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8 Editor's Note10 President's Desk12 Short Takes : La Premiire

18 Production Slate: A Prophet' NY Export: OpusJazz

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I The Return of Jerome Robbins

I ey.loHn Calhoun

Finger-snapping dancers on New

York City streets. Spectacular skyline views

and visrts to derelict locations populated by

athletically graceful, multi-racial youngpeople A jaz4r soundtrack punctuated by

bursts of romantic feeling. Sound familiar?

Maybe so, but |Vest Srde 5tory is not

the movie in question, ll's NY Export: Opus

Jazz, a new dance film scheduled for a

March 24 broadcast on PBS The common

feature to both is the late Jerome Robbins,

choreographer and director of both stage

and screen versions of 1.4/est 5ide Story and

choreographer of the original ballet ,NY

Export. Opus Jazz, which premiered in

1958. Though the latter rs a more formal,

abstract work, with music by Roberl Prince

as opposed to the Broadway sounds ofLeonard Bernstein, the kinship is clear

But aparl from a prelude showing

L1;ri llrll

the performers going about their daily lives,

transitions bridging the five movements,

and a verite montage of youths on the

streets, /VyExport. )pus lazz is pretty much

all dance for rts 46-minute length Relreved

of the requirements of telling a linear story

rt also has the feel of pure cinema Each ofthe five movements is shot entirely in its

own style the first with a locked-offcamera, followed by Steadicam, handheld,

crane and dolly And the frame rs anamor-phic, giving the dancers and therr backdrop

an expansive view,

According to co-directorkinematog-

rapher Jody Lee Lipes, the inspiration forOpus Jazz came after New York City Ballet

revived the dance, in 2005. "Two of the

dancers in the restaging, Ellen Bar and Sean

Suozzi, started talking about how cool this

would be as a movie, and they conceived

the story and the idea of shooting it in real

locations," says Lipes. They recognized thatwith lts kinetic rhythms and the popular

American €inematographer

African-American and Latin-American inf lu-

ences on its dancing and music, Opus Jazz

seemed destrned to burst the confines of

the stage Bar and Suozzi became executive

producers on the f lm and enlisted Lipes,

whose credrts nc ude the documentary

Brock Enright: Good Ttmes Wrll Never Be

the Same and the Ieallre Afterschool,

along with his coleagues Henry Joost (co-

director and associate producer) and Arrel

Schulman (associate producer and art direc-

tor). Lipes and Joost wrote the adaptation

for the piece

The first stage of filming took shape

in 2A07 , when the producers rarsed funds

to shoot "Passage for Two," the ballets

foufth movement "Ellen and Sean wanted

to shoot one scene from the larger film in

order to rarse more money, " says Lipes. The

location was Manhaltans High Line Park.

Referencing both i.4/est Side Story and a

pedormance of the ballet from lhe Ed Sulli-

van Show in the late 1950s, the filmmakers

decided to do the five-minute duet mostly

in a single take, using a 30 limmy Jib

mounted on a dolly to capture the dancers

from as many ang es as possible.

"We knew the piece was going to

determrne how the rest of the film wouldgo, so we were very ntent on doing it the

right way," says Lipes, "We gave ourselves

two days because we wanted it to be at

magic hour " Shooting all day to give them-selves backup footage, and as a means ofpractic ng the complex take, Lipes and his

crew completed more than 20 takes, butgot the best one at the last moment. "ltwas overcast, but at the very end of the day,

the clouds broke on the hor zon, and there

was a beautiful sunset," he says, Shooting

Kodak Vison2 250D 5205 with a PanArri

435 and a Z5A 40-200mm T4 5 Super

Panazoom lens, "l opened up all the way

and ended up pushing t 2 stops. lt was the

absolute last take, and rt was perfect,

thanks in pafi to my great focus puller, Joe

Anderson. "

What helped the team achieve it

was Joost's decision to prepare detailed

photo storyboards. "We took pictures of a

dance rehearsal with a digital SLR, and

Henry made a big board of all the key

frames with the crane n'roves," says Lipes

"We went through it with the crew and

then rehearsed it for half a day " For this

movernent, and throughout the shoot,

constant collaboration with Bar, Suozzi and

a ballet master from the Robbins Trust

helped to preserve the choreography while

enhancing it for the carnera. "The choreo-

grapher is th nking about movement as its

seen straight from the front, and some-

times it works belter to alter that a bit for

the camera, " notes L pes. "One example of

that n 'Passage for Two' is when the

camera rises up above them. The guy is

holding the g rl, who makes a sort of X with

her body. Usually thats done toward the

audience, but n this case, we had her do it

toward the sky, where the camera was."

With "Passage for Two" in hand,

the f lmmakers were able to raise the capi-

tal to film the rest of Opus lazz by 2009.

The stylistic approach to the remaining

movements had mostly been worked out,

Of course, the decrsron to shoot in the

American Cinematographer

anamorphic format, with Hawk C-Sedes

and V-Series lenses, was paft of the equa-

tion from the beginning. "Jerome Robbins

was a pedectionist, to say the least, and he

made his only film on 70mm," says Lipes.

