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24 Big Guns
Dante Spinotti, ASC, AIC arms himself with digital
cameras on Public Enemies
34 Impressionistic Cinema
Darius Khondji, ASC, AFC lends lush, romantic
look to Chri
44 Risk and Valor
Barry Ackroyd, BSC brings tense, handheld aesthetic
to The Hurt Locker
52 Terror on the Tracks
Tobias Schliessler, ASC confronts complex logistics
on The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
Departments
Features
Vi s i t us o nl i ne a t www. t he a s c . c o m
On Our Cover: Notorious bank robber John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) is armed and dangerous in Public
Enemies, shot by Dante Spinotti, ASC, AIC. (Photo by Peter Mountain, courtesy of Universal Pictures.)
8 Editors Note
10 Short Takes: Puppy Love
14 Production Slate: Moon and Sraphine
60 Post Focus: Mega Playgrounds DP Dailies
64 New Products & Services
68 International Marketplace
69 Classified Ads
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72 In Memoriam: Jack Cardiff, BSC
74 Clubhouse News
76 ASC Close-Up: Mark Irwin
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W
ith HD cameras becoming more prevalent and more
sophisticated, the old question Film or digital? is
taking on a new complexity for cinematographers at
every level. On Public Enemies, Dante Spinotti, ASC, AIC and
director Michael Mann initially discussed shooting on 35mm
film, but ultimately chose HD after conducting comparison
tests geared toward the specific narrative and stylistic
requirements of the period gangster tale. With digital
cameras, there arent any steadfast rules, and I believe that
gives me a huge amount of freedom, Spinotti tells Jay
Holben (Big Guns, page 24). The medium is romantic,
interesting and beautiful, but it also looks real. And theres
so much you can do in post! Film has a certain kind of quality that cannot be matched by
digital technology, but at times, the advantages digital has over film are important for the
language and the contents of the story youre telling, and that determines your choice.
For the romantic drama Chri, Darius Khondji, ASC, AFC adopted a more tradi-
tional approach, composing in widescreen anamorphic (which he deems wonderful for
faces, for intimacy) and manipulating three film stocks to create the pictures painterly
frames. I didnt want the image to be too sharp or the light to be obvious, Khondji notes
in his interview with European correspondent Benjamin B (Impressionistic Cinema, page
34). I wanted very, very soft light, as though its filtered through time, like a hazy memory.
The light was often bounced or going through two layers of diffusion, and it was always
wrapping around.
Barry Ackroyd, BSC took an entirely different tack on The Hurt Locker, a tense war
story that follows a U.S. Army bomb squad through a series of nerve-wracking missions in
Iraq. To immerse viewers in the hard reality of the soldiers experiences, Ackroyd and his
operators shouldered 16mm cameras and marched straight into the fray: I said, Lets make
it physical. I figured the cameras would be handheld 90 percent of the time, and they were.
Director Kathryn Bigelow further emphasized the films firsthand feel by deploying multiple
cameras to capture a variety of perspectives. Thats how we experience reality, by looking
at the microcosm and the macrocosm simultaneously, she explains to New York corre-
spondent Pat Thomson (Risk and Valor, page 44). The eye sees differently than the lens,
but with multiple focal lengths and a muscular editorial style, the lens can give you that
microcosm/macrocosm perspective, and that contributes to the feeling of total immersion.
Film was also chosen by Tobias Schliessler, ASC on The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3,
a modern update of a memorable thriller from 1974. Tony came in not to remake the movie,
but to retell the story, and he definitely wanted to put his stamp on it visually, Schliessler
relates in a detailed account penned by Douglas Bankston (Terror on the Tracks, page 52).
I love the look Owen Roizman [ASC] gave the original film, but we didnt necessarily refer-
ence it. Tony wanted to show the energy of the city, and gritty or not, it feels on film like
New York. Achieving that authenticity involved quite a feat of logistics, according to gaffer
Bill OLeary, who is based in the city: New York has its own set of challenges, and know-
ing the ropes makes it easier. In a way, its about compromises and playing the hand the city
deals you. This job took that to a new level, though. The thick bureaucracy of the MTA and
working in The Hole, as they call the subway tunnels, were especially tough.
Stephen Pizzello
Executive Editor
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Editors Note
8


T
heres no relationship like the rela-
tionship between a dog and its
master, a point made by Puppy Love, a
comedy series on LStudio.com, an online
channel sponsored by Lexus. The show
is about dog lovers and the people who
love them, explains cinematographer
Jendra Jarnagin. Each episode of the
show, which is set in New York, follows
a different cast of characters.
The series was created by
writer/producer Amy B. Harris and
produced by Grace Naughton, who met
Jarnagin on the set of the HBO series
Sex and the City, where Jarnagin was
working as an electrician. Because she
was shooting projects on the side at the
time, Jarnagin tried to shadow the cine-
matographers with whom she worked.
I talked to them about their work when-
ever I could find an appropriate opportu-
nity, she says.
Despite Puppy Loves low budget,
the producers wanted to evoke the look
of Sex and the City by portraying New
York in a romanticized way: everything
and everyone is beautiful, and colors are
bright and saturated. Although the show
was conceived for the Web, Harris and
Naughton planned to enter individual
episodes in festivals as stand-alone short
films, so they wanted images that would
also look good on the big screen. Jarna-
gin decided the Red One camera would
be ideal; it offered the cinematic look of
35mm depth-of-field and an extended
dynamic range, could yield high-quality
deliverables in a variety of formats, and
would work well with Jarnagins
personal set of Cooke S4 prime lenses.
In the first episode, a woman
(Famke Janssen) finds her romantic
exploits thwarted by her loyal canine
companion. That episode gave us the
opportunity to do moody lighting,
whereas a lot of the other episodes have
normal day interiors, says Jarnagin.
The first episode has a lot of date
scenes and romantic interiors. And
Famke is a joy to light.
The cinematographer notes that
there are just a few basic differences
when it comes to lighting men and
women. People stress the importance of
lighting women more carefully because
female beauty is so important in our
culture, she says. Of course, actors are
generally conscious of how they look
because thats directly related to their
employability. The secret to making
someone look his or her best is to really
study the face the way shadows
penetrate the face, the way light wraps
around the nose, and so on and notice
how those things change when the
person moves.
For day interiors, if it was a
broadly lit scene, Jarnagin used a book
light, bouncing a light (often a 1.2K HMI)
Shooting Puppy Love With the Red One
by Iain Stasukevich
Short Takes
P
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. Above: In the
first episode of
Puppy Love,
Famke Janssen
portrays a
woman whose
romantic
exploits are
thwarted by her
canine
companion.
Below:
Cinematographer
Jendra Jarnagin
shoots the Web
series with the
Red One camera.
10 July 2009


She allows me to do my own thing, and
if she doesnt like it, shell tell me. There
were very few situations where we
didnt get what she wanted.
One thing Jarnagin found herself
wanting was an optical viewfinder, the
absence of which is inherent to most
digital cameras. Even at 720p, the Reds
monitoring output is only a fraction of the
resolution of the 4K image, which makes
judging the image quality difficult. This
led to a few surprises at the color-correc-
tion stage, when Jarnagin noticed that
the image tended toward the sharp side.
I think it plays into the level of detail
youre capturing, she says. With film,
you get random, organic grain patterns
that average together for a smooth look.
With digital, you have very precise points
of light and color that are repeated frame
by frame, leading to a harsher and
sharper look.
To counteract this, she used a
Tiffen Soft FX filter in front of the lens for
close-ups. Soft FX filters look natural
they dont give themselves away, she
observes. They dont diffuse the light as
much as the detail.
Puppy Love was graded on a
Scratch system at Offhollywood Digital
in Manhattan. With colorist Robbie
Renfrow at the controls, Jarnagin super-
vised the color-correction of the entire
series. We took a pretty straightforward
approach, she says. Our main goal was
to use Power Windows to finesse the
things that were rushed on set. We
never put a heavy hand on things. The
look is supposed to feel natural but
bright and happy.
The series was shot at 4K in 16x9
using the Redcode 28 setting. Even
though the Redcode 36 codec is less
compressed, Jarnagin decided 28 would
be more flexible. At the time we shot
the series, you couldnt shoot 4K in the
16x9 aspect ratio to compact flash cards
at 36. If you wanted that, you had to
shoot directly to the Red Drives.
Every camera and format has its
strengths and weaknesses there is
no such thing as a perfect camera, she
adds. But in terms of the evolution of
digital cinema, Red is on the right track.
I
12 July 2009
into a beadboard and through a diffu-
sion frame between the bounce and the
actor. For low-key night interiors, she
used 4-by-4 Kino Flos and Fresnels with
Lee 250 or light grid diffusion in front of
them to give the light more directional-
ity. Famke can take directional light
very well, she notes, and I like using
light grid because it diffuses the most
with the least loss of light.
She recalls that the Red Ones
extended dynamic range really came in
handy for shooting outdoors during the
day; she shot these scenes in the protec-
tive shade of trees and buildings, or
backlit her actors and exposed for the
highlights. The Reds range meant I
could bring up the shadow areas. I asked
our Red technician, Sam Kretchmar, to
do a curve in the RedAlert software that
would bring up the faces, so in the
QuickTime dailies, we could see the
image the way we intended it to look.
We didnt always have the guns
to match the exteriors, adds gaffer
Meg Schrock. We tried to augment
sunlight rather than try to beat it. Wed
soften it up with a 1.2K HMI and light
grid. Sometimes, the only way to get
light into an actors eyes was to walk
next to the actor with a bounceboard.
The core production crew on the
series comprised Jarnagin, Kretchmar,
Schrock, key grip John Shim, two best
boys and two camera assistants. Jarna-
gin often did her own operating and
came to rely on Shrocks ability to antic-
ipate the next lighting setup. Meg and
I had a good understanding of each
others taste, says the cinematogra-
pher. Most of the time, Id outline what
I was looking for and trust her to figure
out how to do it. Schrock adds, Jendra
is really good about communicating.
Right: Jarnagin
strove to keep
the actors in
backlight and
expose for the
highlights
whenever day
exteriors couldnt
be staged in
the shade.
Below: Jarnagin
(standing on
dolly) and
director Amy B.
Harris (center)
plan their
next move.


14 July 2009
Clones in Space
by Patricia Thomson
On Moon, his first theatrical
feature as a director of photography,
Gary Shaw confronted challenges that
would make most first-timers blanch. For
starters, the set, built at Englands Shep-
perton Studios, was a white box built
with fixed walls and 8' ceilings. Even
more daunting was the overall mission:
shoot a science-fiction film featuring
motion-control, CGI and miniatures for
$5 million in 33 days.
Fortunately, both Shaw and the
director, Duncan Jones, had years of
experience with visual-effects work
they had met on a Carling beer commer-
cial that presented CG robots kicking
back in a practical pub. Jones had made
a name for himself as a commercials
director, and Shaw had a long track
record as a commercials cinematogra-
pher, with stints at The Mill Motion
Control Studio and Geoff Axtell Associ-
ates in London.
Jones wrote Moon with a cost-
saving premise in mind: The story is
about clones, so one actor would play
multiple roles. In the film, which is set in
the near future, Lunar Industries is
mining the moon for Helium 3, which
has become Earths primary source of
energy. Manning the base is a lone
astronaut on a three-year contract, Sam
Bell (Sam Rockwell), who is assisted by
a robot named Gerty. After an accident
strands the astronaut in his lunar Rover,
another Sam Bell is activated and
rescues him. Back at the base, there is
tension between Sams 1 and 2, who
were previously unaware they were
Cerebral Sci-Fi and Painterly Drama
Production Slate
M
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b
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.
Right:
Astronaut Sam
Bell (Sam
Rockwell) uses
his lunar Rover
to investigate a
mission
problem in
Moon, shot by
Gary Shaw.
Below: Model
photography
supervised by
miniatures
specialist Mark
Talbot
produced
convincing
shots of the
moons surface.

clones. Ultimately, they form an alliance
to change their fate.
In developing a look for the
picture, Jones sought a retro aesthetic
that would recall films such as 2001: A
Spacey Odyssey, Silent Running and
Outland. Production design centered
upon a sturdy, concrete look rather than
the sleek touch-screen technology of
today. We decided to shoot most of the
movie on the most readily available but
soon-to-be-discontinued film stock we
could find, which was Kodak [Vision
200T] 5274, because we wanted the
image to have that older look, says
Shaw.
Jones wanted a widescreen
aspect ratio to provide an epic feel, so
Shaw shot 3-perf Super 35mm. That
gave us a feel that was as close to
anamorphic as we could get without
spending the money to shoot anamor-
phic, says the cinematographer. A
Panaflex Millennium XL was the main
camera; an Arricam Lite facilitated
handheld work; and an Arri 435 was
used for high-speed work. The lenses
comprised Primo primes and Primo 4:1
(17.575mm) and 11:1 (24275mm)
zooms.
To give the white set a wide vari-
ety of looks, Shaw used colored gels,
perforated metal grills, layers of light
and dark in adjoining work-bays, and
practical lighting accents. His more
specialized skills came into play in the
creation of multiple Sams. In addition to
sharing the screen, Sams 1 and 2 phys-
ically interact playing Ping-Pong,
fighting and so forth. We wanted it to
look believable, not tricksy, says Shaw.
Some shots were accomplished with a
double and clever camera angles;
others required frame-accurate motion-
control. However, because the budget
allowed only five days with a motion-
control rig, the filmmakers devised a
poor mans motion-control for the rest
of that work, which required very
precise camera operating from Shaw.
The tight quarters called for the
smallest mo-co rig possible, and visual-
effects supervisors Gavin Rothery and
Simon Stanley Clamp brought in a new,
portable model, the Sprog. Shaw had
previously worked with the portable
American Cinematographer 15
Left: The sterile,
retro aesthetic of
the moon base
emphasizes Bells
isolation. Below:
Shaw eyeballs a
setup.

16 July 2009
Milo system, and he found the Sprog to
be even handier. Because its based on
a Panther dolly central column, its pretty
unique and very quick to use, he notes.
Operationally, the Sprog
seemed very intuitive, says Clamp.
Gary was able to drive the unit using
hand wheels to control the remote
pan/tilt/roll head, with the grip perform-
ing tracking dolly moves all recorded
for consistent repeat action for the
multiple passes necessary for the clone
and Gerty shots. The servos made a
really cool sound when the unit reset to
its start position, so much so that the
sound department recorded it to use as
an element for the Gerty robot traveling
around the moon base.
In scenes with the two Sams,
Rockwell would first perform whichever
character drove the action. An improvi-
sational actor, he was given a loose
leash on this first pass. Then, Rockwell
would change his makeup, rehearse to
playback on a video iPod, and perform
the other Sam utilizing marks and
precise eyelines. Clamp used Apple
Shake on his laptop to create simple,
temporary composites for editorial.
For the poor mans motion-
control, Shaw would mimic the earlier
passes manually, looking at a monitor
and concentrating on the background
rather than the actor when doing the
moves. We had to be very strict about
how we moved the cameras, knowing
what the consequences might be, he
says. We didnt want the effects team
to have to do any zooms or changes of
perspective. Clamp notes, Although
[zooms] arent impossible to deal with
as software improves, it adds huge
overheads to postproduction.
To help facilitate visual-effects
work, Shaw always shot clean plates.
It takes me a minute to do it, and it can
keep [the effects team] from spending
days trying to fix something, he says.
You just need to get everyone off the
set for 10 to 15 seconds to shoot a clean
plate. You might also shoot an overex-
posed pass and an underexposed pass,
or some light movements. Its simple to
do and can save serious time and
money.
Gary is always thinking ahead,
says Clamp. He knows Ill always want
a clean pass under exactly the same
lighting conditions as the principal
plates, and that tiles of the scene are
useful. Its so hard to go back and repli-
cate the lighting at a later stage. Also,
we shot HDRI [High Dynamic Range
Imaging] and chrome-sphere plates for
lighting reference, and Gary never struck
the lighting until they had been shot. He
also shot lens grids for all the lenses,
which helped us put distortion into our
CG and helped with tracking calcula-
tions.
Several scenes in Moon occur on
the moons surface, when Bell exits the
base to check on the helium harvesters,
and the filmmakers used greenscreen
and miniatures to realize them. The
most important lighting reference for
Top: Rockwell
and director
Duncan Jones
parse the script.
Middle: Bell
examines the
church from a
neighborhood
model he has
painstakingly
constructed in
his spare time.
Bottom: As his
three-year
lifespan winds
down, Sam 1
begins to
deteriorate
physically.

