American Cinematographer Magazine - January 2011-TV

J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 1

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The International Journal of Motion Imaging

30 Letting GoRodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC and Alejandro González Iñárritumake spiritual connections on Biutiful

42 Tough LoveHoyte van Hoytema, NSC, FSF works David O. Russell’scorner on The Fighter

52 Back to the GridClaudio Miranda, ASC enters futuristic arena with Tron: Legacy

64 A League of His OwnRoger Deakins, ASC, BSC explains the path that led him tothe Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award

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— VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM TO ENJOY THESE WEB EXCLUSIVES —Podcast: Phedon Papamichael, ASC on Knight and Day

DVD Playback: Psycho • Videodrome

On Our Cover: A divorced father of two (Javier Bardem) confronts his mortality in Biutiful, shot by Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC. (Photo by José Haro, courtesy ofRoadside Attractions.)

8 Editor’s Note10 President’s Desk12 Short Takes: “Eye of the Storm”18 Production Slate: The Tempest • All Good Things78 Post Focus: EFilm at Universal• HPA Awards82 Filmmakers’ Forum: Jody Lee Lipes84 New Products & Services88 International Marketplace89 Classified Ads90 Ad Index92 In Memoriam: Michel Hugo, ASC94 Clubhouse News96 ASC Close-Up: Jack Couffer

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EDITORIALEXECUTIVE EDITOR Stephen Pizzello

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CONTRIBUTING WRITERSStephanie Argy, Benjamin B, Douglas Bankston, Robert S. Birchard,

John Calhoun, Bob Fisher, Michael Goldman, Simon Gray, Jim Hemphill, David Heuring, Jay Holben, Mark Hope-Jones, Noah Kadner, Jean Oppenheimer,

John Pavlus, Chris Pizzello, Jon Silberg, Iain Stasukevich, Kenneth Sweeney, Patricia Thomson

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OFFICERS - 2010/2011

Michael GoiPresident

Richard CrudoVice President

Owen RoizmanVice President

John C. Flinn IIIVice President

Matthew LeonettiTreasurer

Rodney TaylorSecretary

Ron GarciaSergeant At Arms

MEMBERS OF THEBOARDJohn Bailey

Stephen BurumCurtis Clark

George Spiro DibieRichard EdlundJohn C. Flinn III

Michael GoiStephen LighthillIsidore Mankofsky

Daryn OkadaRobert Primes

Nancy SchreiberKees Van Oostrum

Haskell WexlerVilmos Zsigmond

ALTERNATESFred Elmes

Rodney TaylorMichael D. O’Shea

Sol NegrinMichael B. 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

dem on strated out stand ing ability. ASC membership has be come one of the highest

honors that can be bestowed upon a pro fes sional cin e ma tog ra pher — a mark

of prestige and excellence.

6

Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC is clearly held in highesteem by his collaborators. Oliver Stone sang his praisesin our October coverage of Wall Street: Money NeverSleeps, and within this month’s overview of Biutiful(“Letting Go,”page 30), director Alejandro González Iñár-ritu offers his own endorsement in a sidebar commentary(“Iñárritu on Method,” page 38). “The visual grammar ofthis film was very delicate and sophisticated because ithad to combine the social, the physical, the metaphysicaland a hyper-realistic approach,” Iñárritu notes. “To me,Biutiful is by far Rodrigo’s most lyrical and poetic work.Realistically and metaphorically, he found light in the dark-est places possible.”

The film offered Prieto ample opportunity to be creative. The emotional journey of themain character, Uxbal (Javier Bardem), led Prieto to suggest the unusual strategy of shiftingfrom 1.85:1 to anamorphic 2.40:1, with a transition point that combined the 1.85 formatwith anamorphic lenses. “I suggested we test starting at 1.85 and eventually opening up to2.40 to represent the transition from [Uxbal’s] tight control to ultimate release,” he says.“There was some concern that the shift would be too jarring, but we decided it worked.”

That spirit of experimentation is also evident in David O. Russell’s boxing drama TheFighter, which allowed cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, NSC, FSF to blend dramascenes shot on 2-perf 35mm with fight sequences shot on Betacam-SP. For the former, vanHoytema used Aaton’s Penelope camera, and for the latter, he employed vintage Sony videocameras. “When shooting 2-perf for [2.40:1] output, you expose far less negative than 4-perf, saving a lot of money, and if you are interested in getting grain and texture, it’s the wayto go,” the cinematographer tells Michael Goldman (“Tough Love,” page 42).

The sci-fi spectacle Tron: Legacy required Claudio Miranda, ASC to combine a varietyof strategies, including 3-D camera rigs, LED and Electro Luminescent lighting technology,high-speed cameras and face-replacement animation effects. As Miranda explains to NoahKadner (“Back to the Grid,” page 52), some of the lighting was built directly into the futur-istic costumes worn by characters in the computer environment known as the Grid: “Thesuits really drove the pastel look of the digital world. We wanted to see the suit lights cast-ing interactive light from character to character and have everything look as luminous aspossible, like the glow of a computer monitor.” Further insights into the production areoffered in a sidebar Q&A with Digital Domain’s visual-effects supervisor, Eric Barba, and headof animation, Steve Preeg (“Barba and Preeg on Tron: Legacy,” page 60).

This issue also offers a heartfelt salute to cinematographer Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC,a longtime friend of the magazine who will receive the Society’s Lifetime Achievement Awardon Feb. 13. Though still in his prime and shooting as artfully as ever, the seemingly tirelessDeakins has built a legacy of excellence that simply demanded the ASC’s highest honor. PatThomson’s account of his remarkable career (“A League of His Own,” page 64) offers illu-minating details about his formative years, insights earned after decades of experience, anda sidebar on True Grit, Roger’s latest collaboration with the Coen brothers.

Stephen PizzelloExecutive Editor

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As the new year kicks into gear, there is a lot happening in the industry: more new digitalcameras, higher-resolution post workflows, 3-D proceeding full steam, and more sophisticatedvirtual production. How is a humble cinematographer supposed to keep up with all this? Becausethe production and distribution of feature films, television programming and Web content are aglobal business, it is more important than ever that we all be on the same page at the same timeon technology, and that we understand where the craft of cinematography is going.

For this reason, the ASC will host an International Cinematography Summit Conference fromMay 2-5, 2011. Every cinematography society in the world has been invited to send a representa-tive to this milestone event. This is not a film festival, nor is it a trade show. It is a work group ofthe leading practitioners of our craft designed as a means to discover where our differences andcommon ground lie; it is an opportunity to learn from the tools and techniques that are being usedon the other side of the world; and it is a forum to establish more open communication amongthose who have chosen cinematography as our life passion.

The conference is especially significant at this moment, although it has been in the planningstages for almost 18 months. When Mauro Fiore, ASC won the Oscar for Avatar last year, it seemedto amplify speculation about the future of cinematography. This conference will address where weare going and, more importantly, help all of us understand how changes and trends in our profes-

sion affect our countries’ industries. It is the necessary next step in coordinating our common goals.Part of the conference will be devoted to demonstrations of current technology, such as virtual production and 3-D, and there

will be a detailed analysis of various film and digital archival methods used by innovators in the preservation field. The Acad emy ofMotion Picture Arts and Sciences will present a new capture-medium/post paradigm designed to enable the maximum input of acamera’s resolution and color-space capabilities into a common post workflow. Leading developers of digital cameras and film emul-sions will speak about what is coming in the next five years, not from a marketing perspective, but with an emphasis on stabili zingthe industry.

But the most important part of the ICSC will be the dialogue it will create among cinematographers worldwide. We’re notinviting people to come and listen to a bunch of lectures; we want to hear what everyone has to say. There are issues and concernsin some countries that other countries have already resolved. Let’s share that knowledge. Though we exist in a global industry, wetend to work in an insular way. The extraordinarily innovative artistry that many of our fellow lighting masters have accomplis hed,and the means by which they have achieved their results, may never be seen by the world or acknowledged for its originality. If weare to live and grow as artists, and harness the potential that new technologies offer us, we must open our eyes to what our fellowcraftspeople are doing in other parts of the world.

I have been traveling a lot recently, speaking to cinematographers and students in many countries, and I have been amazedby the common elements of our aesthetic approach, regardless of region, and by the bold visions of those who see the world froma different perspective. Festivals such as Camerimage and the efforts of organizations such as Imago have kept the flame of vis ualartistry burning brightly for many years. And the bond that the Korean Society of Cinematographers and the Japanese Society ofCinematographers have shared over the last 25 years is truly inspiring. The artistic interchange that results from simple commu ni-cation between countries opens the door for all of us to learn and grow, to reach for new forms of visual expression.

For the ICSC, each society has been asked to bring a five-minute reel of the best work its members have produced, spanningthe entire history of their industry. All of these pieces will be screened as part of our welcome dinner on the first night of the confer-ence. If that evening has even a fraction of the magic I felt when I watched a young student’s cinematography during my trip toIndia, this will prove to be a most magical gathering.

Michael Goi, ASCPresident

President’s Desk

10 January 2011 American Cinematographer

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Creating an Animated “Eye of the Storm”By Iain Stasukevich

“A couple of years ago, I saw a short animated film byAnthony Lucas called TheMysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello ,and it blew me away,” recalls director Christopher Alender. “Theanimation was done with silhouettes and collage backgrounds, andit got me wondering if I could do the same thing with live action.”

Alender put the idea on hold until singer/songwriter BenLovett, a close friend, asked him to produce a music video for a songon his album The Fear. When Alender listened to the album, thetrack “Eye of the Storm” jumped out at him. “It’s like a soundscapewith a very cinematic feel,” he observes.

Like Jasper Morello, the video for “Eye of the Storm” is set ina steampunk world, a highly technological Victorian society powered

by steam. The video tells the story of a lonely captain (played byLovett) battling to keep his airship afloat in the midst of a ragingtempest. Alender decided to shoot all of the action against blue-screen, using minimal set pieces and props, and he asked cine-matographer Craig Kief, a fellow Florida State University alumnus,to step behind the camera. “Craig is always game when I call him,even when we’re doing something weird,” says Alender. Kief sayshe was immediately drawn to the images Alender proposed. “A lotof the work I do, mostly commercials and music videos, has exten-sive visual effects, so this seemed like a natural fit,” says the cine-matographer.

The visual effects for “Eye of the Storm” called for thecreation of the airship and all of the weather effects, and also forpicking out specific details in Lovett’s costume and the props. Typi-cally, this would be accomplished by chroma-keying the bluescreenelements of the frame, but Alender intended to shoot 4K with theRed One MX (recording to Red Drives and Compact Flash cards),and he didn’t want the CPU-hogging process to impede the postworkflow. “It really slows you down, especially if you’re experi-menting and working with high-resolution imagery,” he says. “Weworked with the 4K sources but mastered in a 2K comp.”

Alender and Kief came up with a way to isolate the elementsthey wanted to remove by shooting under black lights and using aluma key instead. The idea is based on an RGB image being split intothree separate monochrome channels, with each channel contain-ing a separate luma key based on a defined level of exposure. Kiefand Alender experimented with different kinds of fluorescent tapeand paint until they found the ones that reacted best to ultravioletlight. “Green fluorescent tape was the most powerful, so we usedit to build part of the captain’s wardrobe,” says Alender. “Orange

Short Takes

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Singer Ben Lovettpilots an airship

into a fiercestorm in the

music video forhis song “Eye of

the Storm.”CinematographerCraig Kief utilized

bluescreens,black lights andfluorescent tape

to isolate keyelements of the

imagery thatwould later becombined with

CG effects.

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reacted powerfully in the red channel. Thatleft blue, which we used for the back-ground and treated like regular blue-screen.”

While shooting, Kief used a SonyBVM-L230 HD reference monitor, whichallowed him to view one color at a time,giving him a preview of what the individualluma keys were going to look like. (The film-makers also monitored an RGB compositefor keying white elements.) “When youlook at the different channels, the mostsaturated colors become bright white, andeverything else falls pretty close to black,”says Kief. “My primary goal was to giveeach color as much separation as possible.”

Kief and Alender are aware of thesimilarities between their process and thephotochemical bluescreen process, wherecomposites were achieved by taking shotswith bluescreen elements and re-photographing them through a blue filter inblack and white so only those elements are

exposed. This creates the holdout mattethat cuts out the area of the backgroundplate dedicated to the foreground when thetwo are combined. “We did a lot of experi-menting,” says Kief. “We weren’t 100-percent sure what the shot was going tolook like in the end, particularly the back-grounds, but Chris was meticulous aboutstoryboarding every single shot, and wefollowed those boards exactly.”

The airship set, which was placed ina corner of Soapbox Films’ 10,000-square-foot soundstage in Burbank, Calif.,comprised little more than a ship’s wheel, acaptain’s chair and a treadmill (for walkingshots). The skeleton crew includedproducer/puppeteer Kris Eber, who hides inplain sight, puppeteering Lovett’s scarf withfilament from atop stepladders or crouchingbehind flags, catching the books he tossesinto a furnace. (The furnace is CG.)

The team didn’t shy away fromdramatic camera moves, despite the extra

work required to track the shots in post.Creating digital moves in post was brieflyconsidered, but, Kief notes, “Chris and Iprefer to create a move in-camera becausea move created in post never looks as good— the three-dimensional perspective doesn’t change.”

The Digi Blue background was litwith Kino Flo bluescreen tubes, and theforeground was lit with a pair of 4x4 KinoFlo heads outfitted with black-light tubes.Kief brought the black-light Kinos as closeand flat to the lens plane as possible for thecleanest reflectance; if the lights were evenslightly off axis, he’d get shadows on thefluorescent tape.

In the shots where Kief wanted topull some detail out of Lovett’s face, he’duse tungsten lights. Two 2K Mighty Moleswere outfitted with Mole Shutters for light-ning effects, a couple of 1K nook lights ondimmers provided the illumination from theroaring fire in the airship’s furnace, and vari-ous tungsten sources were placed at strate-gic angles to bring out reflective highlightson bits of metal in Lovett’s costume and theprops. “The black light was actually strongenough that we were also getting a lot offill directly from the fluorescent tape,”recalls Kief. In some scenes, the reflectanceis so bright, the collar almost serves as abounce surface.

The production’s Red One MX wasprovided by Keslow Camera in Culver City,Calif. “It’s a real step forward and a real joyto be able to work with the Red at 500

To create theimpression of the

singer’s scarfblowing in thewind, the scarf

was puppeteeredwith monofilament

as Lovett walkedon a treadmill.

Electric fans werealso used in

conjunction withthe monofilament.

SonyPictures.com/Awards


ASA,” says Kief. “Before the MX, rating theRed at anything higher than 200 wouldstart to introduce a lot of noise, and a goodsignal-to-noise ratio is important whenyou’re trying to pull keys. The new sensor isso clean that I can start at 500 ASA andhave no problem going to 800 ASA.” Alen-der concurs, “Using a Red with the original

chip would have been really problematicbecause there’s so much junk in the bluechannel. If we hadn’t had access to the MX,we would’ve picked a different camera alto-gether.”

Kief used T1.9 Zeiss Ultra Primelenses, shooting as wide as possible toaccentuate the graphic compositions and

lend a slight distortion to the close-ups.Most of the video was shot with a 14mmlens. Kief also wanted to keep a shallowdepth-of-field, so he shot every scene bysetting the frame, opening the iris all theway and then lighting for the proper expo-sure level.

In post, Alender started with the raw4K frames, which look a lot like screen shotsfrom Tron (1982): orange for the smalldetails in Lovett’s shoes, jacket and helmet;green for his goggles and bits of detail onhis jacket; and blue for the outline of thesinger and the props. Alender peeled apartthe RGB channels in Adobe After Effects,handling most of the rotoscoping, includingcrew and wire removal, and some of thecompositing and 3-D animation. “Wes Balland his company, Oddball Animation,stepped in to help with a lot of the finalproduct, and they’re really taking it to thenext level with gorgeous sky environmentsand realistic particle effects,” says Alender.“They also did the character animation forthe demon creature. As more and moretalented specialists jumped onboard, Ievolved into more of an art director on thepost side of things — I roughed out a lot ofthe stuff that others executed.”

Kief and Alender see projects such as“Eye of the Storm” as great opportunitiesto experiment with art, media and technol-ogy. “We both love pushing the envelopecreatively and technically,” says Kief. “It’s alot of fun working with Chris. He’s been atthe helm on some of my most uniqueprojects.” ●

Top and middle:Lovett positions

himself for ashot as a

crewmemberoperates a

small fan. TheDigi Blue

backgroundwas lit with

Kino Flobluescreen

tubes, and theforeground was

lit with a pairof 4x4 Kino Floheads outfittedwith black-lighttubes. Bottom:Kief takes the

helm on set.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Best Picture

Best Cinematography

The Company Men

PLEASE VISIT

www.thecompanymenfilm.com and www.twcawards.com

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Artwork © 2010 The Weinstein Company. All Rights Reserved.


The Tempest Hits HawaiiBy Iain Stasukevich

In William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the Duke of Milan,Prospero, is usurped by his traitorous brother, Antonio, and Alonso,the king of Naples, and exiled to an island where, some years later, heis able to exact his revenge. Julie Taymor’s film adaptation stars HelenMirren as Prospera, the wife of Milan’s duke. In this version of the tale,the duke is killed by Antonio, and Prospera is accused of murderingher husband with witchcraft. She is exiled to a distant island, and fromthat point on, the story hews fairly closely to Shakespeare’s originalplot.

The Tempest’s cinematographer, Stuart Dryburgh, ASC, andproduction designer, Mark Friedberg, had worked together on anumber of projects, including Taymor’s Across the Universe , shot byBruno Delbonnel, ASC, AFC. (Dryburgh did some additional photog-raphy on that film, collaborating closely with animation director KyleCooper on the “Strawberry Fields” sequence.) When The Tempest’soriginal director of photography, Christopher Doyle, HKSC, departedthe film after a few weeks of shooting, Friedberg campaigned onDryburgh’s behalf, and just two days after getting the call, Dryburghwas on a plane to Hawaii with the script in hand.

He showed up to set the next morning and dove right in. “Ifelt like I’d seen enough Shakespeare to know how it could work onfilm,” says Dryburgh, citing Peter Brook’s King Lear, Franco Zeffirelliand Baz Luhrmann’s very different interpretations of Romeo andJuliet, and Taymor’s Titus (AC Feb. ’00) as notable cinematic transla-tions of the Bard.

The Tempest opens with one of Dryburgh’s shots, made onthat first morning in Hawaii: a close-up of a sandcastle with stormclouds looming in the distance as violent waves crash on coastalshelves of volcanic rock. A downpour begins, melting the castle in thehand of Miranda (Felicity Jones), Prospera’s daughter. In the distance,a raging tempest threatens a ship carrying Antonio (Chris Cooper),Alonso (David Strathairn), some members of Alonso’s family, andtheir entourage.

Prospera appears to command the elements, but it’s really thesprite Ariel (Ben Wishaw) who does her dirty work. Visual-effectssupervisor Kyle Cooper directed the sequence in which Ariel, with theaid of computer-generated water, wind and fire, wrecks the CG ship.(The film’s visual effects were created by Cooper’s company, PrologueFilms.) On Hawaii’s Big Island, Dryburgh shot the live-action portionof the scene, which required a full-sized mockup of the period ship,complete with mast, deck and practical cabin. Dump tanks floodedthe set with water and giant fans sprayed it in every direction, and18K HMIs backlit a thick layer of smoke to create the impression of astormy day exterior.

The Hawaiian island of Lanai, with its lava flows, craters androcky cliffs, stands in for Prospera’s isle. (All of the photography onLanai was done by Doyle. Dryburgh completed the location filmingon Big Island.) Throughout the shoot, the filmmakers exploited eachlocation’s unique topography to accentuate the story’s supernaturalelements. “There’s a sense that the island is all things to all people,”says Dryburgh. “It has a very diverse landscape: there’s seashore,swamps, deep forests, high deserts, bare rock and orange-red earth.We weren’t worried about one scene matching the next.”