"ln that spirit, we wanted to shoot on a

high-quality format. And when you're

working with big groups of dancers,

widescreen is a lot easier to use; people can

all stand in a line together; and you can get

tighter on them and see their whole bodies.

Also, it calls back to an older style of film-

making "

A similar gesture to the past was the

decision to use Ben Shahns abstract back-

drops from the ballets original production as

a starting point in determining which loca-

tions to use. "We chose places that were

run down, places that were once something

else and are now 'old New York,"' explains

Lipes. A case in point is Brooklyn s McCanen

Park Pool, a crumbling, Depression-era relic

used for the film s opening number,

"Entrance: Group Dance." After a prologue

that shows the dancers making their way to

this space from various locations, the

members of the ensemble enter the pool

and take their positions. "Something we

took away from Wesf Side Story was the

importance of trying to make the choreog-

raphy exist in the space," says the cine-

matographer. "We didn't want to just take

choreography and plop it down in McCar-

ren Pool; we wanted to integrate the move-

ments into the space."

"Entrance/Group Dance" was shot

with a locked-0ff camera, a time-consuming

choice given that the shoot employed only

one camera, an Anicam Lite. The move-

ment requrred more than 100 takes. This

sequence became the films static-camera

movement almost by process of elimination."lt was pretty arbitrary" says Lipes. "l'm a

big fan of making rules for yourself to limit

what you can do. Deciding to make that

movement totally static, or this movement

on a dolly, makes us think about how to

capture the dance while emphasizing

distinct styles of photography."

It was clear that the third movement,

"lmprovisations," which was shot in a

gymnasium in Brooklyn, would benefit the

most from a freewheeling handheld

approach. The last movement, the eight-

minute "Theme, Variations and Fugue,"

was shot onstage in an 80-year-old theater

in Jersey City, N.J , and it was determined

that a dolly would be needed for optimal

coverage of the choreography. The open

loft space in Red Hook, Brooklyn, that was

used for the second movement, "Statics,"

became the Steadrcam sequence largely

because of its structural properlies, which

included columns.

Dave Ellis was the Steadicam opera-

tor for "Statics," a nighttime sequence that

Lipes shot on Kodak Vision3 500T 5219,

opening up to T4 and pushing one stop.

This kept 1st AC David Jacobson on his

toes, as he had to pull focus "with the

camera flying around the room at 360

degrees," says Lipes. The most frequently

used lens in this sequence was a 40mm,

which was about as wide as Lipes went on

the shoot. "All of the Hawks open lo a12.2

or T3, and I shot the first couple of setups

at T4. My favorite colorist, Sam Daley at

Technicolor, called me at one point, frantic

about extreme distortion. He said T8 was

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really where I should be. That dictated a lot

of the look of the f ilm, because I wasn't able

to shoot at low light."

Lighting the Steadicam sequence,

set entirely in a sixthJloor walkup, was a

challenge for Lipes and his gaffer, Josh

Allen. "l hoped to light from the street, but

there were construction scaffoldings with

black knitting over them," says the cine-

matographer. "So I turned to the inside,

where there were construction lights hang-

ing in the ceiling. I started thinking we

might as well use practicals because we

were going to see 360 degrees. So we put

the highest-wattage bulbs posible in there

and put several Mighty Moles on the roof,

shooting them down through the skylights.

My key grip, Matt Walker, had teams of

people with nets and flags running around

behind the camera, trying to keep out the

shadows that resulted from these 60-odd

bulbs. "

Lighting for the final movement at

the Jersey City theater was also a major

undertaking. The dancers perform on the

stage to an empty auditorium, a spectacle

viewed from a number of dolly positions in

the house and finally from the stage itself. "l

went through a lot of options to try to make

it look nice, and then I realized it3 supposed

to look like a bunch of krds putting on a

show, and it should therefore feel kind of

homemade," says Lipes. "So we put a 20K

up in the balcony and just pointed it at the

slage." 24 Source Four Lekos in the wings

and 24 above the stage added flares and

edging to the theater seats, while a 4K and

other units in the lobby and two Mighty

Moles on the theater floor brought out wall

details. "We also had 15 or 20 shop lights

in the upper tier of balcony seats, so when

we looked up there, there was distance

instead ofjust black."

At press time, the filmmakers did not

know whether )pus lazz had the potential

for exhibition beyond television. "At this

point, we're not doing a print," says Lipes.

"But we've had offers for a theatrical run in

New York, which is pretty amazing, consid-

ering that the film is only 46 minutes long. "

K TECHNICAL SPECS X1,78:1

(2.40:1 mask)

Anamorphic 35mm

Arricam Lite; PanAni 435

Hawk, Cooke and Panavision lenses

Kodak Vision2 250D 5205, 50D 5201;

Vision3 250D 5207, 500T 5219 O

ERRATA

ln our coverage of The Huft

Locker (July '09), special-effects supervi-

sor Richard Stutsman was incorrectly

identified as Robert Stutsman.

ln our coverage of Avatar (Jan.

'10), some technical specs were incor-

rect. The two primary lenses the film-

makers used were both Fujinon zoom

lenses, a 6.1-101mm and a custom-

made 7-35mm. The original aspect ratio

and lmax presentation were 16x9. Stan-

dard theatrical presentations were

2.40"1.