o . 5The International Journal of Film & Digital Production Techniques • Since 1920

Visit us online at

www.theasc.com————————————————————————————————————

PUBLISHER Martha Winterhalter————————————————————————————————————

EDITORIALEXECUTIVE EDITOR Stephen Pizzello

SENIOR EDITOR Rachael K. Bosley

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Jon D. Witmer

TECHNICAL EDITOR Christopher Probst

CONTRIBUTING WRITERSStephanie Argy, Benjamin B, Douglas Bankston, 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, Jon Silberg,

Iain Stasukevich, Kenneth Sweeney, Patricia Thomson, David E. Williams

————————————————————————————————————

ART DEPARTMENTCREATIVE DIRECTOR Marion Gore

DESIGN ASSOCIATE Erik M. Gonzalez

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ADVERTISINGADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Angie Gollmann

323-936-3769 FAX 323-936-9188

e-mail: [email protected]

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CIRCULATION, BOOKS & PRODUCTSCIRCULATION DIRECTOR Saul Molina

CIRCULATION MANAGER Alex LopezSHIPPING MANAGER Miguel Madrigal

————————————————————————————————————ASC GENERAL MANAGER Brett Grauman

ASC EVENTS COORDINATOR Patricia Armacost

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ASC ACCOUNTING MANAGER Mila Basely

ASC ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE Corey Clark————————————————————————————————————American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 88th year of publication, is published

monthly in Hollywood by ASC Holding Corp., 1782 N. Orange Dr., Hollywood, CA 90028, U.S.A., (800) 448-0145, (323) 969-4333, Fax (323) 876-4973, direct line for subscription inquiries (323) 969-4344.

Subscriptions: U.S. $50; Canada/Mexico $70; all other foreign countries $95 a year (remit international Money Order or other exchange payable in U.S. $). Advertising: Rate card upon request from Hollywood

office. Article Reprints: Requests for high-quality article reprints should be made to McNeil Group at (800)394-5157 ext. 26. Copyright 2007 ASC Holding Corp. (All rights reserved.) Periodicals postage paid at Los Angeles, CA and at additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA.

POSTMASTER: Send address change to American Cinematographer, P.O. Box 2230, Hollywood, CA 90078.————————————————————————————————————

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Daryn OkadaPresident

Michael GoiVice President

Richard CrudoVice President

Owen RoizmanVice President

Victor J. KemperTreasurer

Isidore MankofskySecretary

John HoraSergeant At Arms

MEMBERS OF THE BOARDCurtis Clark

Richard CrudoCaleb DeschanelJohn C. Flinn IIIWilliam A. Fraker

Michael GoiJohn Hora

Victor J. KemperStephen Lighthill

Daryn OkadaRobert PrimesOwen RoizmanNancy SchreiberDante Spinotti

Kees Van Oostrum

ALTERNATESMatthew LeonettiSteven Fierberg

James ChressanthisMichael D. O’Shea

Sol Negrin

MUSEUM CURATORSteve Gainer

American Society of Cine ma tog ra phersThe ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but

an educational, cultural and pro fes sion al or ga ni za tion. Membership is by invitation

to those who are actively en gaged as di rec tors of photography and have

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After channeling Fred Astaire as host of the AcademyAwards, Hugh Jackman exchanges his tux for a hairshirt in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the first spinoff

from the wildly successful comic-book franchise. BackingJackman with brawny visuals, cinematographer DonMcAlpine, ASC, ACS demonstrates why he was recentlyhonored with laurels at the ASC Awards. The action-packed film, directed by Gavin Hood, should satisfy evenardent X-Men acolytes, who made their presence feltduring production. “We had ‘comic-book police’ all overthe place, people who were obsessed with the waysomeone’s hair was parted and so forth,” McAlpine tells

Noah Kadner (“Wolverine’s Hour,” page 24). “We conformed wherever we could becausethese devotees can be quite fanatical once they start blogging to support or condemn yourshow.”

As blogs and other online outlets continue to challenge newspapers forprimacy, State of Play dramatizes the value of old-school investigative reporting with thetale of a journalist (Russell Crowe) whose inquiries imperil the career of his congressmanfriend (Ben Affleck). Mixing anamorphic 35mm with high-definition video, Rodrigo Prieto,ASC, AMC shows how cinematographers can embrace their own industry’s technologicalchange and lend different shadings to a picture’s visual structure. “We wanted to estab-lish two different textures, but we didn’t want the separation to be obvious,” Prieto tellsassociate editor Jon D. Witmer (“On the Record,” page 36). “We see politics on TV all thetime, [and] we thought the best way to represent that was to shoot digital and have thoseimages look a bit video-ish. To represent the world of journalism, we decided to enhancethe film grain.”

Speaking of newspapers, The Soloist offers a heartfelt story based on realcolumns from The Los Angeles Times: the bond that forms between columnist SteveLopez (Robert Downey Jr.) and a talented musician who is homeless and mentally ill(Jamie Foxx). Atonement collaborators Seamus McGarvey, ASC, BSC and director JoeWright reteamed for the project. “We went for a camera style that’s initially a little abruptand kinetic, and as the [friendship] evolves, there’s a more fluid rhythm,” McGarvey tellsWitmer (“A Friend in Need,” page 56). “Our idea was that by the end of the film, the musicwould fuse with the picture, and there would be a marriage of the two.”

Reportorial diligence is also evident in senior editor Rachael K. Bosley’s Q&Awith Daryn Okada, ASC about his latest project, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (“Reforming aLadies’ Man,” page 48). The romantic comedy’s post workflow is a topic whose impor-tance Okada stresses: “A multitude of unexpected things can happen when a picture goesfrom film to digital, where some of its images are manipulated by various people, andthen back to film. Some people want to cut cinematographers out of post, but I think ourparticipation is even more vital now.”

Rounding out this issue are recaps of two awards-season events: the AcademySci-Tech Awards (“Technical Knockouts,” page 62) and the ASC Awards weekend (“Cine-matography’s Summit,” page 65). A fine time was had by all as the industry’s behind-the-scenes luminaries enjoyed their moments in the spotlight.

Stephen PizzelloExecutive Editor

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Editor’s Note

8

The winners of the ASC’s HeritageAwards this year were NathanLevine-Heaney of Florida State

University and Aaron Dunson of theUniversity of North Carolina School ofthe Arts. The award honors excellence instudent cinematography and is namedfor a different ASC member each year;this year, it was named for honorary ASCmember Burton “Bud” Stone, who diedin 2008.

Nathan Levine-HeaneyPreciousAfter graduating from Trinity

College in Ireland with a bachelor’sdegree in philosophy, California nativeNathan Levine-Heaney found himselfworking in San Francisco, editing corpo-rate videos. He wasn’t happy. “I justwanted to be a storyteller,” he says. “Istudied philosophy because I was curi-ous about storytelling.” He decided togo back to school to study filmmaking,and before long, he was enrolled in themaster’s program at Florida StateUniversity’s College of Motion Picture,Television and Recording Arts. “I initiallychose to focus on directing, but I discov-ered that almost everything I liked about

directing had to do with cinematography— composition, camera movement andexpressing character visually.”

For his thesis project, Levine-Heaney was paired with directingstudent Sou Yun Sim. The film, Precious,was a dark comedy about a 4"-tall girland a full-sized man’s sexual obsessionwith her. The comic and fantasticelements in the story were especiallyattractive to Levine-Heaney, whoconsiders the surreal, storybook-likevisuals that Darius Khondji, ASC, AFCcrafted for Delicatessen one of his inspi-rations.

The number of visual effectsrequired to create the two drasticallydifferent scales was daunting enough,but then another challenge was droppedinto the filmmakers’ laps: The collegewanted to purchase eight Red Ones andasked the Precious team to test thecamera’s workflow. At the time, Levine-Heaney was anticipating a Super 16mmshoot and had shot two days of tests.After renting a Red, he realized he “hada manual and nothing else,” he recalls.“The learning curve was steep.”

Fortunately, his faculty adviser onthe project was Rexford Metz, ASC. “Rexis a very experienced cinematographer,

ASC Honors 2 with Heritage Awardsby Iain Stasukevich

Short Takes

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A full-sized manbecomes

obsessed with a 4"-tall girl in

the short filmPrecious,

whose makersemployed

oversized propsand visual-

effectscompositing to

sell the illusion.

10 May 2009

Aaron DunsonAsphyxia“I love photography and always

wanted to be a cinematographer,” saysAaron Dunson, the undergraduatewinner of the Heritage Award for hiswork on Asphyxia. After dabbling inbroadcast and cinema at the Universityof North Carolina-Greensboro, hedecided to follow his passion byenrolling in the film program at UNCSAin Winston-Salem. In those first twoyears of study, he recalls, “That passionjust grew.”

In his third year, Dunson oper-ated for cinematography studentJeremy Grant on Jessica Pilkes’ shortfilm Nest of Spiders, a runner-up for theASC Laszlo Kovacs Heritage Award in2008. The following year, Pilkes askedDunson to photograph her thesis film,Asphyxia. Grant worked as Dunson’sgaffer, and Dunson chose fellowstudents Sing Howe Yam and GradyWelch as his operator and first assis-tant, respectively.

Asphyxia explores the psyche ofChristian Brock, a clinical psychologistwho is more depressed than thepatients he treats. Brock links hissurvival to that of his pet goldfish,which, he feels, circles hopelessly in atedious existence like he does. If thejaded shrink can’t find something to livefor before the fish dies, he will commitsuicide.

Thesis films at UNCSA get six12-hour days to shoot and one day ofpickups. They handle all of the actualwork of production, including prep andpost, while the university providesequipment, film stock and services,including processing and telecine atBurbank facility FotoKem. “Each studentmakes films for the same budget,”explains Dunson. “You’re not allowed touse your own money or equipment. Noone has a huge advantage over anyoneelse.” He shot Asphyxia in standard1.85:1 in Super 16mm, using KodakVision2 500T 7218, one of the school’sArri 16SR-3 cameras, and Zeiss SuperSpeed and Super Speed MKII and MKIIIprimes rented from Wilmington Camera.

“It’s a solemn film,” he notes.

12 May 2009

and luckily, he’s very knowledgeableabout both film and digital and was ableto really guide us,” says Levine-Heaney.“In terms of deliverables, he and I testedand learned about different color spaces,and it was a very eye-opening investiga-tion into what goes into an imagebeyond ‘4K resolution.’ There are manyother variables, such as bit depth, colorspace and latitude, and also factors suchas gamma and color shifts from variousformats and codecs. Having Rex’s helpwas a huge advantage.”

When the first tests came back,Levine-Heaney realized he had set upthe camera incorrectly — the shutter,gain and color were all off. Once thefilmmakers discovered most of theOne’s settings were controlled by meta-data, they were able to reverse-engi-neer their footage in post, stripping itdown to the RAW files. “We found wegot better results if we left some adjust-ments for post instead of doing every-thing in-camera,” says the cinematogra-pher. “In hindsight, I wish I’d lit for lesscontrast and left a little more room foradjusting it in post.” Precious wascaptured at 2:1; the image was croppedto 1.85:1 in post, which was carried outat 2K, yielding 1080p HD and film-printdeliverables.

To create the difference in scalebetween Precious and Sam, the produc-tion used a combination of oversizedprops and visual-effects compositing.Practical props were used for scenes inwhich Precious had to physically inter-act with her surroundings, such as whenshe stretches out on the pages of amagazine or takes a bath in a teacup.

Levine-Heaney notes thatalthough all of the effects in Preciouswere accomplished digitally (by a teamof fellow FSU students), he was able touse a more traditional method for ascer-taining the proper perspective for eachelement. “We used mathematicalformulas normally applied to illustrationto work out scales and perspectives,” heexplains. Another classic trick heemployed was using mirrors on the floorto reflect a greenscreen backing, ratherthan employing a matte-green floor.“The mirrors reflect the actor’s light,bouncing it away. It helps you retainyour contrast ratio, and you’re able topull a cleaner key.”

Further tying the two scalestogether are convincing rack-focusesbetween Precious and Sam. These wereaccomplished by performing the physi-cal shifts on the background plates ofthe full-sized Sam. (Levine-Heaney shotthe picture with Zeiss Super Speedlenses.) Precious was photographed infocus the entire time, and the focalmovement was applied in post to matchthe optical background plates. “It’s notjust a simple blur,” notes the cine-matographer. “It had to start at differentplaces in the element. For example, thefeet blur differently than the rest of theshot.”

Winning the ASC HeritageAward “was like winning the lottery,”he concludes. “It put me in touch withso many great cinematographers. Thehardest thing to do is connect withpeople whose work you really respect,and the Heritage Award has reallycracked the door open to that world.”

The Preciouscrew opens a box

of digital greenFlo Co lights

donated byRaymond

McMillan ofToronto’s Red D

Mix Rentals.Pictured from left:

gaffer TravisNewton, best-boy

grip DarrellWheat, best-boy

electric DerekMeyer, script

supervisor AdamVarney,

cinematographerNathan Levine-

Heaney and keygrip Daniel

Alives.

14 May 2009

“The main character is depressed, andJessica wanted a lot of calm tones. Welooked at paintings by AmedeoModigliani and Chaim Soutine, amongothers.” Many of these paintings cometo life in Brock’s waking dreams. In onescene, he dreams of Jean AugusteDominique Ingres’ Grande Odalisque, anude woman in repose. As he scruti-nizes the canvas, the woman beginsmoving. To re-create the painterlyaccents of the art, Dunson employed “asoft, sensual feel — not lustful, butgentle.” He lit the woman with a singlesource, a 2K Fresnel on a dimmer over-

head, and used a ¼ Tiffen Black Pro-Mist on the lens to spread out the high-lights.

Another dream, inspired byVincent van Gogh’s Night With Stars,takes place in what looks like an under-ground tunnel lit by colorful Chineselanterns hanging from the tunnel ceiling.“We had a whole team setting up theChina balls while we were shootingother things,” recalls Dunson. “We hadto put 20-by-30-foot pieces of Duvetynover the tunnel entrances.” Every sevenor eight lanterns were wired togetherand rigged by rigging grip Matthew

Verschelde so that as Brock slips out ofthe dream, each set of lanterns could bedoused in sequence until the tunnel fellinto complete darkness. Steadicamwork by David Svenson helps toenhance the dreamlike feeling of thescene.

In one of Dunson’s favoritesequences, Brock slips into his own fish-bowl of darkness. He gazes up into asingle source of light as consciousnessslips away. The scene was staged in aYMCA swimming pool close to campus.To create the void that envelops Brock,Dunson had the pool’s surface and wallslined with Visqueen, a thick, black, polysheeting. Multiple holes were cut intothe surface layer so Dunson could use a2.5K HMI to create shafts of lightthrough the water. (Shannon Murpheyoperated on this scene because Dunsonlacked diving certification.)

Every student project at UNCSAhas a faculty adviser, and professors BillMcCord and John LeBlanc helped withAsphyxia. “The cinematography facultyare the reasons our films were such asuccess,” notes Dunson.

“The most impressive thingabout Aaron is his ability to remain calmin stressful situations,” observesMcCord via e-mail. “Asphyxia, becauseof its surreal, stylized nature, certainlyhad its share of those.”

Winning the ASC HeritageAward “helped me take that first steptoward a career as a cinematographer:going to Los Angeles,” says Dunson.“I’m still living in Wilmington, but I’mdebating where to go to take the nextstep.” �

Above:Depressed

psychologistChristian Brock(David Holland)

feeds hisgoldfish. Right:

CinematographerAaron Dunson

(far right)confers with his

camera team(from left to

right): 2nd ACGreg LeFevre,

camera operatorSing Howe Yam

and 1st AC GradyWelch. Belowleft: The crew

sets up anunderwater shot.

Below right:Dunson and

gaffer JeremyGrant discuss

exposure.

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16 May 2009

New York Eccentricsby Jean Oppenheimer

Were it not for the JackieKennedy connection, few people outsideof East Hampton, Long Island, wouldhave ever heard of Grey Gardens or thetwo women who lived there. Edith “BigEdie” Bouvier Beale and her daughter,“Little Edie,” the former First Lady’s auntand cousin, respectively, lived for 20years, seemingly unperturbed, in totalsqualor in what had once been anelegant mansion. When county healthinspectors arrived in 1971, they had toliterally wade through two decades’worth of garbage — mounds ofdiscarded food cans, empty ice-creamcartons, cat feces, old newspapers andother detritus of daily life that had neverbeen cleaned up and all but concealedthe floor. The electricity had been turnedoff years earlier, and overgrown vines

covered the windows, squeezing out thesunlight.

By the time Albert and DavidMaysles began shooting their documen-tary Grey Gardens in 1973, JacquelineKennedy had already paid to have theestate cleaned and repaired. The filmelevated the Beales to cult status butmade no attempt to offer insight intotheir odd personalities. The new telefilmGrey Gardens, which had its premiere onHBO last month, takes a differentapproach, going back to the 1930s, whenmother (Jessica Lange) and daughter(Drew Barrymore) enjoyed a privilegedand extravagant lifestyle. British cine-matographer Mike Eley describes thefilm as “a kind of love story” betweenthe two women.

In 1936, Little Edie was a carefreeteenager who dreamed of becoming anactress. Her mother, an impulsive freespirit who fancied herself a singer, loved

to throw parties. “That’s when their lifewas at its peak,” says Eley, speaking byphone from London. “They had money, aglamorous lifestyle and this tremendoussense of optimism. [Director] MichaelSucsy and I wanted to capture the feel-ing of the bright young Bohemians ofthe ’30s.”

That translated into rich, lustrouscolors and textures, a sense of airinessand openness (achieved with widelenses and deep focus), and a houseawash with sunlight. The film was shotin and around Toronto, where a façadeof the house was built in a meadow;interiors were shot at Toronto CentreStages. The two-story set wasconstructed as a self-contained unit andtreated as a practical location. The firstlevel comprised a central foyer, a livingroom, dining room, conservatory, agarden that led to the conservatory, andstairs leading from the foyer to the

Ties That BindProduction Slate

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Edith “BigEdie” Bouvier

Beale (JessicaLange, right)

and herdaughter, Little

Edie (DrewBarrymore),

entertainguests in their

home in 1936 ina scene from

Grey Gardens.

18 May 2009

upstairs. The partial second floorconsisted of the landing at the top ofthe stairs, a hallway and a bedroom,which had the set’s only breakawaywall. A couple of brief scenes werefilmed in a real house not far fromwhere the façade was erected.

“The house is the third characterin the film, and it goes on its own jour-ney of deterioration,” says Eley, whosecredits include the documentary featureTouching the Void (AC March ’04) andthe telefilm Jane Eyre, for which heearned an Emmy nomination. Heruefully recalls how cramped theproduction was. “We were begging,borrowing and stealing equipment andstage space because two much biggerprojects, The Incredible Hulk and TheTime Traveler’s Wife, were there at thesame time. In terms of building anddressing the set, we were literally deal-

ing in feet and inches, especially whenit came to floor space outside the housewalls, where [production designer]Kalina Ivanov had to fit bushes andother foliage.”

Nor was there much room forlights. About 60 space lights, all ondimmers, and a smaller number of 10Kand 20K Fresnel lamps were hungaround the perimeter of the set fromthe overhead gantries. “We also affixeda 20K and a 10K to a scaffold baroutside the window at the top of thestairs to suggest sunlight comingthrough windows on that side of thehouse,” recalls Eley. “The bar could beswung several feet in either direction toreflect the arc of the sun’s movementacross the southern sky. That was oneof our most important lamps becausenot only did it illuminate the landing,but it also spilled light down the stairs

and into the foyer.”The light hitting the front of the

house was softer, reflecting its northernexposure. On the stage floor outside thedownstairs windows, Eley mixed 5Ks,10Ks and Nine-lights, all bouncing intosilk. “Whatever bit of floor didn’t have alamp or frame had some kind of shrub orsmall tree to sell the idea of thegarden,” he says. Chicken coops fittedwith tungsten bulbs were attachedabove and outside the windows, thenangled back in. A cyclorama encircling aportion of the set was frontlit with Parcans overhead and clean 5Ks (wired todimmers) and Nine-lights on the floor.

Most of the only illuminationinside the house during the 1930sscenes came from practicals, althoughfor night scenes, Eley sometimes hid afew China balls behind furniture. Also,sections of the living-room ceiling wereoccasionally removed to accommodatea Kino Flo or Chimera.