Production Slate

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Prospera (HelenMirren) summons

all the forces ofnature to whip up

a storm and sinkher enemies’ shipin The Tempest, a

production thatinvolved extensive

location work inHawaii.

I

➣

© 2010 Sony Electronics Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Features and specifi cations are subject to change without notice. Sony, CineAlta, HDCAM-SR, XDCAM, “make.believe” and their respective logos are trademarks of Sony.

Visit sony.com/digitalcinematography for the full story.

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Once location photography wrapped,production moved to Steiner Studios inBrooklyn, N.Y., where Dryburgh’s collabora-tors included key grip Rick Maroquin, gafferBill O’Leary, A-camera operator LukaszJogalla, and B-camera/Steadicam operatorCarlos Guerra. (A-camera 1st AC GlennKaplan stayed with the production from startto finish.)

Taymor wanted to set The Tempest ina fantasy world that would feature costumesand imagery from many different periods ofhistory. Technical accuracy wasn’t as impor-tant as the emotions the images would elicit.“We went from a speck of rock in the middleof the Pacific to an industrial warehouse in themiddle of Brooklyn, but Julie didn’t want us toworry about discrepancies,” says Friedberg.Rather, the director encouraged her leadcreatives to design their work to stand out.

The goal with the subterranean grottowhere Prospera and Miranda reside was a feelthat was “sparkly and magical, not dark andscary,” says Dryburgh. “The cave and thecourtyard are almost 100-percent practical,and a lot of my conversations with Mark wereabout how to light the volcanic rock, whichwas made of Styrofoam and paint.” To createlow, slanting sunlight, “as if the sun is justpeeping over the edge of the cliffs,” O’Learyand his crew rigged four Nine-Light Maxi-Brutes in a lift in a cross configuration “andjust peeked them over the set wall at quite ashallow angle,” recalls the gaffer. “They werethrough a light diffusion just to fuzz out theedges, and an effect color was used insteadof the usual CTO to add warmth.” Dryburghadds, “We also used Maxi-Brutes throughdiffusion to push ‘daylight’ through themouth of the cave, and we had narrow-beam[Source Four] Lekos on a pipe grid overheadto create small, intense beams of light tosuggest light creeping into the cave throughshafts in the rock.”

Other scenes required a less realisticapproach. When Prospera recalls Antonio’sact of treason, the film flashes back to the events in Milan, which appears to be seen through a hazy filter. To create this effect, Dryburgh actually placed sheets ofscratched Mylar, supplied by the art depart-ment in different patterns and textures, infront of the lens. Friedberg had a miniature-scale mockup built out of cardboard cutoutsin forced perspective. These models were

Top: Rear projectionprovides the

background in aflashback to Prospera’s

life in Milan. Middle:Prospera counsels her

daughter (FelicityJones) in their

underground home.Bottom:

CinematographerStuart Dryburgh, ASC.


any digital work at all. For scenes that showProspera conversing with Ariel through thereflecting pool in her courtyard, the film-makers suspended a shallow, glass-bottomed water tank 4'-6' off the floor withpulleys, and Wishaw was placed beneaththe tank and photographed through a layerof rippling water. Rear-projected reflectionson the water and the use of foregroundelements tie the effect into the real world. (Inmost cases, however, some CG was used forcompositing purposes. All in all, The Tempestcontains approximately 330 visual-effectsshots.)

Just as Ariel takes the shape of theelements, he can also transform into othercreatures. A key sequence sees him lure theking and his men onto a barren volcanicshelf with a mirage of lavish food and drink.When the men try to pick up the food, thebanquet table explodes, revealing Ariel inthe form of a horrifying, black harpy. Thetransformation begins when Prospera dropsa black feather into a vial of strange liquid.The glass explodes in slow motion (shot at1,000 fps with a Phantom HD by 2nd-unitcinematographer David Dunlap), and thesingle feather becomes many, each takingthe shape of an individual Ariel.

“Then we cut to Ben in his costume,covered in black, oily makeup with thesehuge wings suspended on cables from theroof, and he’s sitting on a pile of Mark’sglassy volcanic rock in front of a green-screen,” explains Dryburgh. Creating thehundreds of screeching harpies was assimple as capturing Wishaw on a wire rig in

front of a greenscreen and multiplying theimage.

Dryburgh’s goal in the digital grade,which was handled by senior colorist YvanLucas at EFilm in Hollywood, was to let eachscene stand apart rather than try to tie every-thing together visually. “Each location waschosen by Julie to convey the feeling shewanted for that scene,” explains the cine-matographer. “In the DI, we tried toenhance and support the ideas that wereformulated in these choices; we tried tosupport the uniqueness of each locationwith our grading choices.”

Dryburgh supervised Lucas’ workfrom New York, transmitting notes and thenassessing the results. “It was more like work-ing with the old-time film timers, whereyou’d look at the work print, discuss thelook, and then say, ‘See you in three dayswhen the first print is ready.’ Even when Ican physically supervise the grade, I prefer tolet the colorist make a contribution based onmy briefing, rather than sit there and callevery light. If you’re working with someonewho knows his stuff, you’d do well to let hisknowledge and creativity come into play.”

TECHNICAL SPECS

2.40:13-perf Super 35mmArricam LiteAngenieux and Cooke lensesFujifilm Eterna 500 8573; Kodak Vision3 500T 5219Digital Intermediate

photographed and then digitally rear-projected or composited into full-size live-action scenes. “I really like those scenesbecause I had complete control over thelighting, and the final effect is not quiteperfect, which gives it a lovely, magical feel,”says Dryburgh. Friedberg concurs, “Some-times you don’t have any option but to implythings. It’s like poetry, and when you workwith Julie, exercising poetic license is part ofthe job.”

Rendering the character of Arielrequired the combined efforts of the cine-matographer, production designer andvisual-effects team. Wishaw was unable totravel to Hawaii, but he appears in many ofthe island’s exterior scenes, where Arielfrequently interacts with Prospera. Taymorwas keen to film these scenes with bothMirren and Wishaw present, so only back-ground plates and a few wide shots werephotographed on location. Dryburgh filmedthe actors together at Steiner, and Cooperlater separated them. “We tried to not over-lap them physically, because those effectscan be more difficult,” Dryburgh remarks.

Difficult or not, Cooper approachedthe process with a strictly can-do attitude.“Julie had a lot of fantastic ideas — theywere good and also kind of outrageous,” hesays. “Some of the things she describedwould have called for industrial-strengtheffects were it not for her affinity for a hand-crafted look. The goal wasn’t seamless, high-gloss visual effects. It was about somethingmore spirited.”

Some character effects didn’t involve ➣

Near right: Thefilmmakers

prepare to shootactor Ben

Wishaw beneatha shallow water

tank to createthe illusion thatthe fairy Ariel isunderwater. Far

right:Greenscreen was

used for asequence inwhich Ariel

transforms intoa scary,

featheredcreature.

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Dark Family DynamicsBy Ted Elrick

Robert Durst seemed to have every-thing, including financial success, courtesyof his family’s real-estate dynasty in Manhat-tan, and a beautiful and loving wife, Kath-leen McCormack. When Kathleen mysteri-ously disappeared in 1982, some family andfriends suspected Robert of murder. Herbody has never been found, and her disap-pearance remains the most notorious miss-ing-person’s case in New York history.

Intrigued by the unresolved aspectsof the Durst case, director Andrew Jarecki(Capturing the Friedmans ) teamed withproducer/writer Marc Smerling and writer

Marcus Hinchey to develop a fictional thrillerbased on the events. The result is All GoodThings, which focuses on the Marks family:David (Ryan Gosling); his wife, Katie (KirstenDunst); and his real-estate mogul father,Sanford (Frank Langella).

“I’m always attracted by monsterstories,” says Jarecki. “When you look atthe truth behind a monster, you often find areal person who had hopes and dreams,and then things turned out differently. Ithink we tend to take people who do dark,awful things and put them in a box, saying,‘That person is obviously totally differentfrom me, and I don’t have to worry aboutanything because I don’t have a shred ofthat person in me.’ But the reality is that we

all have a shred of that person in us.”After interviewing a number of young

cinematographers for All Good Things ,Jarecki decided he wanted a cameramanwith considerable experience. “The youngones seemed like they would come up withclever ideas every second, and I felt the filmmight become gimmicky,” he explains. Hethought of Michael Seresin, BSC, and calledAlan Parker ( Angel Heart ) and AlfonsoCuarón ( Harry Potter and the Prisoner ofAzkaban; AC June ’04), who said his instinctwas correct. “Michael’s powerful images infilms like Angel Heart and Angela’s Ashes ,and even The Prisoner of Azkaban , which Ifeel is the most cinematic of the Potter films,show that he is someone who cares deeplyabout the mystery of film,” Jarecki observes.“His work suggests that he thinks a filmshould not just be a continuation of reality.”

After several long-distance discus-sions about the script — with Jarecki in NewYork and Seresin at home in New Zealand —Seresin decided to sign on. “I like a dark storybecause it demands more from an audi-ence,” says the cinematographer. “I likemovies that gravitate toward the underlit,darker side of life. When there are a lot ofshadows, the audience isn’t quite sure if theycan see something or not, and their imagina-tion starts to work.”

The story covers about 30 years, fromthe mid-1970s to 2001, and Seresin waskeen to differentiate the periods subtly. “Ivery consciously did not want the film to havea ‘then’ and ‘now’ feel in terms of a grainierSeventies and a slicker present day — thatwould have been too intrusive,” he says.“We lit the two distinct periods in quitedifferent ways. For the Seventies, we usedbrighter, high-key lighting, as well as brightercolors in the wardrobe and art direction. Thelatter period, around 2001, was lower key,with more contrast and deeper shadows, andwith darker clothes and set colors.

“The Seventies was when the worldsort of changed from black-and-white tocolor,” continues the cinematographer. “It’s abit of a cliché to have the story start withbright, sunny colors, but that’s how it was forpeople who were young then. As the storyprogresses, we gradually start introducing theidea that things aren’t quite right. We keepsome of the bright colors as a counterpoint,but I felt that some of the images could still A

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Above: Katie(Kirsten Dunst)

becomesincreasingly

unhappy in hermarriage toDavid (Ryan

Gosling) in AllGood Things,

shot by MichaelSeresin, BSC.

Right: The earlydays of the

young couple’smarriage are

rendered in abrighter, more

colorful palette.

I

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suggest something a bit darker to the audi-ence. We get more and more into nightphotography as the story gets darker.”

During prep, Seresin did extensivetesting at Technicolor New York, “more toshow Andrew a few ideas for the look ofthe film,” he says. “Tech New York is family,and I love working with them.” Seresintested the digital equivalent of Technicolor’sENR process, but, he notes, “this was moreof a guide for lighting contrast ratios, andreminded me of an approach rather thanserving as a blueprint for the look of thefilm. I love the photochemical ENR process,which is hard to do these days. But the digi-tal version is getting close.” (The final digitalgrade was done at Company 3 by coloristMatt Turner.)

Apart from some home-moviefootage, which was shot on Super 16mm,

Seresin decided to shoot All Good Things onKodak Vision3 500T 5219. “I love some ofthe older film stocks because you can get asort of lovely patina — some call it grain —and I was tempted to try and find someolder stock [for this movie], but I decided Ipreferred the challenge of working with amodern stock,” he observes. “I think somuch of today’s film stock looks too perfect,too glossy, and I think we managed to getsome of that patina in 5219. Somehow, itarrived.

“I recently had a showing of AngelHeart on film, and it looks so different fromthe DVD,” he adds. “The digital transferlooks so slick, smooth and sharp. It’s missingthat texture from the film stock.”

The production’s camera package,provided by Panavision, comprised an Arri-cam Studio and Lite and a backup

Moviecam Compact. For the home-moviefootage, Seresin used a Bolex H-16 Rex-5“and mostly a 10mm Switar lens. Thatseemed truer and more appropriate thanshooting 35mm and degrading it in post.

“Cameras are not a big deal to me,”Seresin continues. “I like the new Arris, but tobe dead honest, if I had a chip in my headand could just imagine the picture and thendownload it, I would. I’m not the world’smost technical cinematographer!” Lensesare another matter, however. “I have a set ofCooke S4 primes and Cooke zooms thatfollow me everywhere. They came out of JDC[Joe Dunton Co.]. Joe is a technical geniusand a great friend, and I’ve used his sphericaland anamorphic lenses on pretty much everymovie I’ve done.” On All Good Things ,Seresin used a full set of S4s and the Cooke18-100mm zoom.

Although the shoot took place inConnecticut and New York, Seresin was ableto bring Peter Bloor, his longtime gaffer inGreat Britain, aboard as the lighting consul-tant. “Peter and I first worked together onMidnight Express when he was just an elec-trician,” notes the cinematographer. “I finallypersuaded him to work as a gaffer, andwe’ve done more than a dozen moviestogether.” Seresin has high praise for the rest of the crew, which included A-camera/Steadicam operator Gerard Sava, A-camera 1st AC Stanley Fernandez, B-cameraoperator Tom Weston and B-camera 1st ACPaul Colangelo, all out of New York. “I amtough on a crew, and they were brilliant,”says Seresin. “We had a lot of handheld andSteadicam work, and a lot of location work.Some days we had two [company] moves, soyou end up working at the speed of yourslowest truck. We were filming at a timewhen everyone was taking advantage ofNew York’s tax breaks, so we were lucky toget such a great team.” Bloor agrees, adding,“We worked some incredible hours, and thecrew never moaned or groaned; we just allgot on with it.”

Connecticut stood in for much of theNew York photography, with a large, vacanthouse standing in for three different loca-tions: David and Katie’s Manhattan apart-ment, Sanford Marks’ stately home, and theden where David practices “scream therapy.”Of the latter room, Seresin recalls, “Therewas a crazy quality to the design of the ceil-

Above: Davidreluctantly takesa position at his

father’s multi-million-dollar

business. Right:Katie offers

comfort as thestress of his job starts to

take a toll.

ing tiles, which is why we chose that room.We had to shoot a really low angle to showit, but it worked.” Another prominentConnecticut location is the lakefront housewhere David and Katie escape the city.Fortunately for the crew, the production

found a house whose interior did notrequire much alteration to resemble a1970s-era residence. “They even had ayellow Princess telephone,” says Jarecki.“All the phones in the house were dial, notpush-button.”

The homeowner was very accommo-dating, but drew the line when the filmmak-ers asked if they could remove some tiles andpart of the wall from the shower so theycould shoot through the wall when Katiejoins her husband in the shower. When theowner refused to allow the modification,Bloor suggested building a working showeroutside the house: an interior in the exterior.“It was a freezing night in Connecticut, butthe shower was boiling hot and full ofsteam, sufficient so that Ryan and Kirsten,who were nude, felt protected and comfort-able,” says Jarecki. “It’s an extremelyemotional moment in the story that requireda lot of innovative thinking to pull off, and Ithink it’s one of the most unique images ofthe movie.” To light the shower, two 18"3,200°K Kino Flos were positioned behindthe actors to silhouette their bodies, and a650-watt spot through Lee 129 Heavy Frostdiffusion was rigged overhead.

Another key sequence involves thedisposal of a body from a bridge. The film-makers originally thought of setting theaction on a causeway bridge, with lighting

Director Andrew Jarecki (foreground) and Seresin line up a shot alongside 1st AD David Wechsler.

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28

sourced by streetlights. “I suggested that weinstead try to find a disused railway bridge,which are pretty common in upstate NewYork and Connecticut,” says Seresin. “Wespotted one when we were driving back tothe hotel one day and did a quick U-turn tocheck it out. That scene was big-scale cinemafor a film with this budget!” According toBloor, the crew rigged a mix of 12K and 6KHMIs, “anything we could get our handson,” to light the bridge from the side oppo-site the action. “We actually had a verylimited area to light because the goal was tomake it creepy,” says Bloor. Seresin adds,“What’s great is that we got a sharp outlineof the profile of the bridge against the nightsky with mist and smoke.”

Seresin says he was particularlypleased to work with Gosling and Dunst.“What I love about actors like Ryan andKirsten is that they sort of suggest stuff to you— you watch them, and you suddenly get anidea,” he says. “For instance, for the scenewhere David drags Katie out of her family’sparty by her hair, the conventional way toshoot it would have been to look straight at

her and then look straight back at him. Butas I was walking past Ryan, I caught a glintfrom the glasses he was wearing, and Ithought it made him look really evil. I usuallydon’t like asking actors to do stuff for thecamera, but I asked him, ‘Have you everseen Rear Window?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, along time ago.’ And I said, ‘Remember howthe reflection on Thorwald’s glasses madehim look really evil? Do you mind if I just askyou to move your head a bit left?’ He said,‘No, that’s fine.’ So we shot him in profileusing a long lens to isolate him from thebackground. It strongly suggests thatunderneath it all, David really is quite evil.”

TECHNICAL SPECS

1.85:135mm and 16mmArricam Studio, Lite; Moviecam Compact;Bolex H-16 Rex-5Cooke and Switar lensesKodak Vision3 500T 5219/7219, Vision2 50D 7201Digital Intermediate ●

ERRATA

Some of the text in our Novembertribute to William A. Fraker, ASC, BSC(“King of Cool,” p. 64) was altered and/oromitted because of a production error. Thestatement by Fraker that begins at thebottom of page 67 should read, “And that’sone thing that’s lacking in some of the filmsI’ve seen lately — there’s a vague plot, butyou don’t care about the characters.” Thesentence after that should read, “In anothercareer-spanning interview with Bob Fisher,he stressed the single-mindedness requiredto succeed in such a glamorous butdemanding profession.” Also, a quote fromWarren Beatty that begins at the bottom ofpage 76 should read, “To Billy’s credit, wegot it done. The crowd had no idea whatwas going on when two teams came outwearing different uniforms.”

29


The new film Biutiful is the latest collaboration betweendirector Alejandro González Iñárritu and cinematogra-pher Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC, and although it doesnot feature the kind of fractured narrative that character-

ized their previous features, Amores Perros (AC April ’01), 21Grams (AC Dec. ’03) and Babel (AC Nov. ’06), it nonethelessoffers a similarly rich tapestry of characters and subplots. Thefilm focuses on Uxbal (Javier Bardem), a divorced father oftwo, who hustles a living in Barcelona by selling goods from aChinese sweatshop to African street vendors, and by moon-lighting as a kind of messenger between the dead and theliving — he possesses the eerie ability to see ghosts. WhenUxbal learns that he has a terminal illness, he struggles tocome to terms with his fate, all the while concealing his ill-

Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMCdiscusses his approach to Biutiful,

his latest collaboration with directorAlejandro González Iñárritu.

By Benjamin B

•|•

LettingGo

www.theasc.com January 2011 31

ness from his loved ones, including hischildren, his tempestuous ex-wife,Marambra (Maricel Alvarez), and hisbrother, Tito (Eduard Fernández).

A few months after the film’spremiere at the 2010 Cannes FilmFestival, AC caught up with Prieto todiscuss the project. In a separate conver-sation, Iñárritu shared some observa-tions about Biutiful and his approach tofilmmaking. (See page 38.)

American Cinematographer: Thesupernatural is an element that youand Iñarritu haven’t tackled before,and you chose to represent it in anunusually naturalistic way. Why?

Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC:On this film, we were aiming for asubjective point of view that wouldemphasize Uxbal’s perspective, and wealways wanted to stay believable, toportray his environment the way hewould see it. His ability to see and hearthe dead is part of his reality, so wedidn’t want to depict that differently interms of the visuals. The metaphysical ispart of his everyday life, so I did notemphasize it through special lighting orcamera gags for these moments. On thewhole film overall, I did allow myself tobe a little bit more stylized with thelighting, but it’s always based on realsources. I wanted the film to feel natu-ralistic, but I did heighten the atmos-Uni

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Opposite: Uxbal(Javier Bardem)helps his daughter,Ana (HanaaBouchaib), with herhomework in ascene from Biutiful,shot by RodrigoPrieto, ASC, AMC.This page, top: AnHD frame grab fromthe scene thatintroduces Uxbal’stempestuous ex-wife, Marambra(Maricel Alvarez),illustrates the film’snaturalistic lightingand intimate camerastyle. Middle: Inanother scene,Marambra is bereftafter a confrontationwith her ex. Bottom:Prieto scopes out hisoptions in a narrowalley.


phere of certain scenes through lightingto align the viewer with Uxbal’sthoughts.