www.clairmont.com
The thing I like the most about cinematography is the ability to use
an Austrian camera with a French zoom lens on an Italian fluid head
with an English tripod and also rely on a set of German prime lenses.
The reason I get my gear from Clairmont Camera is very simple. To me,
its not a rental houseits a portal into the World of Cinematography.
I started out in the business in Canada and managed to travel a
lot while shooting films, so I gained an appreciation for all things
international. At the same time, I found that a monoculture point of
view could not give me the options I was looking for. What I find in
Clairmont is a group of people who share my outlook; people who travel
to trade seminars and cinematography forums all over the world; people
who can understand my shooting conditions and discover new
equipmentfilm or digitalto meet those needs. I cant get to
Germany, France, Japan or the UK to find the next best thing so I rely on
Denny Clairmont, Alan Albert, Tom Boelens, Andree Martin and Mike
Condon to go there and bring it back so I can use it.
Call me selfish, but I eagerly await the chance to shoot my next
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Mark Irwin, ASC, CSC, reflects on advantages of global resourcing

these scenes was Michael Lights book
Full Moon, which features NASA photos
from Apollo missions. To re-create the
stark light that is unfiltered by atmos-
phere and surrounded by darkness, we
used a single 20K lamp, says Shaw. It
had to look unrelenting, quite hard and
nasty. There were a few supplementary
pieces and quite a few practicals inside
the Rover; we used flashing lights, a very
small Kino here and there to fill in, and
the odd bit of poly to bounce it back.
Shaws biggest challenge with
the greenscreen work was not losing
Rockwell in his reflective helmet. It
was like a chrome bowl covering his
entire head, and it took a lot of flagging
to keep the green off it, says the cine-
matographer. We brought in big blacks
and isolated the area where Sam was.
That was the only way to do it.
Miniatures specialist Peter
Talbot was brought in for five days of
model photography, and for that work,
too, harsh light was paramount.
Having studied just about every photo
and footage of the moons surface, I
knew Id have to achieve long, hard,
deep shadows to emphasize the clarity
created by the lack of atmosphere and
the sheer distance of the sun, says
Talbot. Naturally, thats the hardest
thing to create in a studio. Standard
Fresnel studio lamps dont give the hard,
sharp light, especially at close-up
inspection. In lunar photography, there is
no atmosphere to create fill, so the suns
light is the dominant source, and any fill
comes from the moons surface. The
high contrast ratio was a very delicate
balance.
When lunar vehicles drive to the
dark side of the moon, that balance
shifted. There, I used a soft, overhead
key light with a slightly higher-than-
normal fill ratio to bring out the subtle
tones and deep shadows, says Talbot.
Although a soft light was used, it had
the appearance of a hard light source, so
visually, the moons surface was slightly
darker than the millions of stars and
galaxies visible in the sky. Scenarios like
that are where Kodak [Vision3 500T]
5219 comes into its own. Talbot
photographed all the miniatures work on
the new 500-speed stock. The moons
surface, having a monotone texture,
needs a film stock that has an incredibly
clean tonal range, from the deepest
black to the brightest highlight, without
contaminating the scene with colored
18 July 2009
Above left: Bell
begins to
question his
sanity as events
aboard the ship
take a mysterious
turn. Above right:
The astronauts
only companion
on the mission is
a robot, Gerty.
Below: To
achieve shots of
the two Sam
clones interacting
in the relatively
cramped set,
visual-effects
supervisors Gavin
Rothery and
Simon Stanley
Clamp employed
the Sprog, a new
motion-control
rig.

grain artifacts, explains Talbot. By
adding subtle colors of occasional sun
flares on the camera lens, we delivered
a very realistic visual experience.
Talbot also devised a solution
for visually conveying the moons grav-
ity, which is
1
6 that of Earths. Because
all miniature photography relies on a
scale film speed to neutralize and bring
the scale size back to full size, a new
mathematical formula had to be
devised, he explains. I came up with
a formula utilizing
1
6 gravity and
combining it with the regular
scalespeed formula. This new formula
could be altered, depending on which
scale model we were using. Of course,
the effect resulted in a considerably
higher-than-normal shooting stop, even
for miniatures. As a consequence, all
the vehicles were fitted with high-
powered LED technology; that was the
only way the vehicle headlights would
expose comfortably with the lunar
sunlight. The space-station building
was fitted with low-voltage dichroics,
which scaled well to industrial practi-
cal-lamp fittings. Both LEDs and
dichroics have a unique color tempera-
ture and are a perfect match to vehicle
lights and interior light fittings, elimi-
nating the need for any color-correcting
filter.
Shaw says Moon prompted him
to take his career in a new direction.
Before we did the movie, I wondered
if I really wanted to spend 33 days
working on one thing, he recalls. I
thought it might feel like working in a
factory, going in there every day. But at
the end, I was sorry it was over! I was
a changed person.
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Super 35mm (3-perf)
Panaflex Millennium XL;
Arricam Lite; Arri 435
Primo lenses
Kodak Vision 200T 5274,
Vision3 500T 5219
Digital Intermediate
Printed on Kodak Vision 2383
19

Above:
Sraphine
(Yolande
Moureau)
brings one of
her new
paintings to
German
expatriate art
dealer William
Uhde (Ulrich
Tukur). Below:
After the war,
Uhde tracks
Sraphine
down to see if
she is still
painting.
Outsider Art in France
by Jean Oppenheimer
The drama Sraphine was unlike
any project Laurent Brunet, AFC had ever
undertaken. It was really an experiment
for me, he confesses, speaking with AC
by phone via a translator. Despite an
extensive list of credits, including La
Belle Personne (2008), Le Fils de lpicier
(2007) and five films with Raphal
Nadjari, Brunet had never worked on a
period piece. Trying to feel and re-
create another time period [forced me]
to think about lighting in a way I never
had before, he says.
Based on the life of an obscure
20th-century French painter who spent
the last decade of her life in a mental
institution, Sraphine won seven Csars
last year, including Best Picture and
Best Cinematography. On one level,
the film was quite easy technically,
notes Brunet, explaining that he used
one camera, a few lenses, a single film
stock and a modest lighting package,
and finished the picture photochemi-
cally. Budgetary constraints definitely
influenced creative decisions but rarely
compromised them, he adds.
The film begins shortly before
World War I, when Sraphine (Yolande
Moureau), a devout Catholic, begins
housecleaning for William Uhde (Ulrich
Tukur), a German migr and art dealer.
At first, Uhde is unaware that Sraphine
is an artist she claims to have taken
up painting at the behest of her
guardian angel and when he sees
her canvases, bursting with colorful but
disturbing images of fruit, flowers and
plants, he is stunned by their primitive
beauty. He offers to pay her living
expenses so that she might devote
herself full-time to her art, but war inter-
venes, and although Sraphine eventu-
ally enjoys some success as a painter,
her deteriorating mental state soon
gains the upper hand.
Sraphine has a painterly qual-
ity, with darkness often dominating the
frame. Brunet says this was not a
conscious attempt to imitate a particular
artist, and director Martin Provost, in a
separate interview, concurs. People
didnt have electricity back then, so they
used sources with a limited range, like
candles and oil lamps, and I wanted to
remain true to that, says the director.
Brunets lighting package
comprised 6Ks, Jokers and Lucioles,
which are lighting cubes made by
Maluna. Although they have yet to
penetrate the American market, Luci-
oles have become increasingly popular
in Europe, according to the cinematogra-
pher. I chose the smaller sizes in order
to avoid spilling light all over the place,
says Brunet, but getting the right level
of warmth was very important. I went
with 250-watt bulbs.
He points to a late-night scene
that shows Sraphine climbing the
stairs in her rooming house. Its pitch-
black except for a small oil lamp she
carries that provides the faintest outline
of her. The scene was shot on a practi-
cal staircase, with two Lucioles
suspended above the actress. The
cubes were on boom sticks held by two
electricians, and the 250-watt bulbs
were on dimmers, recalls Brunet,
adding that he often shot wide open.
At that time, people made do
with whatever natural light came
through windows and doors during the
day; as a result, day interiors could be
quite dark. Similarly, Brunet relied on the
light coming through the windows,
always exposing for the outdoors. That
was one of our guiding principles, and
with 500-ASA film, you can manage a
lot of shots with natural light, he notes.
An example of this is a late-afternoon
scene that shows Sraphine rifling
through papers on Uhdes desk. The
scene plays out in one shot. The desk is
right in front of a window, and I relied
solely on the light coming through it,
says Brunet. She is opening his note-
books and entering his world for the first
time, and I wanted to suggest a certain
intimacy. Exposing for the outdoors put
Sraphine in silhouette, creating just the
ambience I wanted.
20 July 2009
S

r
a
p
h
i
n
e

p
h
o
t
o
s

c
o
u
r
t
e
s
y

o
f

M
u
s
i
c

B
o
x

F
i
l
m
s
.

22 July 2009
One daytime sequence that takes
place inside Uhdes living room covers
several hours and is intercut with other
material. Uhde is seated at the piano in
the foreground while a friend stands to
the right of the piano. Further inside the
room is Uhdes sister, Anne-Marie (Anne
Bennent). Natural light coming through
French doors illuminates the room; the
doors are not visible in the shot, but
when we revisit the scene a short time
later, we see that one of the French
doors has been opened. There was a
lot of sun that day, and I worked with
reflectors set up on the lawn, says
Brunet. I considered supplementing
with a 6K, but it wasnt practical or, in
the end, necessary. Whatever fill light
there was came from natural light
hitting the reflectors and bouncing into
the room. We simply moved the reflec-
tors to suggest the passage of time.
Martin wanted a very simple
mise en scne, and he was reluctant to
use too many close-ups, continues
Brunet. Most of the close-ups show
Sraphine as she paints, and these
scenes presented some challenges,
given that she usually placed her
canvases on the floor and painted on her
knees. One of the most complex scenes
of her painting was conceived and
filmed as one shot, but was later cut in
editing. In her tiny room, which was a
practical location, we had two Lucioles
provide backlight. The camera is
suspended from a mini jib arm I was
holding. We start on her back, then
swing around slowly to reveal the shrine
she maintains for her guardian angel.
The camera turns back toward her and
goes over her shoulder, settling on her
hand as she paints. At that point, the
film cuts to a close-up of her face that
pushes in ever so slightly. We really get
into her emotions in those tight shots.
Aside from these intimate
moments, the camera maintains a
somewhat observational distance from
its subject. Provost explains that he
wanted to emphasize Sraphines piety,
not her hysteria. I didnt want to exac-
erbate the tragedy, and I certainly didnt
want her ever to look pathetic, he says.
I was trying to show that this woman is
reaching for something thats just escap-
ing her. Her inner world is expressed
most directly through her artwork, which
features deep reds, blues and oranges
the only bold colors that appear in
the film.
Brunet shot the picture on Fuji
Eterna 500T 8573. I knew [I needed a
fast stock because] we wouldnt have
many lights, and we would be shooting
all day and into dusk, usually in very
small spaces, he explains. He tested
several stocks but liked Fujis color the
best, particularly as rendered by Cooke
S4 prime lenses. The S4 series has a
kind of softness and gentleness but still
remains sharp, he observes. He did his
own operating, usually using a 32mm or
40mm lens.
The only visual reference Provost
gave Brunet during prep was a book of
contemporary Russian photographs
taken by a man who took his camera
through the most impoverished areas of
his country. Martin said, This is what I
want the film to feel like, recalls
Brunet. Provost adds, I wanted to avoid
the beautiful historical reproduction
that so many period films have. There
was something about Laurents previous
work that was a bit on the rough side,
and that corresponded exactly to what I
wanted.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
35mm
Arricam Lite
Cooke S4 lenses
Fuji Eterna 500T 8573
Printed on Kodak Vision 2383
I
Top left: The
artist at work in
her home. Top
right: Sraphine
stops in to pick
up some art
supplies. Below:
Csar Award-
winning
cinematographer
Laurent Brunet,
AFC (left) and
director Martin
Provost on
location.


24 July 2009
P
rojects such as Miami Vice (AC
Aug. 06), Collateral (AC Aug.
04) and televisions Robbery
Homicide Division have
cemented Michael Manns
reputation as an advocate for digital
capture, but when he began
discussing his latest picture, Public
Enemies, with cinematographer
Dante Spinotti, ASC, AIC, the direc-
tor was inclined to shoot 35mm. In
our early discussions, Michael
mentioned several times that he was
thinking of going back to film,
recalls Spinotti. He was considering
it, I think, because he initially envi-
sioned classical, more set-in-stone
kind of imagery. We spent a lot of
time discussing the pros and cons.
Spinotti had recently used
high-definition video (via the
Panavision Genesis) on the features
Deception (AC May 08) and Flash of
Genius, but his previous feature
Dante Spinotti, ASC, AIC captures period action digitally for
Michael Manns Public Enemies.
by Jay Holben
Unit photography by Peter Mountain
Big
Guns
Big
Guns

collaborations with Mann The
Insider (AC June 00), Heat (AC Jan.
96), The Last of the Mohicans (AC
Dec. 92) and Manhunter were all
35mm productions. Just prior to
Public Enemies, Spinotti and Mann
shot a commercial on HD using
Sonys CineAlta F23, a
2
3" 3-CCD
1920x1080 camera that records 4:4:4
RGB or 4:2:2 Y/Cb/Cr to HDCam-
SR tape. (The camera has a
2
3" bayo-
net lens mount, and the SRW-1 deck
can be mounted directly to the
camera, like a film magazine.)
Michael likes images to be sharp,
and he likes shooting with smaller
chips because he likes the deep depth
of field, so we became fans of the F23
American Cinematographer 25
on that commercial, says Spinotti.
For Public Enemies, Spinotti
decided to shoot side-by-side
comparison tests of HD and Super
35mm, using an F23 for the digital
work and Kodak Vision3 500T 5219
in the film camera. He set the two
cameras up in the parking lot behind
Manns office and started shooting in
the early afternoon, using stand-ins
attired in period wardrobe and
several period cars; the testing
continued through twilight into
night. The digital and film footage
were taken all the way through post,
with Stefan Sonnenfeld handling the
color-correction at Company 3. The
35mm material was scanned at 2K,
color-corrected and recorded back
out to film; the filmmakers dialed in
look-up tables to match the final
filmout to what they were seeing on
the monitor.
They decided to compose the
film in 2.40:1, which meant the F23s
1920x1080 resolution had to be
cropped to 1920x800, costing a little
over 25 percent of the vertical image
information. Despite that slight loss
of resolution, the footage from the
F23 was very, very sharp, says
Spinotti. It didnt have the full tonal
range of film, but its response to the
night material was very interesting.
Digital cameras read into the shad-
ows very differently; theres an
Clockwise from
opposite page:
Federal agent
Melvin Purvis
(Christian Bale)
pulls the trigger
during a gun
battle with
gangsters;
Americas most
wanted, John
Dillinger (Johnny
Depp), takes aim
from the running
board of an
automobile;
Dante Spinotti,
ASC, AIC
brandishes his
weapon of
choice while
harnessing the
suns rays.
P
h
o
t
o
s

a
n
d

f
r
a
m
e

g
r
a
b
s

c
o
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t
e
s
y

o
f

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
a
l

P
i
c
t
u
r
e
s
.