Eley shot Grey Gardens in 3-perfSuper 35mm, framing for 16x9. Describ-ing himself as “an Arri man from wayback in my documentary days,” heopted for the Arricam System, Cooke S4primes, and an Angeniuex Optimo 24-

Right: In 1952,after spending

several years inManhattan, Little

Edie reluctantlyreturns to thefamily estate.

Below left:Cinematographer

Mike Eley(foreground) and

his crew prepareto film a 1970sscene, which

finds the Beales’home in a

deterioratingstate. Belowright: Lange

(foreground) andBarrymore(seated in

background)wait for

“Action.”

290mm zoom lens, which was usedsparingly. He favored 27mm and 32mmprimes in the house in order to show asmuch of the set as possible.

He filmed the picture on threeFuji Eterna negatives, 500T 8573, 250T8553 and 400T 8583. Deluxe Torontohandled the processing and producedDVD dailies and a few 35mm dailies.The filmmakers were not certain of thepost path when filming began — in theend, a digital intermediate was done —so Eley “did most things in-camera,” herecalls. “I used a Varicon to lighten theshadows for almost all of the 1930smaterials, and I used some SchneiderClassic Soft filters on the two leads. Ididn’t want too many things in front ofthe lens, however, because of the Vari-con.”

Much of the 1930s portion ofGrey Gardens plays out in long, fluidtracking shots. “We kept the cameramoving, and I had a fantastic operator,Michael Carella,” notes Eley. “My entirecrew was from Toronto, and they wereall great: gaffer Franco Tata, key gripBob Harper, dolly grip Owen Smith andfocus puller Vanessa Ireson.”

Despite her mother’s protesta-tions, Little Edie leaves home andspends several years in Manhattan,working as a model and trying to launchher acting career. While there, shebegins an affair with a married man(Daniel Baldwin). Eley notes that thissection contains one of his favoriteshots. “Drew and Daniel are in bed atthe Barbizon Hotel [a set built onstage],and the camera is outside the windowand dollies forward. There was no glasson the window, and the lens goes rightinto the room. We added some wind sothe curtains wafted a bit in the early-morning breeze. There was a TransLiteof Manhattan behind the camera that’sreflected in the mirror [above the bed].”

When Little Edie’s parents learnof her affair, they force her to return toGrey Gardens. It’s 1952, and Big Ediehas become even more eccentric andcontrolling. Little Edie feels like a pris-oner, and the stress causes her hair tofall out in clumps. Late one night, in amoment of despair and hysteria, she

runs downstairs, grabs a pair of scissorsand starts hacking away at her hair.“That was a tricky scene,” admits Eley.“It’s the middle of the night, and all thelights are off. I needed to play againstsomething so that when Little Edierushes past the windows, she would beslightly silhouetted. We angled a 5Koutside each window that just washedacross the curtains, and we had two 2-foot Kinos inside the dining room, downby the table where she finds the scis-sors. It’s an unmotivated source, but itbrought the detail we needed to thewallpaper and table.”

As time goes on and the rubbishstarts piling up, the camera movesbecome more ragged, and by the 1970s,the camera is consistently handheld. Forthese scenes, Eley pushed the 8573 onestop. (He pushed it 1½ stops for the finalsequence, which shows Little Edieperforming in a cabaret.) The interior ofthe house darkens as vegetation coversthe windows and the electricity is shutoff. “We made sure there was always abit of broken clapboard or windowwhere a shaft of light could comethrough,” says Eley. “We moved ourexterior sources closer and upped theintensity to compensate, and we putdust into the air so the shafts of lightwould catch the mustiness of the rooms.I particularly like the scenes where thefront door is open, revealing more of thedark interior. That sold it well, Ithought.”

By the time the Maysleses enterthe picture, in 1973, Big Edie is spendingmost of her time in her bedroom, and agood portion of the brothers’ documen-

tary is filmed there. “The brothers shot16mm, and I pushed to shoot thosescenes on 16mm, but that didn’t pan out,so we shot 35mm and degraded it in theDI,” says Eley, who worked on the digitalgrade at Modern VideoFilm with coloristGregg Garvin.

The emotional turning point inthe film comes during an argumentbetween mother and daughter thatflares up after they see the Maysleses’documentary. “Little Edie realizes hermother is once again manipulating heremotionally, and decides to fight back.Drew comes close to camera, in focus,and we experience that epiphany withher before racking focus back toJessica,” says Eley. “In the 10 minutesthey are arguing, it goes from dusk tonight. We dimmed our space lightsdown incrementally until it was dark.One of the women is always in front of awindow, so the audience can feel andsee the light going.” In frustration andpain, Little Edie runs to the nearbybeach. Hours later, she returns homeand reconciles with her mother. “It’s areal moment of discovery for Little Edie,”says Eley. “That’s when the love storybetween mother and daughter comesgood.”

TECHNICAL SPECS16x9

Super 35mm (3-perf)Arricam Studio, Lite

Cooke and Angenieux lensesFuji Eterna 500T 8573, 250T 8553,

400T 8583Digital Intermediate

David Maysles(Justin Louis)films Little Ediefor adocumentary heand his brotherare making abouther unusualfamily. TheMaysleses’ GreyGardens wasreleased in 1975.

�

American Cinematographer 19

Falling into Technology’s Trapsby Patricia Thomson

Given that their latest collabora-tion, Adoration, is a character-drivendrama with few visual effects,writer/director Atom Egoyan and Paul

Sarossy, BSC, CSC, his longtime cine-matographer, planned to give it a tradi-tional photochemical finish at DeluxeToronto, just as they’d done with theirprevious films. But by the time theywere finishing principal photography,“there were practically no timers ornegative cutters left in Toronto,” says

Sarossy. “The great timers at Deluxe,Chris Hinton and Art Montreuil, aregone. There was no particular techno-logical advantage to exploiting any ofthe newer post methods on Adoration.We just wanted to shoot it, develop it,time it and print it. That proved to bealmost impossible.”

In the end, they were able towork with timer/colorist Alfredo Fras-son, who succeeded Hinton andMontreuil at Deluxe Toronto. “Alfredodid a beautiful job,” says Sarossy. “Wewere very blessed that under these newcircumstances, we had a great collabo-rator.” Because of dirt that was intro-duced at the negative-cutting stage,however, the team had to digitally gradetwo reels of the picture. “That’s whattipped the balance for Atom,” saysSarossy. “On the film we’re making now,Chloe, we’re shooting 3-perf and finish-ing with a digital intermediate.”

Even in Los Angeles, the dwin-dling numbers of color timers has beennoticeable, says the cinematographer.“Two summers ago, I photochemicallytimed Charlie Bartlett at Deluxe Holly-wood, and that was a great experience,but I was led to understand that we

20 May 2009

Right: Simon(Devon Bostick)

brings his latemother’s violin

along as heinvestigates his

parents’ deathin Adoration.

Below: Simon’sFrench teacher

(ArsineeKhanjian)

reveals someinformation

about his familyto the boy and

his uncle (ScottSpeedman).

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were using the last timer still working,Chris Regan,” says Sarossy. “Even inHollywood, it’s the end of an era, and Imourn the passing of this absolutelybeautiful medium. It’s not over yet, butyou can see the future evolving.”

The evolution of technology isfront and center in Adoration. The Cana-dian/Lebanese protagonist, Simon(Devon Bostick), is a teenaged orphanwhose parents died in a car crash. For aschool writing assignment, he takes anold news story about a foiled terroristplot involving a pregnant woman travel-ing to Israel whose Arabic husband puta bomb in her luggage; in writing thepiece, Simon casts himself as their son,and he continues this misrepresentationwhen talking to friends in an Internetchat room. Soon, his story goes viral andspins out of control, and Simon embarkson a journey of self-discovery, deter-mined to find out what really happenedto his parents on the night they died. AsEgoyan explained at a festival screen-ing, “The Internet gives us a lot of infor-mation, but it’s not really a source ofrevelation. You still have to go on aphysical journey … and make a connec-tion to real people and real things.That’s what the second half of Adora-tion charts.”

Over the years, Sarossy andEgoyan have alternated betweenanamorphic and spherical formats, andthis time, they felt the story’s emphasison interiors and intimacy warranted astandard 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The moviefeatures three looks: Web-camera andcell-phone imagery, real-world footage,and faux flashbacks comprising Simon’simagined memories of his parents. Togive the flashbacks a special look,Sarossy stayed at the longer end of aPrimo 11:1 zoom lens and used TiffenWhite Pro-Mist filters. “The White Pro-Mists give a slightly heightened reality,”he says. “Overexposed elements in theframe have a glow. That’s an effect weused quite extensively for the flash-backs in Where the Truth Lies [AC Sept.’05], and in that case, it was for glamour.In this case, it’s a kind of idealizedmemory.” Indeed, when Simon’smother’s blonde hair is backlit in a violin

shop, the filtration creates a kind ofhalo. “It’s on the edge of being toomuch, but with such a pleasurable visualeffect,” says Sarossy. “The moment isdefinitely not of the here-and-now, butof another place and time.”

The camera is mobile throughoutthe film, and most of these moves wereachieved with dollies on rails or dancefloor. “The only exotic piece of gear weused was a Russian Arm,” says Sarossy.This was employed for a drivingsequence after local officials insistedthat a conventional camera car wouldbe too dangerous on the highway. “TheRussian Arm allows you to do shots likecoming up from the tire of the vehicle tothe top of it and around,” notes Sarossy.“It worked beautifully, but its safetyadvantages seemed a little dubious —it was a huge crane swinging left andright in live traffic on a highway. If that’snot a visual distraction, I don’t knowwhat is!”

For the Web-cam chats, Egoyanwanted to simulate an application suchas Apple’s iChat, but needed to involveup to 30 participants. His goal was toshoot these person-to-monitor conver-sations live, without greenscreen, tohelp the actors. The first question waspurely practical: how to shoot actorsinteracting in real time without shootingthem in different locations. The film-

makers’ solution was to break one roominto several small sets, each lit anddressed differently. The actors werewithin earshot of each other and woremicrophones that isolated their voices.Each actor addressed a Canon Optura 30MiniDV camera that was standing in forthe Web-cam. “When you’re reproduc-ing a known technology, you have to becareful not to introduce something thatlooks false,” says Sarossy. “Those littlecomputer eyeballs have an iconic view;they’re low-grade video, but they havean immense ability to see into the shad-ows. They’re amazingly bad and good atthe same time.”

Complicating the task was thefact that the Web-cam images weregoing to be presented in a variety ofways ranging from full-screen blowupsto a tiny piece within a grid of 30 talkingheads. “Our video coordinator, CameronDavis, did extensive testing to find avideo workflow where the final resolu-tion of those images wouldn’t be sodegraded that they’d be hard to film,”says Sarossy.

“When the images were assem-bled into grids, there was a loss of qual-ity because all the images were initiallyshrunk to fit into a standard-definition-video [720x480] frame,” explains Davis.“The resolution of the computer screenwas 1440x900, and when the video files

In a scene Simonimagines, hisparents (RachelBlanchard andNoam Jenkins)celebrate theirlove before shetravels to Israel.CinematographerPaul Sarossy,BSC, CSC shotall of Simon’sfaux memorieswith a TiffenWhite Pro-Miston the lens.


Right: Inanother scene

Simonimagines, his

mother isquestioned by acustoms official

at the airport.Below (from

left): Sarossy,1st AC Cylvain

Desylreaux and2nd AC DarrinSpriet prepare

to film.

were played full-screen, the overallquality wasn’t very good. To combatthat, we optimized the playback files tofit the computer screen, starting with aframe of this size [1440x900] for theimages to be arranged in. This helpedmaintain the quality of each image inthe grid when played full-screen.”

Shooting characters interactingwith the computer screens presentedsome other challenges. Although LCDscreens have largely eliminated the

rolling flicker that characterizes conven-tional TV monitors, Sarossy found thatthe latest generation of LCDs has itsown peculiarities. “With all the shoot-ing we were doing, we discovered littletraps,” he notes. For instance, hediscovered that if the monitor’s bright-ness wasn’t turned up all the way,flicker was reintroduced; this problemnecessitated one reshoot. “Basically,you have to light [the room] to thecomputer screen,” he says.

Traps wait in every new technol-ogy, which is one argument for main-taining the old while embracing thenew. For Sarossy, a good example iscursive handwriting, which is no longertaught at his children’s school. “Justbecause there are computers, we’regoing to throw away this ability that’sthousands of years old?” he marvels.“There’s surely something wrong withthat. Are you an obsolete fuddy-duddy ifyou’re trying to preserve handwriting? Idon’t believe so, but others think differ-ently.”

TECHNICAL SPECS1.85:1

35mm and MiniDV35mm:

Panaflex PlatinumPrimo lenses

Kodak Vision2 500T 5218MiniDV:

Canon Optura 30Digital Intermediate (2 reels)

�

22 May 2009

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wide

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images

24 May 2009

X-Men Origins:Wolverine,

photographed by Don McAlpine, ASC,

ACS, presents amutant’s turbulent

history.

by Noah Kadner

Unit photography byJames Fisher

Wolverine’sHour


Introduced to movie audiences inBryan Singer’s X-Men (AC July’00), the mutant Wolverine(Hugh Jackman) possesses extra-ordinary capabilities that include

rapid healing powers, razor-sharpclaws and a virtually indestructibleAdamantium skeleton. Over thecourse of X-Men and its two sequels,X2 (AC April ’03) and X-Men: TheLast Stand, he became a fan favorite,and he takes center stage in X-MenOrigins: Wolverine. The film’s direc-tor of photography, Don McAlpine,ASC, ACS, recalls with amusementthe way he came aboard the produc-tion, directed by Academy Awardwinner Gavin Hood (Tsotsi, ACMarch ’06): “It was one of the funni-est interviews I’ve ever had. 20thCentury Fox called to ask if I waswilling to meet with Gavin Hood todiscuss an X-Men prequel, and theyflew me over to Los Angeles. Ourfirst meeting immediately started tofeel like a production conference,and after half an hour, I asked Gavinif it was still a job interview. He said,‘Oh, you got the job!’”

Wolverine had to not only

maintain continuity with the previ-ous X-Men films, but also respect theestablished mythology of the comics.“We had ‘comic-book police’ all overthe place, people who were obsessedwith the way someone’s hair wasparted and so forth,” notesMcAlpine. “We conformed whereverwe could because these devotees can

be quite fanatical once they startblogging to support or condemnyour show.”

The production was filmedprimarily on location in Australiaand New Zealand; stage work wasshot at Fox Studios Australia. Afterprincipal photography wrapped, thecrew regrouped for a final round of

Opposite: Logan,better known asWolverine (HughJackman), stepsinto the spotlightfor this prequelto the X-Menfilms. This page:Wolverinepursues hislongtime foe,Victor Creed,a.k.a. Sabretooth(Liev Schreiber,below), withferociousintensity.

Pho

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20t

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ox. L

ight

ing

diag

ram

s co

urt

esy

of S

teve

Mat

his.

As part of a project

code-named“Weapon X,” the

unbreakablealloy known asAdamantium is

fused toWolverine’s

skeleton. Theoperation takes

place in thisacrylic water

tank, whichcinematographer

DonaldMcAlpine, ASC,

ACS lit withdaylight-

balanced LEDstrips.

26 May 2009

exterior and studio work inVancouver. McAlpine’s crew was amix of Americans and Australiansand included several of his regularcollaborators, including gaffer SteveMathis. Camera operator PeterRosenfeld, 1st AC Tov Belling, 2ndAC Helen Ward, key grip Pat Nashand dolly grip Brett McDowellrounded out the main-unit crew.

McAlpine shot Wolverine in

Super 35mm using cameras andlenses supplied by Panavision’sSydney office. “Our A and B cameraswere both Millennium XLs,” saysBelling. “We used the second cameraevery day, but Don likes to stage andlight for a single camera as much aspossible. We used some Arri 435s forsecond-unit and stunt work.” Theproduction carried a full set ofPrimo primes and several Primo

zooms, including a 4:1 (17.5mm-75mm), an 11:1 (24mm-275mm)and a 3:1 (135mm-420mm). AnAngenieux Optimo 15mm-40mmwas used mostly for Steadicamwork. “Don’s very disciplined andwould typically light to a T2.8 orT2.8/T4 split,” recalls Belling. “Earlyon, he and Gavin discovered theywere really enjoying a long-lens feel,and we ended up shooting a lot on

Wolverine’s Hour

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American Cinematographer serves filmmakers by exploring the artistic thought processes of the 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 inform them of visually extraordinary productions.

Our subjects include:Studio Features • Television Productions Commercials • Foreign Films Postproduction • Independent FilmsNew Products & Services

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the 3:1 zoom. I’ve never done somuch close-up work at 400mm, buteveryone rose to the occasion.”

With an eye toward the even-tual digital intermediate, McAlpinelimited lens filtration to 85s, 81EFsand polarizers. “Gradation and diffu-sion can both be picked up in the DI,and then you don’t burn ships,” henotes. “If you’ve built those factorsinto the negative, they’re very hard toget out, if not impossible.” He shotmost of the picture on KodakVision3 500T 5219, using Vision2200T 5217 for day exteriors only.“Nowadays, I expose to get virtuallythe widest range of information I canonto the film,” he says. “For darkscenes, I’ll expose a bit closer to thedarker end of the latitude, and for ascene of highlights, I do the reverse. Iexpose very much toward the centerso as not to create any strong effecton the negative; I know we can doinfinitely better effects in the DI.”

To check lighting setups andcommunicate his dailies-timingintentions to the lab, McAlpine shot

stills of every scene with his CanonEOS-1Ds and manipulated them onset using Adobe Photoshop and anApple Cinema Display, a method hehas employed on several recentfeatures. “I use high-quality f2.8zoom lenses that I’ve calibrated to

the film lenses for stop,” the cine-matographer explains. “I expose withthe digital camera at the same stop Iintend to use on the film camera,which produces a full-range RAWimage file. After I correct it inPhotoshop, I’ll call the director over


The water tanksat at the heartof a multi-levelset built at FoxStudiosAustralia. Inaddition toextensivepracticalsources,McAlpine andgaffer SteveMathisincorporatedSource FourLekos andoverhead spacelights.

28 May 2009

to the monitor and say, ‘This is whatyou’re going to have in the movie.Do you like it?’ If he has a comment,we make a quick adjustment. There’san eventual realization that becauseI’ve exposed in the mid-range, hecan get whatever look he wants inthe dailies. With this preview system,

the whole ballgame has reallychanged.”

As Wolverine begins, Logan(a.k.a. Wolverine) is happily living asecluded life in a hilltop cabin withhis girlfriend, Kayla (Lynn Collins).The sequence was captured in TheRemarkables, a mountain range

near Queenstown on New Zealand’sSouth Island. “It helped set a nice,idyllic situation for the love theme ofthe film,” notes McAlpine. The initialplan was to capture wide views of theremote location and supplementthose with cabin interiors on stage inSydney, but the filmmakers decidedon the spot to capture closer shotswith the principal actors. “We didn’tbring our lighting truck up therebecause we hadn’t planned to lightthe scene originally,” explainsMathis. “Don asked us to improvisewith some bed sheets found on thegrip truck, and we bounced some fillin for a close-up of Kayla and Logangetting out of Logan’s car. We madeit all work with available light. Onstage, we matched the exterior light-ing for the interior of the cabin witha 100K SoftSun set all the way at theend of the stage on a scissor lift.”

Logan ruminates on his past,including his military service inseveral wars and his childhood on a19th-century plantation. In one ofthe latter scenes, the youngster runsfrom an accidental fight through aforest at night. The sequence wasshot in Sydney’s CentennialParklands and was lit with two 100KSoftSuns on Condors set in the deepbackground. Mathis recalls, “Thatgave a nice, single sidelight with nofill. The uneven layout of the terrainwas ideal because we didn’t have to

Right: Wolverinehas a rough

night out on thetown. Below: In

a flashback,young Logan(Troye Sivan)

runs through aforest after

realizing theresponsibilities

inherent in hispowers.

Wolverine’s Hour

worry about cutting thelight off the ground. Itcreated a nice moonlighteffect coming through thetrees.”