One stylistic carryover fromyour previous collaborations is theemphasis on a handheld camera.

Prieto: Yes. I shot about 95percent of the film handheld, but manyof the moves were carefully choreo-graphed. We designed complex shotsthat would tell the story without theneed to cut; the rhythm of the camera

movement was meant to representUxbal’s emotional state. We tried tokeep him in frame most of the time, andthe way the camera moves around him ismotivated by what he is focusing on.

There is a very unusual formatchange from 1.85:1 to 2.40:1, and fromspherical to anamorphic, partwaythrough the story. What motivatedthat choice?

Prieto: So you noticed? [Laughs.]In one of the first discussions I had with

Alejandro, he described Uxbal as some-one who is uptight and controlling atthe beginning of the film, and then, ashe is forced by his circumstances toaccept his fate, he is finally able to let go.Alejandro wanted to find a way torepresent this transition visually. At first,we talked about using tighter composi-tions in the beginning and then goingwider as the story progressed. After thatconversation, I thought about it somemore and wondered if we could takethat a step further and play with theaspect ratio. I suggested we test startingat 1.85 and eventually opening up to2.40 to represent the transition fromtight control to ultimate release. Therewas some concern that the shift wouldbe too jarring, but we decided it worked,and we thought it was subtle enoughthat the average viewer wouldn’t noticeit. We start the transition with the tragicscene in the Chinese sweatshop, wherewe stay with the 1.85 aspect ratio butswitch to anamorphic lenses. Thismarks a very powerful, crucial momentfor Uxbal; his world truly starts tounravel, and it’s the point where heeither falls apart or decides to take

◗ Letting Go

Top: Prieto(shouldering a

PanaflexMillennium XL2)

and 1st AC ArturoCastañeda (center,

with his back tocamera) stay close

to the action asEkweme (CheikhNdiaye, far left)

and other Africanstreet vendors

scatter during apolice raid. Typical

of his work withdirector AlejandroGonzález Iñárritu,

Prieto shot mostof Biutiful

handheld. Bottom:Prieto captures the

climax of thepolice chase.


charge of putting his life in order. I feltthat anamorphic lenses would helpisolate him and convey his despairbecause they would slightly alter thetexture of the image. I wanted the back-grounds at this point to have that soft-focus texture, that slightly liquid feel ofanamorphic. We made the aspect-ratiotransition a few scenes later on a craneshot at the beach, using an angle of theocean to open the edges of the screen to2:40. I shot most of the movie withPanavision Ultra Speed [Z Series]MKIIs, and for most of the anamorphicwork I used Panavision’s G-Serieslenses. Whenever there was a source oflight in frame, like a window, the MKIIswould cause a slight flare, and they gavethe image a hard edge and contrasty feelthat we liked. For certain moments, weenhanced the flare of bright sourceswith a Tiffen Smoque Filter on thecamera.

The 1.85 anamorphic passage inthe film is very impressionistic, withUxbal crossing the bridge at sunset,roaming the streets at night, and thengoing to meet his brother at the night-club.

Prieto: He is going through adeeply traumatic moment, so we

Top: This HDframe grabshows part ofthe film’stransition fromspherical 1.85:1to anamorphic2.40:1. Prietoshot thissequence in 1.85with anamorphiclenses. Middleand bottom:Uxbal’s longwalk ends at agarish, surrealnightclub, wherehe seeks solacein alcohol andthe opposite sex.


wanted to use different techniques tocreate the sense that things are out ofbalance, that he’s confused and doesn’tknow where to go or what to do. Wewanted to create images that weren’tstraightforward, so we would, for exam-ple, pass split diopters in front of the lensto defocus some elements in the frame.

The film has a very rough,powerful texture and a grainy, satu-rated image. How did you achievethat?

Prieto: From the beginning,Alejandro felt it was important to havefilm grain permeating the air. In part, itwas his reaction to all the digital devel-opments — he feels that more andmore, movies tend to look too clean andplastic. But film grain has actually beenan important part of the visual palette inall our films, going back to AmoresPerros . Because Biutiful tells one story, Ididn’t want to mix as many film stocks asI have on our other films. The stock Itested in the beginning was Kodak[Vision 500T] 5279, which we liked,but it was being discontinued. So weused [Kodak Vision2 500T] 5260,which is similar to 5279 but has bettercolor reproduction. We found thatpushing 5260 by 1 stop, combined withthe USZ MKII lenses, gave us a texturethat we really loved. Pushing enhancedthe grain but also enhanced the contrastand the color saturation, and thatbecame an integral part of the movie’slook. However, I found that for nightscenes, when there’s a lot of black in theframe, the pushed 5260 became a littletoo milky and a little too blue in theblacks. So for those scenes, I used[Kodak Vision3 500T] 5219 pushed 1stop; that gave the night scenes a littleless grain, but in the very dark, high-contrast night scenes, it delivered deeper,cleaner blacks. I rated both film stocks at640 ASA. The film is bookended byscenes set in the snow, and for those Iused [Kodak Vision2 50D] 5201, whichhas a very clean grain. It’s the only partof the movie that’s not pushed. I wantedthose scenes to be clean and pristine, tohave a very different feel.

Like all of your films with

◗ Letting Go

The HD frame grabs on these pages show a late-afternoon interlude in which Uxbal and Marambra enjoy icecream with their children, and then quiet time as the day comes to an end. The filmmakers’ sleight of hand in

this location included placing greenscreen outside the window for the sunset scene and comping in thebackground later, and shooting the evening scene day-for-night to accommodate child actors Bouchaib and

Guillermo Estrella.


Iñárritu, Biutiful was shot on location.What kind of lighting did you bring tothe locations?

Prieto: I use Kino Flos a lot.They’re very practical; they don’t requiremuch space or a lot of electricity, theydon’t get hot, and you can rig themquickly. I use many different types,including Flathead 80s and the 6-by-6Blanket-Lite. Using a separate diffusionin front of the Blanket-Lite, like an 8-by-8 Full Grid cloth, gives you a verysoft source inside a location. We alsobuilt 4-by-4-foot soft boxes with eight

Kino Flo bulbs to rig either on ceilingsor, for sidelight in tight spaces, against awall. I also used 1-by-1 Litepanels LEDunits configured in a square of four,usually diffused with Full Grid, to simu-late soft lamp light, hiding the shallowfixture behind lampshades or tucking itbehind bedside tables. For HMIs, I usedthe K5600 400-watt and 800-wattJokers extensively; I can bounce themfor fill, or I’ll use the soft tube adapter,which creates a powerful but narrowlight source that’s easily hidden behind adoorframe. The 4K Alpha came inhandy to light through Full Grid diffu-sion frames of different sizes. We used18K HMI Fresnels through windows tocreate sunlight. For tungsten, I also usedthe Barger-Baglite DV-3 with ChimeraMedium Video Pro Shallow Bank, as

well as the 1K [Lowel] Rifa light. I useDedolights for accent lighting.

How did you light the scene thatintroduces us to Uxbal’s ex-wife,Marambra, where she bursts intoTito’s bedroom, dances on the bed andpours wine on him?

Prieto: That location was a tinyroom on the sixth floor that had abalcony. My only lighting opportunitywas the window. The camera basicallydoes a 270-degree move in the scene. Istarted on Tito waking up with my backto the window, so we begin with frontallight, and then I end up on the otherside of the bed, facing Marambra, withthe window behind her. We placed an18K Fresnel on the balcony about 10feet from the window, with a flagcutting the direct light on Marambra

but allowing direct sunlight on Tito. Iused the sheers on the window to bloomthe light coming in, which created a softambient light. So with one light source,we had soft light for Marambra and ahard light for Tito. We put white showcards on the ceiling to create fill, andwhen the camera came around onMarambra, we opened up the lens 2stops, ending up with a fill light that was2 stops under. My focus puller, ArturoCastañeda, has a feel for focus that’s justincredible, and that gives me the confi-dence to move freely. Luis Lattanzi, thesecond AC, was doing the stop change.It was a very small room, and they alldanced behind me as I moved aroundwith the camera, along with the boomoperator. We encountered this kind ofsituation often in the cramped locations,

“If you can find asolution that’s

simple, it’s probablythe most effective,

so whenever possible, I do it the

simplest way.”


but we somehow managed!That’s a very simple lighting

setup.Prieto: Yes, and it’s one of my

favorite scenes in the movie. If you canfind a solution that’s simple, it’s proba-bly the most effective, so wheneverpossible, I do it the simplest way. I useda similar approach in Uxbal’s bedroom,for example when Igé [Diaryatou Daff]opens the shutters. I had Condor liftsoutside with two 18Ks, one for eachwindow. When she opens the shutters,the light comes in through the sheers,fills the room and flares the lens. I alsohad a 4-foot-2-lamp Kino Flo just outof frame above the windows, so thatwhen the shutters were closed, we’dhave some ambient light representingthe daylight seeping in around the shut-ters. I also put a 12K Par on scaffoldingoutside the window that was exclusively

bouncing off the white shutter to lightIgé when she’s standing in the darkroom. It’s a very natural-looking source,but to get the exposure I had to use avery powerful light.

So you used the shutters as abounce board?

Prieto: Yes, using the set itself tobounce light in frame is something I didquite a bit on this film.

How did you light the happyscene involving Uxbal, Marambra andtheir children eating ice cream in herapartment?

Prieto: That was a practical loca-tion on the fourth floor. I lit the scene assunset, as we wanted this to be aprecious moment for the family. Wedidn’t like the view outside the windowmuch, and it wasn’t oriented toward thesun, so we had to hang a greenscreenoutside the window and ask Daniel

Aranyó, our B-camera operator andsecond-unit cinematographer, to shoota background plate with the sun at theright position for our interior location.We had an 18K gelled with Full CTOon a scissor lift just next to the green-screen creating the ‘sunset’ light. We putMarambra close to the window so thebacklight would hit her hair and makeher more alluring. Uxbal has just a littlebit of sunlight on his face. It’s a mix ofcolor temperatures, which is whathappens at sunset — you get the warmsun combined with the reflection of thebluish sky. So there’s golden sun on thebottom part of Uxbal’s face, while thetop of his face and the background arecooler, lit by fill with a little bit of bluein it — a 4-by-4 soft box overhead witheight Kino Flo daylight tubes with ¼CTB and Full Grid diffusion. For theevening scene that follows the ice-cream scene, we shot day-for-night,blacking out the windows, and used thesame soft box with tungsten bulbs, butwith an egg crate made from strips ofblack coreplex to make it a little moredirectional and keep it off the walls.

What was your approach on dayexteriors, like the scene in which Uxbalfollows Marambra out into the streetand gives her money?

Prieto: The main thing for mewith exteriors is to schedule the time ofday to shoot each angle. We scheduledthat scene so we’d be in the shade of thesurrounding buildings for every shot. I

◗ Letting Go

At a key momentlate in the film,Ekweme’s wife,

Igé (DiaryatouDaff), opens the

shutters in Uxbal’sbedroom. Lightfrom two 18Ks

outside thewindows, diffused

by the sheercurtains, flares thelens as she opens

the shutters.

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Idon’t know if I’m a masochist, but Ihate soundstages, and not only

because I think that they will neverrepresent reality correctly. There’s some-thing about the texture, the reality ofwalls, the smell, the story of them, thevibe. Even if the builder creates setsexactly the same, the sets don’t havesoul. I think reality can never bematched in that sense. The other reasonI shoot all my films on location is thatthere’s something uncomfortable aboutlocations that, in a way, helps everybodyfeel they are in real territory and notmaking a film. I like that, and I thinkit’s a very effective psychological

environment.You know, I’m not interested in

reality; I’m interested in the truth of theuniverse that I try to portray. Like manyothers, I am obsessive, meticulous, aperfectionist, and as an exquisiteneurotic I can be unbearable as a direc-tor because Idemand whatever numberof takes to get what I, the character andthe film need. (You can ask the actors.Ha, ha!)

I wanted to shoot Biutiful inchronological order because that notonly helps the actors travel correctly, butalso helps me and Rodrigo and the restof the crew really understand where we

are in time and space, which is what afilm is really made of. Film, for me, ismade of the tension and rhythm thatone image creates against another, andif all of us are traveling in time andspace with the characters, we suddenlybegin to be affected by the film. And Ihave to tell you that after three monthsof shooting, we were completelyinvested. We were living the experience,and that made a big difference in thefinal result.

It’s very difficult to describeBiutiful because in it, I played withelements that are new for me. It’s a filmthat explores a timeless question —Where do we go when we die? — inthe very specific and complex time weare all living. It is close to a tragedy inthe classical sense, but it also has ametaphysical element, and we don’tknow exactly the division between real-ity and illusion. Visually, that was anelement of the film that was very diffi-cult to find the right balance for; Iwanted to create a perfume of themetaphysical element, but I didn’t wantto take the film into another territory.

If I use musical analogies, Iwould say that Amores Perros is rock ’n’roll, 21 Grams is jazz, Babel is operatic,and Biutiful is a requiem. The visualgrammar of this film was very delicateand sophisticated because it had tocombine the social, the physical, themetaphysical and a hyper-realisticapproach.To me, Biutiful is by far Rodrigo’s most lyrical and poeticwork. Realistically and metaphorically,he found light in the darkest placespossible.

Over the years, Rodrigo and Ihave developed a communication levelthat is not only effective and veryproductive, but also very profound. Weskip all those things that you normallyhave to go through when you startcollaborating with someone. We just gostraight to the DNA.

— Alejandro González Iñárritu

•|• Iñárritu on Method •|•

didn’t use any lighting, just a handheld3-by-3 white card for the eyes. WhenUxbal hugs her, I went low with thecamera to catch the flare from theskylight in the moment when he relaxesfor a second in her arms. The shiftingcolor on their faces is the blue skylightcombined with warmth that came from the sun bouncing off the brickbuildings.

Did you use any lighting in thelong sequence that shows Igé’shusband and the other African streetvendors getting busted by the police?

Prieto: No, I didn’t. It’s all aboutscheduling. Whenever I can, I try not to

use any electrical lighting on day exteri-ors, as I find it can look quite fake.

As you mentioned, there aremany dusk scenes in the film. Can youtalk about the scene that shows Uxbalcrossing the bridge?

Prieto: At that moment, it’s alsothe dusk of Uxbal’s life. With any duskscene, it’s really tricky to schedule andrehearse it and make sure you capturethe right moment. We had some Maxi-Brutes gelled with Lee 013 Straw Tintuplighting the buildings in the back-ground, representing the sodium-vaporstreetlights at the location. We lit otherbuildings in another part of the shotwith Lee 728 Steel Green, as if metal-halide streetlights were glowing up thefaçades. I asked the production designer,Brigitte Broch, to build in the fluores-

“Using the setitself to bouncelight in frame issomething I didquite a bit on

this film.”

cent fixtures that you see on the bridge,so that as Uxbal walks on the bridge, hegoes in and out of pools of cyan fluores-cent light with uncorrected Cool White

bulbs that contrast with the sodium huein the background. It was an extensivelighting job; we wanted it to look realand organic but somewhat enhanced.

The shot involved a very complexchoreography of the handheld camerawith the different elements surroundingUxbal. Getting everything right at theexact moment of dusk light was quite achallenge, but when we got it, it wasexhilarating. I have to mention that theentire crew was great, and I think mygaffer, Jose Luis Rodriguez, is one of thebest gaffers in the world. He was anamazing support for me.

Can you talk about the sequencein the nightclub? The extreme colorsand lighting provide a strong contrastto the rest of the film.

Prieto: It was a lot of fun todesign that lighting, and again, we triedto emphasize Uxbal’s point of view.Alejandro came up with the idea ofhaving the strippers outfitted with latexbreasts on different parts of their bodies.We wanted an unsettling feel; wewanted to enhance the feeling that thisis the moment when Uxbal just lets go.He decides to drink and forget about

◗ Letting Go

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Prieto checks the light on Bardem stand-in Francesc Sadurní.

40

everything. We brought in most of thelighting, gelling most of the units withRosco 90 Green and Storaro Orange.We had robotic Mac 2000s projectingpatterns and colors throughout the club,many pulsing Par cans, and a few strobelights. As Uxbal enters the room, he isbathed in ultraviolet ‘black light,’ and weshot without a UV filter on the camera,which creates a hazy, atmospheric,indigo light that contrasts with theorange and green of the first part of thescene. I also used a video projector withbubbly images for one of the strippersclimbing up a wall. To emphasize theotherworldly feel, we wanted moredramatic lens flares, so we used thespecial Panavision C-Series ‘Flare’lenses in the club. I also used theselenses for the scene after the club, wherea drunken Uxbal goes back home todiscover that his son has been left aloneby Marambra.

What about the very saturatedblue light that bathes the scene when

Uxbal talks to the woman in the booth?Prieto: We lit the booth with two

4-by-8 Martin LC series RGB LEDpanels that we positioned overhead. Wecould program the panels with digitalvideo images, and I ended up choosingwaves of colors. What I liked about itwas that it didn’t have the hard edge ofstandard nightclub lighting — there’s asofter texture to the light — and wecould shift the colors as the sceneprogressed. Mostly, I lit that area withthis sort of blue cyan with waves ofpurple that I felt was more in tune withUxbal’s despair, until a red light flashesas the music changes and they move tothe dance floor.

Mirrors seem to be a recurringmotif in the film. They figure in severalscenes, including the last one.

Prieto: We didn’t make aconscious decision to use mirrors, but Ithink that the feeling you get through-out the movie is like Through the LookingGlass, as though the mirror is another

reality. Peering into another dimensionis what Uxbal does; it’s his gift. We tookthat all the way in the last scene, whichis the ultimate mirror shot. But we can’ttalk about that because it would be aspoiler! ●

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From the earliest moments that producer/actor MarkWahlberg and director David O. Russell partnered todevelop The Fighter, they had raw and uniquely Americanvisuals in mind. Ironically, they turned to a European

cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema, NSC, FSF, to get thatjob done. Russell was impressed by van Hoytema’s work onthe Swedish feature Let the Right One In, and on the black-and-white Swedish television show How Soon is Now?

What Russell hired van Hoytema to shoot was, at itscore, a gritty, reality-based drama. Wahlberg stars as Bostonboxer “Irish” Micky Ward, who learns how to be a championfrom his half brother, Dickie (Christian Bale), even as Dickiebattles drug addiction. The movie is built around the frame-work of a real 1995 HBO documentary that covered Dickie’sdescent, portions of which were re-created by the filmmakers

Hoyte van Hoytema,NSC, FSF mixes 2-perf

Super 35mm andBetacam-SP for the

period boxing dramaThe Fighter.

By Michael Goldman

•|•

Tough Love


as a framing device. Shot entirely inLowell, Mass., The Fighter includesextended boxing sequences choreo-graphed and shot to mimic Ward’s realfights in the late 1980s and early 1990sas they were broadcast on HBO.

Because of Wahlberg’s relation-ship with HBO via his series Entourage,the Fighter team was given full access tothe network’s sports-broadcasting unitso they could accurately re-createportions of some of these fights. HBOlent the production some personnel, andthe filmmakers’ equipment includedperiod-correct Betacam-SP standard-definition ENG cameras (supplied byPittsburgh’s NEP Supershooters).