Right: Dillingers
gang piles into a
getaway car
during their
bank-robbery
spree in the
Midwest. Below:
The outlaw
spares some
time for romance
with Billie
Frechette
(Marion
Cotillard).
26 July 2009
incredible elasticity there that you
dont have with film you can
adjust gamma curves and gain and
really gain incredible control over
the image. In the end, the F23s
rendering of night scenes sealed the
deal. This movie has a lot of night
action, including a lot of gunfights
on city streets, so the digital cameras
higher sensitivity and ability to see
into shadows was a major benefit,
says Spinotti. Also, we believed digi-
tal would facilitate a more dynamic
use of film grammar while giving us
a hyper-realistic look. (Ed. Note:
Some visual-effects work, supervised
by Robert Stadd, was shot on
35mm.)
Set in the 1930s, Public
Enemies follows charismatic bank
robber John Herbert Dillinger
(Johnny Depp) and his gang as they
rob banks all over the Midwest and
try to evade the authorities, who are
led by federal agent Melvin Purvis
(Christian Bale). We wanted the
look of Public Enemies to have a high
level of realism, not an overt period
feel, notes Spinotti. Among the
historical aspects are a lot of action,
romance and drama, and Michael
and I talked about achieving an
immediate feel.
One thing you can do with a
digital camera that you cant do with
film is shoot with a 360-degree, or
no, shutter, he adds. We tested that
with gun-muzzle flashes from the
machine guns and some flares that
we planned to use to light a few
scenes, and the 360-degree shutter
had a really great look in those situa-
tions.
The filmmakers also found
that shooting digitally enabled them
to make the most of zoom lenses,
which they used for most of the
picture. There are a number of
zoom lenses for digital cameras
that are around a T2 but also
compact enough for handheld
camerawork, says Spinotti. The
productions camera package, rented
at Fletcher Camera in Chicago,
included two sets of Zeiss DigiPrime
lenses, but Spinotti was so impressed
with the capabilities of the Fujinon
HAe10x10 10:1 (T1.8) zoom that it
became his main lens. Its sharpness
was unbelievable, he attests. Ive
found that when shooting digitally, I
rarely have to go to primes because
Big Guns

the digital zoom lenses are so sharp,
fast and compact. We had some very
complicated handheld moments
where wed be following the gang in
an action sequence, and the opera-
tors would have to jump on the side-
board of a car and drive away with
them. These cameras and lenses were
great for that.
We shot most of the picture
using three F23s, but we also had a
Sony F950, which we used with the
T950 adapter, and a Sony EX1; we
used those as D cameras for action
pieces and in tight spaces the EX1
was especially great for car interiors,
he continues. In terms of image
quality, the cameras were very, very
close. There was a little difference in
dynamic range, but we could easily
smooth that out in post. Once the
images were colored, the exposure
was enhanced, the grain was mini-
mized, and the details were
enhanced, the images were indistin-
guishable from each other, and the
footage intercut perfectly. (The
projects final DI workflow, carried
out at 2K, comprised the scanning of
35mm material at LaserPacific, a
digital grade at Company 3, and a
filmout at EFilm. Release prints were
made at Technicolor.)
Mann chose to stay in the Rec
709 (ITU-R BT.709) color space as
opposed to shooting in a film rec.
We prefer shooting in video color
space because we can always see on
set exactly what were going to get,
says Public Enemies co-producer
Bryan H. Carroll, a longtime collabo-
rator of Manns. The monitor shows
us the final image, and that allows us
to bulletproof the system more easily.
Being able to see the final image on
set means you can push the medium
further than you would otherwise,
because you can see exactly when
certain image characteristics start to
become undesirable.
The filmmakers decided to
establish the storys period primarily
through the use of practical loca-
tions. In addition to period
wardrobe, vehicles and props, practi-
cal locations add heavily to the
atmosphere, says Spinotti. By
shooting digitally, we were able to
work with the existing lighting at
many locations and maintain a level
of realism that is very hard to achieve
with movie lighting. Very few things
suggest an atmosphere better than a
real location; the way things are
painted, the relationship between
interior and exterior, and all of the
other physical details tend to estab-
lish visual truth in a very tangible
way. Shooting digitally, you see loca-
tions in a different way. When you
walk into a location and know youre
going to shoot film, you have to set
little rules for example, youll
need to get an exposure here thats at
least T2.8 at 500 ISO but not so
with digital.
The production traveled to
many of the actual sites where
Dillinger and his gang had their
exploits, including the Little
American Cinematographer 27
A road flare
illuminates
Dillingers
arrival at an
airport after he
is captured by
the authorities
a major news
event that draws
a media throng.
Spinotti
explains, Our
prop master, Kris
Peck, found a
1933 newsreel
about Dillingers
gang and broke
it down frame-
by-frame, and
we discovered
that they lit
some of the
news scenes
with large flares
road flares,
basically. Our
special-effects
coordinator,
Bruno Van
Zeebroeck,
tracked down
some very bright
military flares
that created a
light that was
quite beautiful.

28 July 2009
Bohemia Lodge in Wisconsin, where
they hid out for a period of time.
Purvis planned to ambush the gang
at the lodge but lost the element of
surprise when some of his agents
opened fire prematurely. A brief but
fierce gun battle broke out, and the
outlaws managed to escape.
Re-creating the famous battle
at the actual location posed a
number of logistical challenges for
Spinotti and his crew. Most of the
gun battle takes place outside at
night, and it is followed by a car
chase that covers nearly 2 miles of
forested road. It was a very challeng-
ing scene, says Spinotti. For the
lighting along the main stretch of the
road, Bob Krattiger, my gaffer,
suggested the Bebee Night Light,
which I hadnt used before; its very
versatile and has a huge amount of
power. We put it on a nearby hilltop
and allowed the light to filter
through the trees to cover 200-300
yards of road. When we initially
scouted the location, in late February
or early March, the foliage was pretty
sparse, but when we arrived a couple
of weeks later to shoot, it was shock-
ing to see how much the trees had
grown in! I was afraid we wouldnt
have enough light to punch through
the leaves, but the Bebee has a lot of
flexibility. We turned the camera
shutter to 360 degrees and increased
the gain to +3dB, and it worked
fantastically. You really dont need a
lot of light to get the right density on
your waveform with these cameras.
Spinottis crew positioned a
second Bebee Night Light about half
a mile down the road, but instead of
aiming the fixtures at the ground,
they pointed them at the night sky.
The existing cloud cover and humid-
ity enabled them to achieve a soft,
ambient glow over the entire area.
We actually didnt do much lighting
of the road I called it black-hole
lighting, laughs Spinotti. To light
the actors, I really wanted the muzzle
flashes and car headlights to do most
of the work.
Top to bottom:
Purvis strides
into action with
a supreme sense
of purpose;
Purvis consults
with FBI director
J. Edgar Hoover
(Billy Crudup) on
the steps of a
courthouse;
crew members
capture two
angles of the
scene, one with
a handheld
camera and
another with a
Steadicam.
Big Guns

The escape sequence required
coverage both inside and outside the
cars, as several of Dillingers gang
members stood on the cars side-
boards, firing back at the federal
agents as they made their escape.
Taking a page from the playbook
ASC members Paul Cameron and
Dion Beebe used on Manns
Collateral, which features many
scenes inside a taxicab, Spinotti used
Rosco LitePads, thin squares and
rectangles of plastic with hundreds
of dimmable, color-corrected LED
lights, inside the car. The ELD
panels they used on Collateral
created really beautiful light, but they
required a lot of equipment,
converters and extra car batteries,
notes Spinotti. The Rosco LitePads
did the job in a very interesting way
with precise dimmers, and they were
easy to gel and didnt require addi-
tional power sources. We could tape
them up anywhere.
For shots looking back at
the drivers of the cars or the men
riding on the sideboards, Krattiger
mounted Kino Flo Diva-Lites to the
car bumpers as a bit of augmenta-
tion. We mounted the Divas hori-
zontally to just lift the levels enough
to get details in the actors faces and
eyes, says Spinotti. We kept them
low to play them as the car head-
lights reflecting off the road.
Krattiger replaced the headlights on
many of the cars with stronger,
dimmable lamps that were
controlled from inside the vehicles;
most of the main cars were rigged
with these stronger lamps, and when
the camera was inside the car and
shooting through the windshield,
the electricians ramped the head-
lamps up to full to light the road
ahead. When the camera was look-
ing at the headlights directly, the
crew dialed them way down so they
would read realistically.
Spinotti used some less-
orthodox lighting techniques as well.
He recalls, Our prop master, Kris
Peck, found a 1933 newsreel about
American Cinematographer 29
Top to bottom: A
sharpshooter
has Dillingers
crew in his
sights; the
robbers return
fire; the gunmen
take cover
behind human
shields.

30 July 2009
Dillingers gang and broke it down
frame-by-frame, and we discovered
that they lit some of the news scenes
with large flares road flares, basi-
cally. Our special-effects coordina-
tor, Bruno Van Zeebroeck, tracked
down some very bright military
flares that created a light that was
quite beautiful. They threw off a lot
of smoke, and we had to stop down
quite a bit so you could actually see
the flare, but the look is really beauti-
ful. We used them for the scene when
Dillinger lands at an airport and
runs into a large group of journalists
waiting for him. Its a spectacular
scene; the flare light is dynamic and
very dramatic, which really adds
energy to the story.
Spinotti and Krattiger worked
with production designer Nathan
Crowley and set decorator Rosemary
Brandenburg to select practical
lighting fixtures for each location
that could serve double-duty as
decoration and principal lighting.
Rosemary did an incredible
amount of research on period light-
ing fixtures, and we collaborated to
see what worked best, recalls
Spinotti. Bob and I did a lot of work
on the practicals to make sure they
had the ideal intensity, shape and
Big Guns
Top left: A 360-
degree shutter
was used to lend
a dynamic look
to gun-muzzle
flashes. Top
right: Baby Face
Nelson (Stephen
Graham) bites
the dust during a
shootout at the
Little Bohemia
Lodge. Right:
Purvis briefs his
men before
attempting to
ambush Dillinger
at the Biograph
Theater in
Chicago.

Fletcher and PACE

Congratulate

Michael Mann, Dante Spinotti, ASC, AIC
Bryan Carroll, Julie Herrin
and the rest of the production team.

Thank you for allowing us
to support your camera production needs.







































































































control. We used them as keylights
on main players and for filling in the
darker areas [of the scene]. We
wanted to massage the practicals so
that we could keep our Hollywood
lighting absolutely minimal. We
designed some practicals to have
open tops that would spill a certain
amount of light onto the ceiling; that
light would then bounce into the
room and add just the right detail in
the shadow areas. We did as much as
we could with practicals and then
added a little extra to make the scene,
but not so much that we were over-
powering the real atmosphere.
The cinematographer used a
number of classic sources at each
location, and for fill light, he repeated
a technique he devised on Deception:
stringing tiny Christmas lights across
empty 8'x8' and 12'x12' frames. We
might have bought out all the
Christmas lights in town, but the
result is an amazing, golden fill light
sometimes even a key that has
a wonderful energy to it, he says. Its
not just a soft light because there are
hundreds of tiny, sparkling bulbs,
and it has an organic feel. I tried
using them for some of our night
exteriors, but the cars gave us so
many reflective surfaces we couldnt
keep the reflections out of the cars!
They are really wonderful, light-
weight sources that you can tuck in a
corner or even shoot through for a
great effect.
For a scene in which
Dillingers girlfriend, Billie Frechette
(Marion Cotillard), visits him in jail,
Spinottis initial plan was to use a
soft toplight. To keep up with the
demanding schedule, the produc-
tion was leap-frogging sets, with a
pre-lighting crew working ahead of
the principal unit and then striking
the previous location when the
production moved forward. Spinotti
and Krattiger often led the pre-light-
ing crew, and when they arrived at
the jail-scene location, Spinotti real-
ized that soft toplight wasnt the
right choice. It just didnt work
the scene is very emotional, and the
toplight felt boring to me, he recalls.
The location was very small and
had blue tiles on the walls, and it was
difficult to come up with an alterna-
tive lighting scenario.
After some experimenting,
Big Guns
32
Director
Michael Mann
grabs a piece of
the action.

Spinotti pulled out a Source Four
HMI ERS and bounced it into the
tiled wall. Suddenly, the light was
very interesting. It bounced off the
tiles and felt like light coming
through the door; it was crisp but
also somehow soft. It played great on
the actors faces and was extremely
effective. Michael really loved it, and
we ended up shooting the scene with
that single source. As we moved
around for coverage, Bob [Krattiger]
would adjust the light right and left,
according to the angles.
The scene in which Dillinger
and Frechette meet was shot at
Chicagos historic Steuben Club.
Unfortunately, the location is so
historic we couldnt mount anything
to the walls or alter the existing light-
ing, and the camera was looking
everywhere, laments Spinotti. It was
a very tricky situation, but Bob and I
came up with a solution. They hid
an 8'x8' frame of full gridcloth and an
LCD crate behind a pillar in the loca-
tion, then placed a Source Four
(warmed up to match the practicals)
behind another pillar, projecting the
light across the room into the diffu-
sion. That gave us a very thin piece
of equipment that could be hidden,
and by using the Source Four from a
distance, we could keep all the hard-
ware out of the shots, says Spinotti.
With digital cameras, there
arent any steadfast rules, and I
believe that gives me a huge amount
of freedom, he concludes. The
medium is romantic, interesting and
beautiful, but it also looks real. And
theres so much you can do in post!
Film has a certain kind of quality
that cannot be matched by digital
technology, but at times, the advan-
tages digital has over film are impor-
tant for the language and the
contents of the story youre telling,
and that determines your choice.
I always emphasize to
students that the technology is only a
minor part of the job and its the
easy side, really. The hard part is the
art of storytelling. Once you work out
how to tell your story, the rest is just
putting that plan into action. I
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
High-Definition Video and
Super 35mm
HD:
Sony CineAlta F23, HDC-F950,
PMW-EX1
Fujinon and Zeiss lenses
Super 35mm:
Arri 435, 235
Cooke S4 lenses
Kodak Vision3 500T 5219
Digital Intermediate
33

34 July 2009
A doomed love affair takes center stage in Chri,
directed by Stephen Frears and photographed by
Darius Khondji, ASC, AFC.
by Benjamin B
Impressionistic
Cinema

C
hri begins with a humorous
voiceover by its director,
Stephen Frears, who describes
famous French courtesans as
the Parisian celebrities of the
early 1900s. During a phone inter-
view, Frears laughs and admits, I
am, as it were, Maurice Chevalier in
Gigi, referring to the lighthearted
1958 musical set in the world of
Parisian courtesans. But Chri is no
Gigi, and Frears deceptively breezy
introduction leads into a nuanced
film about an impossible love
between a middle-aged woman
(Michelle Pfeiffer) and a man
(Rupert Friend) roughly 30 years
younger than she.
La de Lonval (Pfeiffer) is a
courtesan in the waning days of her
career, and Chri (Friend) is the dis-
solute son of a friend and retired
courtesan, Charlotte Peloux (Kathy
Bates). The story, based on two nov-
els by Colette, begins with Chris
seduction of La, and the couple
continues to live together happily for
six years, until Charlotte arranges a
profitable marriage between her son
and the teenaged Edmee (Felicity
Jones). The film intercuts between
the lovers after their painful separa-
tion, with Chri setting off on a hon-
American Cinematographer 35
Opposite: Chri
(Rupert Friend)
makes his move
on longtime
family friend La
(Michelle
Pfeiffer). This
page, top: This
frame grab,
showing La and
Charlotte (Kathy
Bates) entering
a garden, is
the most
impressionistic
shot in the film,
and for me, it
creates a whole
world of
imagery, says
Darius Khondji,
ASC, AFC.
Middle: In this
unit-photography
shot of a later
moment in the
same scene,
Charlotte
explains that she
has arranged a
marriage for
Chri. Bottom
(left to right):
Khondji, director
Stephen Frears
and camera
operator Alastair
Rae discuss their
approach.
P
h
o
t
o
s

b
y

B
r
u
n
o

C
a
l
v
o
.

F
r
a
m
e

g
r
a
b
s

a
n
d

p
h
o
t
o
s

c
o
u
r
t
e
s
y

o
f

M
i
r
a
m
a
x

F
i
l
m
s
.