Back in the story’spresent, Wolverine enduresa brutal attack from VictorCreed, a.k.a. Sabretooth(Liev Schreiber), and latertracks his nemesis to aroadhouse bar. The nightinterior/exterior was stagedat an abandoned lumber-yard in Dunedin, NewZealand. The interior was lit withPar cans hung on pipes installed inthe roof. “Wolverine andSabretooth’s fight quickly spillsoutside,” says Mathis. “It was about1,000 feet from the fight in the fore-ground to the deep background. Weshot the fight sequences at up to 96fps, so we had to light to the equiva-lent of around a T5.6, which is prettydifficult at night in a small town onNew Zealand’s South Island. Weused Maxi-Brutes with Very NarrowSpot Pars, 20Ks and lots of Condorswe’d shipped down from Auckland.

In the deep background, we ran outof tungsten lights and substitutedHMIs gelled with Half CTO.”

After he is nearly defeated inthe brawl, Wolverine reluctantly re-ups with Stryker (Danny Huston), aformer military colleague. Their planis to gather a band of fellow mutantsto counter the threat posed bySabretooth. As they coax mutantsfrom their various hideouts,Wolverine encounters Wraith (Will iAm), who possesses the ability toteleport. The filmmakers usedmotion-control to achieve the effect.

“We brought in motorized tracksand a robotic crane for the teleporta-tion scenes,” says Belling. “Everyadjustment I made on the camerawas recorded into the motion-control computer. I’d pull focus for acertain pass with the actors, and thenthey’d repeat that pass as neededalong with the operator’s moves.”

Wolverine’s first team missioninvolves a trip to Angola to investi-gate a possible source of Adaman-tium. The scene was shot north ofSydney. “That was a huge night exte-rior in the jungle, and it was origi-


Wolverine freesmutants heldcaptive in a top-secretcontainmentfacility. The setwas built onlocation onCockatoo Islandin Sydney Harbor,and the cageswere lit withVery NarrowSpot Pars shonethrough culvertpipes that actedlike long snoots.Space lightsprovidedadditionalambience.

30 May 2009

nally scouted and planned as a dayexterior,” recalls Mathis. “Don and Ihad to come up with a lighting planon Monday, and our crew had onlyTuesday to pre-rig everything, whichthey accomplished in a driving rain.We put up three 125-foot construc-tion cranes that each had 800 1,000-watt Par cans on dimmers. We alsohad a Condor with three LightningStrikes units, and the physical-effectsteam added another Condor withrain towers. The Par cans were inframes wrapped in quarter-griddiffusion, which we had to punchholes in to let all the rainwater drainout.”

As Wolverine works forStryker, he begins to realize thatStryker’s intentions are evil. Thisbecomes apparent as he explores hisassociate’s laboratory and a zoo-likeseries of mutant holding cells in asecret facility. The set was built onCockatoo Island in Sydney Harbor, ahistorical site featuring huge ship-yards, an imperial prison and otherbuildings. “It was rather amazingdoing all the night work out on thatisland,” says McAlpine. “Every day atsunset, we’d get in a little ferry andsteam under the Sydney HarborBridge. Then, in the morning, we’dsteam back at dawn, which was quite

Sabretoothreadies himselffor yet another

rumble withWolverine, this

one at aroadside bar. Theinterior (top) waslit with overhead

Par cans whilethe exterior

(bottom) was litwith Maxi-

Brutes and 20Ksin the foregroundwith HMIs gelledwith Half CTO inthe background.

Wolverine’s Hour

calming. We had to work very care-fully because of the site’s historicstatus.”

“We lit the cages using thekind of culvert pipe you’d run undera driveway out in the country — itwas about 1 meter in diameter,”notes Mathis. “The pipes were 30 feetlong, and we put three Very NarrowSpot Par cans in the tops and hungone tube over each cage. It acted likea long snoot and kept the lightcontained within each cage. The

snoots burned out 3 stops over key attimes, giving a hot toplight to thecages. We hung space lights for ambi-ence. At the end of the cages, thedoors were supposed to open intosunlight. We shot at night and hung a100K SoftSun outside, across theway, on a construction crane. Thatgave us a single-source sunlight-backlight effect as Deadpool (RyanReynolds) steps through the door-way. It’s a cool effect.”

A signature scene in the movie

involves the painful infusion ofunbreakable Adamantium intoWolverine’s skeleton and claws; thisproject was code-named “WeaponX.” The multi-level industrial set wasconstructed onstage at Fox StudiosAustralia and featured extensive

Top left:Deadpool (RyanReynolds) sizesup thecompetitionduring a brawl inAngola, whereWolverine hasled a team ofmutants insearch ofAdamantium. Topright: A lightingdiagram for thelocation, whichalso requiredrain and fireeffects. Left:Three 125'constructioncranes wereused to light thenight exterior;each cranesupported 8001,000-watt Parcans aimedthrough a frameof ¼ gridcloth.


32 May 2009

practical lighting and an acrylicwater tank. The filmmakers used a30' Technocrane to capture shotstransitioning from level to level. “Ihad a real challenge with the tankbecause we wanted a lot of light inthere,” recalls McAlpine. “Tungstenlighting from the outside would havedistorted or even cracked the acrylic,and there wasn’t enough roominside the tank to safely install prac-tical underwater lights. About threeweeks before we were to shoot the

scene, I was introduced to these newLED lights that are packed in strips;it’s almost like they were designedjust for that tank! They ran nice andcool, and we could attach themdirectly to the acrylic on the outside,creating the high-tech look wewanted. It worked out remarkablywell.” Mathis adds, “The LEDs weredaylight-balanced and gave off astriking, cool glow that contrastedwith the warm tungsten lights on therest of the set. We also placed Source

Four Lekos at regular intervals toplay as worklights; people would goin and out of the hard toplight onmetal walkways. We rounded out thelighting with space lights and lots ofpracticals built into the set.”

Wolverine ultimately escapesfrom the “Weapon X” program on amotorcycle, and he is pursued byseveral Humvees and a helicopter.Confident in his indestructibility, hehurls himself at the chopper andbrings it crashing to the ground. Theresulting explosion was captured onlocation in Paradise, New Zealand,by seven cameras, including Arri435s in crash housings. “A piece ofdebris from the helicopter explosionlanded right on top of one of thecrash housings, and it cracked themagazine wide open,” recalls Belling.“We managed to get the negative outand were able to salvage the footage.Amazingly, it didn’t actually damagethe camera. Those 435s are toughlittle guys!”

The film’s finale involves abattle between Wolverine and theall-powerful Deadpool. The scenetakes place atop a cooling tower atPennsylvania’s Three Mile Island.

Wolverine’s HourWolverine and

Sabretooth’sshared history

includes militaryservice duringWorld War II.

Portions of the fight were capturedonstage in Vancouver on partial setsand in front of greenscreen. “Becauseit was meant to be a day exterior, wehad to re-create sunlight,” saysMathis. “We planned to do it with100K SoftSuns, like we’d done in

Sydney, but there weren’t any avail-able in Vancouver. We hung about900 1,000-watt Par Cans in large,vertical softboxes at one end of thestage. We needed the Pars to be as faraway as possible so the light wouldbe relatively even from side to side

and wouldn’t look artificial. We alsohung about 150 space lights forambience. For fill, we aimed 20Ksinto 12-by UltraBounces. It alllooked great.”

Throughout principal photo-graphy, McAlpine viewed high-defi-nition-video dailies, but inVancouver, the filmmakers hadaccess to 35mm dailies. He notes, “Itwas quite exciting to see the powerof a full 35mm projector comparedto most of the HD systems we get fordailies. That privilege is becomingpretty rare these days.”

McAlpine and Hood workedon Wolverine’s DI at EFilm withcolorist Steve Scott. “I worked withSteve on Peter Pan [AC Jan. ’04], andhe’s a real magician,” enthusesMcAlpine. “He picks up on whatyou’ve done and takes it just thatlittle extra step forward. On filmslike this, there are an awful lot ofslugs in the DI for incomplete

Wolverine’s Hour

34

Director GavinHood

(foreground)prepares for the

next camerasetup while

McAlpine(opposite page)

checks the light.

visual-effects shots, so you timeeverything on either side of them,and then it’s pretty easy for someoneelse to fill in the gaps as the shots arefinished.”

The cinematographer says heenjoyed his first foray into a comic-

book franchise. “You can’t call it X-Men without making an actionmovie, but Gavin placed everythinginto a very solid and humandramatic frame,” he notes. “Hugh isquite remarkable in both the energyhe can engender in front of the

camera and his ability to act in amore tender range. It’s a real tour-de-force that broadens the wholeconcept a bit.” �

TECHNICAL SPECS

2.40:1

Super 35mm

Panaflex Millennium XL; Arri 435

Panavision and Angenieux lenses

Kodak Vision3 500T 5219, Vision2 200T 5217

Digital Intermediate

35

36 May 2009

If, as the late Hunter S.Thompson suggested, “politics isthe art of controlling your envi-ronment,” then Rep. StephenCollins (Ben Affleck) could stand

further training. At the moment, thecongressman is pummeling publi-cist Dominic Foy (Jason Bateman)in a hotel room, and Washington

Globe reporter Cal McAffrey(Russell Crowe) is trying to break upthe fight.

Director Kevin Macdonaldcalls “cut” from just outside the set,and as Affleck and Bateman step tothe corners of the room, director ofphotography Rodrigo Prieto, ASC,AMC passes the Panaflex Millen-

nium XL to 1st AC Zoran Veselicand makes his way to the director.It’s day 38 of 60 on the feature Stateof Play. The crew is currently set upat Culver Studios in Culver City,Calif., and in a few days, they willmove to Washington, D.C., for amonth of location work.

Based on the 2003 BBC

Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC mixes

anamorphic 35mmand high-definition

video to explore the intertwiningworlds of politics and the press for

State of Play.

by Jon D. Witmer

Unit photography by Glen Wilson

OntheRecord

Prieto about the project, the cine-matographer was unfamiliar withthe BBC miniseries. “Kevin didn’twant me to see it or have that influ-ence in my mind, and I didn’t wantto try to depart from or be faithfulto it,” he says. Approaching theproject as a blank canvas, Prietotook full advantage of his 2½months of prep. “Several thingskept pushing the project, includingthe writers’ strike, and that wasgreat for me,” he says. “I did a lot oftesting, and Kevin and I were ableto shot-list. Every prep is like filmschool in a way; you get to re-learnand experiment.”

Many details of the film’svisual landscape became clear whenthe filmmakers visited real journal-ists and politicians at their offices.Prieto recalls, “The journalists’ deskswere very cluttered — I couldn’tbelieve they could work in such amess! — and at the congressionaloffices, everything was organizedand clean.” To emphasize this dis-parity, the filmmakers decided toassign McAffrey and Collins theirown color palettes, camera stylesand even capturing media:McAffrey’s scenes have a handheld

miniseries of the same name (shot byChris Seager, BSC), State of Play sea-sons the mingling worlds of politicsand journalism with cloak-and-dag-ger intrigue, following McAffrey’sinvestigation into the death ofCollins’ assistant, Sonia Baker (MariaThayer). McAffrey, Collins’ formercollege roommate, supported hisfriend’s bids for public office, butnow, his reporting runs the risk ofsinking the congressman’s career.

After delivering his marchingorders for the next setup in the hotel-room set, Macdonald speaks aboutthe project’s genesis. “I come fromthe world of documentaries, and Ialways try to take the audience into aworld they’re unfamiliar with, wherethere’s something anthropologicallyinteresting. The world of this film isvery familiar — it’s Washington, it’spolitics, it’s on TV all the time — andto make that fresh, I wanted to workwith people who had a foreigner’sview, as it were.” He therefore soughtthe collaboration of Prieto, a nativeof Mexico, and production designerMark Friedberg, who has focused onindependent fare such as Far FromHeaven and The Darjeeling Limited.

When Macdonald contacted


aesthetic and a cool palette and wereshot on anamorphic 35mm, where-as Collins’ scenes feature smoothcamera moves and warm colors andwere captured on high-definition

Opposite: Thepolitical careerof Rep. StephenCollins (BenAffleck) losestraction whenhis researchassistant turnsup dead. Thispage, left:Reporters CalMcAffrey(Russell Crowe)and Della Frye(RachelMcAdams)investigateCollins’ situation.Below:CinematographerRodrigo Prieto,ASC, AMC(foreground)lines up the Acamera whileMarcis Coleoperates the Bcamera.

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38 May 2009

On the Record

video. “We wanted to establish twodifferent textures, but we didn’twant the separation to be obvious,”says Prieto. “We see politics on TVall the time, so in our minds, it’s avideo world; we thought the bestway to represent that was to shootdigital and have those images look abit video-ish and crisp. To representCal’s world of journalism, we decid-ed to enhance the film grain andshoot handheld.”

After testing Panavision’sGenesis, Thomson’s Viper andDalsa’s Origin, Prieto decided toshoot the HD material with the

Genesis, which he describes as “themost suited to our needs.” He wasdissatisfied with the Viper’s colorreproduction and noise level, andfound the Origin “very interesting,but with some technical complica-tions.” He adds, “I was amazed withthe Dalsa’s images, but it wasn’t pro-duction-ready at that time.” He ini-tially planned to shoot the 35mmmaterial on Kodak Vision 500T 5279because of its high contrast andcolor saturation but changed tackswhen “we realized the colors were alittle off,” affecting the costumes andproduction design. Kodak then

offered Vision3 500T 5219, which“was so new at the time it didn’teven have a name — we called it ‘themystery stock,’” he recalls. “We test-ed it, and I liked the look of it, par-ticularly when it was pushed. It wasclose to 79, with strong, bold con-trast, and the colors were true.”Throughout the shoot, he pushedthe stock at least half a stop, and hepushed it a full stop when workingin very low light.

Still photographs by RobertFrank, Elliott Erwitt, Nan Goldinand René Burri were among thefilmmakers’ inspirations. In particu-lar, says Prieto, “Burri has somephotos that are very graphic in theiruse of architecture, which was alsosomething we took from TheParallax View and All the President’sMen [both shot by Gordon Willis,ASC]. We wanted our characters tobe framed in the architecture ofWashington; we wanted to takeadvantage of buildings, fluorescentsand windows, and Mark Friedbergreally focused on finding locationsthat had those graphic, urban ele-ments.

“One theme of the movie isthat investigative reporting is on theway out — newspapers can’t affordto have reporters working day afterday on one story,” continues the cin-ematographer. “Cal represents the

Clockwise fromtop left: Collins

and his wife,Anne (Robin

Wright Penn),visit the

WashingtonGlobe to set therecord straight;

the paper’seditor, Cameron

Lynne (HelenMirren), keeps

vigil in heroffice; director

KevinMacdonalddiscusses ascene with

Crowe.

Constructedacross twostages at CulverStudios, the fullyenclosednewsroomcomprised twostories and avariety of built-in lighting units.This view omitsthe fluorescentsthat were hungfrom pipesrunningbetween supportcolumns,instead showingthe fourskylights in theset’s ceiling(letters A, C, Iand K).


people who keep that tradition alive,and that’s why we looked to moviesof the ’70s; we wanted to pay hom-age to that era, which is another rea-son we wanted to shoot his sceneson film.”

Taking another cue from TheParallax View, the filmmakers choseto work in widescreen, and thoughthey tested Super 35mm, theyfound the spherical lenses “a littletoo real, a little too direct,” saysPrieto. “The C-Series anamorphiclenses we tested had a bit of distor-tion at the edges, and the out-of-focus backgrounds were a littlemore liquid and less immediate,”characteristics that helped distin-guish the 35mm sequences from thevideo realm.

Shortly before State of Playstarted coming together, Panavisionintroduced the G-Series anamor-phic lenses, and upon testing them,Prieto discovered “they are actuallyvery similar [to the C-Series]. Theycut together well and have verygood contrast. It can be hard to finda great set of C-Series lenses, butZoran found the best, and the G-Series matched that set seamlessly.”

For the film sequences, hecontinues, “our classic stop wasT2.81⁄3. It wasn’t wide open, but itdefinitely kept Zoran on his toes.”By contrast, Prieto fitted theGenesis with spherical Primo lensesand generally lit those scenes to a

40 May 2009

On the Record

During a meetingof the Energy

Committee,Collins tries

saying a fewwords about his

late assistant.Shooting on

location in one ofthe Green Rooms

in Washington’sAndrew W.

MellonAuditorium, the

filmmakerspositioned 18K

ArriMax Pars onscissor lifts to

push “daylight”inside. “One of

the windowswas at an anglewhere we could

have the‘sunlight’ right on

Collins,” saysPrieto. “I thought

that wasappropriate

because he’sliterally in the

spotlight.”

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42 May 2009

higher stop to give them an evengreater depth of field.

The Genesis also spent muchof its time on a dolly, making slow,creeping movements. Prieto operat-ed the film camera himself butassigned the HD operating toMarcis Cole and John Grillo. “Onereason I like operating a film camerais the optical viewfinder — I can seeeverything,” says Prieto. “But whenyou’re looking through a little elec-tronic eyepiece, everything’s off. Iprefer to look at a monitor.”

Although McAffrey’s world iscaptured with a handheld camera,Macdonald says he didn’t want thatcamerawork to be “a super-shaky,Bourne Identity kind of thing. It’sjust meant to have the feel of ahuman being behind the camera,and to help make the journalisticworld sort of human as opposed tothe harder world of politics.” Prietoadds, “I rarely put marks on the

floor for those scenes, and I tried notto memorize the dialogue so I wouldreact more spontaneously and panwhen I actually heard the other per-son talk. I tried to light the sets toallow for two cameras to shootsimultaneously and be able to panfrom one actor to another. I waslucky to work with actors who couldtake any light; I could use hard top-light, for example, and they wouldstill look good!”

During the shoot, Prietoworked with Gamma & Density’s3cP color-management system tocommunicate his intentions to thedailies team at Modern VideoFilm.By employing the ASC CDL for theGenesis footage, he was effectivelyable to time his own dailies for thedigital material. Although the CDLinformation could not be directlyapplied to the digital intermediate,which was done at EFilm with col-orist Yvan Lucas, Prieto was grateful

to have the dailies as a reference,especially because he was able toparticipate in only three days of thefinal grade. (He was shootingBiutiful in Barcelona for AlejandroGonzález Iñárritu.)

On set, Prieto color-correctedthe Genesis footage using a lookuptable that mixed P3 color space withfilm emulation, but for the finalgrade, he decided to work purely inP3 for the digital sequences. “Thatgave us an image with a more digitalfeel, with saturated colors and crisp,clean visuals,” he explains. “I think itsuits Stephen Collins and his envi-ronment quite well.”

The filmmakers’ carefuldesign nearly fell apart when it cameto shooting the plot’s inciting inci-dents: a nighttime foot chase thatends with the shooting death of ayoung briefcase snatcher, andBaker’s descent into a subway sta-tion, where she meets her fate.

Clockwise fromtop left:

McAffrey’sinvestigation

into the murderof a briefcase

snatcher beginsnear the KeyBridge; for a

scene in amorgue, thefilmmakers

supplementedthe existing

practicals in areal morgue

with additionalfluorescents; the

reporter findshis own life in

danger; andMcAffrey

follows ananonymous

source into anunderground

hideaway.

On the Record


Because of the low light levels inboth locations, “Kevin and the pro-ducers suggested we shoot on videowith available light,” Prieto recalls. “Ithought that would betray ourintention to separate the anamor-phic and digital worlds, so on one ofour scouts, I took a [PanArri] 235with a 50mm C-Series lens and acouple of 200-foot loads of 5219into the subway and rolled a little bitof film with available light. I pushedit one stop, and it was quite dark —around two stops underexposed —but it was gorgeous; 5219 can reallycapture the information in low light and still have good contrast. Thank goodness we madea test, because we decided to shoot film. The art departmentadded some fluorescents, and [2nd-unit director of photography]Masanobu Takayanagi, who shot thesubway scene, put a China ball witha metal-halide bulb in the fore-ground and had a couple of KinoFlos floating around.”