The filmmakers also took anunorthodox approach to the dramasurrounding the boxing. Russell and vanHoytema both wanted to be improvisa-tional to a large degree — going hand-held, mobile and as light as possible —and when creative requirements andbudget considerations appeared tosuggest a digital format for principalphotography, van Hoytema insteadsuggested using Aaton’s Penelopecameras to shoot 2-perf Super 35mm,an unusual move for a U.S. studio

picture. (The production prohibited theuse of Super 16mm.) The cinematogra-pher was accustomed to shooting 2-perfin Europe, and felt he could use theformat to more successfully accommo-date Russell’s desire to shoot mostlyhandheld or with a Steadicam in smalllocations, often in limited light, whileworking extremely fast. (Principalphotography took 38 days.) Thisapproach would also enable the film-makers to capture grainy images to suitthe story.

“When shooting 2-perf for[2.40:1] output, you expose far lessnegative than 4-perf, saving a lot ofmoney, and if you are interested ingetting grain and texture, it’s the way togo,” says van Hoytema. “I prefer 2-perfover all the digital cameras I’ve tested.

“I find that workflows and provenworking methods are harder to changeor adapt in an established industry likeHollywood’s, which may be why 2-perfhasn’t really been used here,” he adds.“In that respect, Europe seems a bitmore flexible — in a smaller industry,you need to be able to adapt.”

Abel Cine Tech provided theproduction with three new Penelopes,U

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Opposite: Trainer Dickie Eklund (Christian Bale) raisesthe arm of his half-brother, “Irish” Micky Ward (Mark

Wahlberg),after a big win. This page, top: Wardtakes a shine to Charlene (Amy Adams), a sharp-

tongued bartender. Bottom: Cinematographer Hoytevan Hoytema, NSC, FSF shoulders an Aaton Penelope.


Angenieux Optimo 28-76mm zoomlenses, and a set of Arri Master Primes(ranging from 14mm to 150mm). VanHoytema chose three Fujifilm stocksthat he knew well, Eterna 250T 8553,250D 8563 and 500T 8573. “I felt theFuji would respond well to lots of differ-ent colors, and I had used it before, sothe choice was a comfort thing,” he says.“It’s good to be acquainted with thelimits of your film stock; it gives you less

to worry about and more time to focuson what’s in front of the camera.

“The Penelope allowed us to usea small zoom, and with the Steadicamrig this became a versatile and flexibletool,” he continues. “I often handled theremote zoom to make small adjust-ments in movements and close-ups.The Steadicam is very handy, but itoften also smoothes out moves andbecomes a bit too clinical or predictable.

The zooming added a new axis to theequation and occasionally gave us unex-pected results. Sometimes it added thatextra bit of tension and dirt.”

It was important to Russell thatthe images “not look designed,” accord-ing to van Hoytema. “We even wantedthings to look a bit messy, a little eclec-tic,” he says. “We didn’t want people towatch this film and directly pinpoint alook or an obvious intention. For me,[the visuals] had to be more closelylinked to the direct, emotional side, sortof like jamming in a band.”

Because The Fighter is a periodpiece, Russell wanted it to evoke thepalette and style of the early 1990s,which meant lots of color in parts of theframe and little color in other parts.“We used some of the saturated look ofthe big colors from the late Eighties,but we also picked a palette for eachscene with [production designer] JudyBecker so that we’d have only one boldcolor in each frame, with the rest beingfairly monochromatic,” says Russell.“Each [bold] color has a purpose, andwe use red very selectively. For example,Micky wears a red shirt when heconfronts his family, and red also shows

◗ Tough Love

Right: During akey bout, Eklund

urges Ward todig deeper and

follow theirfight strategy.Below: Ward’sfeisty mother,Alice (Melissa

Leo), also servesas his manager,

but heeventually

concludes thather career

guidance isn’toptimizing his

prospects.


up as blood in the ring.”A-camera operator Geoff Haley

captured most of the drama sequenceswith a Steadicam. Haley says this was adirect result of Russell and vanHoytema’s desire to improvise withoutstopping frequently for reloads. “I’d saythis was the most difficult shoot I’veever done as an operator,” Haleyobserves. “We used the camera almostin a stream-of-consciousness fashion,which David excels at. He didn’t story-board, per se, or design shot lists aheadof time. Instead, he would show up onthe day with the actors and allow thescene to organically play itself out. Heand Hoyte were adamant about wantinga camera style that could adapt quicklyand easily with little or no down time.”

In fact, he continues, “Davidrarely called ‘Cut.’ We just called ‘rollout,’ so takes lasted as long as there wasfilm in the camera. But there was oneoccasion, in the middle of a take, whenwe were shooting in Dickie’s apartmenton a wide prime lens. We were aboutfive minutes into the take, and Davidasked me to go to a longer lens andmove around Christian. I said, ‘Okay,let’s cut and quickly change lenses,’ andDavid yelled, ‘No, don’t cut!’ So, for thefirst time in my career, I stopped and

After a violentconfrontation withthe police (top),Eklund lands inprison (middle),where he urgesWard to follow hisadvice for anupcoming boutwith a formidableopponent.Bottom: Ward’sparents consolehim after hesuffers a brutalbeating at thehands of a muchheavier fighter.

changed lenses on the Steadicam whilethe film was still rolling through thecamera!”

Many settings were dingy, tightlocations such as apartments, gyms, jailcells and police stations, and vanHoytema’s source-lighting schemeswere central to the realism Russell waspursuing. Indeed, gaffer Mike Moyer

calls van Hoytema one of the mosttalented source lighters he has ever seen.“Hoyte believes that if there’s a window,he should light through the window,and if there’s a door, he should lightthrough the door,” says Moyer. “Theway he achieves this is by creating large‘eyebrows,’ basically reflective materialover every window or whatever the

source is, and then bouncing a largelight, in this case reflector flood Arrimax18Ks, into that reflective material. Wehardly ever put a light up in the air;lights always stayed on the ground, andwe used large bounces. One bounce was120-by-12 feet, rigged off trusses andmotors over the side of a building, andwe had large lights on the street below,over the face of the building, bouncingup into it. By adjusting the angle of thetruss frame, we created a wonderful,natural-looking bounce through thewindows that was very controllable.With the bounce material in place, wecould just move lights to different posi-tions on the ground to get differentangles of attack with soft light comingthrough the windows.”

Van Hoytema says it was almost asteadfast rule to light from the outside,with very few exceptions for dramasequences. The “eyebrow” is somethinghe has been utilizing for years, and hesuggests it’s a “simple way of lighting aset while still being able to look outwindows. The floor is clean of lights, sothe camera can move around freely. You


◗ Tough Love

Right: Ward goesnose-to-nose with

WBU championShea Neary

(Anthony Molinari)during the prefight

introductions fortheir2000 light-

welterweight titlebout in England.

The productionlent the fightscenes extra

authenticity byemployingperiod-correct Betacam-SPstandard-definitioncameras, which are

frequently visiblein frame. Below:

Ward exults afterdefeating Neary

on an eighth-round technical

knockout.


◗ Tough Love

can throw light into the room withoutblocking the view outside. The light willfall off quite fast the farther it goes intothe room, so there is quite a dynamicwhen the actors move around. We justlet them go dark away from windows,and a bit of smoke helped carry the lighta bit further, reducing the contrast.”

Van Hoytema was equallydynamic with the film’s extensive street-lighting work during night filming,because numerous sequences take place

on the urban streets of Lowell. In keep-ing with the story’s period, vanHoytema was committed to avoiding asodium look on the streets, so all street-lights close to the filming were fittedwith metal-halide lamps (250-watt4,000°K 90CRI) that were moreneutral.

Again, the goal was to light asnaturally as possible, bouncing lightacross and around sections of streetswhen actors were interacting up against

or near buildings. Moyer says suchscenes were largely lit with threeCondors; one lifted a 20'x20'Ultrabounce, one lifted a 48-light spotDino, and one lifted another 20'x20'Ultrabounce to capture and bounce spillfrom light shooting across the street.

For action in boxing arenas,however, the shooting and lightingparadigm changed to emulate HBObroadcasts of three of those fights. Allof the boxing scenes were shot overthree days in Lowell’s Paul TsongasArena. This was mainly becauseWahlberg wanted to do all choreo-graphed fighting himself, and that workleft him exhausted, so the filmmakersdidn’t want to prolong it.

Russell was also keen to find anapproach to the boxing scenes thatwould be different from the stylizedimagery in Raging Bull and Rocky.Thus, he decided to avoid bringingcameras inside the ring and close to theactors, except for a brief montage in themiddle of the film and a few shots inthe climactic fight. “Mark really wantedto shoot the boxing scenes so theyflowed in one big sequence, rather thansetting them up shot by shot,” recallsRussell. “We did shoot a small fightsequence that was stylized from the

Right: Anoverhead grid of

Par 64 cansilluminates thering in Lowell’s

Paul TsongasArena, where all

of the fightscenes were shotover three days.

Below: Large“eyebrow”

reflectorssuspended abovelocation windows

allowed vanHoytema to

bounce lightinginto the interiors,

creating realisticambience.

actor’s point-of-view, and I enjoyedthat, but otherwise, we shot thosescenes as if they were broadcasts of realmatches. There was a certain flow toshooting in one movement with the[Betacam] cameras rather than stop-ping and starting. That gave a rawnessand realness to the flow of the fights.Because we used older video camerasthat were clearly meant for the smallscreen, there was some banding in theimages when they were blown up, but Ifeel that gives it a historical feel.”

The team used the same kind of Sony BVP-900 and BVP-950Betacam-SP cameras that were used tocapture Ward’s fights, and some of theoriginal HBO cameramen and techni-cians also worked on these scenes. (Thenetwork even provided the same boxingring, ropes and arena advertisementsused for those televised matches.) “Thetechnique is essentially how HBO stillcovers boxing matches,” notes Haley.“There were two long-lens camerasperched basically halfway up thestadium stairs to get long-lens and wideshots, and then they had two aproncameras, handheld cameras just outsidethe ropes to get more intimate coverageof the fight. Those four cameras weretaping to isolated tape decks in theproduction truck but were also beingcut together live by an HBO technicaldirector. That gave them a line cut theycould use as a starting point and thatDavid could use in editing, with addi-tional material to choose from on tape.Then, [B-camera operator] DanaGonzalez and I came in, abandoningour film cameras and using Sony[UVW-500] Betacams to cover all theevents happening outside the ring andaround the arena.”

Van Hoytema notes that he hadnever shot or even watched boxingbefore making The Fighter. He saysHBO’s guidelines for how to shootthese scenes were easy to follow. “Davidwould sit at a table with monitors fromall the camera outputs, and let thingshappen,” recalls the cinematographer.“We’d work in sequences rather thanmoments or beats. It was tough for

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David to see everything live on all themonitors we had, so there was a lot ofplayback on set. It was a bit of differentthinking for us to make the drama fit anestablished sports style.”

Lighting in the arena was largelyconfigured exactly as it was for HBObroadcasts, creating what Russell calls “aharsh feel” on the big screen. A basictruss grid over the ring lit most of the

action. “It was a box grid the dimen-sions of the boxing ring, with about 35medium Par 64 cans for each side of thering,” Moyer explains. “All the lenseswere turned, every other light, so thatone lens was horizontal and one wasvertical.”

The project’s post workflow washandled at Technicolor facilities in New York and Hollywood. The NewYork house provided dailies, and theHollywood house handled the digitalintermediate, including up-rezzing and converting the Beta-SP images.According to post supervisor Chris-topher Kulikowski, the standard-defin-ition video footage blew up to 24-fpshigh-definition nicely while retaining“the gritty quality of the video, which iswhat David wanted.

“It was basically a two-stepprocess,” Kulikowski continues. “Theyshot in the Beta-SP format at 30 fps,and then we converted it to HD at 24fps by running it through a Terranex

◗ Tough Love

352

In the shimmering heat, a glassysurface will soon beshattered.

www.leefilters.com

Think LEE50

Wahlberg, Bale and crewmembers prepare to shoot the movie’s opening scene on the streets ofLowell. Wahlberg, a Massachusetts native and one of the project’s producers, insisted that the

film be shot in his home state to capture the local flavor.

conversion box, and then later convertedall the video material to DPX files to beincorporated into the DI files, retainingthe noise and imperfections of the orig-inal Beta-SP. It was an enormous under-taking largely because they shot six toeight video cameras inside the arena;organizing all that footage was challeng-ing. The tapes were actually sent to LosAngeles, where the conversion work wasdone by Technicolor Creative Services.”

As far as massaging the 2-perf35mm footage went, Kulikowskisuggests that today’s DI tools have madethose adjustments fairly straightforward.“The DI requires everything to beturned into a 4-perf anamorphic nega-tive and print, so the optical-blowupissue has gone away,” he says. “As far asremoving imperfections, you treat it likea visual-effects sequence and paint thoseout. Technicolor has great restorationtools for that sort of work. Shooting 2-perf means you have to take some moretime in post, but on the other hand, it

made their lives so much easier inproduction for this kind of a movie.”

The DI, handled by colorist TonyDustin, was the first of Russell’s career.This time, in a departure from theextensive post manipulation he hasrequested on films like Three Kings (ACNov. ’99), the director asked Dustin tobe subtle, because he was satisfied thatvan Hoytema had largely achieved thedesired look in-camera. That was trueeven with the Betacam footage, whichvan Hoytema describes as “strangelysharp and rough at the same time” onthe big screen — exactly what he andRussell wanted. “Something reallyinteresting happens with the texturewhen you convert Betacam to film,”says the cinematographer, “and when wetested it in prep, David and I thoughtthat looked better than the HD tests wemade. We felt this was an obvious andquite logical way to do it, actually.”

Russell says his creative synergywith van Hoytema was so complete that

he regards the cinematographer as“someone I think I can work with for along time. He’s a very special guy. I likepeople with a fresh eye who are notcynical or hungry.” ●

51

TECHNICAL SPECS

2.40:1

2-perf Super 35mm and Digital Capture

Aaton Penelope; Sony BVP-900,BVP-950

Angenieux Optimo and Arri Master Prime lenses

Fujifilm Eterna 250T 8553,250D 8563, 500T 8573


Printed on Fujifilm Eterna-CP 3514DI


It’s been nearly three decades since Kevin Flynn (JeffBridges) first entered the high-stakes digital world of theGrid in Tron. The sequel Tron: Legacy reveals that Kevindisappeared in the Grid 20 years ago, leaving behind his

son, Sam (Garrett Hedlund), who has become an aimlessextreme-sports enthusiast. Legacy, directed by first-timerJoseph Kosinski and shot by Claudio Miranda, ASC, takesSam into the Grid, where he is finally reunited with his father.Among other challenges, the action-packed journey requiredMiranda to shoot both 2-D and 3-D and help to furtherevolve the digital facial-replacement techniques that playedheavily into his previous feature, David Fincher’s The CuriousCase of Benjamin Button (AC Jan.’09).

Fincher introduced Kosinski to Miranda in 2005 whenKosinski was looking for a cinematographer to shoot a

commercial in Los Angeles. “Claudio and I have done another14 or so commercials together since then,” says Kosinski. “Hehas been a great friend and partner. He’s an amazing artistwith a great technical mind, and he’s always up for tinkeringwith something new.”

The first steps toward realizing Legacy included thecreation of a teaser trailer, which premiered at Comic-Con in2008. “At the time, [Disney] wasn’t sure there was demand fora Tron sequel, and we knew that if we failed [at Comic-Con],the project would be put on hold,” says Kosinski. But thetrailer was a hit, and the feature received a green light.Principal photography commenced in April 2009 and wasdone primarily onstage at the Canadian Motion Picture Parkoutside Vancouver; location work for sequences set in the realworld was done around the city.

Back tothe Grid

Tron: Legacy, shot byClaudio Miranda, ASC,

mixes 2-D and 3-D to update the

environments of the1982 sci-fi hit.

By Noah Kadner

•|•


AC visited the Legacy set in June2009,as the filmmakers prepared toshoot a major action sequence andclose-ups of Hedlund simultaneouslyon different stages. Kosinski started theday by showing off the Comic-Contrailer in high quality and then review-ing storyboards and cutout models ofkey set pieces, many of which paidsubtle homage to the original film.

The groundbreaking visual effectsin the original Tron, shot by BruceLogan, ASC ( AC Aug. ’82), wereachieved primarily by painstakinglyrotoscoping and colorizing black-and-white 70mm film and incorporatingstate-of-the-art computer animation.To enhance the sense of technologicalprogress that has marked the interven-ing decades, the Legacy team chose toembrace high-definition video, and inorder to further distinguish the digitalworld created by Kevin Flynn from thereal world, they shot sequences set in theGrid in stereoscopic 3-D. After testinga number of options, Miranda decidedto work with Pace’s Fusion 3-D system,using a pair of Sony CineAlta F35cameras.

An earlier iteration of the Fusion

system, fitted with Sony HDC-F950s,was used on James Cameron’s Avatar(AC Jan. ’10), and although the Legacyteam tested that rig, “we really preferredthe 35mm-sized sensor in the F35,”Miranda says during a break in filming.“I loved its shallow depth of field andsofter, more pleasing 3-D effect.” Whenshooting with the 3-D rig, 1st AC JonasSteadman supported camera operatorJohn Clothier from a specially converteddigital-imaging-technician station,where he used a Camnet touch-screen

system designed by Pace to handle inte-rocular/convergence, mirror correctionsand iris; in addition, Steadman pulledfocus with a Preston remote-focushandset.

Recording 1080p HD to Codexhard drives, the filmmakers devisedtheir own guidelines for their 3-D work.For example, referring to the point inspace where the two cameras’ lenses areaimed, and which determines whetherobjects appear to float in front of orbehind the screen plane, “we decided toU

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Opposite: SamFlynn (GarrettHedlund) followsin his father’sfootsteps andraces a light cyclewithin the worldof the Grid inTron: Legacy,directed by JosephKosinski and shotby ClaudioMiranda, ASC.This page, top:Twenty years afterdisappearing intothe Grid, KevinFlynn (JeffBridges) isreunited with hisson. Bottom: Thefilmmakersutilized digitalface-replacementtechnology tocreate Legacy’santagonist, CLU2.0.


◗ Back to the Grid

Top: Alan Bradley(Bruce Boxleitner)informs Sam that

he received a pagefrom the long-

abandoned Flynn’sArcade. Middle and

bottom: Aided bydigital extensions,

Flynn’s Arcade wasconstructed at theCanadian Motion

Picture Parkoutside Vancouver.

not lock convergence with focus,”Miranda explains. “We treated conver-gence as a fixed point in 3-D space that moves independently from focus,which makes the screen appear like abox you’re looking into, and keepsthings from leaping out unnaturally.Additionally, we went against the ‘rule’of deep-focus depth-of-field for 3-Dand let our backgrounds go really soft,which helps guide the eye along withthe depth cues.”

The filmmakers framed for2.35:1, and “we protected the top andbottom of the 2.35 frame in order tokeep items from breaking the horizontalframe lines,” notes Kosinski. “When thebrain perceives a depth cue disrupted bythose edges, it tends to ruin the illusion.”

Given the complexity and weightof the dual-F35 3-D rig, Miranda ruled out handheld and Steadicamshots. “I would have needed ArnoldSchwarzenegger to carry that rig,” hesays with a laugh. “The style of cine-matography we envisioned for Legacywas well suited to dolly and crane shots.Joe liked nodal shots on axis and linear,deliberate camera moves from point Ato point B, which is logical for a movieset inside a computer. Many of our setswere elevated, and we spent a lot of timeon a Hydrascope telescoping armcombined with a Titan crane and a

Chapman G3 stabilized head. We alsomodified a Graphlite, designed byPacific Motion Control, to work as agantry motion-control crane. Instead oflaying motion-control track on theground, the track and crane wereinverted to come from the ceiling. Thisgave us great flexibility; I could reachanywhere on set without laying track. Italso allowed me to create a perfect high-speed circle track.”

Some of the action set in Legacy’sdigital world also required high-speedphotography. For this, Pace supplied theproduction with a modified 3-D mirrorrig fitted with two optically linkedVision Research Phantom HDcameras, allowing Miranda to shoot atup to 1,000 fps while closely matchingthe F35 material.