36 July 2009
Impressionistic Cinema
eymoon and returning to dissatisfy-
ing married life, and La trying to
banish her sorrow with a young
suitor in Biarritz. When La returns
to Paris, it looks as though she and
Chri might renew their relation-
ship, but Chri cannot hide his new-
found sensitivity about their age dif-
ference.
Frears previously worked
with Pfeiffer and Chri screen-
writer Christopher Hampton on
Dangerous Liaisons (shot by
Philippe Rousselot, ASC, AFC; AC
May 89), and although that film
and Chri are both period love sto-
ries that play out in opulent settings,
Frears succinctly differentiates the
two: Liaisons is a melodrama; Chri
isnt. Colette was an impressionist.
He describes choosing Darius
Khondji, ASC, AFC for Chri as
pure instinct. The challenge of
filming this story, he continues, lay
in finding the right nuances of light-
ness and gravitas. A lot of the film
has to do with tone because it deals
with someone who is frivolous and,
as it were, tragic underneath. I was
constantly trying to get the tone
right.
Explaining Chris richly tex-
tured look, Khondji says the idea
was to have an impressionistic
touch. I didnt want the image to be
too sharp or the light to be obvious.
I wanted very, very soft light, as
though its filtered through time, like
a hazy memory. The light was often
bounced or going through two lay-
ers of diffusion, and it was always
wrapping around.
Khondji combined and var-
ied lighting, lenses, film stocks and
processing to modulate the pictures
subdued look, which he developed
in concert with production designer
Alan MacDonald and costume
designer Consolata Boyle. With few
exceptions, the soft lighting of the
interiors has a limited range of tonal
values from dark gray to muted
whites. Khondji shot principally
with Cooke anamorphic prime lens-
es, which he chose in part for their
rendering of faces, and for their soft-
ness. He opted for Fuji negatives,
using mainly Eterna 250T 8553,
which he sometimes pull-processed
for additional softness. He used
Eterna 400T 8583 when he wanted
to reduce the contrast in day exteri-
ors or heavy-backlight situations,
and occasionally used Eterna 500T
8573, which he sometimes pull-
processed for additional softness.
1st AC Vincent Gallot tested
three sets of anamorphic lenses pro-
vided by Panavision Alga Techno in
Paris: Technovision/Cooke Classic,
Cooke Xtal Express and Kowa.
Gallot laughs as he recalls telling
Khondji about the loss of definition
when the lenses were wide open.
Darius said, Thats what I want.
Thats when I realized it was all
about the imperfections. I was try-
ing to find matching lenses, but
Darius actually wanted to have dif-
ferent looks. Khondji ended up
using a mix of lenses but favored the
Classics, which, he notes, are steeped
in cinema history, housing 40-year-
old glass that was used by Italian
directors Visconti and Antonioni in
their later films.
Frears readily accepted
Khondjis suggestion to shoot in the
anamorphic format. Im quite
inexperienced with it, but when I
Above: La and
Chri enjoy
another happy
morning
together. Below:
Chri and his
young bride,
Edmee (Felicity
Jones), pose for
a wedding photo
with guests.
Both of these
shots are unit
photography.

look at the film, Im thrilled, says
the director. Khondji notes that
anamorphic is wonderful for faces,
for intimacy. He accentuated the
lenses shallower depth of field by
shooting between T2.8 and T4,
thereby isolating the characters even
more from the backgrounds. I
wanted to observe the main charac-
ters like fish in an aquarium and
make the background watery and
subdued, says the cinematographer.
I felt their psychology changed
between the beginning and end of
the film, the way light and color
change on fish as they move around
in the water. And the anamorphic
frame was like a long, horizontal
aquarium.
For Khondji, the anamorphic
format is often more powerful
than spherical ones. You can open
up the frame with a landscape, or
you can close it with people in the
foreground or elements in the set.
You can make the frame intimate
and close it with two characters
together. You can carry that from
scene to scene, and then suddenly
open the frame into a vista of Paris
or a cliff by the sea. Then you can go
back into a room with faces and
the aquarium.
Charlottes
conservatory is
the setting for a
few key scenes
in the film, two of
which are
depicted in the
top and middle
photos. Top: A
unit-photography
shot of one of the
films first
scenes, when
Chri interrupts
Las visit with
his mother.
Middle: A frame
grab of a later
scene depicting
a strange tea
party. Bottom:
Dinos through
white silk
provide
consistent
lighting in the
conservatory.
American Cinematographer 37

to ask how we did it. I told him it was
just an old 75mm Kowa! Khondji
enhanced the softness of the image
by shooting at a wide-open stop with
an ND.9 filter on the lens.
The difficulty with lighting
Maxims restaurant was that the
camera moves freely about, turning
360 degrees in a room full of mir-
rors. Khondji and his gaffer, Franck
Barrault, decided to create toplight
with dozens of household bulbs
strung on wires overhead. Its the
principle of the Dino or the Wendy
Light: shadows dont exist because
there are too many sources, explains
Barrault. The bare bulbs were
dimmed down, providing a soft,
warm light that was supplemented
by the practicals on the tables.
Chris seduction of La takes
place in Charlottes glass-enclosed
winter garden, or conservatory,
which is also the setting for a bizarre
tea party later in the movie. The chal-
lenge for Khondji was to provide
consistent lighting in the conservato-
ry throughout the lengthy dialogue
scenes, and to handle varying back-
light. He had the offscreen part of the
conservatory covered with a white
silk through which he shone several
Dinos gelled with CTB, providing
soft, slightly warm daylight that was
partially compensated for with an
LLD filter on the 75mm Classic lens.
The outside lights could be dimmed
or increased to follow the weather.
The seduction scene also has a few
strokes of bright sunlight on the
Khondji acknowledges many
painterly influences on the pictorial
style of Chri, and a couple of
sequences readily evoke painters of
Colettes era. A brightly colored
sequence with world-weary Chri
seated in the famous Maxims
restaurant reminds one of Renoir,
and when Charlotte and La walk in
a lush garden, it looks like a Monet.
That shot in the garden was found
by Alastair Rae, our camera opera-
tor, recalls Khondji. He went
scouting with his finder, and when
he showed it to me, it was wonder-
ful! It is the most impressionistic
shot in the film. For me, it creates a
whole world of imagery. Gallot
adds, That shot was so beautiful
and so strange that the lab called me
38 July 2009
Impressionistic Cinema
These frame
grabs of two
different scenes
Charlottes
lunch with La
(top) and Chris
breakfast with
his mother after
his honeymoon
(bottom)
illustrate
Khondjis
approach to
Charlottes home,
where the goal
was a gaudy
and dark interior,
slightly on the
cool side,
says the
cinematographer.
Relying on hues
a bit warmer and
a bit cooler than
the 3200K rating
for his Fuji film
stock, Khondji
used amber
background
practicals to
complete the
color range. In
the top frame,
note the gleam of
sunlight on the
wall at right
the only touch of
hard sunlight in
the room.

couch and plants; these were created
with MoleBeams and Xenons.
Khondji comments that the
second conservatory scene, the tea
party, reminds me a little bit of
Visconti theres a richness, almost
a decadence. I was happy to film it
with the lenses he actually used in his
later films. To reinforce the strange
mood, he created no spots of bright
sunlight and added a bit of smoke for
depth. He shot both conservatory
scenes on the 400-speed Eterna
because he found its lower contrast
could better handle variations in the
weather. Stephen uses anamorphic
to its full advantage he fills the
frame up without a problem, he
adds.
For a scene showing La enter-
ing the hotel dining room in Biarritz,
Khondji had to contend with a bank
of large windows. He opted to put up
a wall of Dinos to provide direction-
less fill. I didnt want to make it low-
key, he notes. I like coming back to
an era when the lighting was a little
flatter. He had some of the windows
fitted with hard ND gels to bring
down the outside when the sun got
bright. He also added a touch of
smoke to give the restaurant a three-
dimensional quality.
The films dominant mood is
defined by the subdued interiors:
dining rooms, bedrooms and
boudoirs. MacDonalds production
design favors cool pastels in Leas
house and gaudy hues at Charlottes.
When La comes to Charlottes for
lunch, the contrast of the frame is
limited. 4K open-faced Goya HMIs
with Lee 129 Heavy Frost diffusion
shine through the windows to evoke
gloomy northern light; Kino Flos,
also through Lee 129 diffusion, pro-
vide a soft, underexposed key on
Bates; a touch of orange is provided
by a practical on a dimmer; and a
MoleBeam creates a single gleam of
hard sunlight on the wall. Khondji
describes his goal as a gaudy and
dark interior, slightly on the cool
side, slightly purple.
After La learns of Chris
engagement, she shares a meal with
him at her house, a scene dominated
by pastel, silvery colors. There is
something very sad, very faded
there, notes Khondji. Its the sad-
ness you have in middle of day, with
a dying sun behind clouds. Its not
contrasty a little timeless. In
lighting the interiors, Khondji and
Barrault always began by imagining
where the sun was, and for this
scene, they settled on cool northern
light, says Khondji. The soft light
falling on La is without direction,
and she doesnt seem lit, which
Khondji attributes to both the level
of the lighting and its diffusion. At a
certain balance, we found that
Michelles skin was delivering the
glow, he notes. If wed overpow-
ered the light, she would have looked
lit.
American Cinematographer 39
Above: A frame
grab showing
Las visit to
Biarritz, where
she searches for
a new suitor
who can help
her forget Chri.
Below: Khondji
and Frears
prepare to film
another balcony
scene at the
seaside resort.

40 July 2009
Khondji favors Lee 129 Heavy
Frost diffusion, which he believes is
close to the 1000H tracing paper he
used on Seven (AC Oct. 95). My
favorite is real tracing paper you
get really soft light and the subject
doesnt feel lit but gaffers dont
want to use it because its too flam-
mable, he says.
Sometimes I put a little soft
tungsten light with the direction of
the practical, a little rim that is very
underexposed, because I cant stand
when its too backlit, he continues.
It feels like its from the lamp, but
the lamp doesnt give it to you unless
you shoot really wide open. With
anamorphic, you have to create these
kinds of subtleties.
Upon returning from his
honeymoon, Chri has breakfast at
his mothers, and the soft daylight
from the windows is brighter and
slightly cool. Khondji explains that
his color scheme for the movie often
involved hues slightly warmer and
slightly cooler than the 3200K rat-
ing for the film stocks. Daylight was
4000-4500K, rarely more, and the
lamps were generally 2800-3000K.
He likes to tint daylight slightly, and
feels it helps the negative. Film neg-
ative is a little weak on blue, so I
always add some blue, he says. He
completes the color range by
putting a touch of amber from a
bulb in a practical.
Toward the end of the film,
when La sits in a chair and consoles
Chri at her feet, the morning effect
is much brighter. The scene was shot
on a soundstage in Cologne,
Germany. Outside the windows,
there was a big truss with a row of
underslung tungsten lights that were
extremely diffused, recalls Khondji.
Barely visible outside the window is a
giant TransLite that required a lot of
light. Pfeiffer is lit by a softbox that
gives gentle direction to the fore-
ground light. Orange practicals in
the background add a touch of color
contrast. Khondji notes that in this
scene, as in others, he added a subtle
color contrast to the image in the
digital grade, which he carried out at
Deluxe in London with colorist
Adam Inglis. I put a little bronze
gold in the highlights and a bit of
blue in the midtones and darks to
create a more 3-D effect with color,
says the cinematographer. Adam
had what I was looking for: a sensi-
tivity to nuance and the desire to
make a work of cinema, not a pretty
film with boosted contrast and
video-like saturation.
Stephen and I decided to do a
DI because a lot of effects shots were
required around Las house in order
to re-create the atmosphere of Paris at
that time, continues Khondji. But
the truth is that even with a 4K DI, the
image quality never really matched
the quality of the pure anamorphic
image we saw in the dailies. My advice
is to avoid doing a DI on an anamor-
phic picture unless you really have to,
and we had to on Chri.
One striking scene breaks with
the subdued quality of the films over-
all look. In it, Chri comes home and
carries his young wife to bed through
a bright, sunlit corridor. When scout-
ing the location, Khondji noticed the
timing of the morning shafts of sun-
light, and he asked Frears if the shoot
could be scheduled according to the
weather. We did it on a sunny morn-
ing, and we had to be very light on
our feet, says Khondji. The only
lighting he added to the scene was a
gold sconce in the background for a
color contrast.
The film is punctuated by a few
bright exteriors, including Las gar-
den in Normandy, a dazzling helicop-
ter shot of her car on a country road,
and the seaside hotel in Biarritz. But
even some exteriors feature limited
contrast, as when La looks over the
balcony at the beach in Biarritz and
This frame
grab, showing
Chris return to
his young wife,
illustrates a
rare departure
from the
subdued look
that
characterizes
the rest of the
picture. Able to
time the shoot
to take
advantage of a
sunny morning,
Khondji added
only the gold
sconce in the
background.
Impressionistic Cinema


the overcast image reflects her sad-
ness. Barrault notes that Khondji
almost always shaded the main char-
acters in exteriors. To add fill, the
crew often used Gaffair balloons,
which could be moved on booms to
follow the characters. Instead of the
customary 85 filter, Khondji some-
times uses an LLD or 812 filter
because they barely correct day-
light, giving a day exterior a slight
blue tone.
Arguably, the films most
striking cinematographic accom-
plishment is its portraiture. In many
ways, the faces define the movie,
Pfeiffers more than any other.
Khondji believed the film should
have very few close-ups. I feel that
anamorphic close-ups sometimes
magnify too much. You have to be
careful with them. Its a rule with all
formats in general, but with anamor-
phic, the close-up is especially power-
ful, and you have to hold the power
back. You shouldnt go into a strong,
tight close-up unless you need to.
With a chuckle, Rae recalls,
Darius and I decided early on that
when Stephen asked for a close-up, it
would be a shot from the waist up,
and we would only do two or three
shots that were closer we really
saved them. Stephen would say, Cant
I have a close-up? and wed say, This
is a close-up. And hed say, Oh, is it?
He generously allowed us to do that.
The rare close-ups were filmed with
an Xtal Express 152mm without any
diffusion filters.
Khondji and Barrault devised a
special Michelle light for some early
scenes in the film. Inspired by the
sequence at Maxims, Barrault con-
structed a lightbox comprising a rec-
tangle of 20 150-watt household
bulbs arranged in an arc that focused
Impressionistic Cinema
42
For the dining
room in Biarritz,
depicted in
this frame
grab, Khondjis
goal was
directionless fill.
I like coming
back to an era
when the lighting
was a bit flatter,
he says. I didnt
want to make it
low-key.

soft light on Pfeiffer, giving her a
unique glow that retained the
piquant of the bare bulb, says the
gaffer. This arrangement could not be
used easily on the soundstage in
Cologne, where scenes in Las bed-
room, bathroom and boudoir were
shot. For those sequences, a similar
arc of soft light was often created with
Kino Flo units and Lee 129. We had
to be careful not to come too close
and not to be too sharp on the skin,
notes Khondji.
When the broken-hearted La
returns from Biarritz, the lighting
becomes less soft and the camera
comes closer to her, revealing a few
wrinkles here and there from side-
light. When Chri comes back to see
La, he kisses her on the floor. After so
many wider shots, the softly lit dual
close-up is powerful. The highlight
with a liner on Rupert is almost over
the top, says Khondji, adding that the
difficulty lay in flagging Friend while
keeping a soft light from diffused
Kino Flos on Pfeiffer. He remarks,
Green can be sexy on the skin. I use
underexposed green all the time.
Toward the end of the film,
La comes to see herself as an old
woman, in a one-shot sequence in
front of the mirror. Khondji explains
that the remarkable transition was
achieved very simply with a gradual
shift from frontal light to toplight; a
black cloth covered white gridcloth
lit by a distant, frontal Wendy Light,
while at the same time, flags were
moved to unveil an eight-tube Kino
Flo Wall-o-Lite above. The seamless
transition makes La subtly age
before our eyes.
Chris subject is age, and the
film could not have worked without
an older actress willing to show her
age rather than hide it. I take my hat
off to Michelle, Frears says of his
star. He adds that the film only real-
ly came to life once all the elements
had been added: images, editing and
Alexandre Desplats music. Khondji
had a similar epiphany when he saw
the film recently. You dont really do
it all intentionally, he muses. Its
only when you see the finished film
that you realize what you have creat-
ed together as a group. I
Save the Date:
September 17, 2009
The New Yorker, New York, NY
November 4-5, 2009
Burbank Marriott, Burbank, CA
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TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Anamorphic 35mm
Arricam Studio, Lite
Technovision/Cooke Classic,
Cooke Xtal Express and
Kowa lenses
Fuji Eterna
250T 8553, 400T 8583, 500T 8573
Digital Intermediate
Printed on Kodak Vision 2383
43

44 July 2009
V
eterans frequently describe
combat as the most vivid, fully
lived experience of their lives.
Some get hooked on it. As for-
mer New York Times war corre-
spondent Chris Hedges writes in his
book War Is a Force That Gives Us
Meaning, The rush of battle is often
a potent and lethal addiction, for
war is a drug.Those are the opening
lines of The Hurt Locker, a drama
about U.S. Army specialists who dis-
mantle improvised explosive devices
in Iraq. Directed by Kathryn
Bigelow, the film follows members
of the Bravo Company in 2004, an
early and particularly bloody stage
of the war. Often called in to defuse
IEDs 10 or 20 times a day, soldiers in
the Explosive Ordnance Disposal
squads endure lives of unrelenting
intensity.
The Hurt Locker focuses on
three characters: newly arrived Staff
Sgt. William James (Jeremy
Renner), whose impressive record of
disarming 873 bombs is offset by a
reckless bravado; Sgt. J.T. Sanborn
(Anthony Mackie), a seasoned sol-
dier who worked in Army
Intelligence for seven years; and Spc.
Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty),
who is looking for a role model. The
film moves through seven missions
that are interspersed with moments
of downtime back on the base.
Visually, it combines the jagged
edges of war reportage with inti-
RiskandValor
Barry Ackroyd, BSC
uses Super 16mm
and handheld
cameras to lend
intensity to The Hurt
Locker, which follows
a U.S. Army bomb
squad at work
in Iraq.
by Patricia Thomson

mate close-ups of the soldiers
engaged in life-and-death assign-
ments. In addition, long-lens sur-
veillance and riflescope images cre-
ate the sense of watching and being
watched in a hostile land.
The Hurt Locker is based on
the accounts of embedded freelance
journalist Mark Boal, who also
wrote the screenplay. Bigelow says
she wanted you to feel like
youre the fourth man in the
Humvee youre right there. But
we also wanted to keep it different
from a documentary, moving past
that into something that was raw,
immediate and visceral. To achieve
those sensations, she turned to
Barry Ackroyd, BSC, Ken Loachs
longtime cinematographer. Bigelow
was particularly impressed with
Ackroyds work on Paul Greengrass
United 93 (AC June 06) and Loachs
The Wind That Shakes the Barley
(AC April 07). In The Wind That
Shakes the Barley, Barrys attention
to character and story is as impor-
tant as the look, says Bigelow. If I
had to describe him simply, Id say
hes a true poet.
For his part, Ackroyd consid-
ered The Hurt Locker a good fit. My
work has always got a political
theme to it, he notes. Ive worked
with Ken Loach for 20 years, and
theres a reason why: our ideas coin-
cide. All the good stories seem to
revolve around political themes.
Although The Hurt Locker
was independently produced on a
fairly low budget, Bigelow wanted
multiple cameras for multiple per-
spectives. Thats how we experience
reality, by looking at the microcosm
and the macrocosm simultaneous-
ly, she explains. The eye sees differ-
ently than the lens, but with multi-
ple focal lengths and a muscular edi-
torial style, the lens can give you that
microcosm/macrocosm perspec-
tive, and that contributes to the feel-
ing of total immersion. Ackroyd
recommended shooting on Super
16mm. He recalls, I said, Lets
American Cinematographer 45
Opposite: Sgt.
Thompson (Guy
Pearce) tries to
outrun the blast
of an IED in
the opening
sequence of
The Hurt Locker.
This page, top:
With Spc.
Eldridge (Brian
Geraghty)
looking over
his shoulder,
Thompson
guides a robot
toward the
device in an
attempt to
determine what
it is. Middle:
Barry Ackroyd,
BSC checks
Pearces view.
Bottom: After
the robot
breaks down,
Thompson dons
a protective suit
to investigate
further.
P
h
o
t
o
s

b
y

J
o
n
a
t
h
a
n

O
l
l
e
y
.