Meanwhile, the first unittackled the end of the foot chase,when Robert Bingham (MichaelBerresse) kills the thief and puts abullet into a deliveryman who wit-nessed the shooting. The actiontakes place beneath the Washingtonabutment near the Key Bridge inGeorgetown. Robby Baumgartner, alongtime collaborator of Prieto’s,notes, “It was a night scene, we wereshooting 360 degrees, and we had tobacklight rain. We changed out andadded a couple of cobra heads[streetlights] with metal-halidebulbs, and on top of the abutment,we put an Arri T12 on a MaxMoveron a [Chapman/Leonard] LennyArm III camera crane. I had a wire-less device so I could spot, flood, panand tilt the light, and when the cam-era flipped around, the grips couldswing the light to the other side [ofthe abutment]. We were able to hidea Condor on one side of the abut-ment when we needed to have bothsides lit at once, but that was rare.”

Collins learns of Baker’s deathjust prior to an important meetingof the Energy Committee, on whichhe serves. The meeting scene wasshot on location in Washington’sAndrew W. Mellon Auditorium,where the filmmakers bolstered thedaylight coming through the win-dows with a row of six 18K ArriMaxPars on scissor lifts; inside the room,the ambience was boosted with askirted HMI helium balloon on thewindow side of the room. “We float-ed around a bounce with a couple of6Ks just to fill in a little, and we alsokept the practicals on, which addedsome warm highlights,” notesBaumgartner.

“The lighting allowed us to

shoot in any direction,” says Prieto,who shot the scene at a T8 toincrease the depth of field. “One ofthe windows was at an angle wherewe could have the ‘sunlight’ right onCollins, and I thought that wasappropriate because he’s literally inthe spotlight. It’s a very vulnerablemoment for him.” Indeed, as thecongressman tries to say a few wordsabout his assistant’s death, he cracksand, in tears, excuses himself fromthe meeting.

Collins’ public breakdownincites a wave of speculation in theWashington Globe newsroom, a fullyenclosed, practically lit, two-story setthat filled two adjacent soundstagesat Culver Studios. Reporters’ desks

Left: The RobertC. WeaverFederal Buildingstood in for ahospital exterior.For the location,Prieto gelled aBeBee Light with½ Plus Green fora metal-halidelook. “TheBeBee raked thebuilding andbacklit the rainand the actorsfor the mainangle,” thecinematographerexplains. Below:With nowhereelse to turn,Collins goes tohis old collegeroommate,crashing inMcAffrey’sapartment.

44 May 2009

clutter the ground floor, and fromthe second level, the paper’s editor,Cameron Lynne (Helen Mirren),has a view of the floor. Macdonaldnotes, “I’d never worked on a setbefore, and every single person whowalked into the newsroom said,‘This is the biggest set I’ve everworked on!’ It made me a little nerv-ous.”

Having such a sprawling setwith a hard ceiling helped the actorsfeel they were on location, and toadd to that illusion, Prieto workedwith Friedberg to make the setessentially light itself. In keeping

with the filmmakers’ desire to framethe actors against graphic geometriccompositions, the crew rigged rowsof fluorescents over the reporters’desks, suspending the 4' four-bulbfixtures (fitted with Kino Flo K32tubes) from pipes that ran betweencolumns supporting the ceiling. “Tokeep it interesting and reinforce thedrama, I decided to mix these fluo-rescents with [90-watt Par 38] spot-lights, which were 3 or 4 stops over-exposed,” adds Prieto. “In the fore-ground for particular scenes, I usedDedo lights to simulate the spot-lights and could come in with a

Kino Flo with Cool White bulbs.”Prieto also took advantage of

the four large skylights Friedberginstalled in the set. “We had 20-by-16s floating over each skylight andnine Mole 6-light Par coops overeach of those,” recalls Baumgartner.“We also had two 20Ks and two10Ks for a hard-light source for eachskylight.” To create a similar sense ofdaylight coming through the win-dows in Lynne’s office, the crew stag-gered two rows of Finn LightToplights — 25 units total — out-side the set. The Finn Lights feature“a diffusion baffle on the inside thatpushes light out the side as well asstraight down, so they can have adirectional, side quality,” notesBaumgartner.

A TransLite backing featuringa view of Washington hung outsideLynne’s office and was illuminatedby 80 fixtures, a mix of 2K and 5KSky Pans. “I used a white net betweenthe TransLite and the set to make it alittle milkier and give it the sense ofhaze, and I overexposed it by about 3stops,” Prieto details. “I wanted theTransLite to be overexposed becauseif we’d been in a real newsroom, itwould have been blown-out. I thinkthe result is pretty realistic.”

Key grip Joseph Diandadesigned a truss rig to allow a night-time TransLite to quickly slide intoplace as the daytime backing waspulled aside. The Finn Lights andcertain Sky Pans were shut off fornight scenes, and Kino Flo Flathead80s gelled with Rosco 013 E-ColourStraw were placed on the floor tosimulate the glow of sodium-vaporstreetlights. “We also added blinkingLEDs on certain parts of theTransLite, like the airplane blinkerson the tops of buildings,” addsPrieto. “I love to do that stuff. Noone will notice it, but it gives thebacking a bit of life and makes it feelmore real.” (Inside the newsroom,each fixture was numbered and runoff the dimmer board, allowing thefilmmakers to quickly switch from

On the Record

Above: McAffreyand Frye

interviewDominic Foy

(JasonBateman), who

helped plantCollins’ assistant

in thecongressman’soffice. Below:The reporters

keep Foy undersurveillance. To

capture thesurveillance

footage, Prietomounted lipstick

cameras on C-stands. “We

wantedsomething low-

quality and real,”he says. “The

cameras werehard to handle:

We had tounscrew the lens

and go into thecamera to zoom,so finding each

frame took time.”

day to night looks.) The sodium-vapor look out-

side the Globe was established whenthe filmmakers scouted Washing-ton’s Bender Building, which servedas the Globe’s exterior. When thecrew shot outside the BenderBuilding at night, Prieto had a 24K gelled with 013 raking thebuilding. The exterior of the build-ing features 10'-tall, angled cementslats, to which the crew affixed 8'Cool White tubes, one per slat. “We put the bulbs on the face youcouldn’t see, so each bulb was light-ing the slat next to it,” saysBaumgartner. Prieto adds, “Thestreet was lit with orange-ambersodium light, and the light comingfrom the building was green fromthe fluorescents. I like to mix colortemperatures like that; it’s a veryrealistic urban look.”

Prieto used outdoor fluores-cents as an architectural element forthe hospital where the comatosedeliveryman is kept under policeprotection. When McAffrey’s col-league Della Frye (Rachel McAdams)visits the victim, she stands in thewaiting room near a window thatlooks out onto another wing of thehospital, where Prieto opted to install4' two-tube fluorescent fixturesbeneath each window along the faceof the building. “Again, it’s a graphicelement, and it gives the scenedepth,” he says.

Prieto wanted to emphasizecooler colors in and aroundMcAffrey’s apartment, so for thosestreetlights, the crew replaced thesodium-vapor bulbs with metal-halide globes. A combination of20Ks and Arri T12s gelled with Lee728 (Steel Green) on Condors andscissor lifts augmented the effect.

McAffrey’s apartment interiorwas built onstage at Culver Studios,and the set included anotherTransLite, which Prieto color-cor-rected to match the metal-halidelocation exterior. “We had T12sgelled with Lee 728 on I-beam truss

45

to push light through the windows,and we also used Image 80s withtungsten bulbs and Steel Green frombelow [the windows],” notesBaumgartner. Above the set, thecrew installed 12'x12' softboxes fit-ted with 2K Blondes run off thedimmer board, pushed throughthree layers of diffusion and further

controlled with Lighttools Soft EggCrates. “We used those very mini-mally, just to bring up the ambientlevel,” says Baumgartner. “If we hada practical, we’d turn one of theBlondes on 50 percent; they weresort of a no-light light.” The softbox-es were held in place by ropesattached to each corner and run to

the perms; the filmmakers couldthereby angle the boxes for evenmore control. “The challenge was tomold and direct the soft light to bewhere we wanted it while keepingother areas in darkness,” says Prieto.

When the production re-grouped for additional photogra-phy in October 2008, Baumgartnermodified the softboxes. At the time,Prieto was shooting PedroAlmodóvar’s Los Abrazos rotos inSpain, so he handed the reins toDante Spinotti, ASC, AIC. “HavingDante take my place was a relief, as Itruly admire his work,” says Prieto.Instead of one large 12-by, the crewrigged four 5-bys fitted with 1Knooks and custom egg crates fash-ioned out of corrugated plasticsheets known as Coroplast. TheCoroplast egg crates “were perfectbecause we could make them deep-er, wider and more efficient,” notesBaumgartner. “Lighttools come in

On the Record

46

McAffrey visitsCollins in the

congressman’soffice. “When I

see photos orvideos of

Congress, thereare always

practical lampsturned on,” says

Prieto. “To me,that golden

look isrepresentativeof interiors inWashington.”

specific sizes, and they’re fabric, so ifyou hang them straight down, theysag.”

Small overhead softboxes werealso used inside the hotel-room set,where McAffrey and Frye keep Foyunder surveillance after discoveringthat Foy helped plant Baker inCollins’ office. Foy’s predicamenttakes a turn for the worse whenCollins bursts through the door withfists flying. For the filmmakers, how-ever, the interior’s challenges weren’tquite so brutal. The softboxes helpedcarry the “daylight ambience” intothe room, and the effect wasenhanced with a 20K suspendedfrom a truss outside the window.

Stepping outside of the room,Prieto points to the set’s real chal-lenge: The door opens to an open-air walkway constructed as an exactmatch to the exterior of theAmericana Hotel in Arlington, Va.,where the filmmakers would shoot

in another couple of weeks. “We’retrying to match an exterior that wehaven’t shot yet,” he notes. To bettertheir odds, Baumgartner explains heand Prieto “decided we have a bettershot at it either being cloudy or thesun not being on that side of thebuilding.” Accordingly, the crewrigged a 20x20 frame of full grid-cloth along the stage-bound walk-way, behind which they placed a20K and eight space lights for ambi-ent skylight.

“One thing I really enjoyabout this work is that you do a lotof cheating,” says Prieto. “I lovereproducing certain moments oflight I’ve experienced in life. But as acinematographer, you don’t wantthe audience to think about thelighting while they’re emotionallyinvolved in a scene; you want themto feel it’s real. I’m constantly look-ing for ways to hide the fact that filmlighting was used, and I hope the

result will help the audience believethey are experiencing a moment oftruth with the characters.” �

TECHNICAL SPECS

2.40:1Anamorphic 35mm and High-Definition Video

Anamorphic 35mm:Panaflex Millennium XL,

PanArri 235C-Series, E-Series and

G-Series lensesKodak Vision3 500T 5219

HD:Panavision Genesis

Primo lenses


Printed on Kodak Vision Premier 2393

47

48 May 2009

In Ghosts of Girlfriends Past,directed by Mark Waters andshot by Daryn Okada, ASC, afun-loving bachelor (MatthewMcConaughey) travels home for

his brother’s wedding and is visited,over the course of an evening, byfour apparitions who force him toconfront the consequences of hisbehavior. Although the title suggestsa visual-effects-heavy show, Watersand Okada’s emphasis on story-telling and character, honed on theirprevious collaborations, Mean Girls(2004) and Just Like Heaven (2005),translated into a lean approach.“With Mark, the visual choices arealways motivated by what the char-acters are saying or doing,” says

Okada. “We have a similar sensibili-ty about what’s right for the story,and we always try to do clever in-camera things. If it doesn’t take avisual effect to get from one scene tothe next, we keep it simple.”

Despite the film’s apparentsimplicity, however, its post pathwas intricate enough that Okada’sparticipation in that work spannedseven months. As is typical for pro-ductions today, the trajectoryinvolved many hands at multiplefacilities, including CIS Hollywoodand Rhythm & Hues (CG effectsshots), LaserPacific (scanning, digi-tal color-correction and filmout)and Deluxe Laboratories (35mmprints). Thanks to his close working

Reforming ALadies’Man

A rakish photographer

reconsiders his relationships in the bittersweet

comedy Ghosts ofGirlfriends Past,

shot by Daryn Okada, ASC.

Interview by Rachael K. Bosley

Unit photography by Ron Batzdorff

for a simple thing like the addition ofa subtitle to alter the image, and if itisn’t the cinematographer’s eyewatching it go by, it could look justfine until it goes to film.

There’s such a synergy nowbetween cinematography and digitalpost work, and I’m lucky I’ve beenable to educate myself to the extentthat I have. The ASC’s TechnologyCommittee has opened the doors forus to learn the software facilities use.

If I know I’m doing a digitalfinish and shots will be sent to anumber of facilities for digital-effectswork, we run a test of everyone’spipeline in advance of that work, iftime permits. I’ve made it a habit toget a test scan from wherever our

relationship with Waters, Okada wason hand throughout the process. “Amultitude of unexpected things canhappen when a picture goes fromfilm to digital, where some of itsimages are manipulated by variouspeople, and then back to film,” saysOkada, whose recent featuresinclude Baby Mama, Stick It (ACJune ’06) and Paparazzi. “As much asI like to finish movies as simply aspossible, this is the world we live inright now. Digital software tools areso accessible, and the depth of whatyou can do with them is so exten-sive, that there’s an army of settingsthat have to be exactly right for thatparticular project in order for you toend up with the image you set out toachieve. You have to have someonein on the process who knows howthose images were created andknows each image note for note.Some people want to cut cine-matographers out of post, but Ithink our participation is even morevital now. Fortunately, Markinvolves me in that work.”

Okada met with AC to dis-cuss this and other aspects of Ghostsin mid-February, shortly after hehad viewed the first 35mm printprojected.

American Cinematographer:You started DI work on this movielast summer, and as recently as lastweek, when you saw the first print,you were spotting little problemsthat had cropped up for the firsttime, weren’t you?

Daryn Okada, ASC: Yes. Oneof the shots was sent out for a subti-tle and dropped in after we’d fin-ished the final color correction, anda shadow had somehow material-ized on an actress’ face. There are alot of intricacies in today’s postworkflow, and if cinematographersare in on the process, we can solveproblems along the way, and we canalso prevent a lot of things fromgoing wrong. Shots can’t be simplydropped into a reel; all it takes is onewrong setting on a piece of software


scans are being done, put it up on thesystem we’re using for the DI, correctit, send it to the facility doing digital-effects work, and ask them to put itthrough their entire pipeline andsend the file back to me. If it comesback exactly the same, I know every-thing is great. If the file went from10-bit [color space] to 8-bit and backto 10-bit, there could be artifacts. Mygoal is to try to solve some of thoseissues before the facility devotes hun-dreds of hours of work to the proj-ect. I’ve found that if we don’t all dis-cuss how we’re going to do things —and it can be as simple as the namingof files — chances are great the firstfew deliveries won’t be what weexpected.

Opposite page:Connor(MatthewMcConaughey)is reunited withhis childhoodsweetheart,Jenny (JenniferGarner), in ascene fromGhosts ofGirlfriendsPast, shot byDaryn Okada,ASC. This page,top: Connor isstunned toencounter hislate UncleWayne(MichaelDouglas) in themen’s room ofthe familymansion.Below: Connoris ushered backto the 1980s andoffered aglimpse of hisyounger self bythe Ghost ofGirlfriendsPast, a.k.a.Allison (EmmaStone), his firstsexual partner.

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50 May 2009

Reforming A Ladies’ManHow did your post work on

this show begin?One of our strategies was to

pre-time as much as we could in anon-destructive way, which meantusing only primaries to time shotsthat were going to the effects team.So last July, we started using DI timethat we’d planned to use fourmonths later so I could spend a fewhours a week on that work; by tak-ing that step, we didn’t have to fine-tune those shots as much when theycame back to us. When we starteddoing final reviews of effects shots, Iinsisted we view them on the screenwe’d be using for the DI, and thatproved to be invaluable because wesaw little irregularities that wewouldn’t have seen on a monitor.Monitors can hide a lot of motionartifacts, so projecting on a largescreen at full resolution, 24 fps, withthe intended look is the only way toinspect the work properly.

This was your first experi-ence shooting a feature on Vision3[500T 5219] and taking it througha DI. Were there any surprises?

Okada: Only in post. 5219 is aremarkable technology — I shotmost of this movie with it and usedit in daylight with an 85 filterbecause of its incredible latitude inthe brightest areas, such as snow.While checking test scans after fin-ishing principal photography, wediscovered 5219 has more informa-tion and latitude than theCineon/DPX 10-bit file format cancontain; it just doesn’t reach what5219 can do in the highlights whenthe scan is written as a file referringto a print density. Granted, theremight be things in that area youdon’t want or need, but you want tobe able to get to it. In this case, thevisual-effects team wanted thatinformation because they wereusing it to get hints about where topaint or not paint snow in the shot.When I checked the early test scansdone at various facilities in the DItheater at LaserPacific, we could

Top: Shortlybefore he meets

the Ghost ofGirlfriendsPresent, a

panicked Connorcontemplates

escaping back toManhattan. Thisscene features alighting scheme

that wound upbeing “Plan B”

after high windsand heavy snow

took a toll onOkada’s original

lighting setup.Middle: Okada

and his crewprepare to film

outside themansion in

Ipswich, Mass.Bottom: The

crew filmsConnor as he is

stopped in histracks by the

Ghost ofGirlfriends

Future. Thisscene features

the soft, glowing“moonlight”

Okada hoped touse on all of thenight exteriors.

(The lights heused can be

seen on page52.)

Island for his brother’s wedding, wewanted there to be a visual arc in themansion where everything takesplace. The initial feel is warm andfestive, and as the night wears onand strange things start to happen,the mood gets darker and the lookmore contrasty. That way, whenghosts start appearing to Connor,the audience accepts it. We shot themansion interiors in an old buildingin Wellesley, Massachusetts, that hadbeen uninhabited for years. An elec-trician had to trace and connect theold wiring so we could use the prac-ticals mounted to the walls andother built-in light sources. To giveourselves maximum flexibility, wehad that electrician run the wiringfor the entire mansion to a centraldimmer pack. That gave us the abil-ity to dim every circuit in the entiremansion to a different level andstore that setting for a scene, whichwas helpful in altering mood andcontrast throughout the schedule.We have that kind of control onstages, but to do it with every practi-cal at a location isn’t that common.

As things take a darker turn inthe mansion, we start doing subtlydifferent things with the camera,and, finally, when it looks likeConnor has wrecked the weddingplans, we go handheld, which isunusual for this type of movie, tosuggest the rawness of the charac-

immediately see the problem, andeveryone was concerned.

How did you deal with it?Okada: We didn’t have the

time or resources for R&D, so wehad to find a workaround. There aretwo: You can either ignore it and letthat area clip out of your scan, oryou can modify the scan so youdon’t have as many bits as youshould have to represent that area ofinformation — do a flatter scan, inother words. We decided to modifythe scans so they were flatter.

Do you feel the look is whatyou set out to achieve, despite thatcompromise?

Okada: Yeah, I think we gotthere, but it took a little more work.We had to sort of re-expand the flat-ter scans as [colorist] Dave Cole andI did the color-correction to get thecontrast back into the image. In theDI world, everyone’s talking aboutresolution — 2K vs. 4K — and that’san issue for debate, but when youhave less dynamic range and colordepth to work with, you really feel it.Cineon is a brilliant breakthrough,but it’s based on film stocks thatwere in existence in the late’80s/early ’90s, when that file formatwas designed. Film emulsions haveadvanced quite a bit since then.There won’t be a solution to thisproblem until a higher-dynamic-range file format becomes the stan-dard for DI work. The proposedAcademy File Format that theAcademy’s Science and TechnologyCouncil is working on mightaddress issues like this, but it willrequire a new generation of softwarecolor-correctors. Also, there arehardware bandwidth issues for real-time playback. I firmly believe youneed to judge the color-timingprocess with images running in realtime to know how the color of onescene or shot will play against theothers; a shot might look fine as astill frame, but when viewed in con-text, the perception of its color andcontrast is affected by all the shots in

the sequence.How did you and Mark work

out the visual tone of the film giventhat the story is strongly groundedin reality but has a handful of fan-tastic elements?