Legacy opens with a prologue setin 1989 and then jumps ahead to thepresent day; these sequences were shotin 2-D with a single F35 on location inVancouver. The prologue features ayoung Sam (Owen Best) and Kevin,and Bridges was able to play his youngerself thanks to the facial-replacementtechnology pioneered by DigitalDomain for Benjamin Button . Button’svisual-effects supervisor, Eric Barba,again collaborated with Miranda forLegacy. “Jeff was on set to digitally drivethe facial animation, and then we

shot with a body double mimicking his physical movements,” explainsMiranda. Bridges’ facial movementswere captured by means of a head-mounted rig with four witness cameras,and the body double, Miranda notes,“wore a gray mask to facilitate thereplacement process. The double had ahairstyle and build similar to Jeff’syounger self, so we could go without themask on over-the-shoulder shots. As onBenjamin Button , the idea was to treatthe lighting no differently from any

other scene; we didn’t want to draw anyspecial attention to the effect.”

In Legacy’s present day, AlanBradley (Bruce Boxleitner, reprising hisrole from Tron) prompts Sam, now 27,to check on Kevin’s long-abandonedarcade. In the first Tron, Flynn’s Arcadewas a real location in Culver City, Calif.,and production designer DarrenGilford painstakingly re-created the setat the Vancouver studio for Legacy.Inside the arcade, “I didn’t use the orig-inal film as a reference,” says Miranda.

Top: Miranda motivated the lighting inside Flynn’s Arcade from hanging practicals, arcade-game machines and the street outside. Bottom: Sam discovers his father’s secret lab, where

he inadvertently triggers a laser that digitizes him and transports him into the Grid, cuing the film’s switch from 2-D to 3-D.



“Our version of the look is less saturatedand has warmer tones. The place issupposed to be dilapidated now, and it’slit by the glow of covered arcade-gamemachines and sodium-vapor lightsmotivated by the street outside. Weused conventional lights outside thearcade — the big light through the doorwas a 20K gelled with ½ CTO. In thearcade, we put R40 tungsten lampsinside the hanging practicals, creatingpools of light. The arcade machines litthemselves, though I did augment thema bit with some Blue Green Kinosaround the machine for lightingGarrett. For ambience, we had a fewfour-bank Kino Flos in soft boxes overhead, but they were used very minimally.”

Hidden behind the Tron videogame, which serves as a focal point inthe arcade, Sam finds a passageway thatleads to his father’s secret lab. “We put abunch of practicals in the lab, but turnedthem all off in the end because wedecided to play things darker and moremysterious. The only lights were the20K [with ½ CTO] outside thewindow and, for fill, a couple of 4-footsingle Kino Flos gelled with ½ CTO forfill.”The lab contains a laser capable ofdigitizing a human and transportinghim or her into the Grid — the samemechanism that launched Kevin into


Top: Sam is discovered by a Recognizer, which casts a blinding beam of light akin to a helicoptersearchlight. Miranda used a digital projector to give the light a subtle computer-grid effect.

Middle and bottom: Bridges wore a head-mounted rig fitted with witness cameras to capturefacial movements for CLU 2.0; the digitized face was then mapped onto a body double.


the digital realm in Tron. When Saminadvertently triggers the laser, he, too, istransported to the Grid, at which pointthe film transitions to stereoscopic 3-D.

The world of the Grid includescity streets, with long stretches of road-ways and façades, which were built asbacklot sets with interactive lighting.“We avoided traditional 1K and 2Kunits,” says Miranda. Instead, he andgaffer Drew Davidson employed Image80s with Kino Flo 55 tubes for a 40'x40'overhead soft box and some PhilipsColor Kinetics lights. The latter “had5,500°K and 3,200°K LEDs hooked toa dimmer so we could mix colortemperatures, but we mainly used onlythe 5,500°K side,” notes Miranda.

“Instead of streetlamps, we integratedVision X 4-foot off-road-racing LEDheadlamps everywhere,” says Miranda.“They looked beautiful.”

Lost on the Grid, Sam is discov-ered by a Recognizer, a U-shaped flyingtroop carrier/prisoner transport thatappeared in a more primitive form inTron. The Recognizer casts a blindingbeam of light onto Sam, and Miranda“wanted it to feel like a helicoptersearchlight, but a little different — thebeam has a subtle computer-grid effectover it. We used a digital projector withthe grid pattern loaded up, and webeamed it all around Sam to create theeffect.”

After being picked up, Sam is

taken to a room and fitted with askintight latex suit accented with glow-ing piping, the uniform of all of theGrid’s inhabitants. (Quantum CreationFX supplied the suits.) In Tron, theglowing effect was created in postthrough frame-by-frame cel animation;for Legacy, the filmmakers were deter-mined to create the effect in-camera.Gilford explains, “The primary lightingin the costumes was EL [ElectroLuminescent] technology derived fromcell-phone displays; it’s a very thin lampsandwiched in a film laminate. The suits were sculpted in 3-D using[Luxology’s] Modo and [Pixologic’s]ZBrush, and then sent directly tomanufacturing and cast in latex. Theactors wore lithium battery packs, andwe controlled the lights wirelessly toconserve power; we’d turn the lights onas the cameras started rolling andswitch them off right at ‘cut.’”

“The suits really drove the pastellook of the digital world,” notesMiranda. “We wanted to see the suitlights casting interactive light fromcharacter to chara cter and have every-thing look as luminous as possible, likethe glow of a computer monitor. Thegood guys have cool tones — blues,purples and greens — while the badguys have the warmer reds and oranges.

“We really wanted the suits toread bright, and we wanted to capturetheir interaction with the sets and char-acters,” the cinematographer continues.The suits’ low light output necessitatedshooting with minimum levels of filllight and keeping lenses at their widestapertures. Miranda worked with aselection of Arri Master Primes, favor-ing the 25mm and 32mm. He turned tothe 14mm and 18mm to take in thesets’ full scope. The cinematographeralso eschewed filtration in order tominimize light loss and deliver pristineimagery for post. “I generally lit to themonitors and didn’t carry a light meter,”says Miranda. “After a while, you getused to lighting to the waveform.”

Once in the Grid, Sam is intro-duced to the film’s antagonist, CLU 2.0,who looks exactly like Kevin Flynn circa


Sam is pressedinto play in the

lethal DiscArena, which

was constructedonstage as a

mostlybluescreen set.


The following are excerpts from arecent conversation with Digital

Domain visual-effects supervisor EricBarba and head of animation StevePreeg about their contributions to Tron: Legacy.

American Cinematographer: Theoriginal Tron was a watershedmoment for motion-picture visualeffects. Did you approach Legacy withthe goal of doing something no onehad ever done?

Steve Preeg: It was certainly aconcern that we live up to the original,but any major visual-effects filmrequires some level of new softwaredevelopment, and we wrote a numberof tools specifically for Tron: Legacy ,including new acquisition techniquesfor animating CLU, and new rendertechnologies and tracking software.

Eric Barba: Our first step was tobuild a previsualization team. This wasin 2008, before the live-action team washired. We started planning what wewere going to shoot and how we wouldshoot it. We built art-department assetsinto the previz to get an idea of howthings would work in front of a stereo-scopic lens. We planned out everysequence and every shot, determiningwhat would be synthetic and whatwould be practical and how to buildboth. The disc game was an earlysequence that helped us establish thelook of the Grid. What do the discslook like when they hit a wall? Whateffect do they leave behind? How hotshould they be optically? The otherthing that helped us establish the Grid’slook was the first shot of the newRecognizer. I kept telling my crew, ‘Thisis the first time people will see aRecognizer. It needs to be massive, andit needs to be the coolest thing we’venever seen before.’ We did 120-oddversions of that shot before Joe[Kosinski] and I were both happy withit.

Let’s talk about the CLU char-acter, a photo-real re-creation of a

young Jeff Bridges.Preeg: The first time Eric and I

did something like that was onBenjamin Button , but CLU was moredifficult because everyone has seen JeffBridges in his thirties, whereas no onehas seen Brad Pitt at 80. We looked atdifferent films and pictures of Jeff fromthat era and tried to figure out thethings about him that are constant.

What new techniques did youdevelop for this process?

Preeg: Jeff wanted to be on setinteracting with the other actors, so wedeveloped a system that used fourhelmet-mounted cameras, similar towhat was done on Avatar, to capture hisperformance. While Jeff performed hisCLU scenes with the other actors, hisbody double, John Reardon, studiedJeff’s movements and performance.When it came time to shoot, John,wearing a gray hood covered withtracking dots, would mimic Jeff, andthen we would replace John’s head withJeff’s CG features, based on perfor-mance data we captured with thehelmet cameras. We also built a libraryof facial performance motions based onthe Facial Action Coding System PaulEkman developed in the 1970s — it’s a140-point map of hundreds of humanfacial expressions. The points representthe regions of the face that move inrelation to one another, and they let usdetermine what muscles were activated

to move those points to a given posi-tion. We walked Jeff through a FACSsession, recorded his face, and built adatabase of expressions, and then [ourpropriety program] Faceplant trans-planted Jeff’s muscle system to CLU’s.

Barba: We did some facereplacement for Sam [GarrettHedlund] as well. During the light-cycle scenes, we used a four-cameraRed One array to photograph Garrett’sface and project it back into Sam’shelmet. That whole system came fromJoe wanting to shoot from any direc-tion.

How do you know when you’vesuccessfully animated a believable-looking CG human?

Preeg: That’s for the audience todecide. I’m proud of my work, but I’mso close to it that all I see are the imper-fections.

Barba: It’s hard to put down thatpaintbrush — they have to rip it out ofyour hand! We had an amazing team.All 1,500 visual-effects shots camethrough Digital Domain in Venice, butwe also worked with our Vancouveroffice and companies in NorthernCalifornia, Mexico City, Mumbai,Toronto and Thailand. When it comestogether on the big screen, all you cando is cross your fingers and hope theaudience loves it.

— Iain Stasukevich

•|• Barba and Preeg on Tron: Legacy •|•


1982. Once again, face-replacement wasemployed to capture Bridges’ facialmovements and map them onto a bodydouble. “The CLU character could onlyexist post- Benjamin Button ,” saysKosinski. “With other digital creatures,you can get away with a lot, but with adigital human being, 99 percent isn’tgood enough. It’s a gut reaction whensomething’s not right in a shot of a digi-tal human — it could be an eyeline, alighting match or lip sync. The actors allunderstood we were pushing the enve-lope with this process.”

CLU 2.0 keeps his commandcenter on the bridge of the Rectifier, ahuge, floating battle cruiser. The bridgeset incorporated extensive practicalLEDs covered with orange-tinted filmand milk Plexiglas over which heads-updisplay graphics were placed in post.“We placed a big soft box with Image80s overhead and had LED ribbons inthe floors and walls,” Miranda details.“There were literally miles of LEDlighting strung all over the place. Wealso installed 4-foot and 2-foot singleKinos in the walls, and we had sheens oflight everywhere.”

After he receives his “digitalduds,” Sam is taken to the Disc Arena,where he is forced into a deadly game inwhich players fling light discs at oneanother. Being hit by a disc is fatal. Inanticipation of the sequence’s extensivevisual effects, the Disc Arena footagewas shot almost entirely against blue-screen, which Miranda lit with overheadsoft boxes fitted with Image 80s withKF55 tubes. During AC ’s set visit,Miranda deployed the 3-D-linkedPhantom HD camera rig to captureshots of martial artist Anis Cheurfa asRinzler, CLU’s main enforcer. Mirandaand Kosinski asked for a few extra takesto enable Cheurfa, hurtling through theair on a wire harness, to time his flyingkick perfectly into the Phantom’sLexan-protected lenses. Gilford ex-plains the various lighting setups:“Depending on the shot requirements,we used different floor surfaces to getthe interactions right. At certain angles,we’d use mirrored floors to see the

complete reflections of the actors, whichwould later be mapped onto the virtualset extensions. If the angle got too high,we’d switch to pure glass floors for moremuted reflectivity.”

Once he survives the games inthe Disc Arena, Sam meets Quorra(Olivia Wilde), who takes him to a safehouse, where, at last, he meets his father.The minimalist abode is reminiscent ofthe “alien zoo” from the final scenes of2001: A Space Odyssey. Davidson recalls,“Most of the other sets were built withhigh ceilings, but the safe house had alow ceiling, along with a floor consistingentirely of 6-by-6-foot glass panels. Weused Image 80s to light each panel from

below.” Each Image 80 was individuallyconnected to a GrandMA dimmerboard, which enabled Miranda to creategeometric chase patterns for variouseffects. “Once the floor panels weregoing, the safe house didn’t need muchaugmentation,” says Miranda. “We shotone of my favorite scenes in there, whenSam speaks with Quorra and their suitsare actually lighting and interactingwith each other.”

Sam and Kevin unite to escapethe Grid and return to the real world, ajourney that leads them to the End ofLine nightclub,which was still underconstruction when AC visited theproduction. Eschewing the trend of

The set forKevin’ssafehouse recallsthe “alien zoo”from 2001: ASpace Odyssey,with a lowceiling and aglass floor litfrom underneathwith Kino FloImage 80scontrolled by aGrandMAdimmer board.

partial sets surrounded by bluescreen inlarge-scale visual-effects movies, thefilmmakers chose to construct almostthe entire set with a minimum of blue-screen outside the club’s windows,providing a more realistic stage for theperformers and camera. “We initially

thought of doing some handheld orSteadicam shots leading into the club,but the rig’s weight made that too chal-lenging,” says Miranda. Instead,Miranda and key grip Kim Olsonemployed the overhead Graphlite rig,programming it with automated moves

to create a Steadicam-style feel.Operated by the extravagant

Castor (Michael Sheen), the End ofLine club features interlocking LEDpanels laid directly into the walls andceiling. The club’s floor, measuringapproximately 20'x20', was fitted withBarco panels, and the media the film-makers ran was clouds. “We also usedthe Barcos to simulate elevator effects,”notes Miranda. “We used two 4-by-20-foot Barco panels placed to the actors’left and right, and on those panels weran media to simulate the elevator trav-eling up or down. This was a lightingeffect only and not in shot.”

Miranda and Kosinski monitoredtheir work in 3-D while shooting withspecially calibrated 50" HyundaiHDTV monitors that offered a half-resolution representation of their work.They also watched full-resolution 3-Ddailies each day in Pace’s 3-D mobile-projection trailer, which was parked justoutside the stage. “The on-set monitors


62

Kosinski (lyingon the floor)

works out anangle with

Miranda (right)and Hedlund.

allowed us to see what was working in2-D vs. 3-D in real time,” says Kosinski,“but the projected dailies we watched atlunchtime were where we’d really get afeeling for what we were getting interms of depth and detail.”

AC was invited into the Pacetrailer to review an assembly of dailies in3-D, as well as special-unit still photog-raphy also shot in 3-D. Miranda andKosinski pointed out that because thePace trailer uses two optically inter-linked projectors, they could actuallyalter the convergence of footage afterfilming to determine where shots mightwork better with a different level ofdepth.

During prep, Miranda developeda look-up table that the filmmakerscould toggle on and off on their moni-tors during production to get a sense ofthe intended look. “It added a bit ofcontrast to the raw footage and servedas a one-light correction for our dailies,”he says. To emphasize the cool feel

within the Grid, Miranda typically litfor a 5,500°K color temperature andkept the camera balanced for 3,200°K.“I wouldn’t recommend that strategy forother digital cameras,” he cautions, “butthe F35 is really soft in that transition.I’d also occasionally take a piece offootage and grade it myself in Apple’sColor as a reference.” The final digitalgrade was completed at Laser Pacificwith colorist David Cole. “I was able tosit in on a few of the sessions and gavesome notes,” says Miranda. “I did notspend as much time there as I wouldhave liked, however, because I wascommitted to another project.”

After working on Legacy fornearly four years, Kosinski enthuses,“I’m really impressed with the work theentire team has done; their level ofcommitment exceeded my expectations.It’s been a tremendous, fun challenge,and I’m very happy with how thingsworked out.” Miranda adds, “There wasa unified camaraderie from the studio

on down. This was truly one of the bestteams I’ve worked with, and it feels likethere’s a lot of excitement for this movieout there.” ●

TECHNICAL SPECS 2.40:1

3-D and 2-D Digital Capture

Sony F35; Vision ResearchPhantom HD

Arri Master Prime lenses


63

A fter four decades behind the camera, Roger Deakins,ASC, BSC, is at the top of his game. “I think I’m doingwork now that’s as good as I’ve ever done,” he says. His peers in the ASC clearly agree, as they will honor him

next month with the Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award.The ASC honor is the latest in an incredible run that hasincluded double ASC Award nominations for two consecu-tive years, 2008 (for Revolutionary Road and The Reader) and2007 (for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward RobertFord and No Country for Old Men). Indeed, Deakins’ presencelooms so large at these ceremonies that when Robert Elswit,ASC accepted the 2007 ASC Award for There Will Be Blood,he suggested that the Society establish a special category for“films shot by Roger Deakins.”

The four films that earned Deakins his double nomina-tions reflect his special niche as a shape-shifting cinematogra-


A League of

HisOwn

Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC receivesthe Society’s Lifetime Achievement

Award for a body of work thatreflects vision, purpose and a

personal perspective.

By Patricia Thomson

•|•


pher for auteur directors with substan-tive, character-driven scripts. “That’s avery small niche right now,” he says witha laugh. But it’s one that many cine-matographers would envy, as it has ledhim to collaborate with filmmakers suchas Joel and Ethan Coen, Sam Mendes,John Sayles, Martin Scorsese, BobRafelson and Norman Jewison. Ofcourse, he is most closely identified withthe Coens, America’s most idiosyncraticauteurs; he has shot 11 films for themsince Barton Fink (1991), including thecurrent release True Grit.

None of this was in the crystal ballwhen Deakins was a young lad inTorquay, a fishing town on England’ssouthwest coast. Once a Victorianresort, the town didn’t offer many careeroptions for a youth with artistic inclina-tions. Deakins’ father ran a constructioncompany, and his grandfather was a fish-erman. “My dad wanted me to take overhis business,” Deakins recalls. “For manyyears,when I was working in London inthe film industry, my father still thoughtI’d come back and take over!”

Instead, Deakins took after hisartistically inclined mother, an actressand amateur painter. He also took up thebrush, painting realistic renderings ofpeople and landscapes. “They werepretty depressing, actually,” he says. Butthey led him to still photography. “Isuppose I took up still photographyAC

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Opposite:Surrounded bysome of hissignature soft light,Roger Deakins,ASC, BSC awaitsthe next shot onthe set ofRevolutionary Road(2008). This page,top left: In the mid-1970s, Deakinstakes the helmwhile working onone of his firstdocumentaries forBritish TV, about ayacht race thatcircumnavigatedthe globe. Topright: As a studentat England’sNational FilmSchool, Deakins (atfar left) works onThe Penal Colony(1972/1973),directed by NeilLevenson (atcamera). Middle: Inanother PenalColony still,Deakins preps adolly shot. Bottom:During filming ofAlex Cox’s Sid andNancy (1986),Deakins practiceshis punk-rock sneerwhile surroundedby actors (from left)Tony London, GaryOldman andGraham Fletcher-Cook.


because I always had an interest in[seeing] people within their environ-ments.” Deakins had the opportunity tosoak up art-house movies through theTorquay film society. He and his brothertrudged miles to watch everything fromItalian neorealist films to Peter Watkins’faux vérité documentaries. Seeing awoman faint during TheWar Game ,Watkins’ vivid scenario about a nuclearexplosion in London, deeply impressedDeakins, but the idea of making a careerout of film hadn’t yet coalesced in hismind.

Intending to become a painter, heenrolled in the Bath Academy of Art,but found himself assigned to thegraphic-design department. “I guessthey didn’t like my naturalistic paint-ings,” he says. “Abstract was in, and Ididn’t do much of that.” But there was asmall film department. “I wanted to getinvolved in that, but only two or threestudents were allowed to play with filmcameras, and I didn’t get the chance.”Instead, he discovered still photography— in a big way. “I used to spend nightsin a darkroom printing, then days out,

just wandering around towns andseaside communities taking pictures.”He even pinched the school’s darkroomkey to make a copy for himself.Curiously, photography itself was notpart of Bath’s curriculum. “It was just away of recording images to be used ingraphic design— if you were designingbook covers, for instance,” says Deakins.