F
r
a
m
e

g
r
a
b
s

a
n
d

p
h
o
t
o
s

c
o
u
r
t
e
s
y

o
f

S
u
m
m
i
t

E
n
t
e
r
t
a
i
n
m
e
n
t
.

46 July 2009
RiskandValor
make it physical. I figured the cam-
eras would be handheld 90 percent
of the time, and they were.
Kathryn wanted an accentu-
ated version of what I do normally,
continues the cinematographer. At
times, we had up to four cameras
running on a single scene, and
everyone was instructed to get more
coverage and as much information
as possible about the characters. I
think the film is full of energy
because of that. We were trying to
convey the kind of paranoia that
goes on in those circumstances.
This approach is evident in
the very first scene, shot on the
streets of Amman, Jordan. The
opening image is a low-quality
video of a war-torn street, tracking
just inches above the ground. Next, a
telephoto shot from a rooftop
reveals that the video camera is
attached to a small robot rolling
toward a pile of rubble where an
IED has been spotted. Tight, hand-
held close-ups follow, showing
members of an EOD squad headed
by Sgt. Matt Thompson (Guy
Pearce), who is studying a monitor
from behind a Humvee and remote-
ly guiding the robot. Snap zooms
zero in on faces and procedures;
telephoto shots show locals watch-
ing from the rooftops; and another
shot through a riflescope watches
them back. When the robot mal-
functions, Thompson dons a Kevlar
protective suit and walks down to
manually defuse the IED. Tensions
mount when Sanborn spots an Iraqi
using a cell phone, and the bomb
detonates before Thompson,
encumbered by his 80-pound suit,
can reach safety.
To cover this 10-minute
sequence, the filmmakers used one
high-speed Phantom HD camera
and four Aaton XTR-Prods. The
Aaton is the camera I used during
my documentary years, says
Ackroyd, who spent 10 years shoot-
ing for the BBC and other docu-
mentary outlets before transitioning
to feature films. Its the basic tool of
documentary-makers of the pre-
video era, and I thought it was a
good choice for this film. It feels very
Above: After
disarming one
IED, Staff Sgt.
James (Jeremy
Renner)
uncovers a
network of
secondary
bombs. Below:
Sgt. Sanborn
(Anthony
Mackie) helps
James out of the
protective suit.

resolution in the HD image.
As he has on all his features,
Ackroyd manned the A camera
throughout the shoot. Its my doc-
umentary background, he says.
When youre feeling in tune with
something, you can follow a whole
scene or conversation even one
in another language and know
how to make that coverage tell the
story. You can use one camera and
one sound recorder and get cut-
aways and reaction shots, all in real
time. I think thats the greatest kind
of training you can have.
The other camera operators
on the picture were Scott
McDonald, a Canadian who had
worked with Ackroyd on Battle in
Seattle (2007); Duraid Munajim,
who was hired for second unit but
comfortable and is very ergonomic.
For running shots and tighter quar-
ters, like inside the Humvee, Aatons
A-Minima came into play. You can
poke it around a bit, the same way
people use [Sony] PD150s; its got
that kind of attitude.
Though Bigelow storyboard-
ed the film, the four Aaton operators
worked like documentary shooters
covering a war. The sets were big,
usually more than 300 meters long.
In the opening sequence, the video
images were captured by the Armys
robotic device. Two XTR-Prods were
stationed behind the Humvee to
pick out dialogue and reveal charac-
ters. (In this sequence and others,
special reveals were given to well-
known actors playing cameo roles,
such as Pearce and Ralph Fiennes.)
Canon 8-64mm and 11-
165mm zoom lenses were employed
throughout the shoot. Its a good,
huge range, says Ackroyd. Wed
have three to four cameras, and wed
tell one of the guys to try to find a
rooftop. There are lots of lovely 45-
degree angles down. Using an
11165mm zoom, you could pick
off a head-and-shoulders shot of
someone across the street, or have a
wide-angle shot. We used a lot of
zooms within the shot to give it that
little edge.
IED explosions were created
by special-effects supervisor Robert
Stutsman and his team. No digital
effects were used to create or
enhance any explosions because
Bigelow was aiming for total accura-
cy. Those fake gas fireballs have a lot
of visual impact but are inaccurate,
especially given the type of ordnance
soldiers are dealing with in Iraq, she
says. The effect we were after was
predominantly a very dense, black,
thick, almost completely opaque
explosion filled with lots of particu-
late matter and shrapnel.
The blast in the opening scene
was captured at high speed with a
Phantom HD, which was obtained
in Beirut, Lebanon. Ackroyd notes
he is normally reluctant to use slow-
motion for such scenes. On a lot of
films Ive shot, wed refuse to shoot
high-speed or use multiple cameras
on something like an explosion or a
crash because thats showing too
much knowledge, he explains. But
in this case, we shot high-speed to
get the sense of flying dirt. When an
explosion that big goes off, the
whole earth moves.
The great thing about that
[Phantom] camera is that its really
quite simple to use, provided you
have enough daylight, he contin-
ues. And you can play back and see
your results straight away, which is
really helpful. He determined that
shooting between 500-1,000 fps
would facilitate the appropriate
amount of screen time and optimal
Left: James
examines the
detonator he
ferreted out
while defusing a
car bomb at the
United Nations
building in
Baghdad. Below:
James and
Sanborn search
an abandoned
building where
suspicious
activity has been
detected.
American Cinematographer 47

48 July 2009
wound up operating for the main
unit; and Neils Johansen, a Danish
operator brought in for second unit.
(Dory Aoun operated the Phantom
HD.) Many other crew members
were Jordanian, Moroccan or
Palestinian. I said to Kathryn right
at the beginning, No matter where
we go, we cant just take over the
place and treat it like its just a back-
drop, recalls Ackroyd. We very
consciously tried to bring on as
many people from the region as we
could in all departments. Because
Jordan has a limited production
infrastructure, Bigelow created a
training program. I modeled it after
the Directors Guild program, like an
internship, she says. There were
trainees in the camera department,
in the art department, in props and
makeup you name it.
Bigelow chose to shoot the
Iraq scenes in Jordan because it has a
sizable population of Iraqi refugees.
There are two million of them in
Amman alone, and some of them
are actors from Baghdad, says the
director. All of the extras and bit
players were real Iraqis. That was
really important to me. If wed shot
in Morocco, our extras would have
been North African, and to an Arab
eye, thats probably the equivalent of
me trying to look like a Native
American. Reinforcing her decision
to shoot in Jordan were the countrys
architectural similarities to Iraq,
which it borders, as well as the avail-
ability of U.S. military gear. One
company there is already providing
military machinery for war films, so
we could get Humvees and the type
of military hardware we needed to
make this film look right, says
Bigelow. We could even use some of
the bases, which I think were built by
America as a training school for
Iraqi police.
Shooting in Jordan in mid-
summer, the filmmakers had to con-
tend with average temperatures of
110F. Though he was twice felled by
heat exhaustion, Ackroyd saw a big
benefit to the location: full sun was
guaranteed every day of the shoot.
He took advantage, using sunlight to
illuminate certain interiors, such as a
large, seemingly abandoned build-
ing that the EOD squad searches.
When we first saw that building, it
RiskandValor
Right: While
working out in
the desert,
James unit
finds itself
pinned down by
an Iraqi sniper.
Sanborn lines
up his shot
with James
assistance.
Below: Director
Kathryn
Bigelow talks
over a setup
with Ackroyd.

had these wonderful shafts of light
inside, he recalls. We could have
brought a lot of big lights in to
reproduce that look for different
times of day, but I decided to do
something else. Shooting in late
afternoon, when the sun was on the
far side of the building, Ackroyd
rounded up several grips to handle
4'x4' mirrors that would bounce
sunlight through the empty win-
dows into the interior. There was a
little embankment and a fence out-
side, so we could strap everything off
to the fence and make the mirrors
rigid. The sun was guaranteed, and
theres no movie light that gives you
the intensity of sunlight. We man-
aged to keep that with a little bit of
luck, good planning, and trust. So
instead of using electricity, we just
used the sun.The enduring sunlight
also gave the filmmakers enough
time to stage the scene the way they
wanted. We wanted those to be
long, continuous takes that told lots
of stories every step could be a
trip wire, every corner could be a
booby-trap or ambush, says
Ackroyd. I think that comes across.
Throughout the film, Ackroyd
employed a small, portable lighting
fixture he devised, a Tubo. Starting
with a 2' or 4' section of black
drainage pipe, he cuts away a sec-
tion, paints the interior white, and
then installs a few small clips to hold
a battery-operated Kino Flo in place.
He tops it off with diffusion. Its just
a very simple way of getting more
control of the light, he says. He orig-
inally devised the Tubo for the 360-
degree or 180-degree lighting situa-
tions he often encounters on Loachs
films. You can put them through
batteries and dimmers to warm
them up a bit; then, you can roll
them underneath the bed, stand
them behind a table or affix them
anywhere. Theyre useful things. The
casing protects the bulb and also
controls where that light goes. And
you can always give it a little 10-
degree twist to make it less bright. It
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tends to be my secret weapon to get
the small stuff in a scene.
Tubos were among the fix-
tures used in a long night sequence
that required a combination of
sources. In the scene, the EOD squad
is called in to investigate a deadly
explosion in the Green Zone
moments after it has occurred. The
men arrive to find a huge crater sur-
rounded by fires, mounds of rubble
and survivors wailing over the dead.
Nights were tricky because we were
trying to portray cities that were
blacked out either because of curfew
or because theyd lost power, notes
Ackroyd. But we did have this great
special effect, the fire, that we kept
burning throughout the night. We
just filled in and built around that.
Ackroyds 4' Tubos and flame bars
backlit and silhouetted the soldiers
and special-effects fires, while mili-
tary-grade flashlights carried by
some soldiers provided additional
sources.
Ackroyd wanted to add one
more element: flares. They light up
a whole war zone so the soldiers can
see where theyre going, he notes.
Those things are being fired off
around Baghdad all the time, and we
thought we could use that kind of
light to give the scene an ethereal
glow. When military flares proved
impossible to get, the production
obtained some signal flares not an
exact match. To better emulate the
roving, overhead light he had in
mind, Ackroyd and his gaffer, Matt
Moffatt, devised a low-cost solution,
filming the signal flares only for
effect. Im almost embarrassed to
tell you, Ackroyd says with a laugh,
but we got some silver shiny board,
like a 4-by-4, and put it on the end of
a long pole or lighting stand, then
pointed a powerful Xenon [flash-
light] up into the shiny board. It was
just enough to create that very soft
glow. Whats more, we could fade
that light in and out just by waving
the board over our heads, and move
it around like it was a floating light
up in the sky that drifted away into
darkness. Sometimes you just
improvise things!
When James decides the
bomb could have been detonated by
someone just outside the Green
Zone, he takes his men to hunt for
suspects, and they switch off their
flashlights as they leave the bomb
site. When soldiers go into battle,
they switch off their flashlights,
notes Ackroyd. Instead of using any
of the standard tricks for suggesting
total darkness, the filmmakers allow
the image to go completely black for
several beats. Black is something
that gets out of your control, really,
says Ackroyd, who notes that a key
component of his night strategy was
shooting on Fuji Eterna 500T 8673.
When I push Eterna 500 to its lim-
its i.e., at night, when you cannot
or do not want to bring in too much
light the image will go somewhere
thats a little bit crazy, and thats
sometimes what we wanted on this
film. If you feel youre in control of
the situation, you might lose the
sense of danger youre trying to
establish. Ive been using Fuji for 10
years now, and I feel I can mess
around with it.
Once they leave the site of the
bomb blast, the soldiers search for
suspects by scouring some urban
alleyways. (This sequence was shot
in a Palestinian refugee camp in
Amman.) In that location, we could
use some justified light and play
people against silhouettes, says
Ackroyd. They pre-rigged one alley-
way, but at the last minute, Bigelow
decided to have the soldiers split up
and go down three separate alleys,
and she wanted to film them simul-
taneously. Ackroyd determined he
would need 360-degree lighting in
the added locations, and his crew
rummaged through the lighting
truck and came back with a mixed
bag of units. They have very wacky
lightbulbs there, really high-intensity
bulbs, he notes. Theres sodium,
mercury and all kinds of other
things. The color temperature could
be 6000K with extra green in it! But
thats life, so we used those things. Of
course, we also used some Kino Flos
and standard fluorescent tubes.
Though we had done tests on all the
available lights, quality control was
completely out of the window! We
just knew that if we mixed it all
together, wed have a sense of reality,
and thats what we wanted. I
50 July 2009
Ackroyd and
1st AC Oliver
Driscoll find a
rare bit of
shade on
location in
Jordan.
RiskandValor
TECHNICAL SPECS
Super 16mm and
High-Definition Video
Super 16mm:
Aaton XTR-Prod, A-Minima
HD:
Phantom HD
Canon lenses
Fuji Eterna
250D 8663, 500T 8673
Digital Intermediate
Printed on Kodak Vision 2383

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M
ore than 30 years have
passed since the Pelham 1 2
3 subway train out of the
Bronx was hijacked on the
big screen. United Artists
underrated 1974 adaptation of John
Godneys novel The Taking of
Pelham One Two Three, directed by
Joseph Sargent, had Walter Matthau
matching wits with a steely Robert
Shaw, who demanded money in
exchange for his hostages. A third
character of sorts was just as impor-
tant: New York City. Charged with
capturing that gritty New York-
ness on film was Brooklyn native
Owen Roizman, ASC, who had
notched Oscar nominations for The
French Connection (1971) and The
Exorcist (1973).
With The Taking of Pelham 1
2 3, which opened in theaters last
month, director Tony Scott has
modernized Godneys story, starting
with the title no more spelled-out
numerals. John Travolta portrays
Ryder, the leader of a four-man
crew of ex-cons who commandeer
the Pelham train, radio the
Metropolitan Transit Authority and
demand that $10 million be deliv-
ered in one hour. Taking Ryders call
is disgraced police officer Garber
Terror on the
Tracks
52 July 2009
The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, shot by Tobias Schliessler, ASC, places
a hostage drama in the bowels of New Yorks subway system.
by Douglas Bankston
Unit photography by Rico Torres and Stephen Vaughan, SMPSP

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who are creating this years most amazing experiences. In the city that has been inspiring musical
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spark your creativity and surpass your goals for the coming year.
Join some of the worlds nest players at SIGGRAPH 2009 in New Orleans.