Okada: There are a lot of dif-ferent visual realities to the story,and we tried to place the look some-where between pure fantasy andsuper-realism. There is an emotionto the story that I knew wouldn’t hit the audience if the look were too glossy. I wanted an overallromantic look that would undergo achange. We wanted the beginning ofthe movie, showing Connor’s[McConaughey] life in New York, tofeel wintry but kind of grungy —the holidays are over, and the snowis muddy and melting away. Connoris liked by a lot of people, but he’skind of cold in his relationshipswith women, and we wanted toestablish that edge right away; thecharacter had to come in on a highnote because there wasn’t time todevelop him at the beginning. Marktalked about giving these scenes thefeel of an Adrian Lyne movie of theearly ’80s, which we pinpointed asthe time Connor had lost his inno-cence. I couldn’t get as long lens-y asI would have liked because of thelocations, but we tried to shoot itwith that sensibility.

Once Connor goes to Rhode

Okada lines upan interior shotas director MarkWaters standsby.


52 May 2009

Reforming A Ladies’Manters’ emotions. Connor heads out-side to leave, and that’s when heencounters the ghost from thefuture, and things take another turn.

The ghosts representingConnor’s past and present all looklike fully flesh-and-blood crea-tures, whereas the ghost from thefuture arrives on a supernaturalnote, materializing out of the snow.How did you arrive at the decisionto present her differently, and howdid you achieve that shot?

Okada: When it comes towomen, Connor has seen ’em all, sowe felt the ghost from the future hadto be something of a mystery, some-thing he hasn’t seen before, in orderto get his attention. She representsthe unknown, unlike the otherghosts, who show Connor things hehas already experienced. The futurescenes deal with some harsh emo-tional truths.

She is introduced in a series ofshots that involved motion-controlon location; the snow swirls up, andwe move in on her as she material-izes. It had to be a dolly move, andthe camera had to boom up at thesame time. We shot this and all theother mansion exteriors at theCrane Estate [in Ipswich, Mass.],and we had to set the motion-con-trol rig up in the snow. Lighting wasa challenge because we were tryingto keep it moody, and there weren’t alot of places to light from. Also, wehad a dark-brick mansion in thebackground and lots of white snowon the ground and coming down —coming down for real, incidentally!

I wanted a glowing moon-light, a soft, magical feel, and my firstthought was to do what HaskellWexler [ASC] did on Matewan: cre-ate a giant ‘moonbox’ and suspend itfrom a crane. But the location wasup on a hill, and we couldn’t get acrane up there that was large enoughto do that. Also, we were concernedabout high winds because we wereright next to the ocean. When I wasin a similar situation on Lake Placid

The crewprepares to filmthe appearance

of the Ghost ofGirlfriends

Future (OlgaMalioiuk,

visible at rightin bottom

photo), whomaterializes out

of the swirlingsnow before

descending tothe ground and

showingConnor what

the rest of hislife might be

like. Themotion-controlsequence was

shot entirely onlocation, and

Okada createdthe overall

ambience withtwo helium

balloonsattached to 130'

Genie arms.

[1999], I designed a moonbox thatwas held together with Velcro, so if ahigh wind came up, it would justblow apart instead of blow over.

We located a couple of 130-foot Genie arms and attached a 12KHMI/15K tungsten lighting bal-loon to each one — we couldn’tfloat them because of winds. Theygave me the overall ambience Iwanted, and my plan was to usethem for both of the night scenes.We’d scheduled the motion-controlwork first and managed to get that,but then we had to wrap and bringeverything down because the windswere picking up and the snow wascoming down faster and faster. Thewind started to break the armsloose, and one balloon started torotate in the other direction. I knewthere was was no way we could usethat setup again. I had to resort tolighting the other night scene withharder sources, 20Ks and Nine-lightMaxi-Brutes, in cranes set fartherback. Even though the looks aren’tthe same, it actually worked outbecause the other night scene, whenConnor meets the ghost from thepresent, takes place before he meetsthe ghost from the future, and theghost from the present is more real-ity-based, so the different look kindof fits.

As the ghost from the futureleads Connor away from the man-sion and through the woods,there’s an overhead shot of themthat transitions from night to day.How did you achieve that?

Okada: We did it all on loca-tion. If we’d shot them from theground with a dolly move, wewould’ve had to make the transitionwork on all the scenery aroundthem, so instead, we decided to usean overhead shot looking straightdown. We found a spot outside themansion that was accessible andoffered a straight, open spacethrough trees where we couldmount the camera to a DoggicamSuper Slide and point it straight

down. We set up the lighting at thebeginning of their walk to matchthe soft, moonlit look, and alongtheir path, we positioned four 20-by-20-foot UltraBounces withNine-light Maxis gelled with FullCTB that we dimmed up to createambient morning skylight, and twoNine-light Maxis with spot globesgoing through a 12-by frame ofquarter grid cloth that we dimmedup to suggest direct sunlight hittingthem. By the time they reach theend of the walk, it’s full daylight.

Your last film with Mark,Just Like Heaven, was about aghost interacting with a human,and he said you both learned somelessons on that show that youapplied to this one. Can you elabo-rate on that?

Okada: One of the lessonswas that if a ghost walks through awall, you’d better have the camerapanning and moving with theghost, because locking off the cam-era just doesn’t work. Locking off ischeaper to do, but it relays to theaudience that something just isn’tright — the ghost doesn’t feelorganic. The camera should bepanning so the audience is movingwith the ghost, and then the ghostgoes through the wall; it shouldn’tjust be the ghost moving across thescreen in a stationary shot. We also

learned that whenever a ghostwalks through a person, a reactionhas to play out. It just makes sensein terms of storytelling. That’s whywhen the ghost of Uncle Wayne[Michael Douglas] walks throughConnor, Connor remarks that hecan taste Aqua Velva! �

Left: A fan keepsthe snow andwind moving inthe rightdirection as theGhost ofGirlfriendsFuture descends.Below: In atransitionaccomplishedentirely onlocation, theghost andConnor stepfrom a wintrynight into anautumnal dawn.


Connor, like Uncle Wayne,has quite a suntan. Did that presentany challenges in terms of the pho-tography?

Okada: It was a matter of find-ing soft sources that would reflect offMatthew’s skin in the right way. Hisskin tone never feels too deep

because there’s always some highlightand sparkle going on there. That’sanother reason I wanted soft moon-light for the night scene out in thesnow — the light isn’t just falling onhis skin, it’s reflecting off it. I had tobe really careful in the timing becausethat very bronze look can easily go

totally yellow or totally greendepending on where the color of thescene goes. It’s a very delicate balance,especially with a digital negative; ifyou’re off by 1/100th of a point in anydirection during the answer-print-ing, it can dramatically affect how themovie looks. In prep, [costumedesigner] Denise Wingate, [produc-tion designer] Cary White and Iworked together to make sure thecolor choices in all of Matthew’sscenes would be pleasing to his com-plexion.

One of the great things aboutworking with Mark is that he sur-rounds himself with collaboratorswho are all thinking about what wecan do for each other. There’s a lot ofcommunication among depart-ments from the very beginning, andMark knows we’re all working in hisbest interest. We’re all playing in thesame orchestra. It’s what moviemak-ing should be.

54

Waters andOkada fine-tune

their approachto a bar scene

in the mansion.

Reforming A Ladies’Man

Has Mark’s techniquechanged much since your first col-laboration?

Okada: Something that’sremained consistent is that we don’tuse zoom lenses unless we have to.We stick to primes, and I think that’sbecause Mark and I have such agreat feel for what each prime cando. It’s wonderful that Panavisionhas 65mm and 125mm Primosnow; those are focal lengths I’vebeen wanting forever, and I usethem a lot.

On Mean Girls and Just LikeHeaven, we ran two cameras all thetime unless I just couldn’t get a sec-ond one in there, but on Ghosts, if itwas a single of an actor and therewas only one good place for thatlens to be, then Mark was comfort-able going without the second cam-era. Also, we shot widescreen for thefirst time. Our previous movies were1.85:1, but Mark and Caleb

Deschanel [ASC] photographed TheSpiderwick Chronicles in Super35mm [AC March ’08], and I’mgrateful Mark had that experience,because he had no qualms aboutshooting Ghosts widescreen. I actu-ally hoped to shoot anamorphic,which I haven’t used since TexasRangers [2001], but he wasn’t com-fortable trying it on this project.Mark always has a very specific shotlist, and we work fast; he likes to keepspontaneity going with the actors,and I try to mirror that with thecrew. That, coupled with the factthat we were going to be mainlylocation-based and stuck in practicalrooms, made Super 35 a betterchoice.

The work process evolves andwe all grow, and that’s great. Markand I always tap past experiences butalso leave ourselves open to simpli-fying or finding a better way. Whoknows? Our next movie might be

anamorphic, or it might be Super16. It’s all about the visual tapestrythat’s right for that story. �

TECHNICAL SPECS

2.40:1

Super 35mm

Panavision XL2, Panaflex Millennium

Primo lenses

Kodak Vision3 500T 5219; Vision2 50D 5201, 250D 5205


Printed on Kodak Vision 2383

55

Afew years ago, Los AngelesTimes columnist Steve Lopezwas crossing Pershing Squareon his way back to the officewhen he was stopped in his

tracks by the music of a street vio-linist. The man’s talent was strikingeven though his violin had just twostrings. Lopez learned that the musi-cian, Nathaniel Ayers, was a native ofCleveland, Ohio, and had studiedmusic at The Juilliard School beforeschizophrenia transformed his life,landing him on Los Angeles’ SkidRow. When director Joe Wright(Atonement; AC Dec. ’07) read ascreenplay based on a series ofcolumns Lopez wrote about Ayersand their subsequent friendship — atale replete with small miracles andseemingly insurmountable tragedies— the subject immediately struck a

chord. “I’ve always felt film is theperfect medium for exploring men-tal illness, that one could really playwith the relationship of sound andimage to create [that person’s] view-point,” says Wright.

Despite his enthusiasm forthe project, the English filmmakerworried he might not have “theauthority or the right to make a filmthat was so inherently aboutAmerican society,” he recalls. “So Iwent to L.A. and met with SteveLopez, and he took me on a tour ofdowntown and Skid Row. I wasshocked by what I saw; I had neverimagined such a mass of poverty.Then he took me to Lamp, a shelterfor homeless people diagnosed withmental illnesses, and I was blownaway by the people I met there. Irealized I probably didn’t have the

authority to make the film, but Ithought I could get the people I metdowntown to show me how to makeit. Rather than being a film aboutthese people, the idea was to make afilm by these people.”

Many of Wright’s collabora-tors from Atonement returned forThe Soloist, including director ofphotography Seamus McGarvey,ASC, BSC, and production designerSarah Greenwood. Wright andMcGarvey devoted two weeks ofprep to thoroughly storyboardingthe script. “Joe’s very strict aboutthat, and I think that degree of prepultimately distinguishes his films,”says the cinematographer. Duringthat time, he continues, he andWright “listened to the music thatwas going to be played by the LosAngeles Philharmonic. And [com-

A Friend in Need

56 May 2009

The Soloist, shot by SeamusMcGarvey, ASC, BSC, tells the

true story of an unlikely bond.

by Jon D. Witmer

Unit photography by François Duhamel, SMPSP

tionship progresses, they edgetoward each other, [until theybecome] this totem of friendship inthe middle of this kaleidoscopicworld.”

After writing a few columnsabout Ayers, Lopez decides to spenda night on Skid Row to better under-stand his new friend’s situation. Forthis sequence and many others set indowntown L.A., the filmmakerscommandeered Anderson Street, adesolate road on the periphery ofSkid Row. “Joe was very concernedthat the huge Hollywood apparatuswould get in the way of capturingthe place,” recalls McGarvey. “He feltif we had huge cherry-pickers andCondors with Dinos blasting downsoaking-wet streets, it just wouldn’tbe faithful to the look of the place.”

Some 300 homeless — notprofessional extras, but members ofthe Skid Row community — crowdthe street when Lopez arrives in

poser] Dario Marianelli did sometemporary tracks that were reallyhelpful in thinking about the visualsin musical terms.

“Working with A-cameraoperator Mitch Dubin and B-cam-era operator Paul Babin, we went fora camera style that’s initially a littleabrupt and kinetic,” continuesMcGarvey. “But as the relationshipbetween Lopez [Robert Downey Jr.]and Ayers [Jamie Foxx] evolves,there’s a much more fluid, naturalrhythm. Our idea was that by theend of the film, the music wouldfuse with the picture, and therewould be a marriage of the two.”

Preproduction also tookMcGarvey into the heart of SkidRow. “Subject matter like this canoften get very earnest,” he concedes,“but those people just exploded thatnotion and offered a lightning rodfor high-mindedness and artifice.They brought everything backdown to a very terrestrial level. Amovie like this really has to begrounded, and it has to have ahumility, but it also has to have fun.

“We didn’t want to patronizeor underestimate the subject mat-ter,” McGarvey continues. “It’s asymphonic story; it’s a big story; it’sabout the epic in the everyday. So wealways imagined the film to beanamorphic. The scale and the qual-ity of the anamorphic image elevatesthe people and the subject matter,and the format also fits the tone ofthe film, which is about celebratingthe human being.” Wright addsanother reason for choosing thewidescreen format: “The film is verymuch about sound, and withanamorphic, we could have a close-up of Jamie with his face firmly inthe center of frame and create a soft-focus space on either side of his earswhen he hears aural hallucinations.There’s also a [visual] separationbetween Nathaniel and Steve; theycan be talking to each other andthere can be quite a distancebetween them. Slowly, as their rela-

search of Ayers. As the camera fol-lows the journalist through thecrowd, the scene is lit almost exclu-sively with sources that appear inframe: mercury-vapors and sodi-um-vapors, fluorescent tubes, tung-sten globes and neon signs. “We veryconsciously played with the fact thatthe area offers this amazing collisionof magentas, greens and yellows,”says McGarvey. Gaffer RandyWoodside, who had previouslyworked with McGarvey on WorldTrade Center (AC Aug. ’06), adds,“We replaced all of the streetlightheads with a set that were complete-ly gutted; in this case, we used 2KMighty Moles in them. That gave ussome focus, a little falloff, and a littleoverexposure beneath the pools oflight. We kept those in the tungstenrange, so they created a sort of aneutral color zone on the street.”When further illumination wasrequired, the crew hid sources

Opposite:Despite thetraffic in theGrand StreetTunnel, LosAngeles Timescolumnist SteveLopez (RobertDowney Jr.)loses himself inthe music playedby his friend,Nathaniel Ayers(Jamie Foxx).This page, top:Director JoeWright (withviewfinder) linesup a shot whilecinematographerSeamusMcGarvey, ASC,BSC (in whitecap) keeps asharp eye on theaction. Below:The filmmakersemploy a 50'Technocrane ona ChapmanMaverick tocapture a long,fluid shot takingin the Skid Rowcommunity.


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beneath awnings and other pieces ofset dressing. “If we were walking upor down the street, I’d augment thelight with a China ball or even just alittle Litepanels LED,” McGarveysays.

The cinematographer notesthat when Ayers leads Lopez to thealcove where he sleeps most nights,the camerawork and lightingbecome more “lyrical.” An overheadclose-up of a supine Ayers gaveMcGarvey the chance to “start dim-ming the lights on his face so thepassing car headlights become theonly source — I had a light on amoving boom so you could see theshift of light on his face.” The viewfrom Ayers’ alcove allows Lopez tosee his surroundings from a freshperspective. To suggest this new setof eyes, the filmmakers mounted a50' Technocrane on a ChapmanMaverick, a.k.a. Mobile Arm Vehicle.Although the move was originallyexecuted as an uninterrupted four-minute take that traveled up anddown Anderson Street, it appears intwo parts in the film. First, the cam-era tracks past a homeless encamp-ment, rising up over a food line andlooking down over a row of out-houses in which people are trying tosleep; then, after a cut, the cameratracks left past a neon sign proclaim-ing “the gift of God is eternal life”and presents a wide shot lookingdown upon row after row of sleep-

ing bags whose inhabitants try tomake do for one more night.“Before the crane shot, what you seeis the representation of the fears onenormally feels [on a visit to] SkidRow,” says Wright. “But at themoment of [the crane shot], youbegin to see the humanity of theplace.” McGarvey adds, “JohnnyMang, our dolly grip, deserves spe-cial mention because he master-minded that shot with [key grip]Herb Ault.

“We were shooting wide openfor a lot of the night stuff,” the cine-matographer adds. “I love that shal-low depth of field because you real-ly get into Nathaniel’s head; yousense his subjective relationship tomusic. The anamorphic format test-ed the focus pullers’ mettle, but BillCoe [A camera] and HarryZimmerman [B camera] are world-class.”

As Lopez’s understanding ofhis friend’s situation comes intosharper focus, flashbacks fromAyers’ childhood and his days atJuilliard punctuate the film.McGarvey used ¼ and ½ TiffenBlack Pro-Mists to lend these scenes“the feeling of being half-remem-bered through a gauze of all thethings that have happened inbetween. I knew we’d enhance thelook of the flashbacks in the digital-intermediate suite at EFilm.” Whenhe spoke to AC, McGarvey was at

work on the DI. “I’m working withle maître, [colorist] Yvan Lucas, andwe’ve played with evoking those eras— the ’60s in Cleveland and the ’70sat Juilliard. Yvan looked atKodachrome and Ektachromestocks and noticed that there’s a lotof magenta and blue in the shadowdetails.” By adding such touches tothe shadows, McGarvey and Lucasalso gave the flashbacks an overalllow-contrast look.

“Once we knew we weregoing the DI route, I knew [KodakVision3 500T] 5219 was the perfectstock for this picture,” says the cine-matographer. “Although it’s a littlebit flatter than I would normallylike, there’s more detail in the toe ofthe negative than you get with5218.” For day exteriors, McGarveyused Kodak Vision2 200T 5217;both stocks were rated normally andoverexposed by about 1⁄3 of a stop.

The production spent a fewdays in Cleveland to capture winterexteriors, but scenes set in Ayers’childhood home were filmed in awarehouse-turned-stage in CulverCity, Calif. The scenes called for bothday and night looks, and while bothwere achieved with tungsten units,the daylight scenes featured “largesources outside the windows —20Ks and 10Ks — but very littleinside,” says McGarvey. “RandyWoodside and [rigging gaffer] ChrisNapolitano built these little cooplights, which were basically sixPhotofloods in a soft box, to helpcreate a patch of ambience. For thenight scenes, we used much smallersources scattered all over the house.Sarah Greenwood and [set decora-tor] Katie Spencer gave us lots ofpracticals, and I just filled in withsmaller sources: China balls with #1or #2 Photofloods inside, 650s orPups through frames, or 1Ksthrough Chimeras.”

The set comprised two sto-ries: the main floor, where Ayers’mother runs a beauty salon, and thebasement, which serves as the boy’s

A Friend in NeedAfter years ofliving on thestreet, Ayers

struggles withmoving back

indoors. For theapartment set,

which wasconstructed

onstage,McGarvey

created a senseof being onlocation by

motivating lightthrough the

window andopen door and

not flying thewalls. Graphic

artist Sean Dalyserved as the

“hand ofNathaniel

Ayers,” creatingthe illustrations

on the wall.

58 May 2009

room. A staircase connected the twolevels, and a flyaway wall incorporat-ed the exterior façade. In an earlyflashback, the camera, mounted on aTechnocrane, pans with a woman asshe crosses the salon floor, then pansback with another woman beforepulling backward through the win-dow. Moving outside the house,amid ambience provided by spacelights, the camera cranes down tothe basement window to reveal theyoung Ayers (Justin Martin) practic-ing his cello over the din upstairs.(To avoid unwanted reflections,visual-effects company DoubleNegative fitted the basement win-dow frame with CG “glass.”)

Violent riots erupted in Ayers’neighborhood in 1966, and the film-makers decided to “create somethingemblematic [of the action] becausethe riots were too expensive tostage,” says McGarvey. As Ayers peersthrough the basement window intothe night, a car engulfed in flamesslowly rolls down the length of thestreet. “It’s more of a metaphor of ariot, but it’s actually more evocativein a weird way because you’re inNathaniel’s head,” notes McGarvey.“It’s about a memory, a subjectiveexperience.” Seeing the car, Ayerstries to separate himself from thetroubles outside by playing his cellowith frightening intensity. The lightsdim as the camera slowly tracksaround him, leaving only the glowfrom the room’s open furnace. Thepractical flames inside the furnacewere boosted by a fire effect.Woodside explains, “We use a coupleof different systems. One encom-passes the 1,000-watt FCM globesfrom space lights; we rack thosetogether on speed rail and use themin large areas. The other employs batstrips of anywhere from 3 feet to 15-feet long containing 500-watt EALglobes.” Both configurations incor-porated multiple circuits for dim-ming, and the globes were groupedboth horizontally and vertically.McGarvey adds, “There was a kind

of chicken-wire cage around them,and I was able to gel them warm. Icould actually handhold the batten.”