When the academy brought inprofessional photographers as guestteachers, Deakins soaked up the lessons,particularly those imparted by RogerMayne. “He was one of the firstphotographers to go out in the streetand photograph the lives of people inLondon,” says Deakins. “He was quite abig influence on the way I started to seethings.”

After college, Deakins wasn’t surewhat to do. A friend told him about anew school opening up in Londoncalled the National Film School. “Ithought that really made sense, becausemy photography was tending towardsdocumentary, so I applied along withmy friend,” he says. Neither of them gotin. Deakins made an appointment withthe school’s headmaster, Colin Young,to find out why. He recalls, “On the wallbehind Colin’s deskwas this photo-graph of a horse and car. It was blurredbecause it was a time exposure. Colinsaid, ‘Well,your photographs are notreally very filmic.’ He pointed to thephoto behind him and said, ‘ That’sfilmic.’ I said, ‘No, that’s a blurredphotograph.’” Deakins laughs at hisyouthful chutzpah. “I disputed his ideaof what was filmic and what wasn’t.”

Because it was the school’s firstyear, it was seeking an entry class of 25students who already had some film-making experience and could self-startin an unstructured educational environ-ment. So, with the implicit promise thathe would be admitted the next year if heacquired some practical experience,Deakins looked for a job. The BathAcademy principal told him about anarts center that wanted to create aphotographic record of rural life inNorth Devon. For the next year,Deakins wandered around the country-

Top: DirectorJohn Sayles

works out a shotwith Deakins on

location forPassion Fish

(1992). Right: Thecinematographer

at work onMichael Apted’s

Thunderheart(1992).

◗ A League of His Own


side,photographing farmers, woods-men, county fair-goers and other ruralfolk in their element. (Some of theseblack-and-white images are posted onhis website, www.rogerdeakins.com.)He had no supervisor. “It was very muchmake-it-up-as-you-go,”he recalls.

At the NFS, which Deakinsentered in 1972 as part of its secondclass, practical instruction was not partof the deal. “I’ve had no formal training,even though I went to film school andart college!” he says with a laugh. “Bothwere places of anarchy, really. They justgave you an opportunity to find yourown way of doing things, which I thinkis the best training.” As one of the fewstudents who wanted to shoot, Deakinskept quite busy. “I shot something like15 films in three years,” he says. “Onewas a 90-minute gangster movie! Mostwere on 16mm, but one or two were on35mm.”

Deakins’ own first film was adocumentary about stag hunting inDevon. “In the rural community there,stag hunting used to be a very big focalpoint of social life, so the film wasn’t justabout stag hunting,” he notes. “In theend, I took the film to North Devon,and they showed it in village halls forquite awhile.”

Director Michael Radfordremembers his NFS schoolmate vividly:“Roger was clearly one of the mosttalented guys, a cut above everybodyelse. It became very apparent veryquickly, not so much in what he did butjust in his approach to things, that hewas a very, very serious guy.”

Deakins graduated with the ideaof making documentaries, long-formobservational films in the vein ofFrederick Wiseman and RichardLeacock. “For many months, I lookedfor work as a camera assistant, and Ididn’t get any. So I started looking forwork as a cameraman.” The jobs gradu-ally came: industrial films, music videos,and then, in his first big break, a docu-mentary about the war in Rhodesia. Forthe next seven years, Deakins shot andsometimes directed documentaries forBritish television. He spent nine

Above: First-time directorFrank Darabontposes withDeakins onlocation for theperiod dramaThe ShawshankRedemption(1994), whichbrought thecinematographerhis first ASCAward. Left:Deakins checksthe camera asthe crew readiesa dolly/craneshot inShawshank’smain set.


months on a yacht during an around-the-world race. He came under mortarfire in Ethiopia during its guerrilla war.He filmed anthropological documen-taries in India and Sudan. Working with16mm and an Éclair NPR, he becameincreasingly adept as a camera operator.

Radford was among his earlycollaborators. One of their documen-taries followed Van Morrison on tourthrough Ireland( Van Morrison inIreland). “Roger’s camerawork wasamazing,” the director says. “For the firstconcert in Belfast, we’d hired sixcameramen, and they all missed theplane, so Roger literally shot the firsthalf of the concert on his own, and everysingle foot of it was useful!‘How toshoot a concert with one camera’ waswhat that lesson was about.”

For Deakins, a turning pointcame on a documentary about schizo-phrenia that followed eight patientsafter their release from a London hospi-tal. When one suffered a horrendousbreakdown in her apartment, his part-ner wanted to keep filming, but Deakinsinstead put the camera down to assistthe woman. After that, he stoppedshooting documentaries. “I began to feel

that what I was doing was veryvoyeuristic,” he recalls. “I questionedhow much effect I was having, orwhether it was just me trying to further

my own career. I was quite conflicted.So when I got the chance to shootdramas, I decided that was more me.”

His first dramatic project was aTV miniseries called Wolcott, whichcame through a friend of a friend. Soonthereafter, Radford called. He was plan-

ning to direct his first theatrical feature,Another Time, Another Place, a love trian-gle set in Scotland during World War II,and he’d been impressed by Deakins’work on the miniseries. “It was also aninstinct that he was going to deliver,”says Radford, who adds with a laugh,“Then I had terrible second thoughts! I thought, ‘What am I doing? I knowthe guy, I’ve seen this TV series, but itdoesn’t tell me anything,really,aboutwhat we’re going to do now.’But in theend, the decision paid off in spades. Thefilm worked very well, and not at allsolely because of my direction, butbecause of Roger’s stunning photogra-phy— in Super 16mm! At that time,Super 16 was very marginal. You hadabout half a stop of variation on it, soRoger had to light very precisely, with aforest of little lights in these very tinyspaces. The film was a real success inEurope; it got a 10-minute standingovation at Cannes. It was really a bigbreak for both of us.”

“I never looked back after that,”says Deakins. He reteamed withRadford on 1984, an adaptation ofGeorge Orwell’s novel. “That was a bigmovie,” says Radford.“I remember

Deakins prepares totake to the skies to

capture a shot forCourage Under Fire

(1996), his firstcollaboration withdirector Ed Zwick.

They reteamed twoyears later for The

Siege (1998).


“I’ve had no formal training, even though I

went to film schooland art college. Both

were places of anarchy, really.”


driving with Roger to the set of the rallywith 2,000 extras, six camera units, 25assistants. It was just huge, and it was atnight. As we drove onto the set, welooked at each other and said, ‘Yep, thisis it.’ It was the big time, where we weregoing to show whether we’d got it ornot.”

Deakins was subsequently admit-ted to the British Society ofCinematographers, and 1984 wonnumerous awards for special effects, “butthere were absolutely no special effectswhatsoever,” Radford notes with amuse-ment. “Everything was shot in-camera,”including the ubiquitous front-projec-tion newsreels (“horrendously compli-cated”) and the menacing helicopters.Deakins achieved the film’s bold,unusual palette photochemically withthe bleach-bypass process, the first timea cinematographer had used the tech-nique.

Radford and Deakins made onemore film together, White Mischief. Thedirector says he was always impressed byDeakins’ investment in the content ofthe film and his close observation of theactors. “Roger was a great foil,” saysRadford. “You could always go to himand ask, ‘What did you think of thattake?’ and his answer would addressmore than mechanics. You’d have aproper discussion.”

Deakins worked steadily inEngland, including features with AlexCox ( Sid and Nancy ), Terry Jones(Personal Services ),Mike Figgis ( StormyMonday), James Deardon ( Pascali’sIsland) and Bob Rafelson ( Mountains ofthe Moon).One film that helped Deakinsclarify what he didn’t want to do was AirAmerica, directed by RogerSpottiswoode and starring Mel Gibsonand Robert Downey Jr. The story wasabout a pilot recruited into a corruptCIA airlift operation in Laos. “I thoughtwe were going to make some sort ofsubversive, M.A.S.H.-style comedy, butit didn’t turn out that way,” says Deakins.Rather, it wound up as a buddy film.“That film was a great opportunity,but itwas a bit too big for its own good, really,”says the cinematographer. “At one point

These photos show Deakins at work on Martin Scorsese’s Kundun (1998), a highly unusual telling of thestory of Tibet’s Dalai Lama. Deakins has likened the film to a poem, and he told AC, “The story is really

about the child, and it’s seen primarily from his point of view .” He earned an ASC Award nomination forhis work on the film.


On the face of it, True Grit appears tobe one of the simpler stories that

Joel and Ethan Coen have tackled, but“it’s probably the most difficult filmwe’ve ever done together,” says RogerDeakins, ASC, BSC. Adapted fromCharles Portis’ novel of the same name,the film is narrated by 14-year-oldMattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), whotries to track down her father’s killer,Chaney (Josh Brolin), with the help of aone-eyed marshal, Rooster Cogburn(Jeff Bridges). The two are joined by aTexas Ranger (Matt Damon) who hashis own reasons for hunting Chaney,who is hiding in Indian Territory withhis gang.

Deakins found Portis’ book“meditative and melancholy, gritty andreal,” and the Coens’ script called for ableak, wintry look. Shooting on locationin the Southwest, the filmmakers gotwhat they wished for, but impetuousweather, far-flung locations and harshterrain created a challenging 55-dayshoot.“People were saying, ‘It’s threepeople and their horses. What could beso difficult?’” Deakins recalls with someamusement.

The pattern was set on day one,when the filmmakers woke up todiscover that a nighttime blizzard haddumped 2' of snow on them. “I lookedaround and thought, ‘What the hell canwe shoot today?’” recalls Deakins. Only

one scene called for snow, and that loca-tion was 150 miles away. Deakinsfigured he could capture the scene witha Libra head and an electric cart, so theteam loaded the equipment onto a stakebed and plowed through the snow. “Wemanaged to make it there just by after-noon,and we got the scene,” he says.

Deakins stayed nimble with thehelp of his core collaborators, 1stACAndy Harris, key grip Mitch Lillian,dolly grip Bruce Hamme and gafferChris Napolitano. “They were bril-liant,” he says. “Under those conditions,you really had to float with it.”

True Grit required extremes oflighting: minimal (flame-lit cabins) andmaximal (nighttime gunfights andother action). “Imagine you’re on anelectric cart with a stabilizing headtracking with a galloping horse at night,some of it through forest and some of iton an open, empty plain — and you’vegot to light it!” Deakins says, wincing.“The only way to do that is to get as biga light as you can afford and put it as faraway as you can.”

That was his approach to a majorsequence in which Mattie and hercompatriots seek refuge from a snow-storm in a mountain cabin. When theydiscover that the dwelling is occupied bytwo members of Chaney’s gang, they setup a stakeout on the surrounding hills.When the rest of the gang arrives, a

•|• Displaying True Grit •|•

shootout erupts. The Coens set thissequence entirely at night, requiringDeakins to light a half-mile swath ofvalley. “I didn’t want a hard, single-source moonlight effect, but somethingsofter because of the oncoming snow,”he says.

Because the sequence comprisedthree parts, each with a different eyeline,he had to design three separate lightingsetups, all without benefit of cranesbecause of the rocky location. “Rumorwent around that I was using 55bigHMIs, and it was partly true, but Iwasn’t using them all at once!” says thecinematographer. Rather, they weredivided among three hillside platforms,each stretching 120'-150'and holdingmore than 20 12Ks and 18Ks. The crewthen leapfrogged the lights. “We hadthe first and second sequence ready togo, and then,while we were shootingthe second sequence, our rigging crewwas moving lights from the first positionto the third,” says Deakins.

“It’s hard to move around atnight, especially on the side of a rockyhill. That’s when preparation reallycounts.”

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we had three crews working. Things getaway from you, and you pile money intoshooting stuff that’s never used. It mademe decide that smaller, more containedmovies were for me.”

He put his London apartment onthe market and bought a flat in Devon.“I just thought I’d get out of London anddo things that I really wanted to do,” hesays. Then his agent received the scriptfor Barton Fink, the Coens’ fourth film,about a pretentious New York play-wright (John Turturro) who moves toHollywood in 1941 to take a screenwrit-ing job, winds up suffering writer’sblock, and unknowingly befriends aserial killer (John Goodman), hisgregarious next-door neighbor. Deakins’agent recommended he turn the filmdown. “She said it was very strange, andthat it seemed to be two differentmovies,” recalls Deakins. “But I’d heardof the Coen brothers by then, so I said,‘Wait a minute!’”

The Coens recall that they hadbeen tracking Deakins for awhile by thetime their first cinematographer, BarrySonnenfeld, decided to move on todirecting. Because Barton Fink would bea low-budget, nonunion production,they narrowed the field to foreign cine-matographers. “We wanted someonewith experience whose work we couldlook at,” says Joel Coen. “Of the peoplewe were talking to, Roger had done themost by far and had the most impressivework.”Deakins had just come off AirAmerica, so they called that film’sproducers to inquire about him. Theresponse was not enthusiastic. As

All of these photos were taken on location in Mississippi during filming of the period comedy O Brother,Where Art Thou? (2000), which brought Deakins another ASC nomination. Clockwise from top left: Ethan

Coen (left) and Joel Coen join Deakins at the camera; Deakins and Andy Harris, his longtime firstassistant, during a break in filming; the cinematographer stoops to capture some action with a chicken;

the filmmakers dolly down a row of prisoners.


Deakins relates, “They said, ‘He doesn’tlike working with multiple cameras, hedoesn’t like using a zoom lens, and helikes to operate,’ as though these werecriticisms.” But this assessment wasmusic to the Coens’ ears. And fromtheir very first encounter, the match feltright. “We just seemed to be on thesame wavelength,” says Deakins.“They’re very straightforward, unpre-tentious people.”

Barton Fink established a work

pattern that continues to this day. Asscreenwriters, the Coens use very visuallanguage, so the film’s look is establishedin the script. The film is then story-boarded in its entirety with longtimestoryboard artist J. Todd Anderson, ahabit that originally sprang from thebrothers’ budget-consciousness. “Theystill like to storyboard,” Deakins says. “Ithelps them focus on what’s reallyimportant in the scene, and it’s a goodway of working.” The brothers involve

Deakins in that process early on, usuallyas soon as they’ve drafted the first set ofstoryboards. “We use Roger as a sound-ing board for the movie in its entirety —he’s the third collaborator,” says Joel.Ethan adds, “After we do a draft [of thestoryboards] ourselves, we’ll do anotherdraft with Roger so we can talk abouteach scene and incorporate his ideas.”

Typically,five weeks are allottedto preproduction, during which thestoryboards continue to evolve as thefilmmakers secure locations and discussideas. By the time the Coens andDeakins are on set, there’s little need forthem to talk. “Their sets are very quiet,”says the cinematographer. “They don’tdo a lot of takes. They know what theywant, and they know when they’ve gotit. They work very economically.”

Deakins’ input continues duringproduction. “From shot design, to light-ing, to how and when you move thecamera, Roger is brilliant at bringingsome extra dimension that changes theentire feeling of what you’re doing,” saysJoel. “Even when he’s shooting inserts,he’s always looking for a more effectiveor idiosyncratic way to shoot. For exam-ple, in No Country for Old Men [AC Oct.


Top: Deakins andHarris capture a

close-up of FrancesMcDormand’s legsfor a scene in the

Coens’ period noircomedy The Man

Who Wasn’t There(2001), which

brought Deakinshis second ASC

Award. Bottom:Deakins lines up a

shot of JenniferConnelly for Vadim

Perelman’s Houseof Sand and Fog

(2003), whichrequired the

creation of someconvincing

exteriors onstageat Culver Studios.


’07], we were shooting just an insert of awatch — it’s when Llewelyn [JoshBrolin] is waiting for that wounded guyto die under the tree — and Rogerframed it in such a way that it was asmuch about the landscape as it wasabout the watch.” Ethan notes, “We cutour own movies, and as an editor, youthink, ‘Oh, it’s an insert of a watch,’oryou think about the information thathas to be relayed: it’s an hour’s passage.You think [the shot] is about the watchface. But instead of framing it againstthe ground, which is how we boththought of it, Roger put it against a biglandscape with the trees.” Joel adds,“And in a movie all about landscapes,that’s kind of interesting and impor-tant.”

In addition to marking the startof his collaboration with the Coens, the1990s were significant for Deakins forother professional reasons. He moved tothe United States in 1992, settling inSanta Monica, Calif.; he became anASC member in 1994, after beingproposed for membership by JohnBailey, Allen Daviau and Steven Poster;and he earned his first Academy Awardnomination and won his first ASCAward for 1994’s The ShawshankRedemption (AC June ’95) . He shotanother dozen films that decade,including the Coens’ Fargo (AC March’96), which showed the brothers’ morenaturalistic, observational side, andMartin Scorsese’s Kundun (AC Feb.


Top left: Deakins,Harris and other crewmembers chase Bryce

Dallas Howard for ashot on M. NightShyamalan’s The

Village (2004). Topright: Deakins and

Shyamalan plot theirapproach. Middle: The

cinematographerstands beneath a grid

of space lights onstageat Universal Studios

for Sam Mendes’Jarhead (2005).

Bottom: At ease in themuck, Deakins waits to

capture a shot forJarhead.

’98), which told the story of the DalaiLama. For the latter film, Deakins’documentary background was key. Herecalls, “There weren’t any professionalactors in the movie, just Tibetans [re-enacting] their own heritage, so Martywas concerned about the relationshipbetween the cameraman and subject,” hesays.

The following decade was equallybusy. Deakins completed 19 features,including two technically pioneeringfilms for the Coens, O Brother, Where ArtThou? (AC Oct. ’00) and The Man WhoWasn’t There (AC Oct. ’01). O Brotherquickly gained fame for being the firstU.S. studio feature to be digitally color-corrected in its entirety, and Deakinsspent almost two months on the process,using the technology to drain every traceof green from the lush Mississippi land-scape.For The Man Who Wasn’t There ,the goal was luminescent black-and-white imagery, but the filmmakers werecontractually obligated to create a colormaster for foreign markets. In a novelsolution,Deakins shot on color stockand printed on Kodak 5269, a black-and-white stock designed for film titles.He won his second ASC Award for TheMan Who Wasn’t There.

In addition to his ongoing collab-oration with the Coens, Deakins’ recentcredits include several features with newcreative partners, including RonHoward ( A Beautiful Mind ), VadimPerelman ( House of Sand and Fog ; ACJan. ’04), M. Night Shyamalan ( TheVillage; AC Aug. ’04) and Paul Haggis(In the Valley of Elah ), as well as foraysinto animation as a technical consultanton Wall-E (AC July ’08) and How toTrain Your Dragon.

It’s diverse work, to be sure, buthis résuméhas some underlying consis-tencies that can be traced back to hisroots in documentary filmmaking. Firstand foremost is the fact that he alwaysoperates the camera. (To satisfy unionrequirements, he hires an operator, buthe often picks a new member of thelocal, essentially providing an appren-ticeship.) He has repeatedly stated thatcomposition is the most critical part of

the cinematographer’s job. “It’s muchmore important than lighting,” he toldAC. “The balance of the frame— theway an actor is relating to the space inthe frame— is the most importantfactor in helping the audience feel whatthe character is thinking.” Shooting

documentaries no doubt honedDeakins’ skills, but,as Joel Coen says,“Composition in movies is often an on-the-fly, instinctual thing. You eitherhave it or you don’t. We’ve worked witha lot of operators, and Roger is by far thebest.”

Deakins has also maintained hisinterest in “people within their environ-ments,” and that documentary leitmotifcarries over into his dramatic work insubtle ways. Heprefers Super 35mmover anamorphic for widescreen moviesbecause “I like being close to people, andI like to feel somebody’s presence in aspace. I don’t like the distortion ofanamorphic or the depth-of-field. Idon’t like backgrounds being out offocus.”