he definitely wanted to put his
stamp on it visually, says Schliessler.
I love the look Owen Roizman gave
the original film, but we didnt nec-
essarily reference it. Tony wanted to
show the energy of the city, and grit-
ty or not, it feels on film like New
York.
Schliessler opted to achieve
the feeling of urban grit through
lighting, camerawork and the intan-
gibles that the city presents. The
logistics of how you do things in
New York are so different, he notes.
There arent big streets, so you cant
park your 50-footer anywhere you
want. You have to go much smaller,
and in a way, that helped [the look]
become grittier. I didnt have big
cranes to control the sun and big
Bebees [Night Lights] to put the
light back in. Overall, he adds, I
tried to make it feel not lit and as
real as possible no beauty lights
over the camera to get that ping in
the eyes! I tried to shoot as much
available light as possible. Tony likes
that gritty feel.
The kinetic camerawork Scott
favors would seem to be an odd fit
for Pelham, which takes place pri-
marily in two static locations, the
MTA control room and the subway
tunnel. The filmmakers solution
was to run four Panavision cameras,
two Panaflex Platinums and two
Millennium XLs, at all times. That
was the biggest thing: how do we get
that energy through the camera-
work? says Schliessler. We did one
camera on a 360-degree circle track,
constantly moving, searching and
pushing in with the zooms. The
more interesting the shot, the more
compromise there had to be with
the lighting. We decided the lighting
didnt have to always be perfect if the
shot was interesting.
All four cameras were usual-
ly on dollies so they could move and
adjust the frame during the shot,
continues the cinematographer. We
used only [Primo] zoom lenses, two
3:1 [135-420mm T2.8] and two 11:1
[24-275mm T2.8], and while we
were shooting, Tony talked to the
operators via a headset and had
them adjust their framing. He
Terror on the Tracks
Right: The crew
sets up a dolly
shot in a
practical
subway tunnel.
The locations
challenges
included noise,
dirt, darkness,
the 600-volt third
rail and the
bureaucracy of
New Yorks
Metropolitan
Transit Authority.
Below: To boost
the light levels
in the practical
tunnel, the crew
installed 150-
watt sodium-
vapor fixtures
roughly every
50'. The subway
train was then
backlit with
Nine-light Maxis
and Par lamps
gelled with Lee
242 to suggest
the fluorescent
lighting of a
subway station
somewhere in
the distance.
54 July 2009

begins by telling each operator what
he wants, and he can really play a
scene out and cover the entire scene
by reframing. That enables the
actors to run through the whole
scene. Then, on the next take, Tonys
on the headset telling the C camera
to get a little closer on a hand or
some other detail. He does coverage
while hes getting the wide shots. It
takes a fair amount of time to set
things up, but once thats done, we
go continuously. For a new set or
scene, two to three hours were
required to set things up and start
shooting the scene, both master and
coverage, in one take. With this
method, production shot two to
three pages per day on a 72-day
schedule.
Pelham was shot in Super
35mm, and about 90 percent of it
was shot on Kodak Vision3 500T
5219. Preferring a thicker negative
and higher printing lights,
Schliessler often rates his film stock
slower and/or lights to a healthy
stop; he rated the 5219 at 400 ASA.
(He used Kodak Vision3 250D 5205,
rated at 200 ASA, for day-exterior
close-ups to match stunt work
filmed by 2nd-unit direc-
tor/cinematographer Alexander
Witt.) Because we used available
light and practicals in the MTA con-
trol room, I lit it to about a T4
because Tony sometimes likes to use
an extender or double extender on
zooms, and that makes you lose a
stop, notes Schliessler. We didnt
use extenders that much in the con-
trol room, but we did use them in
the tunnel. Tony loves to be on the
long end of the lens, and I lit so we
were ready for that.
The control room was built
onstage and designed to largely
match the specs of the real MTA
headquarters, including 9' ceilings.
With four cameras, most of them
moving all the time, lighting had to
be practical and built into the set.
We had to come up with a lighting
scheme that would facilitate four-
camera setups, and thats the main
reason we went with underlight or
toplight directly overhead, says
Schliessler. With that, we could
maintain continuity in the look.
The control room features
numerous desks and a wall of video
screens that display the status of the
various subway routes. (The images
were rear-projected onto the
screens.) Recessed fixtures in the
ceiling held 3200K fluorescent
tubes. Dropdown fixtures at the rear
of the room and background wall-
mounted sconces were 4100K
Osram tubes with three or four
points of green to provide color sep-
aration. I wanted to keep the fluo-
rescents in line with that greenish
tinge government buildings have, so
I used Daylight Green fluorescents,
says Schliessler. We added Half
CTB to the sconces to separate the
walls a little more.
Garbers dispatch desk re-
ceived extra treatment in line with
the top-lit and bottom-lit look. Kino
Flos, 4x2 and 2x2 units with 3200K
tubes to match the overheads, were
flown above the desk, just below the
Train interiors
were filmed
onstage at
Kaufman Astoria
Studios in
Queens. The set
was built to
match the real
trains interior,
with the
exception that
the entry doors
were widened to
accommodate
dolly track.
American Cinematographer 55

56 July 2009
ceiling. (Schliessler avoided pulling
out sections of the ceiling in an
effort to move efficiently between
wider and tighter coverage.)
Lighting Washington from below
were custom LED panels that pro-
duction designer Chris Seagers
crew had built into the desk; these
could be dimmed up or down.
Denzel looks better in slightly
warm light, notes Schliessler.
Pelhams other main setting,
the subway tunnel where Ryder has
parked the hijacked train, is the
visual opposite of the control room.
The practical tunnel, where all train
exteriors were filmed, contained lit-
tle practical lighting, so Seagers
whipped up small, authentic-look-
ing light boxes that were mounted
on the tunnel walls every 50' or so.
Each box held a 150-watt sodium-
vapor bulb. Theyre a slight stretch,
because those kinds of lights dont
exist down there, notes Schliessler.
OLeary adds, The real tunnels are
almost pitch-black, with only the
occasional incandescent lamp every
100 feet or so and various colored
signal lamps and exit lamps. But this
was the most logical idea we could
think of; the lights were easy to wire
and move, and we felt they looked
like they belonged in the environ-
ment. This gets back to working in
New York: play the hand you have!
The sodium-vapor fixtures
bathe the foreground in warm,
orange light, and Schliessler took the
opposite tack in backlighting the
train. Tony wanted to play around
with color separation, so we used a
cool, green backlight and spread it
around to silhouette the train, he
says. OLeary explains, We used
Nine-light Maxis and Par lamps; the
Maxis were a ways back from the
train, and we squeezed the Pars in
below for the rails or above for the
ceiling to light the areas the Maxis
didnt reach. They were gelled with
Lee 242 [Fluorescent 4300K] to
match the color of the tubes on the
station platforms the logic was
that this backlight was coming from
a station farther down the tunnel.
We didnt change any of the MTA
tubes; we just matched what existed.
So 4100K was the standard look.
Overall, the lighting in the
tunnel was very low. I knew where
the limits were, and we definitely
played it on the borderline, says
Schliessler. When you get to a level
that low, you battle, because to your
eye it looks like more light.
Inside the train, a heavy,
slightly teal hue was used on the
lights; this was motivated by emer-
gency backup lights that kick in
when Ryders crew kills the power.
Normally, you dont want your
actors to have a blue-green cast on
their faces, but it works for this
story, says Schliessler. We had some
of that sodium-vapor light coming
through the windows, and the colors
all came together. It seemed like the
tunnel could have that atmosphere.
The MTA had strict regula-
tions about mounting lights inside
the train. OLeary recalls, The real
trains had a couple of 20-amp out-
lets, so we used fluorescents matched
to the existing tubes and mounted
them to the bars [the passengers
hold] or taped them to the ceiling.
Above:
Schliessler (far
left) and the
crew prepare to
shoot at
Garbers desk in
the control-
room set.
Below: Custom
LED panels
were built into
the desk to light
Washington
from below.
Terror on the Tracks

Again, these were the MTA-stan-
dard 4100K tube gelled with Lee
242. The gel added about 1000K
and some green, and although it
was the same gel we used on the
tungsten backlights in the tunnel, it
appeared more extreme in the train
because we put it on a 4100K
source instead of a 3200K source.
We tried to use common elements
whenever possible because it was a
logistical nightmare to get materials
down there and move them
around.
Shooting in the real tunnel
presented significant challenges.
Between the noise, dirt, dust and
darkness, the 600-volt live third rail,
and the din when a train passed by
on another track, there was no lack
of distractions, says OLeary.
Schliessler adds, Even though the
rail was sometimes off, we treated it
like it was always live, because you
never know when someone might
make a mistake and turn it on. We
protected everything with rubber
mats and rubber feet. We could only
shoot at night, and when we came
out in the morning, it was like wed
been in a coal mine our faces
were black. The draft from trains
going by would stir up so much dust
that it affected the lighting, especial-
ly the backlight. To maintain conti-
nuity, we ended up adding smoke
throughout the whole tunnel
sequence.
All train interiors and shots
from outside looking in were filmed
on a soundstage at Kaufman Astoria
Studios in Queens. The set was built
to match the interior of the practical
train, but the entry doors just
behind the motormans cab were
widened to accommodate 360-
degree dolly track. Wed shoot [the
antagonists] in the motormans cab
from outside, and then wed come
around inside the train and shoot
through the window of the motor-
mans cab door, and then wed go
around again, says Schliessler.
Tony wanted a feeling of constant
motion.
57

58 July 2009
While that camera circled, the
other three cameras captured close-
ups, and to keep those cameras out
of shot, they were positioned lower
in the shadows, just below a
TransLite of the tunnel. They were
also on dollies, so when the 360 cam-
era came around shooting toward
the close-up cameras, a close-up
camera could pull back and then
come in again, explains Schliessler.
It was amazingly intricate, but it
worked.
The lighting was virtually the
same as the real trains: fluorescents
gelled with Lee 242 mounted near
the ceiling. Outside, we made the
sodium tunnel lights a bit more
orange to enhance the sodium feel,
notes OLeary. Schliessler adds,
When we get into close-ups, we
augmented the practical sodium-
vapor fixtures with 2K Fresnels out-
side the windows and matched the
color with Lee CID 237. We brought
those vapor practicals to the stage
and sometimes used them either
bounced or direct, mainly to create
continuity with our location work.
Scott also continued the
passing-train effect onstage. Tony
doesnt like greenscreen, notes
Schliessler, so Chris [Seagers] came
up with the idea of putting up a
screen with train windows. We shot
stills of actual trains going by using
different shutter speeds. When
youre in the tunnels, everything
feels like its strobing. We put those
images of train windows on an oth-
erwise black TransLite; behind every
window was a Vari-Lite on a strob-
ing flicker system; and in front of
and above each window was
another Vari-Lite aimed into the
train so it would feel like a continu-
ation of the same lighting. If Tony
felt like a train should go by in a
scene, he would call it out, and wed
get the Vari-Lites strobing. We had
the TransLite rolling a little bit so the
strobing wouldnt be exact.
Did the metal interior and
exterior of the train coupled with
four moving cameras cause prob-
lems? Yes, Schliessler laughs.
Depending on kick angles, you
could have one camera angle going
5 stops over and another camera
angle with nothing there. I tried to
keep the kicks down as much as pos-
sible, but thats where the digital
intermediate came in handy. A few
times, when a camera came around
and we got that kick in the upper
part of the lens, [colorist] Stefan
Sonnenfeld [at Company 3] had to
knock it down. With the DI, we
could cover up some of those things
we couldnt control.
Schliessler was not involved
in the DI, which was carried out at
2K, but thats not to say he was out
of the loop. I tried to do as much as
I could in-camera, and we set the
look with our tests in prep, he
notes. We shot tests in the tunnel,
on the street and on the MTA set,
and then sat with Stefan for the
color-correction and carried the
tests through a filmout. Company 3
also referenced the tests in creating
the hi-def dailies a format
Schliessler found wanting on a pic-
ture with so much low-light work.
Pretty much every day, I went to
Company 3 after work to look at
the scanned negative, especially the
low-light scenes, he reports. But he
wasnt concerned when it came time
for the final color-correction.
Stefan has graded 90 percent of my
commercials, and I knew his work
would match mine.
Lighting-wise, this was defi-
nitely the most challenging movie
Ive done because of all the tight
spaces, the 360-degree shooting and
the multiple cameras, he concludes.
There wasnt a shot that wasnt
challenging. I
Terror on the Tracks
The crew
captures a
driving
sequence on
location in
New York.
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Super 35mm
Panaflex Platinum,
Millennium XL
Primo lenses
Kodak Vision3 500T 5219,
250D 5205
Digital Intermediate
Printed on Kodak Vision 2383


DP Dailies System
Targets Image Control
by Iain Stasukevich
When Richard Crudo, ASC
published A Call for Digital Printer
Lights in the September 2006 issue of
American Cinematographer, Terry Brown
was one of the industry professionals
who sat up and took notice. With the
arrival of new electronic image-capture
technologies and the growing popularity
of digital intermediates, the art of cine-
matography was changing, and cine-
matographers control over their image-
making process was becoming difficult
to maintain. Crudo suggested the
dilemma could only be solved by a new
universal standard of motion-picture
capture, display, post and exhibition. It
was a subject with which Brown was
quite familiar.
At the time, Brown was spear-
heading the redevelopment of Techni-
colors dailies workflow. I looked at
other digital-dailies systems and noticed
that while you can create compelling
pictures, it doesnt really have anything
to do with the original exposure on
the film and how it would look printed
photochemically, he says. The culmina-
tion of his efforts was the joint Techni-
color/Grass Valley project Bones Dailies,
a resolution-independent turnkey system
for scanning, syncing, grading and deliv-
ering digital dailies. The integration of
the ASC Color Decision List into Bones
marked a further step toward standardiz-
ing the cinematographers vision when
the image moves from dailies to the
initial stages of the DI process.
Even with the CDL, however, the
potential exists for a disconnect between
the two processes. When film dailies are
transferred, it is generally accepted that
the resultant media will be used for HD
video masters and previews, after which
the entire process is started over again
for the final grade. Its expected that once
picture is locked, negative selects will be
rescanned at a higher resolution for the
DI, and that this may happen at a differ-
ent facility than the one that did the orig-
inal dailies timing. Right now, you throw
your previews away, says Eitan
Hakami, founder of New York post facil-
ity Mega Playground. You spend time
and money on the stock, the conforming
and color-correction; you screen it
twice; and then you start your DI from
scratch.
In 2007, Brown joined Mega
Playground as the facilitys chief tech-
nology officer. Using Bones as a starting
point, he began work on what eventu-
ally became the DP Dailies service, a
closed post pipeline that includes the
Spirit 2K, Bones Dailies, DVS storage
solutions, FilmLights TrueLight color-
management tools and the Digital
Vision Nucoda Film Master.
Negative is scanned as
1920x1080 DPX/Cineon files. Our Spirit
2K has a data-only interface, notes
Brown. I dont like to call it HD because
people tend to confuse that with Rec
709, and what youre actually getting is
a 10-bit log RGB file. He maintains that
if a project is shooting 3-perf or 4-perf
Super 35mm (for either 1.85:1 or 2.40:1
exhibition), 1920x1080 is only 6-percent
different than a full 2K scan. The
economics and efficiency of scanning
once can yield significant cost savings
in post, he says.
DP Dailies custom look-up
tables are derived from the one used for
Mega Playgrounds DI process. The idea
is that when a cinematographer is look-
ing at dailies, whether in Rec 709 or P3
color space, he will be seeing the same
image that will appear in the DI theater
and on film. I wanted to keep standard
calibrations on the post display
devices, says Brown. That way, were
not doing oddball calibration on our
monitors. As long as youre in D65 Rec
709 color space, what you see is what
you get.
Working in an emulated film
space means cinematographers can
give printer-light offsets to the dailies
Post Focus
I
m
a
g
e
s

c
o
u
r
t
e
s
y

o
f

M
e
g
a

P
l
a
y
g
r
o
u
n
d
.
Senior colorist
Mike Smollin
works in Mega
Playgrounds
Digital Vision
Nucoda Film
Master DI room,
part of the
facilitys DP
Dailies service.
60 July 2009


cinematographers intent and the inter-
pretation of that intent by the person
sitting at the controls in the timing suite.
The dailies colorist should be there to
watch the cinematographers back,
because he can see things in scene
context and can grade and balance from
scene to scene, says Brown.
This can also benefit the editor,
because he can get the footage in the
proper order and see how its going to
look, he adds. Everybody wins, but the
person who wins biggest is the cine-
matographer.
At press time, DP Dailies had
been used on four feature films: In
Northwood, Last Night, Paperman and
Solitary Man. On a recent visit to Los
Angeles, Brown ran the specs by Curtis
Clark, ASC, chair of the Societys Tech-
nology Committee, and Clark was opti-
mistic about its potential. Terry is
addressing the challenges that exist [in
film dailies], creating a closed-loop
system and linking it to the DI finish, he
says. If youre using a system like that,
its easier to make sure the information
will transfer in a more accurate way.
Crudo notes: The solution to this prob-
lem has to be simple, because simple is
better. The person who creates a tech-
nology that fully puts image control back
in the cinematographers hands will
have found the Holy Grail. I
62 July 2009
same look to the new scans. The
density values would be the same, says
Brown. Its just a different file resolu-
tion.
One of the things Brown hopes to
improve with DP Dailies is the relation-
ship between the dailies timer and the
cinematographer; the gap between film
capture and digital dailies can some-
times create a disparity between the
Right: The
Bones Dailies
system utilized
in DP Dailies
incorporates the
ASC CDL to
track color
metadata through
every step of
the workflow.
Below: A
dailies room
inside Mega
Playgrounds
facility. The DP
Dailies pipeline
bridges dailies
and the DI to
protect the
cinematographers
intent from the
shoot to the
finished film.