As Lopez unravels Ayers’ storyin his columns, gifts for his subject,including a cello, begin arriving atthe reporter’s desk. Wright wasdetermined to shoot inside theTimes offices and put Downey atLopez’s actual desk. To boost thelight levels inside the location, thefilmmakers built fluorescent fixturesthat could serve as practicals inframe. Greenwood designed hous-ings for 6' Kino Flo tubes that couldbe ceiling-mounted around theoffice’s cylindrical support columnslike spokes from the hub of a wheel.Some 40 of these fixtures had to berigged in the newsroom, allowingthe filmmakers to shoot in anydirection; each housing was fittedwith tungsten-balanced tubes tomatch the practicals on desks, andthe windows were gelled for day

scenes. McGarvey details, “We puthard gels on the windows wherethey were visible and soft gelsbehind blinds. If it got really, reallybright outside, we were able to usethe blinds almost like an ND. Fornight work, we could easily pull offthe gels to allow the ambient street-light to come through and not becorrected too orange.”

Transporting the cello in hiscar, Lopez finds Ayers in the GrandStreet tunnel. McGarvey sought tofacilitate the film’s many drivingsequences while avoiding what herefers to as “the flying-carpet effect,where the car always seems to beabove everything when you doprocess-trailer work.” To circumventthis, the filmmakers often utilized aRemote Drive Pod system fromAllan Padelford Camera Cars.McGarvey explains, “A stunt driverwas on the roof driving the car, so anoperator with a handheld camera

The filmmakerscommandeeredthe real SteveLopez’s deskinside the Timesoffices andmounted customfluorescenthousings to theceiling aroundthe building’ssupport columns;these fixturescan be seen inthe upper rightcorner of bothphotos.


60 May 2009

could sit below him in the car’s pas-senger seat and shoot Robert, whoappeared to be driving. It was justwonderful to have, and we used it alot.” (Matching cars were kept at theready for wide shots of the car or forsingles looking through the wind-shield from a hood mount.)

“When we were imaginingthe sequence where Nathaniel playsthe cello for the first time, I wantedthe chance to cross the city and lenda kind of elevation to [the shot],”notes Wright. As Ayers connectswith the instrument, the camerapans away and lifts up through anopening in the tunnel to reveal awide shot of downtown. “We used a100-foot Strada crane with a Librahead, and we released pigeons tohelp lead the camera up,” saysMcGarvey. As Ayers continues play-ing, a sequence the cinematograph-er calls “the city symphony” playsout, combining shots from a Flying-Cam with images filmed by aerialdirector of photography DougHolgate. “Visual-effects supervisor

John Moffat then animated somebirds into the [aerial] shots to leadthe eye,” notes McGarvey. “I opted toshoot the aerial sequences on Super35mm in order to keep the weightdown. The spherical zoom lens alsoafforded us a wider stop and greaterflexibility for composition.”

A similarly symphonicapproach graces camerawork in theWalt Disney Concert Hall, home ofthe L.A. Philharmonic. Moved byAyers’ story, the orchestra’s publicist,Adam Crane (Michael Bunin),invites him and Lopez to attendrehearsals and performances. Theproduction shot these scenes at thereal location, and the filmmakers“wanted Disney Hall to look likewhat it is,” says Woodside.Accordingly, his crew worked close-ly with Disney Hall’s lighting techni-cians and used the facility’s tungstenstage lights. To boost the ambiencein the auditorium, Woodside floatedthree 13' 8K incandescent sausageballoons, which also served toaccommodate a large truss rig thecrew hung from the ceiling to movethe camera. “Seamus and Joe want-ed some shots where we would startwide and come into a fairly extremeclose-up of the conductor,” explainsAult. “I designed the rig and my rigging key, G [DhamarataDhiensuwana], put it in for us. Itwas basically a Cablecam shot, butthe camera rode on a trolley. Wehung it in such a way that we couldangle it and make it run from highto low or low to high. We could alsofly it up out of the way so we couldshoot wide angles without seeing it.”

As conductor Esa-PekkaSalonen lifts his baton to lead thePhilharmonic into a rehearsal ofBeethoven’s Symphony No. 3(“Eroica”), the camera flies acrossthe auditorium from behind themusicians into a close-up of Ayers.With the notes filling the air, thescene is increasingly filtered throughAyers’ point of view. Finally, “all theambient light drops and we’re leftwith the stage lighting,” explainsMcGarvey. “We wanted to create afeeling of going inside Nathaniel’shead, through his ears and into hisbrain.”

Ayers’ sometimes-obfuscatedpoint of view is evoked in othersequences — often with flares, andoccasionally through the use ofmoving crystals on monofilamentjust in front of the lens — but in theconcert hall, his perception is pre-sented as pure light and color danc-ing in time with the music. The visu-als are intended to simulate a phe-nomenon known as synesthesia, inwhich a stimulus produces an appar-ently unrelated sensation (such as asound causing the listener to see acolor). Explaining the creativeprocess that led to the synesthesiasequence, Wright says, “I really want-ed the audience to listen to thisextraordinary piece of Beethovenmusic, but I felt I probably couldn’tget away with having a totally blackscreen. Because the scene is set inDisney Hall, [I decided to create] abit of an homage to Fantasia, andalso to some of my art-schoolheroes, like Stan Brakhage.”

To create the synesthesia

A Friend in Need

Above left: 18Ktungstenballoons

boosted theambience inside

Disney Hall,where key grip

Herb Ault andkey rigging grip

DhamarataDhiensuwana

designed anoverhead

camera trolley.Above right:

Ayers perceivesthe Los Angeles

Philharmonic’srendition of

Beethoven’sSymphony No. 3

as color andlight, a

phenomenonknown as

synesthesia,which the

filmmakerscreated in-camera by

shining a Mac2000 down the

lens or throughthe eyepiece.

effect, the crew “set up a blacked-outtent in the Disney Hall parking lotwhile the first unit was shooting inthe Grand Street tunnel,” saysMcGarvey. “I was able to pop in andout between takes to see how [2nd-unit director] Thomas Napper andJohn Moffat were progressing. Theeffect itself was really as basic as shin-ing a Mac 2000 with shifting colorsequences straight down the lens andsometimes through the eyepiece; attimes, we would interrupt the purelight with bits of glass or jam jars tocreate prismatic effects. We wereshooting wide open on the 40-80mm zoom; the extra elements inthat lens helped introduce moreflares and collisions of light.”

There isn’t a pat storybookending for either Ayers or Lopez, butby the end of The Soloist, each manhas been deeply affected by thefriendship. According to McGarvey,the filmmakers’ experience mirroredthe protagonists’ feelings of cama-raderie and enlightenment. “Thatwas one aspect of Skid Row that wasquite surprising: the strength of thecommunity, the fun people manageto have, and the love they haveamongst themselves. Even thoughpockets of the area can be dark andviolent, there’s generally this incredi-ble respect among people that is verylacking elsewhere. They are extraor-dinary people who became ourfriends.” �

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61

Edwin Catmull and MarkKimball, the recipients of thetwo most prestigious honors atthis year’s Academy Awards forScientific and Technical

Achievement, are both computer sci-entists who brought their technicalexpertise into the film industry andfundamentally changed animationand moviemaking. Catmull washonored with the Gordon E. SawyerAward, which recognizes a lifetime oftechnical achievement in themotion-picture industry, andKimball was honored with the JohnA. Bonner Medal of Commendation,which recognizes outstanding serviceand dedication in upholding thehigh standards of the Academy.

Gordon E. Sawyer AwardCatmull is the co-founder of

Pixar Animation Studios and presi-dent of that company and DisneyAnimation Studios. As a boy, hefound inspiration in Walt Disney’sanimated classics, such as Peter Panand Pinocchio. “When I was young, Iwanted to be an animator,” he says.“I looked to Walt Disney, who wasalways doing interesting things —not just in animation, but also withthe theme parks. He was alwaysusing technology in interestingways, and I wanted to be on thatfrontier. I was also drawn to AlbertEinstein, who was the ultimateimage of what a scientist should be.He and Disney fascinated me when I

was a kid.”Catmull initially pursued a

more Einstein-like path, studyingphysics and computer science at theUniversity of Utah. After a brief stintas a computer programmer at theBoeing Co., he returned to Utah toattend graduate school in the fall of1971, where he became a student ofIvan Sutherland and a classmate ofJames H. Clark, future founder ofSilicon Graphics and Netscape, andJohn Warnock, future co-founder ofAdobe.

Sutherland had createdSketchpad, a breakthrough in com-puter graphics that changed the waycomputer users could interact withtheir machines and laid the ground-

by Stephanie Argy

Technical Knockouts

62 May 2009

The Academy’s Sci-Tech Committee honors the pioneersbehind the industry’s groundbreaking inventions.

The Sci-Tech Awards ceremony was hosted by actress Jessica Biel, shown with the evening’s honorees. Front row (left to right): EdwinCatmull, Sci-Tech Awards Committee Chair Richard Edlund, Biel, Academy President Sid Ganis and Mark Kimball. Back row (left toright): Dominique Chervin, Bruno Coumert, Alexandre Leuchter, Erwin Melzner, Jacques Delacoux, Volker Schumacher, Timo Müller andSteve Hylén.

footage. Catmull notes that it was anenormous task to create an applica-tion that would give artists that kindof control. “It meant having motionblur, dealing with complex lightingsituations, and dealing with incredi-ble complexity,” says Catmull.

He notes he could never havepredicted exactly where the work hewas doing would lead, and hebelieves that was a good thing.“Predicting the future gets in the wayof making the future,” he says. “Iviewed my role as creating an envi-ronment where many talented peo-ple would be in dynamic balancewith each other, causing magicalthings to happen.”

John A. Bonner Medal of CommendationBorn into a family of engi-

neers, Kimball studied electricalengineering at the University ofCalifornia-Los Angeles. During asummer internship at the JetPropulsion Laboratory, he wasassigned to write low-level softwareand developed such an affinity forthe task that he changed his focus tocomputer engineering. After he grad-uated, he went to work at JPL.

In 1980, he moved to WaltDisney Productions, where he founda very different culture. “At JPL, I wasworrying about the quality of the sig-nal we were getting back from space-craft, and I was worrying about accu-racy to 14 decimal places,” he recalls.“It was a bit of a mindset change tocome into an industry where nobodycared about 14 decimal places. Whatmattered was whether it looked goodon the screen.”

One of the first filmmakersKimball worked with was ArtCruickshank. “Art had been atDisney since about 1939, and he wasthe go-to guy for special photoeffects,” recalls Kimball. “He was closeto the end of his career, and I gleaneda lot of wonderful insight from him.He had the ability to look at a setupand walk through it, then use his skill

work for computer-aided draftingprograms. In 1970, Sutherland wascontinuing to explore computergraphics with his students. “The ear-liest things were happening,”remembers Catmull. “At that time,they were making pictures of thingslike spheres and doughnuts, but itoccurred to me that someone couldmake movies that way.”

In 1972, Catmull made hisearliest contribution to the filmindustry: an animated version of hisleft hand that was eventually incor-porated into Futureworld (1976), thefirst film to use 3-D computergraphics. Catmull envisioned more.“My goal at that time was to developthe technology to where we couldmake feature films. At that point, Ithought it would take an additional10 years, and it actually took 20.”

To moviegoers, technical rev-olutions in cinema often appear tobe sudden changes, such as theintroduction of sound and color, butCatmull points out that there aremany steps along the way that makethose innovations possible. Overtwo decades, Catmull went from theUniversity of Utah to the New YorkInstitute of Technology and then toLucasfilm, where he moved intoPixar and slowly built a team thatfigured out how to use computergraphics to create an animated fea-ture.

The teams he assembled andthe organizations he founded wereresponsible for some of the mostfundamental advances in computergraphics, including image composit-ing, motion blur, subdivision sur-faces, cloth-simulation and render-ing techniques and texture map-ping. Catmull is one of the architectsof RenderMan software, which hasbeen used in 45 of the last 50 filmsnominated for Academy Awards inthe visual-effects category.

For live-action films, Ren-derMan is used to render photoreal-istic CG images that can be com-bined seamlessly with live-action

and experience to go through thepossibilities of what could be done.He opened my eyes.”

At Disney, Kimball worked onnumerous projects, including theAutomated Camera Effect System,which was originally used on TheBlack Hole (1979); Disney’s EnergyManagement and Control System;Epcot’s Imagination Pavilion ride-control system; and the specialeffects for Tron (1982), one of thefirst motion pictures to featureextensive computer graphics.

From 1986 to 1995, Kimball’smain project at Disney was theComputer Animation ProductionSystem, a comprehensive systemdesigned to help the traditional ani-mation process take advantage ofdigital technology. He focused onthe back-end engineering aspects ofthe system. “How are you going tohandle the millions and millions offiles and terabytes of data in a pro-

Above: Catmullaccepts theGordon E.Sawyer Oscar.Below: Kimballholds the JohnA. BonnerMedal ofCommendation.


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duction? No one knew how big itwas going to be, and it scared me.Each movie’s data was on the scaleof what NASA dealt with comingback from Mars planetary missionsor the moon.”

Part of Kimball’s challengewas to create a structure that wouldenable artists to bring up an imageand manipulate it, while making itpossible to track who had changedthe image and how they’d changedit. Because Disney always had multi-ple animation projects in the workssimultaneously, it was also necessarythat the file structure specify whichproject, sequence and scene animage was from.

CAPS made its debut in ascene in The Little Mermaid (1989),and The Rescuers Down Under(1990) became the first featuremade entirely with the system.Kimball recalls that when Rescuerscame out, it was clear that some-thing had changed; the film featuredmany shots with multi-plane effects,which would have been impossiblewithout CAPS. “Rescuers was not agigantic commercial success, but itholds a place as a benchmark inmoving the animation process for-ward,” he says.

The first film that really tookfull advantage of the CAPS system

was Beauty and the Beast (1991),which even featured a 3-D renderedenvironment (the ballroom scene).“Today, all animated films are envi-ronments like that, but at the time, itwas breathtaking,” says Kimball.“CAPS was not 3-D in nature, butwe built the hooks so the 3-D piecescould be put in cleanly. I’m veryproud of the fact that we were ableto build CAPS to take advantage ofnew technology we could envisionand give it the flexibility to handlemany artistic and technical chal-lenges over its 15-year life.”

Kimball became chief tech-nologist for Disney FeatureAnimation and, later, director ofdigital production for the DisneyCo. He also was an active partici-pant in the development of theDigital Cinema Initiatives, the tech-nical specifications for the packag-ing, distribution and presentationof digital motion pictures. “DCIreally fostered an industry-wide col-laboration,” he notes. “These wereinformed decisions made with thehelp of the best minds in our indus-try. We came up with specs thatcould be implemented in the near-term but hold the flexibility to pushthe art form to new levels as tech-nology advances.”

Here are the other awardspresented by the Academy Sci-TechCommittee this year:

SCIENTIFIC AND ENGINEERING AWARDS(Academy plaques)These honors are presented

for achievements that exhibit a highlevel of engineering and are impor-tant to the progress of the industry.

Erwin Melzner for the over-all concept (including the opticaland cooling systems), VolkerSchumacher for the optical designand Timo Müller for the mechani-cal design of the ArriMax 18/12lighting fixture. With its choice of

variable focus and specular reflec-tors, the superior optical andmechanical design of this lightingfixture allows it to operate at 18,000watts, producing unsurpassed lightquality while its innovative coolingsystem keeps the housing safe totouch.

Jacques Delacoux for theconcept and electronic design andAlexandre Leuchter for the soft-ware and electronic design ofTransvideo video-assist monitors.Using color LCD screens, the moni-tors provide flicker-free video-assistbright enough for use in sunlightand have become a ubiquitous toolin both spherical and anamorphiccinematography.

Bruno Coumert and JacquesDebize for the optical design andDominique Chervin andChristophe Reboulet for themechanical design of the Angenieux15-40mm and 28-76mm zoomlenses. With focus and zoom func-tions that can be easily controlled byeither the operator or focus pullerwhile filming handheld, these light-weight zoom lenses demonstrate avery high degree of engineering,supporting ease of use and quickinterchange.

TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS(Academy Certificates)These honors are presented

for accomplishments that con-tribute to the progress of the indus-try.

Steve Hylén for the conceptand his continued leadership in thefurther development of the HylénLens System. When attached to afilm or digital production camera,this versatile aerial-image device canproduce a wide variety of opticaleffects interactively, on set and inreal time without postproductionimage manipulation. �

Technical Knockouts

64 May 2009

�

�

Hylén thankshis peers while

accepting theTechnical

AchievementAward for his

role indeveloping the

Hylén LensSystem.

The 23rd Annual ASC Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography,held in February in Los Angeles, marked a first: Anthony Dod Mantle, BSC, DFFbecame the first cinematographer to win the Society’s Theatrical Release prizefor a digital/film-hybrid production, Slumdog Millionaire. One week later, hissuitcase got a bit heavier when he won the Academy Award as well.

These were the nominees for ASC Awards this year, with the winners in bold-face type:

Regular Series: Nelson Cragg, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, “For Gedda”;Ousama Rawi, BSC, CSC, The Tudors (Episode 201); Stephen Reizes, CSC, Flashpoint,“Who’s George?”; Gale Tattersall, House M.D., “House’s Head”; and Glen Winter,CSC, Smallville, “Fracture.”

Telefilm, Miniseries or Pilot: Oliver Bokelberg, BVK, My Own Worst Enemy(pilot); Michael Bonvillain, ASC, Fringe (pilot); Jon Joffin, The Andromeda Strain,Part 1; Kramer Morgenthau, ASC, Life on Mars (pilot); and David Stockton,Eleventh Hour (pilot).

Theatrical Release: Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC, Revolutionary Road and TheReader; Anthony Dod Mantle, BSC, DFF, Slumdog Millionaire; Claudio Miranda,The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Chris Menges, ASC, BSC, The Reader; andWally Pfister, ASC, The Dark Knight.

Jack Green, ASCaccepts theLifetimeAchievementAward at theSociety’s annualceremony, whichbegan with a soloperformance bycellist JasonLippmann of the Los AngelesPhilharmonic.

Photography by David Graves, Jared Jordan, Chris Mankofsky,

Phil McCarten, Danny Moloshok and Logan Schneider

Cinematography’sSummit


1. ASC President Daryn Okada makes his opening remarks; 2. Bill Roe, ASCtakes to the stage to introduce the Regular Series category; 3. actor Simon

Baker prepares to announce the Regular Series winner; 4. Baker hands theprize to Nelson Cragg (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation); 5. Richard Crudo, ASC

addresses the guests; 6. Ralph Woolsey, ASC shares some wisdom; 7. EllenKuras, ASC embraces Deluxe Labs President and CEO Cyril Drabinsky, who

presented a salute to former ASC Awards Chairman Bud Stone; 8. Drabinskypresents the Bud Stone Heritage Award to student winners Nathan Levine-

Heaney of Florida State University (foreground) and Aaron Dunson of theUniversity of North Carolina (background); 9. director Larry Yust sets the stage

for Isidore Mankofsky, ASC; 10. Mankofsky thanks the crowd after receivingthe Presidents Award for his service to the Society; 11. Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC(left) welcomes director Paul Mazursky at the podium; 12. Mazursky presents

the International Award to longtime friend Don McAlpine, ASC, ACS.

66 May 2009

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1. Robbie Greenberg, ASC introduces theTV Movie/Miniseries Pilot category; 2. actress Christina Hendricks stridesonstage with the envelope; 3. DavidStockton cradles his award after winningfor “Resurrection,” the pilot episode ofEleventh Hour; 4. Donald M. Morgan, ASCdraws laughs with his introduction of theCareer Achievement in Television Award,which he earned in 2007; 5. LowellPeterson, ASC sets the stage for RobertLiu, ASC; 6. Liu graciously accepts theCareer Achievement in Television honor;7. Owen Roizman, ASC (left) presents anhonorary Society membership to formerEastman Kodak executive Brian Spruill; 8. Caleb Deschanel, ASC paves the wayfor the Board of Governors Award; 9. director Christopher Nolan brings witand insight to his acceptance speech forthe Board of Governors honor; 10. Nolanembraces faithful ally Wally Pfister, ASC;11. Haskell Wexler, ASC cedes thespotlight to actor/director Clint Eastwood;12. Eastwood demonstrates the properway to look through a camera’s eyepiece;13. Eastwood hands the LifetimeAchievement Award to longtimecollaborator Jack Green, ASC.