Because he operates, Deakinstries to pre-rig lighting as much aspossible. “I don’t want the lighting to getin the way of operating,” he says. “I wantto be able to say, ‘Okay, I’m lit,’ so I canthen concentrate on the framing andwhat the actor is doing. By the time wecome to shoot, I’ve got a whole file onevery location, and scene breakdownsand lighting diagrams for everything.Not that I necessarily stick to thoseplans, but they’re a good place to start.I’m one of those people who believe that

76

Well known forcarrying an array ofhis own gag lights,

Deakins is also quickto improvise a

camera solution ortwo. Here, seated on

an ATV for a shottracking through the

woods onRevolutionary Road,he has stabilized thecamera with a beachball — “a poorman’sWescam, if you like.”

He earned an ASCnomination for his

work on the film, hissecond collaboration

with Mendes.


the more organized you are at thebeginning, the more freedom it givesyou to play around when you’re on set.”Gaffer Christopher Napolitano recallsthat on House of Sand and Fog , “Rogerhanded me a stack of notes, I riggedeverything to his notes, and nothingever changed, which seemed reallyunique. He had everything down toexactly how many lights he wantedsomewhere, and he used every one ofthem.”

That kind of precision is possibleon a single-camera production, anothercommon thread in Deakins’ work, alongwith his preference for prime lenses.“[Shooting with primes] forces you tomove the camera and think about wherethe camera needs to be,” he says.Filming only with zooms, he contends,is “a sloppy way of shooting.”

Since 2005, Deakins has freelyshared his opinions and advice in aforum on his website. “Most of mycomments end with, ‘There are no

rules,’” he says. “Every shot and everymovie is different. There’s no right andwrong. Cinematography is personal; it’ssomething you have to develop yourself,and there’s no easy way to do that. It’sjust a matter of spending time on yourownand finding it. You can’t learn it

from somebody else. It’s not just tech-nique. In fact, it’s less about techniqueand more about a way of seeing.” ●

77

On location inNew Mexico forthe Coens’ TrueGrit (2010),Deakinscaptures someriver action,assisted byHarris.


EFilm Opens DI Suite at UniversalBy Simon Wakelin

Digital lab EFilm has opened a digital-intermediate suite atUniversal Studios’ postproduction facility. Thanks to the new suite,clients can now access uncompressed 2K 4:4:4 scans, dailies or trail-ers, and do digital grading while situated next to Universal’s sound-mixing stages, sound editorial, picture-editing suites and other soundservices. (Film scanning and filmouts will still be done at EFilm’s Holly-wood facility.) “This will be far more efficient,” explains Kevin Dillon,executive vice president and general manager of EFilm. “With somany post services in one location, it will be easier for clients to finishproducts in a timely manner. It’s also a great opportunity for us tobuild our business model for remote services.”

Universal also benefits from the new on-lot service, as direc-tors and cinematographers alike have often lamented the time theyspend traveling back and forth between DI facilities and Universal’ssound department. “Directors used to have to run around Los Ange-les to perform their DIs,” says Chris Jenkins, senior vice president ofUniversal Studios Sound. “They often said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great tosimply walk out the door here and go into a DI suite?’ It’s just prac-tical. It’s important for Universal to expand its capabilities thisway.”

Recent projects that were finished at EFilm’s Universal suiteinclude Paul Weitz’s comedy Little Fockers, shot by Remi Adefarasin,BSC. Before the suite officially opened, the director of anotherfeature popped into the grading suite to oversee the finessing of avisual-effects shot. “It was the kind of tweak that only takes fiveminutes to perform, and having the suite on the lot meant he didn’t

have to drive across town to signoff on a simple task,” says JoshHaynie, EFilm’s vice president ofoperations.

Interactive sessions with EFilmand Deluxe Laboratories’ otherlocations in New York and Londonare also possible, allowing real-timeaccess to scans and media over asecure, private, dedicated fiber-optic connection that is fullyencrypted. “We can transmitanywhere we need to go,” saysHaynie. “We just had a sessionwhere we piped information overto a cinematographer in London.He worked on images, all withabsolute accuracy, while we werewatching at EFilm in Hollywood.”

Interchangeable film-projection and digital-projectionsystems are in place at Universal’s Alfred Hitchcock Theatre. The DIsuite offers white and silver screens available to accommodate both2-D and 3-D XpanD and RealD systems.

Haynie notes that involving EFilm early in production throughthe CinemaScan process in Hollywood always leads to the bestresults. “For Ron Howard’s movie The Dilemma , shot by SalvatoreTotino, ASC, we understood what was going on very early inthe production because we were providing CinemaScan dailies,” hesays. “It’s only going to help the DI process if we come in early andare involved in camera tests and hair and makeup tests as well.”

Although digitally captured features are becoming increas-ingly common, EFilm is still seeing many productions originate onfilm, says Haynie. “We’re seeing a lot of 3-perf and 4-perf comingthrough CinemaScan dailies,” he says. “Film has such a wonderfuldynamic range. Plus, once it becomes a file, it’s as easy to work within the digital domain as any digital-capture format.”

As for the future, EFilm is considering 4K dailies, but not untilscanning technology advances far enough to make for a quick turn-around. “Right now, turning around 4K scans at a fast enough ratefor dailies deliverables isn’t possible,” says Haynie. “Of course, every-one’s goal is 4K dailies. From a data standpoint, we can do it, butwe’re waiting for the scanning technology to catch up.”

EFilm’s parent company, Deluxe Entertainment ServicesGroup, Inc., recently entered into an exclusive multi-year film-processing and printing agreement with Universal. The print deal willsee the studio utilizing Deluxe facilities in Hollywood, Toronto,London, Rome, Barcelona and Sydney.

Post Focus

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EFilm recentlyopened a DIsuite within

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Universal’s fullsound services.

HPA Honors Outstanding Achievements in PostBy Jon D. Witmer

The Hollywood Post Alliance recentlypresented its fifth annual HPA Awards,which honor outstanding achievements inpost processes for features, television andcommercials. The judges for the awardsincluded ASC members Stephen Lighthill,Yuri Neyman and Daryn Okada.

HPA President Leon Silverman, thegeneral manager of Walt Disney Studiosand an ASC associate member, served asthe master of ceremonies at Skirball CulturalCenter’s Cotsen Auditorium. He noted howthe awards have grown since their inception— the Awards Committee received moresubmissions this year than ever before —and, after musing about the unsung impor-tance of post professionals, he passed thebaton to the evening’s presenters with theproclamation, “Get ready to be proud to bein post!”

Echoing Silverman’s review of thepast five years, Richard Crudo, ASC reflectedon the technological evolution that hasmarked color correction’s recent history,marveling at the rapid changeover from thepredominance of photochemical finishingto the now ubiquitous digital-intermediateprocess. Crudo then presented awards forOutstanding Color Grading to ASC associ-ate Stefan Sonnenfeld of Company 3 forAlice in Wonderland (AC April ’10), StevePorter of Riot for “Episode Five” from theminiseries The Pacific (AC March ’10), andSiggy Ferstl of Company 3 for the AT&Tcommercial “Legends.” Ferstl was alsonominated for his work on ESPN’s RobbenIsland. Also nominated were Maxine Gervaisof Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging(The Book of Eli ); ASC associate Steven J.Scott of EFilm ( Percy Jackson & TheOlympians: The Lightning Thief ); NatashaLeonnet of EFilm ( Get Low ; AC Aug. ’10);Skip Kimball of Modern VideoFilm ( Avatar;AC Jan. ’10); Scott Klein of Technicolor (TrueBlood, “Bad Blood”); Kevin O’Connor ofDeluxe Digital Media (Temple Grandin); TimVincent of LaserPacific ( Mad Men ,“Souvenir”; AC Oct. ’09); Tom Poole ofCompany 3 NY (Dos Equis, “Ice Fishing”;Dos Equis, “Cliff Diver”); Dave Hussey ofCompany 3 (Chevy, “We Can Carry”); and

store for Kia Soul, “This or That.”Outstanding Sound awards were

presented to Michael Hedges, Gilbert Lake,Brent Burge and Chris Ward of Park RoadPost Production for District 9 ; Brad North,Joe DeAngelis, Luis Galdames and JackieOster of Universal Sound for House, M.D.,“Help Me”; and David Brolin of UniversalStudios and Phil Daccord of Giaronomo forDevil, “Theatrical Trailer #1.”

The NAB Show sponsored the Engi-neering Excellence Awards, which werepresented to three companies. Arri earnedan award for its Alexa digital-cinemacamera, which supports the recording ofApple ProRes 4444, 422 (HQ), LT or Proxyencoded images onto onboard SxSmemory cards for direct editorial delivery.Cine-tal earned an award for its DavioSignal Processor, which boasts a flexiblearchitecture supported by a library of soft-ware packages that enable a wide range oftasks, including color-managementprocessing, display calibration and 3-Dstereo workflows. Digital Vision earned anaward for its Open EXR color workflow,

Tim Masick of Company 3 NY (ESPN,“Robben Island Promo”).

Avid Technology sponsored theOutstanding Editing awards, which werepresented to Lee Smith, ACE, for Inception;Mark J. Goldman and ACE membersChristopher Nelson, Stephen Semel andHenk van Eeghen of Touchstone Tele-

vision for Lost, “The End”; and ChrisFranklin of Big Sky Editorial for AmericanExpress, “Geoffrey Canada.” OutstandingCompositing awards went to Erik Winquist,Robin Hollander, Erich Eder and GiuseppeTagliavini of Weta Digital for Avatar; andDiramid Harrison Murray, Russell Dodgson,Tim Osborne and Adam Rowland of Frame-

Richard Crudo, ASC (center) presented HPA Awards for Outstanding Color Grading to StefanSonnenfeld (left), Siggy Ferstl (right) and Steve Porter (not pictured).

80

which utilizes 16-bit “Half Float” OpenEXRsto support true, real-time high-dynamic-range content grading. Additionally, TexasInstruments earned a special recognition forits DLP Cinema Technology, which is usedfor color management and mastering inpost facilities around the globe.

Four HPA Judges Awards forCreativity and Innovation in Postproductionwere also handed out during the ceremony.FotoKem picked up an award for its Next-Lab Mobile proprietary software andcommodity hardware system, whichpresents an advanced toolset for file-basedpost. Reliance MediaWorks earned anaward for its Custom Image Processingsoftware applications for film, video anddigital sources. Gradient Effects earned anaward for its Gradient Location-OptimizedWorkflow (GLOW) previsualization andnonlinear production system for 2-D andstereoscopic 3-D. Additionally, LightIronDigital picked up an award for its Outpostand Lightstream systems; Outpost allowsoperators to verify, backup, render onelights of and transcode footage simultane-

ously on set, while Lightstream distributesthose files.

Capping the evening’s festivities, TedGagliano, 20th Century Fox’s president offeature post, was presented with the Life-time Achievement Award. Since joining Foxin 1991, Gagliano has shepherded morethan 600 features through post, includingTitanic, the X-Men series, the specialeditions of the original Star Wars trilogy,and Avatar. Deluxe President and CEO CyrilDrabinsky, an ASC associate member,shared the stage with producer Jon Landauand composer Patrick Doyle to introduceGagliano by way of personal anecdotesfrom years of collaboration and friendship.“Movies are still light and sound [in combi-nation with] great stories — science inter-twined with art,” Gagliano enthused as heaccepted the award. Pledging to return tothe office the next morning to begin “thesecond half” of his career, Gagliano alsonoted, “Movies are harder to make nowthan ever; the stakes are higher, yet therewards have never been so great.” ●

HPA President Leon Silverman reprised hisrole as the awards’ master of ceremonies.


The Challenges of Shooting a Feature With the Canon 7DBy Jody Lee Lipes

One of the reasons I was interested in working on Tiny Furni-ture is that it’s a very traditional story in a lot of ways, and I respondto films that are plotted in a conventional way but use unconven-tional methods of visualizing the story. Most of the features I’veworked on, nonfiction and fiction, have been more abstract, and withan abstract screenplay, most of the time you’re working against thestory to help it make more sense to the audience.

Writer/director Lena Dunham’s script was dialogue heavy, withvery little action, so we asked ourselves how we could turn that intoa visual experience. We both like Woody Allen’s films,so we decidedthat talking about Manhattan was a good place to start. On that film,Gordon Willis, ASC and Woody Allen did a great job of making boldvisual choices that make the audience forget they’re essentiallywatching people have conversations. One great example is the epicshot of the Queensboro Bridge right before the sun rises. It’s adialogue scene between two people sitting, but we only see theirbacks in a single extreme-wide shot. It becomes more about the envi-ronment and the tone than the specific words and facial expressionsthat are often emphasized in this kind of scene.

For Tiny Furniture, we decided we should also strive to keepthings wide and do a lot of one-shot scenes. We chose to shoot onthe Canon EOS 7D two weeks after it was released. When wewatched our tests projected off HDCam-SR at Technicolor New York,the camera’s CMOS rolling shutter was very apparent, so we werehesitant to move the camera. We also couldn’t afford a Steadicam ordolly of any kind, so the shots were either handheld or locked off,

mostly the latter.I often tried to use the architecture of the location to give

shots more visual interest. One example is the scene in which Aura(played by Lena) and Jed, the Nietzschean Cowboy (Alex Karpovsky),visit her apartment. They enter through Aura’s mother’s studio, andit’s a wide shot that shows them coming in and turning on the lightsin this big, white space. To us, the wide shot tells the story bestbecause it forces the audience to think about the characters in theirenvironment, and it also enhances the comedic moment with thedead hamster; you can’t see it but want to, and hearing themdescribe it in detail makes that moment funnier.

For the scene between Aura and her sister (played by Lena’ssister, Grace), I set up the camera in such a way that the wall betweentheir rooms splits the shot down the middle. That’s where the camerahad to be to convey that their two bedrooms are basically the sameroom, but divided. There was no other way to illustrate the proxim-ity of their rooms, which says a lot about their relationship.

We wanted to give Tiny Furniture a clean, high-key look. Weshot day interiors at 200 ASA and used fast Canon EF lenses, allprimes, which got us into a bit of trouble because we didn’t have achance to test them, and they ended up distorting the image aroundthe edges when we opened them up. Joe Anderson, my friend, firstassistant and operator, did an amazing job pulling focus with a verydifficult camera system.

We used a lot of natural light or added to what was therewith a couple of Kino Flos, paper lanterns or very small tungstenlamps. We shot night interiors at 400 ASA. Most of the action takesplace in Aura’s all-white apartment, and it looks kind of like an artgallery. We generally wanted soft light, so we bounced lamps orpushed through 8-by rags and used a lot of practicals to light deep

Filmmakers’ Forum

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Left: Writer/director Lena Dunham (holding cage) and cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes (at camera) line up a shot for the the feat ure film Tiny Furniture, which wasshot with the Canon EOS 7D. Right: Dunham also stars in the film as Aura, who develops a crush on her co-worker Keith (David Ca ll).

I

into the background. It was simple, straight-forward stuff, and my gaffer, Jeff Peixoto, atrue artist, did most of the lighting by himselfbecause we couldn’t afford a larger crew.

Even though we had a tiny crew andno equipment, it was important that thenight exteriors look natural, and not like wehad a single source just blasting the subjectso we could see. That kind of stylizationwould have been very distracting with thiskind of story. We had a 2K, a couple of 1Ksand rope lights, which wasn’t enough tolight on the scale that the complex nightwork demanded.

So instead we worked largely withnatural light, setting the 7D to 800 ASA andsometimes going as high as 2,000 ASA. Itmade sense to ramp up the exposure. Itlooks noisy and grainy but real. I think thelight quality would have been more of adistraction if I’d tried to force a clean imagewithout the appropriate equipment orpersonnel.

The 7D can be a helpful tool in low-light situations, and I was very impressed bythe latitude in the highlights when using thehighlight-protection function. However, Iwould never choose to work with thiscamera again for a theatrical presentation.The image is very compressed, there aresignificant moiré problems, clean cameramoves are nearly impossible, and it’s veryuncomfortable to operate. (When we shothandheld, I used a Zacuto shoulder mountwith handlebars, a matte box, follow focus,a lot of NDs and no diffusion filters. Thecamera’s look settings were all at zero.)

Editor Lance Edmands and SamDaley, my longtime colorist, came up withthe workflow for posting Tiny Furniture .After converting the native 1080 24p H.264files to ProRes for a Final Cut editorial, Lancedelivered a ProRes locked picture to Techni-color New York. Technicolor up-rezzed to10-bit uncompressed 4:2:2 QuickTime filesand recorded those out to HDCam-SR. Fromthere we did a tape-to-tape color correctfrom HDCam-SR to HDCam-SR on a DaVinci2K Plus. HDCam cassettes and a QuickTimewere dubbed for exhibition. Going up to 10-bit was important for color correctionbecause it gave us the bit depth necessary tocreate windows and secondary isolations.Sam and I were both surprised by howmalleable the image was in post. ●


Colorfront Optimizes On-Set DailiesColorfront has announced a partnership with Arri for Color-

front On-Set Dailies, a state-of-the-art digital-dailies tool optimizedfor use with Arri’s Alexa and D-21 digital cameras and their corre-sponding workflows.

The On-Set Dailies system incorporates production-proventools for dailies work —including playback andsync, QC, color grading,audio and metadatamanagement, and simul-taneous faster-than-real-time deliverables incommon file formats —combined with Arri’scolor and image science.

In addition to benefiting productions working with Arri digitalcameras, Colorfront’s system can be integrated into any digital-dailiesworkflow.

On-Set Dailies has an easy-to-use, node-based operator inter-face, and can load media files from film scans, tape capture, disk andsolid-state recorders. The system also synchronizes sound files withpicture using automated and manual techniques. Its image-process-ing capabilities include primary and selective color correction, theapplication of 3-D LUTs, printer light and ASC CDL compatibility,image resizing tools, and a range of burn-in options. The system alsoworks with stereoscopic media, allowing stereo adjustments of colorand position, and it assembles takes into rolls and tapes for deliver-ables, screeners and archiving.

Input media formats include DPX, ArriRAW, ProRes 422 and444, Avid DNxHD, QuickTime (with various codecs) and broadcastWAV audio files. Deliverables formats include MPG4 H.264 for Webdelivery, iPhone and iPad; MPG2 for authored DVDs and chapteredBlu-rays; Avid DNxHD MXF and QuickTime files; QuickTime files withvarious codecs, including ProRes 422 and 444 for Final Cut Pro edito-rial; and TIFF and JPEG stills and WAV audio.

For additional information, visit www.colorfront.com andwww.arri.com.

DSC Labs Adds Red CamBookDSC Labs has added the Red CamBook to its popular

CamBook series of charts. The Red CamBook includes three pages ofcharts designed specifically for the Red One and Red Epic. TheCamBook includes unique Red framing formats, including one chartwith the industry-standard 18-percent gray background and asecond with DSC’s CamWhite background; both have Red cameraframings for up to 5K. The Red CamBook also contains the Chro-

maDuMonde 28 chart, whichfeatures an 18-percent graybackground, 24 colors, fourskin tones and an 11-stepcrossed grayscale; thegrayscale displays the expo-sure setting and determinesexactly how gamma curvesare affecting the image.

“The neutral white and 18-percent gray backgrounds aregreat for achieving an accurate white balance,” says GraemeNattress, problem solver for Red. “The Red CamBook allows you toachieve better exposure [and] a more accurate white balance, and itproduces a record of the actual lighting on set, which helps keepyou consistent in terms of colorimetry throughout postproduction.”

The Red CamBook costs $480 and can be purchased directlyfrom DSC Labs or Red, or from DSC’s worldwide reseller channels.For more information, visit http://dsclabs.com.

Cinedeck Gets ExtremeCinedeck LLC has

released version 2.0 of itsCinedeck Extreme camera-mountable recorder, moni-tor and playback device.Cinedeck Extreme v2.0offers full support for allversions of Apple’s ProRes

codecs, including 4444, 422 HQ, 422 (LT) and 422 (Proxy), stream-lining the camera-to-edit workflow for Final Cut Pro users.