AJA Intros Ki Pro Digital
Disk Recorder
AJA Video Systems has intro-
duced the Ki Pro, a portable, tapeless
video recorder that records files to the
Apple ProRes 422 codec directly from
camera, providing a powerful bridge
between production and post with exten-
sive analog and digital connectivity.
Virtually any video and audio source can
be fed into Ki Pro to record pristine, 10-
bit ProRes 422 media, which in turn is
immediately ready for editing in Apples
Final Cut Studio without having to re-
render.
Ki Pro records hours of media to a
removable storage module with built-in
FireWire 800, or to 34mm ExpressCard
Flash. The small, portable unit can sit on
a table, in a bay or mounted between a
camera and tripod. Ki Pro is also ideal for
on-set monitoring, providing instant
access to multiple display devices simul-
taneously. Other features include the
ability to connect digital cameras via SDI
or HDMI, or analog cameras via multiple
options; real-time converting from SD to
HD, or 720 to/from 1080, in full 10-bit
quality; simultaneous recording to
camera and Ki Pro; and built-in Wi-Fi and
Ethernet for complete control via Web
browser or iPhone.
During the National Association
of Broadcasters (NAB) conference held in
Las Vegas this past April, AJA
announced that the Ki Pro has been
endorsed by Arri, Canon and Red. Ki Pro
fills the gap between camera acquisition
and postproduction, giving filmmakers
and video professionals instant access
to their material, says Nick Rashby,
president of AJA Video. Its extremely
gratifying to bring this product to market
with the support and enthusiasm of
companies such as Apple, Arri, Canon
and Red.
Ki Pro is priced at $3,995, which
includes the Recorder, the HDD Storage
Module and an AC adapter. Additional
product options include an exoskeleton
for mounting between the camera and
tripod, an SSD Storage Module, extra
HDD Storage Modules, a Rod Accessory
Kit and an AJA Lens Tap Cable Acces-
sory.
For more information, visit
www.aja.com.
Chemical Wedding Shines
With Helios
Chemical Wedding has intro-
duced the Helios Sun Calculator, an
application designed for use with
Apples iPhone and iPod Touch. Utilizing
algorithms created by the National
Renewable Energy Laboratory and the
National Geophysical Data Center,
Helios offers professionals information
regarding the path of the sun from dawn
to dusk in any given place on any given
day past, present or future accu-
rate to a tiny fraction of a degree.
The Helios application operates
in four modes: HeliosMeter provides a
graphical representation of the position
of the sun on a compass dial for any time
of day, indicating the suns elevation and
the length of the shadow it would cast;
Skyview offers an at-a-glance depiction
of the suns path across the sky; Raw
Data view provides strictly numerical
information; and Inclinometer view
allows for accurate measurement of the
suns elevation, given in both degrees
and times of day. Helios includes an
internal database of more than 25,000
cities around the world, providing longi-
tude, latitude, time zone and daylight-
savings information, and users can save
favorite locations or add current locations
from GPS data.
Helios can be purchased in the
iTunes App Store for $29.99. For more
information, visit www.chemicalwed
ding.tv.
Silicon Imaging Goes 3-D,
Teams With Band Pro
Silicon Imaging, developer of the
SI-2K camera, has unveiled the SI-3D, an
integrated 3-D cinema camera and
stereo-visualization system. The SI-3D
shoots uncompressed raw imagery from
two synchronized cameras and encodes
directly to a single stereo CineFormRAW
QuickTime file, along with 3-D LUT color
and convergence metadata; the stereo
file can be instantly played back and
edited in full 3-D on an Apple Final Cut
timeline without the need for proxy
conversions.
The SI-3D camera system uses
two remote SI-2K Mini cameras with a
P+S Technik interchangeable-lens mount
connected to a single processing system
via gigabit Ethernet; the cameras are
synchronized and controlled through the
familiar SiliconDVR touch-screen inter-
face. On set, the cameras can be viewed
individually or in stereo modes using
modern 3-D LCD and DLP displays. With
the addition of CineForms Neo3D,
convergence and stereo or individual eye-
color adjustments can be dynamically
controlled and modified while viewing
live 3-D playback using side-by-side, over-
under or interlaced output modes.
The SI-3D system can record dual-
New Products & Services
64 July 2009

stream, 12-bit, uncompressed images
directly to mobile 2.5" solid-state drives,
with peak rates up to 200 MB/second; a
250 GB drive can store up to one hour of
footage per camera. The resulting Silicon
Imaging Video (.siv) footage can be seam-
lessly viewed and graded in Iridas Frame-
Cycler and Speedgrade XR with look and
stereo metadata applied. The files can
also be exported as CinemaDNG
sequences or converted to CineFormRAW
2-D or 3-D files.
The SI-3D camera system
streamlines the entire stereo 3-D
content-acquisition and postproduction
process, says Ari Presler, CEO of Silicon
Imaging. Combining two cameras into a
single control, processing and recording
platform enables shooting and instant
playback like a traditional 2-D camera
with the added tools needed on-set to
analyze and adjust the lighting, color, flip
orientation and stereo-depth effects. In
post, a unified stereo file plus associated
metadata can be immediately graded for
dailies, edited and viewed in either 2-D or
3-D.
Additionally, Silicon Imaging has
named Burbank-based Band Pro Film and
Digital to be the companys exclusive
distributor in the United States and Latin
America. Were very excited about our
newest strategic partnership to expand
our sales and service for the SI-2K
Cinema Cameras, says Presler. Band
Pro will bring their wealth of experience
outfitting digital-cinema production
equipment and will provide best-in-class
technical support, education and service
to our growing base of TV and film-
production clients. Their Burbank and
New York facilities are centrally located
for access to studios and postproduction
facilities leading the digital-acquisition
and file-based-workflow transition.
Band Pro owner Amnon Band
adds, The new form of capture and
workflow is the next big step in cine tech-
nology, and Band Pro will, as always, put
our usual high standards of technological
and educational resources behind every
SI-2K camera package.
For more information, visit
www.si-2k.com or www.bandpro.com.
Digital Recorders from
Keisoku Giken
Specializing in uncompressed
imaging solutions for production, post
and digital-cinema environments,
Keisoku Giken Co. Ltd. has introduced
the UDR-100 and UDR-20S recorders.
The UDR-100 is a compact, light-
weight, battery-powered, uncompressed
recorder designed for digital-cinema
shooting. The system can be camera
mounted, hand carried, kept in a back-
pack or further adapted to suit any shoot-
ing style, and its rugged design makes it
ideally suited for action shooting with
cars, motorcycles, aircraft or boats. The
recorder is capable of 2K recording, and
it can also be used in a stereoscopic
workflow, capturing HD 4:2:2 images via
two-channel HD-SDI input. The UDR-
100 can record to HDD Disk Pack or SSD
Flash Pack, and the recorder is compati-
ble with Panasonic variable frame rate
and Arri data mode; it is also compatible
with any camera with an HD-SDI output.
Additionally, the UDR-D100 features an
LCD viewer, which can be used to
display menu settings or review thumb-
nails of the recorded images for addi-
tional peace of mind while working in
the field.
We designed the UDR-D100 to
be a comprehensive portable recorder
that can be used in the field in multiple
conditions, says Kenji Hirano, president
and CEO of Keisoku Giken. Integrating
seamlessly into the postproduction
process, it is easy to use, highly versatile
and provides unprecedented control to
todays digital cinematographer without
requiring any sacrifices in function,
features or quality.
The portable UDR-20S player and
recorder can record in a variety of
formats and resolutions, from two-chan-
nel HD/2K digital film up to uncom-
pressed 4K. The system features remov-
able media Disk Packs, and an intuitive
VTR-style front panel enables easy oper-
ation. With eight channels of HD-SDI
video I/Os, the UDR-20S can interface
with a number of digital camera
systems, and multiple units can be oper-
ated in parallel and synchronized for
even higher resolution recording, such as
8K. Optional J-UDR software allows the
user to control the UDR-20S remotely
from a PC and convert the image data
into BMP, Cineon, DPX, TIFF, QuickTime
and a number of other file formats; the
J-UDR controls the UDR-20S via Ether-
net or fibre channel.
We call the UDR-20S the
Master Recorder, because it represents
the culmination of all our research and
experience in the field, says Hirano. It
is perfectly suited to support uncom-
pressed processing. We are thrilled by
its versatility across so many different
aspects and applications in 4K RGB
imaging.
For more information, visit
www.keisoku.co.jp.
Glidecam Launches
HD-Series
Glidecam Industries, Inc., has
introduced the re-engineered Glidecam
HD-Series handheld camera stabilizers,
comprising the HD-1000, HD-2000 and
HD-4000. The HD-Series allows opera-
tors to capture incredibly smooth and
graceful shots even when running up and
down stairs or traveling over rugged
terrain.
Each HD-Series stabilizer
features an offset foam-cushioned
handle grip attached to a free-floating
three-axis gimbal, which isolates the
American Cinematographer 65

operators unwanted hand movements.
Additionally, the gimbal incorporates
several adjustable axis-convergence
controls, allowing all three axes to inter-
sect for proper operational alignment.
Users can quickly attach or
remove their cameras to the stabilizers
via a camera-mounting platform with a
quick-release, no-tools, drop-on camera
plate. Ergonomic control knobs allow
quick, precise adjustment of the top
stages movement and allow the opera-
tor to adjust the cameras horizontal
balance. Vertical balance can then be
adjusted by varying the counterweights
on the base platform or by changing the
length of the no-tools, telescoping
central post. Finally, a proprietary
Dynamic Base Platform can expand or
contract, allowing users to easily adjust
the overall systems dynamic balance
and increase or decrease the systems
rotational pan inertia.
For more information, visit
www.glidecam.com.
New Bearing with
Miller Compass
Miller Camera Support has
unveiled the 75mm Compass range of
fluid heads, a premium camera-support
option with professional performance at
competitive pricing. The stylish, low-
profile, lightweight, operator-friendly
design boasts a wide payload range,
selectable pan-and-tilt drag settings and
an illuminated bubble level.
The Compass range retains the
same drag components used in Millers
Arrow range of 100mm fluid heads,
resulting in the widest drag range avail-
able in a 75mm fluid head, with ultra-
smooth takeoffs, super-stable pan/tilt
moves and perfect stops. The newly
designed four-position counterbalance
system in the Compass 15 and 20 fluid
heads provides for a wide payload range;
where other counterbalance systems
can reduce the tilt range and cause
spring-back in higher settings, the
Compass counterbalance settings are
fully functional in all positions.
The Compass 15 provides
professional performance for the
latest generation of lightweight
HDV/DVCam/XDCam and P2 HD
cameras with payloads between 4 and
20 pounds. With a payload range of 4-26
pounds, the Compass 20 is compatible
with an even larger range of cameras.
For more information, visit
www.millertripods.com.
Miller Wheels Out
Arrow Shell Case
Miller Camera Support has intro-
duced the Arrow Shell Case with wheels
for two-stage Arrow tripod systems. The
semi-rigid case is constructed with qual-
ity, weatherproof, 1000D Cordura; light-
weight, padded, honeycomb-plastic wall
paneling; corner protection; and heavy-
duty straps. Both the pull handle and
carry straps are double attached, inte-
grated with metal D-links for extra
strength and positioned for ergonomic
comfort. The cases inline roller wheels
are recessed to protect the axle from
damage during shipping and to provide
ease of maneuverability in transit. Addi-
tionally, molded-plastic foot and base
supports enable the case to stand
upright, clear of wet or dirty floors.
Inside the Arrow Shell Case are
pockets for accessories and a dedicated
tripod adaptor-plate pocket. A molded
head cradle offers added protection for
the Arrow range of fluid heads, and easy
snap-lock straps fasten the tripod in
place.
For more information, visit
www.millertripods.com.
Cine-tal Unveils B Series
Cine-tal Systems, a developer of
image-monitoring and color-manage-
ment solutions, has expanded its award-
winning Cinemage product line with the
Cinemage B Series, comprising 42", 23"
and 19" monitors.
Providing true 10-bit display with
wide color gamuts to support both HD
and DCI standards, the B Series inte-
grates the companys CineSpace color-
management and calibration software.
By integrating our CineSpace technol-
ogy into Cinemage, we provide precision
control of the wide gamut color
primaries, creating a perfect reference
for DCI, HD and SD monitoring, says
Rob Carroll, president and CEO of Cine-
tal. Cinemage is the only monitoring
system utilizing an optimized combina-
tion of 3-D LUTs, 1-D LUTs and 21-bit
color matrices to provide the highest
precision of monitor calibration, display-
system emulation and color previsualiza-
tion. The B Series also supports an
enhanced user interface and modular
control panel.
Cine-tal has also released version
4.0 for the Cinemage 2000 product line,
adding support for 2K XYZ color space,
XYZ Waveform Monitor, Enhanced Stan-
dard Definition Modes and Independent
Color Space I/O. Additionally, the
company has introduced CineSpace
version 2.7.1, which offers support for a
wider range of measurement tools,
including Photo Research, Minolta and
XRite.
For more information, visit
www.cine-tal.com.
66 July 2009

67
P+S Technik Offers
SteadyFrame Scanner
P+S Technik has introduced the
SteadyFrame Universal Format Scanner,
a state-of-the-art digital film scanner for
16mm and 35mm. The SteadyFrame can
scan great quantities of film at a high
quality in a short period of time while
taking great care of the film elements.
Capable of confronting the vari-
ety of problems often encountered with
archived film stock, the SteadyFrame is
perfectly suited to high-end restoration
and preservation projects. The film-
transport system allows for an easy
exchange between 35mm and 16mm,
and the graphical user interface makes it
easy to quickly understand how to oper-
ate the scanner.
The heart of the SteadyFrame is
the software-based Perforation Recogni-
tion System (PRS). The replacement of
mechanical image-stabilization modules
with software-based pattern-recognition
algorithms enables careful handling of
the archive film throughout the scanning
process thanks to sprocket-free trans-
port. Other advantages include the abil-
ity to handle different perforation
patterns, types and pitches, as well as
different types of film, such as positive,
negative and intermedi-
ate. With PRS, even
currently unknown film
formats, perforation
patterns and aspect
ratios can be scanned
with a simple software
update.
A number of
SteadyFrame Scanners
have already been
delivered, including to
New York-based pre-
servation and restora-
tion facility Cineric.
We are very im-
pressed with the
SteadyFrames very
gentle sprocket and pin-
free transport system,
says Adam Wangerin,
Cinerics optical line
manager. Being able
to switch from 35mm to
16mm in just minutes makes it easy and
fast to work in multiple formats.
The SteadyFrame Universal
Format Scanner is available through the
ZGC distribution network in North and
South America, as well as P+S Techniks
international resellers.
For more information, visit
www.pstechnik.de or www.zgc.com. I
CLARIFICATION
In our June article about previsu-
alization, the abbreviation previz was
used throughout the text, reflecting AC s
house style at the time. However, the
Previs Subcommittee of the ASC Tech-
nology Committee a joint committee
comprising members of the ASC, the Art
Directors Guild and the Visual-Effects
Society has decided to use previs
as its official abbreviation of the term. AC
has amended its house style to reflect
that consensus.