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1. Robert Elswit, ASC introduces the Theatrical Release category;2. actress Amy Adams prepares to crack the envelope; 3. Anthony

Dod Mantle, BSC, DFF appears humbled by his win for SlumdogMillionaire; 4. ASC Awards Chairman Michael Goi brings theceremony to a graceful conclusion; 5. Eric Roizman; his dad,

Owen, and double nominee Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC (far right)provide Stockton with a memorable snap for his scrapbook;

6. Mankofsky enjoys the ambience with his wife, Chris; 7. Michael Negrin, ASC is flanked by his wife, Cari (left), and

Nancy Schreiber, ASC; 8. Filmmaker Matthew Pearce talks shopwith John Newby, ASC, Newby’s wife, Erica Fox and David Harp;

9. Dean Semler, ASC, ACS (left), and his wife, Annie, catch upwith Ann Murtha and her husband, Steve Mason, ASC, ACS;

10. Goi embraces his wife, Gina; 11. Deluxe exec Beverly Woodcatches up with Kuras.

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1. Owen and Mona Roizman enjoy the party with ASC membersChristopher Baffa and Woody Omens; 2. John Toll, ASC makes the roundswith Deakins, gaffer Randy Woodside and Elswit; 3. Judy Stone (center)spends quality time with her family; 4. Mankofsky and Omens get festive;5. James Deakins and her husband find themselves on the other side ofthe lens; 6. Delphine Figueras alongside her husband, AC executiveeditor Stephen Pizzello; 7. Larry Mole Parker and his wife, Pam, stop forcocktails with Margie and Ron Smith; 8. Liu and his wife, Ivy, enjoy thesupport of their family; 9. ASC members Amy Vincent (far left) and JacekLaskus flank cinematographer Lisa Wiegand; 10. Michael Zacharia andChuck Minsky, ASC link up with Kodak’s Michael Morelli.

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70 May 2009

1. Ousama Rawi, BSC, CSC (The Tudors) andGoi meet at the annual Nominees’ Dinner;

2. Roizman introduces nominee StephenReizes, CSC (Flashpoint); 3. Levine-Heaney

thanks the ASC; 4. Dunson basks in the glow of Society recognition; 5. Glen Winter, CSC(Smallville) accepts his nomination plaque; 6. Oliver Bokelberg, BVK earns a nod for hiswork; 7. Jon Joffin (The Andromeda Strain) enjoys his photo op; 8. Kramer Morgenthau,ASC (Life on Mars) is pleased to take the podium; 9. Stockton shows off his hardware;

10. Roizman helps the oft-nominated Deakins heft another pair of plaques; 11. DodMantle finishes a journey that began in Bombay on Slumdog Millionaire; 12. ClaudioMiranda takes pride in his nomination for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; 13.

Pfister earns the embrace of his peers for The Dark Knight.

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1. Harrison Engle socializes with Sol Negrin, ASC and his wife, Betty, and Kees Van Oostrum and his wife, Esther Spitz, at the ASC Awards afterparty; 2. Reizesgreets Levine-Heaney and Dunson; 3. Miranda and his wife, Kelli Bean, say hello to Vincent; 4. George Spiro Dibie, ASC circles the room with his daughter,Suzanne Shook; 5. McAlpine and his wife, Jeanette, enjoy his big night; 6. Spruill and his wife, Joanne (center), make the rounds with Kodak mainstays Morelli,Michael Zakula and Candace Chatman; 7. ASC compatriots Pfister, Deakins, Richard Edlund and Omens form a formidable foursome; 8. Brad Six, ASC, Woolseyand Parker talk shop; 9. Morgenthau and his date, Tracy Fleischman, soak up the celebratory vibe; 10. Spruill (second from left) accepts congratulations fromFrancis and Woody Omens and James Deakins; 11. the evening’s honorees step up for a group shot.

72 May 2009

1. Society members Victor Kemper, Omens and Stephen Burum check out the ASC Open House at Mole-Richardson in Hollywood; 2. Mole-Richardson president Parker hosts ASC members Semler, James Chressanthis and Green; 3. Minsky and Green don’t really need those name tags;4. AC associate editor Jon Witmer (far left) moderates a discussion with the Regular Series nominees; 5. Pizzello (far left) prompts discussionamong the TV Movie/Miniseries/Pilot nominees; 6. Vincent welcomes an affectionate embrace from Peter James, ASC, ACS; 7. Green and Morganbond; 8. Crudo (far left) amuses his panel of career honorees.

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1. Vincent, who played a keyrole in organizing the OpenHouse, thanks theparticipants; 2. Deakins,Pfister, Dod Mantle, Mirandaand Crudo form a firing linefor give-and-take withattendees; 3. guests mingle onthe Mole-Richardsonsoundstage; 4. MatthewLibatique, ASC stages asummit with “stealth hipster”Parker; 5. resplendent in fancyhats, nominees’ spouses enjoya tea party at the Hollywoodhome of Bob Primes, ASC andhis wife, Theo.

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Crafting a Stylized Caperby Stephanie Argy

In the years leading up to WorldWar II, cryptographers devised increas-ingly difficult-to-crack codes for secretmilitary and government messages.Eventually, they created machines thatcould produce codes almost impossiblefor humans to decipher. In accounts ofthe era, there are rumors of dangerousand illegal “black-bag” missions, inwhich military operatives would secretlysneak peeks at other countries’machines to figure out exactly how theyworked. The adventure film The RedMachine imagines one of thosemissions: the breaching of Japan’s firstcode machine by a U.S. Navy spy (LeePerkins) and a rambunctious professionalthief (Donal Thoms-Cappello), who isforced to help the spy break into a Japan-ese officer’s apartment in Washington,D.C.

I co-directed The Red Machinewith Alec Boehm, who was also thecinematographer. Though we had co-written and co-directed several shortsand collaborated on others’ projects, thiswas our first feature as co-directors. In

hindsight, making The Red Machine wasalmost as impossible as our heroes’mission — on a very low budget, we hadto depict Washington in 1935 and,through flashbacks, Tokyo in 1928; andwe had 32 actors in period costumes, 36separate locations and a 27-day shoot.

Our goal was to create somethingstylized not only in the narrative and theperformances, but also in the visuals andthe audio. We realized from the begin-ning that postproduction was going to bevery important, and many of the deci-sions we made about methods andequipment were informed by the work-flow we had in mind. For example, weknew we would need to shoot extraelements all through post to help us dovisual effects and matte paintings, so wedecided early on that we should buy theproduction camera; that way, we couldavoid paying for a rental every time wehad to shoot another pickup.

After testing several cameras, wesettled on a Panasonic AG-HVX200,largely because it gave us the look wewanted: a period feel reminiscent ofmovies that were made in the 1970s butset in the 1930s, such as Hard Times orThe Sting. We were also very comfort-

able with the way the HVX200 fit intoour existing post workflow; we edit inApple Final Cut Pro and do our effectsusing primarily Adobe Photoshop andAfter Effects.

We were lucky to have an extra-ordinarily resourceful productiondesigner, Mel Horan, who took theminuscule resources we had for the artdepartment, applied his encyclopedicknowledge of both 1930s style andJapanese art and culture, and createdsets that included the offices of U.S.Naval Intelligence, a Tokyo geisha bar,and a cigar-store hideout in Washing-ton.

Once we reached the post phase,we began to do what we hope are invis-ible fixes, including painting out boomsthat dipped into frame and eliminatinganachronistic details such as light-switches. We also digitally repainteddoors and altered windows, addedfoliage to some exteriors, and erased afly that had landed on an actor’s lipduring a shot.

Matte paintings we created forexteriors included a jewelry store atnight, a listening post in the SouthPacific, the exterior of the JapaneseEmbassy, the front gate of the Washing-ton Zoo, and the apartment buildingwhere the Japanese officer lives andkeeps his code machine. And becausethis is a movie about cryptography, wehid ciphers and clues in some mattepaintings. During post, we used theHVX200 constantly, shooting elementssuch as flags, clouds, storefronts, trees,and even our cat, who makes a cameoappearance as an alley cat. Two verygenerous artists helped us with ourvisual effects: Matte painter Mark Sulli-van created the exterior of the Office ofNaval Intelligence, and visual-effectssupervisor Ted Rae gave us advice allalong the way.

Alec, the co-director and cine-

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74 May 2009

matographer, is also a musician, and hehas a long history of working withsound. While I focused on the pictureedit and the visual effects, he began oursound design. We knew we didn’t wanta movie that was heavy with obviousscore. Instead, we were looking formore of a soundscape, with a musicalitythat came from sound effects as muchas possible. Using a handheld digitalaudio recorder, the Samson Zoom H4,Alec began gathering sounds and ambi-ences everywhere he went, and thenbuilt those into the non-naturalisticsound texture we wanted. Again, weincorporated ciphers, such as Morsecode messages that play in the back-ground of certain scenes.

For us, much of the fun of post onThe Red Machine was putting our handson every frame that we’d shot andextracting every possible lesson fromdoing a first feature. Ultimately,however, there came a point when werealized we needed to go beyond wherewe could take ourselves. For both thesound mix and the color correction, weknew we lacked the ability to properlymonitor what we were hearing andseeing. We also knew that other peoplehad more refined tools, more knowl-edge about how work done in theirsystems would translate to the outsideworld, and more skills and perspectivethan we could bring to the project.

On the sound side, a friend’srecommendation brought us to DinoHermann, a sound mixer who walked usthrough our first experience mixing inDolby Digital 5.1. Though the optionsavailable were very enticing, Dino keptus from getting too gimmicky about theuse of those surround channels.

The color-correction decisionwas more complicated. We looked intoevery option, from getting better toolsand doing the work ourselves to export-ing our entire cut to HDCam-SR andthen ingesting that into a Baselight orLustre for grading. Finally, we chose todo it at Hollywood-DI, where we workedin Apple Color with colorist Aaron Peak.

Color-correction and its variousmethodologies are topics that can ignitereligious wars, and we know there are

many arguments for taking paths otherthan the one we chose. But because ofour overall workflow, we believed work-ing in Color was the best choice on thisproject. One big reason was the abilityto continue to make adjustments to oureffects shots based on what we wereseeing during color-correction. The grad-ing theater at Hollywood-DI is equippedwith a Barco 2K DLP projector and a 20'Stewart DI screen, a far cry from theApple Cinema Display on which we’dcreated the effects shots and mattepaintings. It was our first chance to eval-uate our effects shots at that scale andour last chance to fix anything that both-ered us. Had we gone with a workflowthat involved exporting the cut toHDCam-SR, dropping those extra shotsinto the project would have been a lessfluid process.

Though we could keep our filesdigital all through color-correction, wedid one file-format conversion when wedid our media management in Final CutPro immediately prior to the grading. Afriend of mine once observed that whenDVCPro-HD footage is being color-corrected, it’s about as fragile as wettissue paper. To thicken it up a little,Aaron suggested we convert our origi-nal DVCPro-HD clips to Apple ProRes422 HQ, bringing us from 8-bit to 10-bitcolor space.

One of the artifacts we noticed ina few effects shots on the big screenwas banding in low-light areas that hadsubtle light gradation — interior wallswith streetlight falling on them, forexample. We found we could reduce theproblem by making our After Effects

projects 16-bit, then rendering theeffects shots to ProRes 4:2:2 HQ directlyout of After Effects.

During preproduction, we hadmade one simple color decision: all ofthe set dressing, props and costumes inthe military/spy world should be gray,blue, black or white, and everything inthe thieves’ world should be brown orgreen. When it came time for the colorcorrection, our original thought was totake the saturation way down, but thenwe saw that we were reducing thedifferences between our two palettestoo much. Moreover, we found that,oddly enough, Aaron could sell thedesaturated feeling with more colorthan we realized.

The second surprise came whenwe tried to push the military sequenceseven more toward blue; on a shot-by-shot basis, the look worked, but whenwe saw it in real time, it becameoppressive, the faces too corpse-like.Again, Aaron introduced a little more ofour original color back into the images,letting the production- and costume-design color choices sell the effect.

We were privileged to be able toreally experiment with the look andpush for the stylized feel we wanted. Atone point, Aaron noted that color-correction is relatively easy if you’re justbalancing the images as they were shot,but going for a more stylized look defi-nitely complicates things. But, headded, “So many indie movies are madetoday, you need to do everything tomake yours stand out, and color-correc-tion is one way to do that.”

�


U.S. Navy Lt. F.Ellis Coburn (LeePerkins) gets hisfirst look insidethe top-secretJapanese codemachine.

Creating a Teen Perspectiveby Jay Holben

When a team at Hollywood posthouse Digital Jungle began working onthe feature My Suicide, they quicklyrealized “it was a puzzle unlike anythingwe’d ever seen,” says Dennis Ho, thecompany’s president. “It was a veryunique, complex project, incorporatingmany different formats, frame rates,aspect ratios and resolutions.”

That was the idea from theoutset. My Suicide follows a teen film-maker, Archie Williams (GabrielSunday), who announces to his video-production class that he intends to killhimself, and writer/director David LeeMiller wanted the film to look likeArchie’s own creation. “I conceived thismovie with my son, Jordan, a youngdigital filmmaker weaned on Final CutPro, and I wanted it to look like some-thing Archie has been working on formany years,” says Miller. “I wanted tomake it just like a young kid would.”

This meant using a hodgepodgeof media, including standard- and high-definition video, Internet-compressedMPEG material, Flash video and digitalHi-8 video. Archie has his own studio athome, complete with greenscreen, FinalCut Pro, Adobe After Effects, lights andseveral cameras. “We did a lot ofanimation with Flash and otherprograms and combined thosesequences with different formats, alongwith a number of effects created in AfterEffects,” recalls Miller. “We startedshooting with about $50 and a Canon

76 May 2009

XL1 in December 2004, before we evenhad a script.” Through the Brooks Insti-tute of Photography, he located cine-matographer Angie Hill, who was asenior at the time. “Angie, Gabriel and Ishot a lot of material, including a trailer,which we used to raise some money,”he explains.

After securing some financing,Miller wrote the screenplay (with EricAdams) and hired cinematographer LisaWiegand (Little Athens, AC May ’05) toshoot the narrative body of the film.Because a great deal of footage hadalready been shot in standard-def,Wiegand recommended staying withthat format. The production chose aPanasonic AJ-SDX900 (DVCPro50),three Panasonic AG-DVX100As, andseveral Panasonic PV-DV103 consumer-grade palmcorders. In addition, Millergave Canon GL1 cameras to severalhigh-school students and asked them toshoot footage of other teens discussingsuicide. “We had to have spreadsheetsdetailing which cameras would be usedfor what coverage,” recalls Wiegand.“At times, we were rolling five or sixcameras. The actors were often work-ing as their own camera operators, andmy first assistant and key grip wereworking as operators in someinstances. We had to have a very flexi-ble crew to work on such a uniqueproject.”

Much of the prep time wasspent discussing whether an objectivepoint of view should be incorporatedinto the film — if the movie is Archie’screation, would it comprise only imagescaptured by him and his friends? Millerand Wiegand eventually decided tointegrate an objective camera but with-out differentiating its look; this meantthe POV would jump from objective tosubjective without visual distinction.

Miller asked Sunday, the leadactor, to share editing duties withMiller’s son, Jordan. “I felt they shouldcut the picture to really make it feel likea young person’s project,” he says.“Then, it became a process of writingon the timeline, taking what we hadbuilt in our three-act story structure inprincipal photography, and going out

and shooting more elements to add tothe story and flesh it out.”

This process of “adding on,”mixing post with principal photography,ran from 2005 to January 2009, withHill, Sunday and Miller shootingelements and new scenes throughoutthat period. The final cut, which mixesthe 16x9 and 4x3 aspect ratios, incorpo-rates footage Hill shot with a PanasonicP2 AG-HVX200 in both 1920x1080 and1280x720 HD formats. (Hill, whoresumed cinematographer duties afterWiegand completed the 19-day mainshoot, is credited as a co-director ofphotography.)

At Digital Jungle, the projectwas ingested into a Quantel Pablo, up-rezzed to 1920x1080 HD resolution, andfinalized by colorist John Scheer, aformer visual-effects artist. “Thebiggest challenge was understandingwhere the filmmakers wanted to gocolor-wise,” says Scheer. “Typically,you’d color the objective camera oneway and the others differently, but thefilmmakers only wanted to do thatsometimes, not consistently. As acolorist, you want to match scene-to-scene, and it was a bit of a struggle tohear them say, ‘No, make thiscompletely different.’ But I came tounderstand where they were going —it’s a class project, and it’s supposed tolook like one. You might see a littlegreen fringe on a composite or someeffects that aren’t quite done right. It’s astudent work.”

My Suicide caught the attentionof some major Hollywood players,including Harold Ramis, who signed onas an executive producer and attractedother talent for on-camera contribu-tions, including David Carradine, MarielHemingway and Joe Mantegna. Thefilm won the Crystal Bear for BestFeature in the “Generation 14+” cate-gory at the Berlin Film Festival, where itwas projected digitally from HDCam-SRtape. It was given its U.S. premiere atSouth by Southwest in March. �

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Liquid Pictures Dives into 3-DSpecializing in 3-D production

and cinematography, Liquid Pictures hasunveiled the Liquid Pictures 4K 3-D Digi-tal Cinema Camera System, which isuniquely built for a range of acquisitionoptions and includes a digital 3-D under-water beam-splitter housing.

“We’re committed to producingmainstream 3-D films and content thatwill entertain audiences with an immer-sive stereoscopic experience,” says D.J.Roller, company founder. “Until now,there was no all-in-one 3-D camerasystem capable of wet or dry [shooting]in a beam-splitter configuration.Because we’re working on 3-D features,commercials and films for 3-D Imaxtheaters, we needed a completely self-contained system capable of shooting aspectacular vista, Hollywood actionsequences or a fingernail-sized creatureat the bottom of the ocean.”

Roller’s design was executed by ateam of engineers tasked with creatinga streamlined process for manufacturingmultiple units on demand and “future-proofing” the system for compatibilitywith upcoming Red cameras, such asthe Epic and Scarlet. The 4K 3-D DigitalCinema Camera System can also beadapted to Sony F35, Phantom HD andPhantom 65 cameras.

For more information, visitwww.liquidpictures3d.com.

2 Dollies from Grip Factory MunichGrip Factory Munich has intro-

duced the GF-Primo and GF-Secondoelectromechanical dollies.

The deluxe GF-Primo provides a“one-touch” central gearbox for select-ing front, rear and crab steering. Thenew, patented, electromechanical verti-cal column requires minimal mainte-nance and provides a quiet, smoothmovement to lift the camera and twooperators; the movement can becontrolled either via wireless radio or asecondary cable control. Additionally, a

turnstile mount and a dolly platformsystem offer new possibilities forcamera rigging and movement.

The GF-Secondo is effectivelythe more economical of the two dollies,although it is possible to upgrade theGF-Secondo to a GF-Primo. The maindifferences between the two dollies area fifth, central steering position on theGF-Primo and no “one-touch” control forthe GF-Secondo. With both dollies, allessential data is displayed on thescreen of the hand control, ergonomi-cally designed by CMotion, with whichthe operator can monitor battery

consumption and status, column limitsand markers, motor temperature andmore. Position markers are easily set torepeat shots, and editing the positionsis a simple process.

Both the GF-Primo and GF-Secondo’s columns can rotate and sepa-rate from the dolly base. The startingposition on the column is a low 27",with a lift range of 27" for a maximumheight of 54", achievable in 2.5 seconds.The turnstile mount accepts fouradapters to provide a wider range ofseating and camera positions, includingtwo cameras and two persons, and thestable, multi-functional platform ismachined to provide a selection of holesfor mounting various adapters such aslighting stands, monitor holders andseat-arm extensions while also givingthe operator a secure base to stand on.The telescopic, inclining steering rodprovides increased maneuverability, andsteering-mode selection is a simplematter of twisting a switch. A “drop-and-go” battery system enables batter-ies to be quickly slotted into position.