Cinedeck Extreme v2.0 enables any camera with an HDSDI orHDMI output to bypass onboard compression codecs and record toany of a number of loss-less compression standards, including allvarieties of Avid DNxHD and CineForm Digital Intermediate. A Full-Stream Uncompressed option adds even more flexibility for uncom-pressed 444 and 422 recording.

Cinedeck Extreme v2.0 is available for $9,995. The Full-Stream Uncompressed option, which includes a 256GB RAID SSD, isavailable for $3,495.

For additional information, visit www.cinedeck.com.

Panasonic Introduces P2 Storage UnitPanasonic Solutions Co. has introduced the AG-MSU10 P2

Media Storage Unit, a lightweight, mobile-workflow tool thatsimplifies the process of backing up P2 content. Delivering fast,stable transfer of data, the compact P2 Media Storage Unit elimi-

New Products & Services• SUBMISSION INFORMATION •

Please e-mail New Products/Services releases to:[email protected] and include full contactinformation and product images. Photos must be

TIFF or JPEG files of at least 300dpi.


nates the need forlarger, more expen-sive appliances in

the field and quicklyfrees up P2 cards for addi-

tional shooting.The MSU10 boasts a

small form factor with two slots,one for a P2 card and one for the AG-MBX10 tray, which supports a 2.5" solid-state or hard drive for MSU10 backup. TheMSU10 offers the flexibility of AC or batteryoperation, and includes USB 2.0 and eSATAinterfaces for easy connection to NLEs. TheMBX10 removable drive tray also includesUSB 2.0 and eSATA interfaces.

The bus-powered MSU10 can beeasily transported from the field andconnected to NLE systems, including PCsand Macs, to expedite the editing process.Content is transferred from a P2 card to thedrive at four times real time. In addition tobackup from the P2 card to the removableMBX10 tray drive, the MSU10 also offersHost and Device functions, allowing the unitto be a P2 card reader (when connected toa computer) or to host an external drive forcopying.

The MSU10 features a 3.2" LCDscreen and simple one-touch operation. Itprovides P2 thumbnail display for confi-dence and metadata review and supportsmaster-quality 10-bit AVC-Intra (100/50)and DVCPro HD, DVCPro50, DVCPro andDV recording formats. Clip-by-clip copyingis also supported.

Users can choose to purchase thestorage unit without a drive (MSU10) orpreconfigured with a 256GB 2.5" enter-prise-class solid-state drive (MSU10-SSD) ora 500GB 2.5" enterprise-class hard-diskdrive (MSU10-HDD). The AG-MBX10removable disk tray can be purchased sepa-rately, and Panasonic also offers theMBX10-SSD and MBX10-HDD for furtherflexibility.

For additional information, visitwww.panasonic.com/broadcast.

Photon Beard Offers Wireless ControlPhoton Beard has introduced the

low-cost, easy-to-install, wireless Wi-Lightsystem for studio lighting control. Designedprimarily as an add-on to the company’s

DMX-controlled series of Highlight fluores-cents, the Wi-Light system can also controla mixture of fluorescent and incandescentlighting systems.

The Wi-Light system can reduce oreven eliminate the need for traditionalwired DMX-controlled systems. The Wi-Light system consists of one master trans-mitter/receiver module and individualreceiver modules that are added to eachlight source or dimmer; the master unit canbe configured as a receiver for point-to-point links or as a repeater to cover widerareas. The transmitter range can vary, butgenerally works up to 300' and can beextended using repeaters.

The small receiver modules fit to thebase panel of Photon Beard’s Highlight, onthe outside of the casing, and can be easilyinstalled using only a small screwdriver. Allfurther setup instructions are either auto-matic or transmitted wirelessly from themaster module. The master unit providesthe entry port for the system and takes aconventional DMX512 data stream from astandard control desk. An assignable blockof channels are selected from the inputstream and wirelessly transmitted. The orig-inal address positions of each channel in theblock are preserved, so the user can easilyset the receiver address on each lightsource.

Unlike the basic DMX512 standard,which sends data continuously even whennothing has changed, the Wi-Light systemutilizes a special protocol to transmit onlythe data that has changed. All parts of theWi-Light system are bi-directional, and eachWi-Light unit contains a unique identity thatis added to all transmissions. To close thenetwork and eliminate interference, eachreceiver can be remotely set to respond toonly one transmitter. The robust Wi-Lightsystem also includes built-in error checking.

All Photon Beard products are hand-built to the highest standards. For moreinformation, visit www.photonbeard.com.

Pond5 Stocks After Effects TemplatesPond5, an online marketplace for

stock media, has added Adobe After Effectsproject templates to its collection, whichincludes royalty-free stock video footageand a full range of sound effects and

production music. After Effects users cannow save precious production time bytapping into Pond5’s cache of high-qualitymotion graphics templates and easilycustomizing them for a unique, profes-sional end product.

The Pond5 After Effects collectioncurrently includes more than 140 dynamictemplates to choose from, with prices start-ing at $10. The project files cover a widerange of motion-graphics needs, includingadvertisements, bumpers, show intros,credit sequences, video overlays and more.The Pond5 collection allows users to searchfor, preview, purchase and download AEtemplates instantly and directly from thewebsite.

“Our goal is to provide contentcreators with a palette of stock media thatexpands their creative options, increasestheir productivity and saves them time andmoney,” says Tom Bennett, Pond5 co-founder and CEO. “After Effects templatesdo exactly that, and are a great comple-ment to our selection of stock video andaudio.”

Pond5 is also accepting submissionsof professional-quality After Effectstemplates. As with video and audio onPond5, the model is straightforward andartist-friendly: Contributing artists uploadtheir content at no cost, set the pricesthemselves and earn 50 percent of thelicense fee each time their content ispurchased. Pond5 reviews all submittedwork to check quality and technical specifi-cations.

For additional information, visitwww.pond5.com. ●

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Camera Essentials 89CameraImage 87Cavision Enterprises 57Chapman/Leonard Studio Equipment Inc. 59Chemical Wedding 95Cinegear Expo 91Cinematography Electronics 6Cinekinetic 88Cinerover 89Clairmont Film & Digital 25Codex Digital Ltd., 21Cooke Optics 28Creative Industry Handbook 81

Deluxe C2Digitalvision 40

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Film Gear 75Filmtools 6Fox Searchlight 7, 11FTC West 89Fujji Motion Picture 32a-d, 47

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Interlochen Center for the Arts 75

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Laffoux Solutions, Inc. 88Lee Filters 50Lite Panels 2

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O’Connor 49Oppenheimer Camera Prod. 88Otto Nemenz 73

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90

Emmy-nominated cinematographerMichel Hugo, ASC, an affiliate assistantprofessor in the film department at theUniversity of Nevada-Las Vegas, died Oct. 12after a brief battle withcancer. He was 80years old.

Hugo was bornon Jan. 13, 1930,inParis, France. As ateenager, he aided theFrench Resistanceduring World War II.After the war, heattended the Vaugirardfilm school in Paris,where he focused onc i n e m a t o g r a p h y ,following in his father’sfootsteps behind thecamera. Hugo gradu-ated in 1951 and quickly found steady workas a camera assistant on numerous Frenchproductions. Before long, he climbed theranks and began notching professional cred-its as a director of photography.

In 1956, Hugo moved to Los Angeles,Calif., and essentially began again at thebottom of the ladder. “I don’t regret it,” hetold AC in January 1990. “I just pushedahead. I never looked behind.

“I always had great admiration forthe technology of American movies,” headded. “I was overwhelmed by the abun-dance of equipment, the size of the stages.Taking a golf cart to move from stage tostage in a big studio — this was paradise!”

In 1960, Hugo became a U.S. citizenand was admitted into the camera union,then known as IATSE Local 659. By 1967, hewas once again ranked as a director ofphotography, and he was working on the hittelevision series Mission: Impossible.

Following Mission: Impossible , Hugotransitioned to features, where he workedwith such directors as Bob Rafelson ( Head),Jacques Demy ( Model Shop), Stuart Rosen-berg (April Fools) and Stanley Kramer (R.P.M.and Bless the Beasts & Children ). “Lightingfor television is no different from lighting a

feature,” he told AC. “Good lighting, in myopinion, is pure logic, pure commonsense.” He also shot more than 30 telefilmsover the course of his career, including The

Forgotten Man , ATattered Web , Thief,The Night Stalker andClimb an AngryMountain.

Hugo joined theASC in 1972, afterbeing recommendedby Society fellow TedVoigtlander. Throughthat decade, Hugocontinued to juggletheatrical featuresand MOWs, and healso returned toepisodic TV on theseries The Streets of

San Francisco and Tales of the Unexpected.He was nominated for an Emmy Award forhis work on the 1978 miniseries The Awak-ening Land. In the 1980s, Hugo enjoyed along run as cinematographer on the popu-lar series Dynasty, and he repeated the featin the following decade on Melrose Place.

Hugo was also a member of theDirectors Guild of America, the Academy ofMotion Picture Arts and Sciences, and theSociety of Motion Picture and TelevisionEngineers. He retired from filmmaking afterMelrose Place came to an end, but in 2000,he began a new career as a teacher atUNLV. He frequented his students’ sets andwas often heard to say, “Always check thecamera lens to make sure no one has left aDagwood sandwich in there,” his own,unique way of encouraging students totake care of the tools of their craft.

Hugo is survived by his wife, Gloria;a daughter; two sons; and two grandchil-dren.

— Jon D. Witmer●

Michel Hugo, ASC, 1930-2010In Memoriam

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For more information about AFI Fest, AFI Conservatory and other AFI programs, go to AFI.com.

Luke Lynch (E ‘09) Editor

Georgia Archer (P ‘98) Producer/Director/Writer Anthony Dominici (D ‘99) Executive ProducerMatt Kregor (E ‘99) Co-Producer/EditorJose Pulido (E ‘99) EditorSam Harowitz (C ‘09) Production Manager

Darren Aronofsky (D ‘92) Director Jon Avnet (D ’72) Executive Producer Matthew Libatique (C ‘92) Director of Photography

David Lynch (D ‘70) Producer/Director/Writer/Editor/Production Designer Frederick Elmes (D ’72) Cinematographer

Miguel Bunster (C ’06) Cinematographer

Ed Zwick (D ‘75) Producer/Director/ Co-Writer Marshall Herskovitz (D ‘75) Producer/ Co-WriterPieter Jan Brugge (P ‘79) Producer Steven Fierberg (D ‘95) Cinematographer Steven Rosenblum (C ‘76) Editor

Nick Simon (D ‘08) Director/Writer Thomas Mahoney (P ‘08) ProducerChady Eli Mattar (P ‘08) ProducerHayden Roush (P ‘08) ProducerScott C. Silver (E ’08) Producer/ Additional EditorRobert Konowalow (P ’10) Line ProducerDaniel Meersand (S ’08) Writer Kevin Duggin (C ’08) CinematographerKaty Skjerping (E ‘ 08) EditorNoah Rosenthal (C ’08) Second Unit Director

Andrew J. Spieler (D ‘09) Director/Writer Marina Stabile (P ‘09) Producer/Writer Samuel Harowitz (C ‘09) Cinematographer Vegard H. Sorby (E ‘09) Editor Harrison Yurkiw (PD ‘09) Production Designer

Josef Lieck (D ’01) Associate Producer/Line Producer

Lisa Wiegand (C ’95) Cinematographer

Maggie Kiley (DWW ‘09) Director/Writer

Christopher Jones (E ’03) Editor

Society Welcomes Egilsson, MooradianEagle Egilsson and George Moora-

dian have joined the Society as activemembers.

Eagle Egilsson, ASC was born inReykjavik, Iceland. From his father, heacquired a deep interest in still photographythat evolved into a love for motion pictures.Determined to work behind the camera, heattended Columbia College Hollywood andfocused on cinematography. His creditsinclude the telefilms Sweet Temptation , AFace to Die For , Business for Pleasure andSirens, as well as the series Red Shoe Diaries,The Wire, Eleventh Hour and Miami Medical.He was twice nominated by the ASC for hiswork on the series CSI: Miami, and he wonan ASC award in 2009 for the “VeniceKings” episode of Dark Blue.

Born in Atlanta, Ga., George Moora-dian, ASC briefly studied economics at theUniversity of Georgia before changing tacksto focus on film studies at Ohio University.Following graduation, he spent two yearsfilming his travels across the globe and

honing his eye for light and compositionbefore returning to the United States andattending the Maine Photographic Work-shop. Mooradian notched his first credit as adirector of photography on the feature Pris-oner of Rio, and has since photographed suchfeatures as Retroactive, Crazy as Hell and TheCircle. He has earned Emmy nominations fouryears in a row for his work on the seriesAccording to Jim.

Manaki Brothers Honor ZsigmondVilmos Zsigmond, ASC received the

Golden Camera 300 Lifetime AchievementAward at the 31st Manaki Brothers Interna-tional Cinematographers’ Film Festival inBitola, Republic of Macedonia. During thefestival, Zsigmond led a cinematographymaster class and also headed the festival’sawards jury, which presented the GoldenCamera 300 award to Martin Gschlacht forthe film Women Without Men. Awards werealso presented to Benoît Debie, AFC, for Enterthe Void (AC Oct. ’10); Giora Bejach, forLebanon (AC April ’10); Thierry Godefroy, forWinter’s Beginning ; Christoph Beaucarne,AFC, for Mr. Nobody; Ádám Fillenz, for PálAdrienn; and Daniël Bouquet, for NothingPersonal.

ASC Busy at CreateasphereCreateasphere recently held an Enter-

tainment Technology Exposition in Burbank,Calif., featuring two days of panels andevents in addition to an exhibitors’ hall andgear alley. ASC members Daniel Pearl andSteven Poster joined camera operatorsRobert Reed Altman, Paul Babin, AlexanderCalzatti, Mitch Dubin, Stan McClain, JackMessitt, Chris Tufty and Dave Frederick for thepanel “How Did They Get That Shot?” CurtisClark, ASC joined Sony’s Peter Crithary andDhanendra Patel for a Sony-intensive discus-sion, “The Evolution of the HDCam-SRFormat.” Additionally, Stephen Lighthill,ASC sat down with American Film Institutegraduates Uta Briesewitz, Darren Genet, PetraKorner and Tommy Maddox-Upshaw for

“The Cinematography Program at AFI.”ASC associate Kristin Petrovich

Kennedy, president of Createasphere,noted, “We have the privilege of workingand mingling with some of the smartest,most interesting people in any business,anywhere. Our show grows because theexpos shine a spotlight on the broad spec-trum of content creators and the companiesworking with them as they push the enve-lope of technology and creativity, everysingle day.”

Following the exhibition, Createas-phere also hosted a two-day PostproductionMaster Class. ASC associate Joshua Pinesparticipated in the class’ keynote kickoff, andDavid Stump, ASC added insight to the“Camera to Post” roundtable.

Wexler Rides Wild RiverHaskell Wexler, ASC recently joined

Michael Pogorzelski, director of the Acad-emy Film Archive; Schawn Belston, seniorvice president of library and technical servicesfor Fox Filmed Entertainment; and actorBruce Dern for a panel discussion about EliaKazan’s Wild River (1960) at the Academy’sSamuel Goldwyn Theater. Wexler served asan additional photographer on the 20thCentury Fox film, which was recentlyrestored by the Academy Film Archive. Thescreening was part of “A 20th AnniversaryTribute to The Film Foundation,” a multi-venue series organized by the Los AngelesCounty Museum of Art Film Department.

AC Editors Notch Folio NominationsAll three AC editors have earned

nominations for Folio Eddie Awards for BestSingle Article. Executive editor StephenPizzello is nominated for his Oct. ’09 articleabout Bronson; senior editor Rachael K.Bosley is nominated for her Oct. ’09 articleabout Mad Men; and associate editor Jon D.Witmer is nominated for his May ’10 articleabout Iron Man 2 . Gold, silver and bronzeprizes will be awarded Jan. 13 in New York.

●

Clubhouse NewsRight: Eagle

Egilsson, ASC.Below: George

Mooradian, ASC.


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When you were a child, what film made the strongest impres-sion on you?Wow! I’m 85 years old and you’re asking for childhood memories? Idon’t recall any film experiences from my early years.

Which cinematographers, past or present,do you most admire, and why?It’s almost cliché to say Conrad Hall, ASC andHaskell Wexler, ASC because they are so oftenmentioned as inspirational, but they hardly qual-ify as gurus in my case because we were goodfriends and grew up together in the business.Both of them were truly fine influences on my lifeboth personally and creatively. We know all thefamous names, but there are a lot of folks outthere with equal talent who just haven’tgarnered the praise. I’ve admired the work of somany excellent cameramen that it’s a bit unset-tling to single out any individual.

What sparked your interest in photography?I have a built-in fascination with animals. I was given my first still cameraat the age of 11, and I stalked birds, squirrels and rabbits in the hills andfelt great if I got close enough with my wide-angle lens to see that I’dcaptured a recognizable creature. I’ve felt the same urge ever since.Thank God for the Arriflex.

Where did you train and/or study?I went to the University of Southern California on the GI Bill intending aserious study of biology. I found myself next to a student named ConradHall in a make-up English class. The idea of a career in the movie busi-ness wasn’t even a spark in my head, nor in Conrad’s. He hoped to walkin the footsteps of his father, a well-known writer. Just for kicks, Consuggested that we audit a class in the new Department of Cinema Arts.We sat in on one lecture by Slavko Vorkapich and were seriously hooked.

Who were your early teachers or mentors?Aside from Vorkapich, for mentors I’ve got to go way back in time toFloyd Crosby, ASC. He was the next most important person in the workthat would become my lifetime world. And I was an assistant for KarlFreund, ASC, a great gentleman from whom I learned a lot. How couldn’t I?

What are some of your key artistic influences?I looked to the representational painters of the so-called CaliforniaSchool, watercolorists of the 1930s and early 1950s — Rex Brandt, TomCraig, Vernon Nye and Emil Kosa. I loved their use of color and compo-sition. In those days, when mist-shrouded scenes, focused subjects seenthrough fuzzy foregrounds, and sun flares all went automatically intothe trash, I learned from New York cameraman Larry Madison about theinherent value of these often stunning ‘mistakes.’

How did you get your first break in the business?I was living aboard my boat while attending USC, and Conrad Hall andanother student and I decided we’d put the ideas we’d learned in classinto a film. We bought a used Bolex and some outdated film from Bob

Gottschalk, who ran a hole-in-the-wall camerastore, and then we set sail for Catalina duringthe summer break to make a film we’d call SeaTheme — no dialogue or color, just a beautifulschooner, sails and seas and a score of classicalmusic. It won an American CinematographerAward (in 1951) and was sold to TV, and thebuyer financed a series. We thought we hadthe world by the tail, formed a company,Canyon Films, and became entrepreneurswhile still in film school.

What has been your most satisfyingmoment on a project?

Falling in love with the actress. You can read all about it in my newmemoir, The Lion and the Giraffe.

Have you made any memorable blunders?Too many, too embarrassing and too costly to mention.

What is the best professional advice you’ve ever received?From editor Irving Lerner: ‘Cut out all the comin’s and goin’s.’

What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you? Winged Migration made me jealous — all the new technology I’vemissed out on!

Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like totry?The niche I have happily occupied has been predominantly films withhumans interacting with animals. Well-trained animals are very goodat hitting their marks.

If you weren’t a cinematographer, what might you be doinginstead?I would have been a stuffy biology teacher in some second-rate highschool in an out-of-the-way place. Thank you, Slavko Vorkapich.

Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for member-ship?Conrad Hall and Haskell Wexler.

How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?I am proud to be a member of such a respected group, and at thesame time sad not to have contributed more. My only excuse is thatI’ve been based outside the country, hiding under a mossy stone, formost of my career. ●

Jack Couffer, ASCClose-up

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Documents

American Cinematographer Magazine - January 2011-TV