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Advertisers Index
16x9, Inc. 68
Alamar Productions, Inc. 68
Alan Gordon Enterprises
68, 69
Arri 51
ASC 1
Backstage Equipment, Inc.
6
Band Pro 5
Burrell Enterprises 68
CamMate Systems 68
Cavision Enterprises 23
Chapman/Leonard Studio
Equipment Inc. 9
Cinema Vision 69
Cinematographer Style 63
Cinematography
Electronics 57
Cinekinetic 68
Cinerover 68
Clairmont Film & Digital 17
Cooke Optics 6
Creative Handbook 59
Deluxe C2
Eastman Kodak 13, 21, C4
Filmtools 57
Fletcher Chicago 31
Fuji Motion Picture 41
Glidecam Industries C3
Golden Animations 69
High Def Expo, Inc. 43
Hollywood Post Alliance 67
IBC 75
K 5600, Inc. 32
Kino Flo 33
Laffoux Solutions, Inc. 68
Lentequip, Inc. 69
Lights! Action! Company 68
Litepanels 2
Maine Media Workshops 49
Matthews 69
Movie Tech AG 69
MP&E Mayo Productions 69
New York Film Academy 11
Oppenheimer Camera Prod.
68
Panasonic Broadcast 7
PED Denz 49, 69
Photon Beard 69
Pille Film Gmbh 68
Pro8mm 68
Siggraph 71
Stanton Video Services 6
Super16 Inc. 69
Vancouver Film School 19
VF Gadgets, Inc. 68
Walter Klassen FX 42
Willys Widgets 68
www.theasc.com 57, 61,
70, 73
Zacuto Films 69
ZGC, Inc. 6
70

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who are creating this years most amazing experiences. In the city that has been inspiring musical
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spark your creativity and surpass your goals for the coming year.
Join some of the worlds nest players at SIGGRAPH 2009 in New Orleans.

72 July 2009
Was it the process or the practi-
tioner?
Movie buffs have long lamented
the passing of three-strip Technicolor, a
process praised for its ability to vividly
capture natures colors and bring them
to the screen in a painterly way. These
same movie buffs will cite the films A
Matter of Life and Death (a.k.a. Stair-
way to Heaven, 1946), Black Narcissus
(1947), The Red Shoes (1948), The Black
Rose (1950), Pandora and the Flying
Dutchman (1951) and The African Queen
(1951) as proof that the magic was in the
process, and yet all of those pictures
were photographed by the same person:
Jack Cardiff, BSC.
Cardiff, a onetime ASC member
and, more recently, an Officer in the
Order of the British Empire (even the
Queen recognized that he had a bit to do
with the brilliance of Glorious Techni-
color), died on April 22 at home in
Cambridgeshire, England. He was in his
94th year, and not long out of harness.
His last project as a cinematographer
was the 2007 documentary The Other
Side of the Screen. In a way, his career
had come full circle; his earliest credits
as a lighting cameraman were travel-
ogues and industrial documentaries in
the 1930s.
It would not be fair to say Cardiff
was a reluctant cinematographer he
pursued his career with a passion but
his motives for joining the camera
department did not spring from artistic
pretensions. I started as a child actor in
1918, when I was 4 years old, he told
AC in 2006. By the time I was 14, I was
working as a tea boy on The Informer
[1929], one of the last British silent films
a part-talkie, actually. I heard the
boys in the camera department went
abroad a lot, and I thought that sounded
great, so I got into the camera depart-
ment as a number boy. Of course, for the
next two years, I only managed to get to
the Isle of Wight, just across the water,
for one afternoon.
Cardiff moved up the ranks and
eventually operated the camera on
Britains first three-strip Technicolor
production, Wings of the Morning (1937).
I was working as a kind of operator and
junior cameraman, and I would occasion-
ally do odd inserts for features, he told
In Memoriam
Jack Cardiff, BSC, 1914-2009
AC. A German, Count von Keller, came
to Technicolor with his wife theyd
been traveling around with a 16mm
camera shooting amateur movies, and
their friends suggested they get a proper
color camera and a cameraman. I was
assigned by Technicolor to go touring
with them. We had a van and a whole
Technicolor crew, and I was the camera-
man. We were shooting travelogues,
working with a company called World
Windows. Those travelogues were excit-
ing work and gave me an opportunity to
light what I liked, and I gained great
confidence in my abilities.
Cardiffs first break as a feature
cinematographer came when he worked
on The Great Mr. Handel (1942) with
cameraman Claude Friese-Greene. I
had worked with Claude as a focus puller
and operator, and the director, Norman
Walker, wanted him to shoot the film,
but [Claude] was a black-and-white man,
so he suggested I collaborate with him
on the film. After that, Cardiff went
back to shooting inserts and second-unit
material, and one day, director Michael
Powell happened to wander onto a stage
where Cardiff was lighting an insert
shot. The shot was of a wall with
animal heads mounted on it, recalled
Cardiff. The animals had horns, and
every time you put another light on it, you
got duplicate shadows there were
horns all over the bloody wall! But I had
all day to do it, and I suppose I did a very
good job on it eventually, because I heard
a voice say, Very interesting. I turned
around, and there was Michael Powell.
He said, Would you like to photograph
my next film?
That film was A Matter of Life
and Death, and it began a fruitful work-
ing relationship that eventually brought
Cardiff an Academy Award for Color
Cinematography, which he won for
Powells Black Narcissus. Cardiff earned
two more Oscar nominations for cine-

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he trilogy book set and DVD, Storaro:
Writing With Light, is the project of a
lifetime: an encyclopedia by a single man
a visionary, a researcher and a scholar
about the mystery of vision.
matography, for War and Peace (1956)
and Fanny (1961), but he was a man of
many talents, and for about 10 years, he
traded in his rangefinder for a directors
chair. He earned an Oscar nomination
for Best Director for Sons and Lovers
(1960), which was shot by Freddie Fran-
cis, BSC. In 2001, the Academy
presented Cardiff with an honorary
Oscar for his landmark achievements in
color cinematography.
Cardiff maintained that his
strongest influences were Hollywood
cinematographers and the French
Impressionists the quota quickies
he worked on in the 1930s offered little
in the way of artistic training. We were
making very economical, little films, and
Hollywood was sending over these big
classics with wonderful sets and light-
ing, he recalled. I got to realize the
photography of certain people, including
[ASC members] George Barnes, Harry
Stradling and Gregg Toland. Eventually, I
worked for Stradling as an operator on a
number of pictures in England. At the
same time, I formed a terrific love of
painting, particularly the Impressionists;
they were daring, and they had ideas. I
said to myself, Audacity is the ticket.
Cardiff published his autobiogra-
phy, Magic Hour: A Life in Movies, in
1997. He is survived by his wife, Nikki,
and four sons, Mason, John, Rodney
and Peter.
Robert S. Birchard
I
73

74 July 2009
of the camera department, starting as a
loader.
Grobet got his break as a feature-
film cinematographer with La Mujer de
Benjamn (1991), and he moved to Los
Angeles following the success of Sexo,
pudor y lgrimas (1999). In 2000, he
earned acclaim for his work on Julian
Schnabels Before Night Falls (co-shot
with Guillermo Rosas; AC Jan. 01). His
feature credits include The Woodsman
(AC May 04), Nacho Libre (AC June 06),
City of Ember (AC Oct. 08) and I Love
You Phillip Morris.
Bender Named
Associate Member
Mark Bender, Bogen Imagings
director of sales for the Western Region,
recently became an associate ASC
member. Born in San Francisco and
raised in Los Angeles, he earned an
undergraduate degree from the Univer-
sity of the Pacific and specialized in
marketing and international business
during graduate studies at San Diego
State University. Bender recently helped
Henner Hofmann, ASC, AMC orga-
nize a master class in Mexico City.
J.L. Fisher Hosts Mixer
Members of the ASC, the Society
of Camera Operators and the Interna-
Mindel, Grobet Join Society
Born in Johannesburg, South
Africa, Dan Mindel, ASC (below)
entered the film industry as a camera
assistant for such cinematographers as
Philippe Rousselot, ASC, AFC and Jeffrey
Kimball, ASC. After pulling focus on
Thelma & Louise (1991), Mindel earned
2nd-unit-cinematographer credits on
Ridley Scotts White Squall (1996) and
G.I. Jane (1997), and Tony Scotts Crim-
son Tide (1995) and The Fan (1996).
Continuing his collaboration with
Tony Scott, Mindel moved up to first unit
and photographed Enemy of the State
(1998), Spy Game (2001) and Domino (AC
Nov. 05). His other feature credits
include Shanghai Noon (2000), The
Skeleton Key (2005), Mission: Impossible
III (AC May 06) and Star Trek (AC June
09).
A native of Mexico City, Xavier
Prez Grobet, ASC, AMC (center
column) developed an early appreciation
for crafting images thanks to his mother
and father, who worked as a photogra-
pher and architect, respectively. He
began honing his craft as a child by
shooting films on Super 8. After earning
a degree in cinematography from
Mexicos Centro de Capacitacin Cine-
matogrphica, Grobet climbed the ranks
tional Cinematographers Guild recently
enjoyed their fourth annual mixer, hosted
by J.L. Fisher in Burbank. The event
included a panel discussion that focused
on the collaboration necessary to create
effective camera movements. The discus-
sion was introduced by David Mahlmann,
SOC and moderated by George Spiro
Dibie, ASC. The panel comprised ASC
members Bill Bennett, Richard Crudo,
Michael Goi, Donald M. Morgan,
Michael Negrin, Daniel Pearl and
Kees Van Oostrum; Local 80 members
Don Hubbell, Lloyd Moriarty and Russell
Nordstedt; SOC members David Freder-
ick, Buddy Fries, Robert Gorelick and
Michael Scott; and Local 600 member
and 1st AC Bob Hall.
Zsigmond Named
Cinematographer in
Residence
Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC was
named Kodak Cinematographer in Resi-
dence for the spring quarter at the Univer-
sity of California-Los Angeles School of
Theater, Film and Television. The gener-
ous spirit of cinematographers, their
passion for their art form and their will-
ingness to share their knowledge and
insights has made this program an extra-
ordinarily valuable experience for our
students, says William McDonald, the
UCLA professor who inaugurated the
annual mentorship program in 2000.
Elmes, AC at TriBeCa
Film Festival
Frederick Elmes, ASC was
among the participants in a panel discus-
sion at this years TriBeCa Film Festival.
Titled A Matter of Choice, the panel
was moderated by AC contributing writer
Patricia Thomson and included directors
Damien Chazelle, Julio DePietro and
Bette Gordon; cinematographer Stuart
Dryburgh; and producer Christine Vachon.
I
Clubhouse News

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FREE - Hands-on in the Production Village - NEW for 2009
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Conference 10 - 14 September
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76 July 2009
When you were a child, what film made the
strongest impression on you?
Lord Jim (1965), shot by Freddie Young, BSC; The
Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), shot by Jack Hild-
yard, BSC; and The Cranes Are Flying (1957), shot by Sergei Urusevsky.
But the films of the National Film Board of Canada, especially those by
Donald Brittain and Arthur Lipsett, were the ones that drew me in the
most.
Which cinematographers, past or present, do you most admire?
Ozzie Morris, BSC; Arthur Ornitz; Billy Williams, BSC; Gordon Willis, ASC;
Owen Roizman, ASC; Michel Brault; Jean Claude Labreque; Conrad Hall,
ASC; Richard Leiterman, CSC; Thierry Arbogast, AFC; Roger Deakins,
ASC, BSC; Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC the list goes on and on!
What sparked your interest in photography?
I started taking pictures at around age 10, but I began my career in film
as a projectionist, first at age 5 with a filmstrip projector in my Sunday
School class, and then progressing to full-fledged AV geek status, which
lasted way past high school.
Where did you train and/or study?
I studied political science at the University of Waterloo, where I projected
all the films in my The Medium is the Message class, and then studied
film at York University in Toronto, graduating in 1973.
Who were your early teachers or mentors?
Terrence McCartney-Filgate was an early pioneer of direct cinema and
taught the Maysles brothers and D.A. Pennebaker the vrit style a
generation before he taught me. My biggest mentor was David Cronen-
berg, who began his career as a director/cameraman on Stereo and
Crimes of the Future.
What are some of your key artistic influences?
I started playing guitar at the same time I became interested in photogra-
phy, in 1956, and I find there are parallels between music and perfor-
mance, especially jazz, and working with a crew to light and compose a
cinematic story for an audience. The mechanical aspects of both visual
and musical expression satisfy me very much, particularly the invisible
control of the cinematographer.
How did you get your first break in the business?
My first paying gig was in the porno-film world, loading mags with short
ends for an ancient BNC and a very impatient director. I managed to talk
my way into operating the B camera, but my big break came a year later,
when the same director fired his cinematographer and called me to take
over at 10 oclock on a Sunday night. I was on set by 10:30 and
finished that film, prophetically titled Point of No Return, and then shot
two more for the same director after hiring the fired cinematographer
as my gaffer!
What has been your most satisfying moment on a project?
I was lucky enough to shoot a Jackie Chan film, The Protector, in Hong
Kong in 1984. By then I had 11 years in the business. Golden Harvest and
Raymond Chow produced it, and
Jim Glickenhaus directed. We had
five cameras every day for 66 days,
and only two crewmembers spoke
English, my A-camera focus puller and the gaffer. Of course, we had very
elaborate fight scenes as well as car chases and explosions, and I wasnt
sure how the language and/or experience gap would affect things. But
everything went perfectly from Day One. It taught me I was part of the
global family of cinematic storytellers.
Have you made any memorable blunders?
Id taken 12 years to trade up from an Eclair NPR to a CP reflex to an Arri
SR-1 package (with a Zeiss T2 10-100mm and my favorite Angenieux 9.5-
57mm) when the business slowed down so much that I had to sell all my
gear, a real disadvantage in the freelance world. The business picked up
later, and I ended up shooting a 10-week miniseries with my own
cameras rented from the camera-supply house Id sold them to!
What is the best professional advice youve ever received?
When director Gil Cates chose me to shoot a love story starring Bea
Arthur and Richard Kiley, he said he liked what Id done on The Fly. I
reminded him that Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis were in a horror film,
not a love story. He said, No, they were in love, and thats what the audi-
ence saw. Sometimes you have to ignore the words and let the pictures
tell the story.
What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you?
My visual inspiration has always come from the works of David Black-
wood, Christopher Pratt and Alex Colville, my favorites of the Magic Real-
ism school. For music: Larry Carlton, Stan Getz, Toots Thielemans, Jaco
Pastorius, Diana Krall and Oscar Peterson.
Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like to try?
I began shooting horror films, and that led inexplicably to comedies, but I
have always wanted to do more period films, particularly Westerns,
Depression-era pictures or Elizabethan dramas.
If you werent a cinematographer, what might you be doing
instead?
Playing guitar and taking pictures, and traveling around the world while
doing it.
Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for member-
ship?
Jack Priestley and Gerald Perry Finnerman.
How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?
Being an ASC member is an invaluable link to everyone in the film
community, from labs to camera manufacturers and beyond. There is
usually only one director of photography on a set, so being able to connect
with people in a similarly lonely position gives us an opportunity to share,
compare and learn. My biggest thrills are attending meetings and serving
on committees with my true, living heroes and being able to give back
what I received as a film student in 1970. I
ASC CLOSE-UP
Mark Irwin, ASC, CSC
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" sturted tuling still pictures when wus or
2 yeurs old. hud u little lub or blucl-und-
white photogruphy. 1here wus something
ubout hundling the cumeru und moving it to
nd the right pluces or ruming und ocusing
shots thut cume nuturul. begun my cureer
shooting documenturies. 1hut experience
tuught me how to use light und mule ust
decisions. You huve to leurn to trust your
eyes und instincts. ... Wutching u greut movie
is lile reuding u greut bool. t cun open your
mind to things thut you wouldn't otherwise
experience. Colluborution is one o the things
enoy most ubout lmmuling. Every lm is
u teum eort with the director und everyone
on my crew, including operutors, ussistunts,
the guer und grips."

1obius Schliessler, ASC hus eurned un eclectic
runge o credits, including documenturies,
music videos und commerciuls, in uddition
to such nurrutive lms us9X`k#K_\Ile[fne#
=i`[XpE`^_kC`^_kj#;i\Xd^`icj#?XeZfZbund
K_\KXb`e^f]G\c_Xd()*%
[All these lms were shot on Kodul motion picture lm.
=fiXe\ok\e[\[`ek\im`\nn`k_KfY`XjJZ_c`\jjc\i#
m`j`knnn%bf[Xb%Zfd&^f&fecd%
1o order Kodul motion picture lm,
cull (800) 2-lm.
www.motion.lodul.com
Eustmun Kodul Compuny, 2009.
Photogruphy. 2009 Douglus Kirllund