For more information, visitwww.g-f-m.net.

Sohonet Launches VesselSohonet Solutions, the digital

workflow consultancy arm of Sohonet,has launched Vessel, its digital-negativemanagement service aimed at featureproductions. Through continuous, auto-mated tracking of editorial decisions

New Products & Services

78 May 2009

made during production, Vessel is ableto make intelligent decisions aboutmanagement of the digital negative,maintaining constant production accessto active, uncompressed frames. Thisstreamlines operations and gives film-makers greater control over theirprojects at all stages.

Vessel’s intelligent automationdrastically reduces the volume and opti-mizes the movement of uncompresseddata flow during production. Comparedwith brute-force data-managementapproaches, the system reduces thevolume of data movement by up to200:1 while working with completelyuncompressed files. Additionally, Vesselautomatically collates files to behanded off to every branch of productionand post, from editorial to visual effectsand digital intermediate.

“With digital-film cameras suchas the D21, Genesis and F35, completefile-based workflows are finally becom-ing possible for digital productions,”says Jon Ferguy, Sohonet Solutionssenior partner and Sohonet CTO.“Vessel provides a streamlined solutionfor data-heavy digital productions. Itsintelligent design assures that criticalframes from the digital negative arealways in the right place at the righttime and in the right format.”

Vessel is inherently secure;continuous tracking of the data criticalto the production enables the system tocreate a continuously updated safetynet for digital negative data, leading toan exceptional ability for rapid disasterrecovery.

For more information, visitwww.sohonet.co.uk.

FilmLight Serves up BLTFilmLight has introduced the

Baselight Transfer, a low-cost near-setand postproduction solution for rapidlyviewing, grading and transferringRedcode RAW camera content toeditable dailies or online conforms.

Consisting of a 5U 12TB RAID5chassis, the BLT is a standalone systemand incorporates Baselight’s powerfulconform and primary-grading toolsets,16 CPU cores, GPU acceleration, three

compact flash (CF) card readers andTruelight color management. The BLTcan be used near set to instantly viewRedcode RAW camera rushes andconfirm shot integrity; it can also beused in a post environment to enablerapid conversion of Redcode RAWcontent into either graded dailies or aconformed online.

Mike Grieve, sales director atFilmLight, says, “BLT was designed toaddress the four most common require-ments that our customers requestedfrom a Red workflow: immediate real-time playback, near-real-time DNxHDMXF disc deliverables, metadata main-tained regardless of output, and fast,problem-free conforms.”

For more information, visitwww.filmlight.ltd.uk.

Barger Illuminates LitestripsBarger-Lite has introduced

Litestrips, available in six- and four-bulbconfigurations and incorporating 650-watt FRK single-ended bulbs. The unitscan be used in either horizontal or verti-cal configurations and can be combinedwith Chimera Strip Banks and LighttoolsSoft Egg Crates to create a soft,

controlled source.The six-bulb Litestrip weighs 22

pounds and measures 33.5" wide, 16"high and 11.25" deep; the four-bulbLitestrip measures 23" wide, 16" highand 11.25" deep. In addition to 650-wattFRK (120-volt) globes, the fixtures arealso compatible with 650-watt FRM(240-volt) and FRL (230-volt) globes; 500-watt FRG (120-volt), FRJ (240-volt) andFRH (230-volt) globes; and 300-wattFKW (120-volt), FSK (240-volt) and FSI(230-volt) globes.

For more information, visitwww.barger-lite.com.

Bron Kobold Adds All-Weather HMIBron Kobold USA has unveiled

the DW 400 All-Weather HMI and a lineof new production kits.

Completing the company’s line ofsmall-wattage, all-weather (IP 54),

multi-functional HMIs, the DW 400 canbe configured as a Par or open-face unit;it can also be used for bare-bulb appli-cations with softboxes and lanterns, andit can be used with the ETC Source Fourellipsoidal. Conversion from one config-uration to another is fast and simple,requiring no tools.

The fixture casing is made ofhigh-strength aluminum, and the HMI/hrlamp mounts in a standard GZZ9.5single-ended socket for high efficiency.The igniter is watertight and will starthot or cold even in wet conditions. Withits reflector, the DW 400 weighs only 5.5pounds, and without the reflector itmeasures 4.5"x4"x3.5". Open-faced, thelight angle can be focused between 15and 45 degrees using the ergonomicfocus knob, and four lenses complementthe Par configuration to either spot orflood the beam.


�

The system comes with theKobold EWB 400-575-watt AC ballast,and it is also compatible with the EWB400-575-800 ballast. The EWB 400-575weighs just 7.3 pounds, is rated IP 43,and features automatic voltage selec-tion and dimming capability.

The company has also designednew cases and Par kits for the completeline of all-weather HMIs. Each Par kit isdesigned to be complete and ready forany type of location or studio shoot,featuring an extra head cable, extrascrims and — in the DW 200 and DW400 kits — a Soft Box Adapter.

For more information, visitwww.bron-kobold-usa.com.

Rololight Reduces Softbox PricingThe Rololight Softbox is a contin-

uous fluorescent lighting system forphotographers and videographers with anumber of unique benefits. As the namesuggests, the Rololight can be rolled upto fit into a small carrying bag for easeof transport; a standard light kit and bagweighs less than 10 pounds.

Each fluorescent light on theSoftbox contains its own built-in elec-tronic ballast, allowing each individuallight to be detached and still light up. Inan eight-light unit, users actually geteight lights that can be used together ina rigid bank or as individual lights.

“Over the past year, we madesignificant investment to streamline ourmanufacturing process, have increasedproduction capacity and worked closelywith suppliers to reduce raw-materialcosts,” says Robert Landry, president ofRololight Corp. “We are happy to pass

these savings on to our customers. Pric-ing varies depending on accessoriesand number of lights, however, gener-ally speaking we are talking about a 20-to 25-percent decrease in price.”

Each kit comes with four or eightlights and is available in either daylight-or tungsten-balanced color tempera-tures. Additionally, more lights can beadded to the basic Softbox by simplydaisy-chaining them together. Powerconsumption is minimal, so multipleunits can be plugged into one electricaloutlet without affecting output. Also,each fluorescent tube comes coated in aprotective polycarbonate tubing to avoidbreakage.

For more information, visitwww.rololight.com.

Gyoury Lighting EvolvesMean St. Productions has

updated its Gyoury Light System —developed by director/cinematographerChris Gyoury — and re-branded it asGyoury Evolved Lighting, which nowboasts an expanded offering of lightingkits as well as an educational Web site.

“We’re excited about our newWeb presence and its ability to sharethe greater story of the Gyoury EvolvedLighting system,” says ChristopherHarper, director of marketing for MeanSt. Productions. “The new site providesusers a variety of educational videos forthose already using the system, as wellas sharing how, with the significantupgrades made over the years, itsversatility has been optimized for theever-evolving needs of the industry. Andwith the new addition of our lighting-kitline, professionals and beginners alikewill enjoy new economies and value likenever before.”

The Gyoury Evolved Lightingsystem enables filmmakers to easilyattend to indoor and outdoor lightingneeds, in studio or on location. GyouryLight Wands comprise the heart of thesystem; the dimmable 55-watt fluores-cent lights are available in daylight andtungsten color temperatures. Each LightWand requires only ½ amp of power,maximizing mobility and multi-houroperation. Color filter sleeves are alsoavailable and slide over the Wands.

Gyoury Evolved Lighting offersthree lighting kits: Basic, Premium andElite. The Elite comes fully loaded withtwo removable reflectors, six GyouryWands, a lantern kit, a portable carryingcase, 20' Wand extension cords, twoball mounts, two removable dimmingballasts, a pin-ball adapter, two minireflectors, an egg crate and a pistol grip.

For more information, visitwww.evolvedlighting.com.

Ikan Intros DirectorIkan has introduced the Director,

a handheld production monitor withbuilt-in LANC control for zoom, focusand record functions for Sony andCanon cameras, enabling hands-freecamera operation in locked-off shots.

The high-resolution LCD monitorboasts variable aspect ratio, safe-areaguides, a headphone-out port and A/Vinput. The unit can be powered by eitherthe included AC Power adaptor or theinternal rechargeable battery. The Direc-tor retails for $499 and also comes witha 6" break-out AV cable, a 6' LANC cableand a 6' A/V-R cable. An optional sunhood is also available for $34.95.

For more information, visitwww.ikancorp.com.

80 May 2009

LCD Monitor from PluraPlura Broadcast has introduced

the PBM-070 monitor, a true-black,widescreen, 7" LCD with LED backlight-ing and support for HD/SD-SDI, RGB,component and composite signals,including digital and analog audio.

With a slim design and fastresponse time, the PBM-070 offerssmooth video streaming, high bright-ness and contrast ratio, wide viewing

angles and accurate color reproduction.Other features include support forclosed captioning CEA (608/708), V-Chip, advanced waveform (YCbCr selec-table), vectorscope (75 or 100 percent),EBU/user markers, source-ID display, V-mount and more. The monitor alsosupports an auto-calibration mecha-nism using ICAC (Intelligent Connectionfor Alignment and Calibration) andsophisticated calibration tools to adjustcolor temperatures and gammasettings.

The PBM-070 has a suggestedprice of $2,500. For more information,visit www.plurabroadcast.com. �

81

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CLASSIFIED AD RATES

All classifications are $4.50 per word. Words set in boldface or all capitals are $5.00 per word. First word of ad andadvertiser’s name can be set in capitals without extracharge. No agency commission or discounts on clas si fiedadvertising.PAYMENT MUST AC COM PA NY ORDER. VISA, Master-card, AmEx and Discover card are ac cept ed. Send ad toClas si fied Ad ver tis ing, Amer i can Cin e ma tog ra pher,P.O. Box 2230, Hol ly wood, CA 90078. Or FAX (323) 876-4973. Dead line for payment and copy must be in the officeby 15th of second month preceding pub li ca tion. Sub ject mat -ter is lim it ed to items and ser vic es per tain ing to film mak ingand vid eo pro duc tion. Words used are sub ject to mag a zinestyle ab bre vi a tion. Min i mum amount per ad: $45

CLASSIFIEDS ON-LINEAds may now also be placed in the on-line Clas-sifieds at the ASC web site.

Internet ads are seen around the world at thesame great rate as in print, or for slightly moreyou can appear both online and in print.

For more information please visitwww.theasc.com/advertiser, or e-mail: [email protected].

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Advertiser’s Index16x9, Inc. 82

AC 1, 87 Alamar Productions, Inc. 82Alan Gordon Enterprises

82, 83

Backstage Equipment, Inc. 6

Barger-lite 81Burrell Enterprises 82

Camelot Broadcasting Service 61

CamMate Systems 82Cavision Enterprises 17Center for Digital Imaging

Arts at Boston 45Chapman/Leonard Studio

Equipment Inc. 9Cine Gear Expo 85Cinekinetic 4Cinematographer Style 34Cinema Vision 83Cinematography

Electronics 45Clairmont Film & Digital 43Cooke Optics 6

Deluxe 5

Eastman Kodak 13, C4

Filmtools 45FTC/West 82Fuji Motion Picture 33

Glidecam Industries 11Golden Animations 83

HD Expo 77Hybrid Cases 83

Innovision 82

K 5600, Inc. 55Kino Flo 35

Laffoux Solutions, Inc. 82Lights! Action! Company 83LitePanels 2London Film School 81

Maine Media Workshops 61Movie Tech AG 83MP&E Mayo Productions 83

New York Film Academy 15

Oppenheimer Camera Prod. 82

P+S Technik C2Panasonic Broadcast 7Photon Beard 83Pille Film Gmbh 82Professional Sound 81Pro8mm 82

Silicon Imaging C2

Stanton Video Services 6Super16 Inc. 83

Thales Angenieux 23Tiffen C3

VF Gadgets, Inc. 82Videocraft Equipment Pty

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Walter Klassen FX 47Willy’s Widgets 82www.theasc.com 34, 46, 54

Zacuto Films 83ZGC, Inc. C2, 6

84

JOIN HOLLYWOOD’S PROFESSIONALS IN 2009For the Pre-Production • Production • Post Production Community

Contact us @ 310/472-0809 • [email protected]

CALL FOR ENTRIES!THE FILM SERIES AT CINE GEAR EXPO 2009Independent, Student Short Film & Feature Film CompetitionANNOUNCING NEW!The Expansion Into Documentary Film Competition Deadlines For Submissions Are:Early 3.15.09 • Regular 4.08.09 • Late 5.01.09

For more information and updates, visit us at: WWW.CINEGEAREXPO.COM

Paramount Pictures Studio Lot, Hollywood, CAExhibition & Premiere Seminars: June 5 - 6, 2009The Film Series at Cine Gear Expo: June 4 - 6, 2009Master Class Seminars: June 7, 2009

86 May 2009

experience led to another location-based job, shooting the series Going toExtremes in Jamaica.

Lonsdale has notched credits onsuch series as Bones, Northern Expo-sure, Space: Above and Beyond and TheMagnificent Seven; the miniseries TheLast Don (1997); and the telefilm HighSchool Musical (2006).

Krepela, Fiore in OmahaSociety members Neil Krepela

(right) and Mauro Fiore (left) wereguests at the Omaha Film Festival inFebruary. Fiore hosted “Behind the Lens:A Cinematographer’s Look at Filmmak-

ing,” and Krepela handled “VisualEffects in Hollywood: FilmmakingThrough the Eyes of a Visual-EffectsArtist.” Later, both cinematographersparticipated in a Q&A moderated by BenDrickey (center).

Pfister, Charters at HD ExpoWally Pfister, ASC sat down

for the keynote conversation with Vari-ety’s Peter Caranicas during the HD Expoin March. Their lively discussionaddressed the intersection of art and

Lonsdale Joins ClubGrowing up in Southern Califor-

nia, new ASC member Gordon C. Lons-dale spent his Saturdays watchingdouble features and nurturing a growingpassion for motion pictures. His firsthands-on experience with photographycame in ninth grade, when he receivedan Argus Rangefinder camera, and hefollowed his passion for art to BrighamYoung University, where he earned adegree in communications with anemphasis in photography.

Lonsdale worked at the univer-sity’s motion-picture and televisionstudio, and by the time he graduated, hehad compiled enough of a reel to earn aplace on ASC member Reed Smoot’scamera crew, on which he spent the nexteight years working on features, Imaxfilms, telefilms and documentaries. Lons-dale returned to BYU to serve as the resi-dent cinematographer, and during histenure, he traveled the globe and shot arange of projects.

While living in Utah, Lonsdalebegan shooting telefilms, including AMore Perfect Union and It Nearly Wasn’tChristmas (both 1989). On the latter,Lonsdale worked with director BurtBrinkerhoff, with whom he reteamed forGirl of the Limberlost (1990) and TheCase of the Silk King (1992), which wasshot in Thailand with a local crew. That

technology, focusing on the implicationsof the latest filmmaking tools from astorytelling perspective.

Rodney Charters, ASC alsoparticipated in the Expo, presenting theworkshop “Extreme Red.” He was joinedby Red camera experts Cliff Hsui, Stefanvon Bjorn, Chris Burket and TedSchilowitz.

Chicago Welcomes Zsigmond, ChressanthisIn early March, Vilmos Zsig-

mond, ASC and James Chressanthis,ASC traveled to the Windy City for aweekend of events centered on a galascreening of No Subtitles Necessary:Laszlo and Vilmos. Both cinematogra-phers participated in “A Celebration of

Cinematography,” a three-hour eventincorporating scenes from their respec-tive films, as well as a lighting workshop.While they were in town, Zsigmond andChressanthis also appeared on film criticNick Digilio’s radio show on WGN-AM.

�

Clubhouse News

88 May 2009

When you were a child, what film made the strongest impression on you?I was raised by my mother, and she didn’t get home from work until 7p.m. That allowed me to watch a movie every day on Million DollarMovie — a dollar figure that gives away the era. Each week brought anew genre, and most of the movies were in black-and-white. Iembraced them all.

Which cinematographers do you most admire?I was spinning the dial of a hotel TV recently, and a single shot fromAmerica, America, shot by Haskell Wexler, ASC, made me sit down andwatch the whole movie. ASC members Gordon Willis and Sven Nyqvistchanged the way I looked at movies and changed the way all movieslooked. Work by Robbie Müller, BVK and Juan Ruiz-Anchia, ASC mademe try harder. Nestor Alméndros, ASC showed me, and all of us, thepower of natural light. And I still hold images in my head from HenriAlekan’s work.

What sparked your interest in photography?Seeing Cartier-Bresson’s work when I was in high school. I saved up tobuy a 35mm Nikon, and to get access to my school’s darkroom, I becamethe photo editor of the yearbook, establishing a standard for sub-paryearbook effort that has probably not been matched since my tenure.

Where did you train and/or study?At New York University’s film school, I took cinematography classeswith a Czech named Beda Batka. He was overbearing and didactic butknowledgeable. He insisted all his students buy the American Cine-matographer Manual. I still have that edition.

What are some of your key artistic influences?I spent all my summers in a house without electricity; it was filled withdaylight, and we used kerosene lamps in the evenings. Perhapsbecause of that, I appreciate natural light and warm light from flames.

How did you get your first break in the business?Thanks to a sound mixer, Mark Dichter, who convinced a producer I wasa responsible guy, I was asked to shoot a half-hour TV show featuring afallen Hungarian golf pro named Julius Boros. It was a kind of travel-ogue, and Julius, who hated fishing and travel, wandered the globe,fishing in exotic locations. The soundman and I would fish, and whenone of us hooked a fish, we’d pass the rod to Julius, whom we thenfilmed landing the catch. On good days, I could persuade Julius to sit ina canoe or skiff in ankle-deep water while I put my back to the shoreand found a nice, watery background. A year later, that same producerset up a prime-time show in New York, and the next thing I knew, I wasthe director of photography. I assembled a hard-working, experiencedcrew and faked my way through two successful seasons.

What has been your most satisfyingmoment on a project?The most satisfying moment on all myprojects is when I complete the first setup. I always feel like I’ve just lostsight of land and am heading out into open water.

Have you made any memorable blunders?I refer to it as a color: cornfield black. I had to do a shot in Field of Dreamsin which a thunderstorm wakes Kevin Costner out of a deep sleep, andhe walks to the window to look out at his moonlit cornfield. We workedsix-day weeks on that movie, and that shot was scheduled for late oneSaturday night. I quickly lit the bedroom and then spent hours lighting thecornfield with a Musco and a bunch of Dinos. It took forever and involvedmeal penalties, overtime and exhaustive effort on the crew’s part. Wemade the shot and wrapped for the week. In dailies, as the camera cameup to speed, I could see the cornfield best at about a 1⁄4 of a second ofexposure. At 1⁄48 of a second, however, there was nothing out the windowexcept for an occasional highlight on a stray corn stalk. After the firsttake, the director said, ‘Are we okay, John?’ Knowing all the takes wouldbe identical, I said, ‘No.’ I think the only reason I wasn’t executed wasthat I felt worse than everyone else. We re-shot the scene with a green-screen out the window, and the cornfield was comped in later. The nexttime I light a cornfield at night, I’ll know better.

What is the best professional advice you’ve ever received?When I wanted to quit a miserable show, the director, Virgil Vogel, said,‘Kid, never quit. If you have to leave, get fired. If you quit, it will alwaysreflect on you.’

What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you?Great exhibits of still photography by W. Eugene Smith, Lee Miller andAngela Strassheim.

If you weren’t a cinematographer, what might you have been?Probably working with horses in some capacity.

Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for membership?Nancy Schreiber, Sandi Sissel and Haskell Wexler.

How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?I was a bit reluctant to join the ASC because I have three kids, and I oftenfelt I spent too much time away from them as it was. I’m grateful to havebeen invited, however, and to have overcome my shyness, if only slightly.The ASC brings together a body of knowledge, experience and dedicationthat is apparent to the entire film community. When someone outside theindustry asks me what the ASC is, I always say it is an honorary society,because it is an honor to be invited to join. �

ASC CLOSE-UPJohn Lindley, ASC

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AC mai 2009