American Cinematographer 01 2010 Usa

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$5.95 Canada $6.95
For up-to-the-minute screening information, go to: Awards.FilmInFocus.com
To read complete rave reviews from across America, visit: FilmInFocus.com
####. ONE OF THE COEN BROTHERS BEST AND MOST PERSONAL FILMS.
BEAUTIFULLY PHOTOGRAPHED BY ROGER DEAKINS. ITS A MOVIE MITZVAH.
-LOU LUMENICK, NEW YORK POST
MAZEL TOV.
2009 Focus Features. All Rights Reserved.
BEST PICTURE
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY ROGER DEAKINS, ASC, BSC
AN EXTRAORDINARY ACHIEVEMENT.
Its almost impossible to overstate the artistry that unfolds
on writer-director Henry Selicks screen. A darkly compelling
fantasia in which every corner holds surprises.
Elizabeth Weitzman, NewYork Daily News
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Written ForThe Screen And Directed By
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Pete Kozachik , ASC
For Your Consideration In All Categories Including
For up-to-the-minute screening information, go to: Awards.FilmInFocus.com
2009 FOCUS FEATURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Over 150 sets were built across 52 different soundstages.
Spanning 183,000 square feet, the 52 different stages were the most
ever deployed for a stop-motion animated feature.
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The International Journal of Motion Imaging
32 Conquering New Worlds
Mauro Fiore, ASC tackles new technology on Avatar
48 Watchful Spirit
Andrew Lesnie, ASC, ACS brings a bestseller to the big
screen with The Lovely Bones
60 Super Sleuth
Philippe Rousselot, ASC, AFC lends a kinetic look to
Sherlock Holmes
70 The Right Stuff
Caleb Deschanel, ASC receives the Lifetime
Achievement Award
DEPARTMENTS
FEATURES
VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM TO ENJOY THESE WEB EXCLUSIVES
Podcast: Rodney Taylor, ASC and Lance Acord, ASC
DVD Playback: Easy Rider The Samuel Fuller Collection Homicide
On Our Cover: After inhabiting an alien body, Jake Scully (Sam Worthington) explores a
distant planet in Avatar, shot by Mauro Fiore, ASC. (Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox.)
8 Editors Note
10 Presidents Desk
12 Short Takes: Hyundai Sonata Campaign
18 Production Slate: The White Ribbon The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
84 Post Focus: Technicolor Hollywood HPA Awards
88 Filmmakers Forum: Shane Hurlbut, ASC
94 New Products & Services
98 International Marketplace
99 Classified Ads
100 Ad Index
102 Clubhouse News
104 ASC Close-Up: Billy Dickson
J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 0 V O L . 9 1 N O . 1
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48
J a n u a r y 2 0 1 0 V o l . 9 1 , N o . 1
T h e I n t e r n a t i o n a l J o u r n a l o f M o t i o n I m a g i n g
Visit us online at
www.theasc.com

PUBLISHER Martha Winterhalter
EDITORIAL
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Kenneth Sweeney, Patricia Thomson
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CIRCULATION, BOOKS & PRODUCTS

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ASC ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE Corey Clark
American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 90th year of publication, is published
monthly in Hollywood by ASC Holding Corp., 1782 N. Orange Dr., Hollywood, CA 90028, U.S.A.,
(800) 448-0145, (323) 969-4333, Fax (323) 876-4973, direct line for subscription inquiries (323) 969-4344.
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and at additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA.
POSTMASTER: Send address change to American Cinematographer, P.O. Box 2230, Hollywood, CA 90078.

4
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BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
GREIG FRASER
Campions award-winning young cinematographer, Greig Fraser,
captures the vitality of Keats and Fannys world as well as its plainness.
But he also studs the film with gorgeous scenes of nature
so startlingly good you could frame them.
-Karen Durbin, Elle
With its gorgeously framed shots and superb craftsmanship,
Bright Star is a thing of beauty.
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OFFICERS - 2009/2010
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American Society of Cine ma tog ra phers
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an educational, cultural and pro fes sion al
or ga ni za tion. Membership is by invitation
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di rec tors of photography and have
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It is a hauntingly memorable film that is as
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F O R Y O U R C O N S I D E R A T I O N
cinematography.

For screening information,
please visit:
TheHurtLockerAwards.com
As youve probably noticed, this issue has a slightly
different look streamlined and more contemporary, with
updated fonts, reconceived layouts and a variety of other subtle
enhancements. Its been 12 years since our last redesign, and in
the interest of maintaining a progressive philosophy, we asked
our creative director, Marion Gore, to conjure up a fresh
aesthetic. After a series of brainstorming sessions with the
editorial staff, she responded with sample treatments that
earned enthusiastic kudos.
Cinematography is an artistic pursuit, and weve always
attempted to echo its visual flair in our pages; this issue starts
us down a path that stays true to the magazines traditions, blending informative articles with
stylish presentations. As always, a great deal of care went into the selection of images to
accompany the text. Although modern Hollywood has an obsession with approval processes
the CIA itself might envy, we always do our utmost to dig for photos and other illustrations
that best reflect a cinematographers creative intentions and methods. Allies in various public-
ity departments helped us add pizzazz to this debut issue, and we thank them for their
support.
This months unofficial theme of forward thinking is aptly reflected in our cover
story, Avatar (Conquering New Worlds, page 32). Director James Camerons ambitious film
combines motion capture, high-definition video and 3-D technology in ways that have never
been seen. For cinematographers, the production could mark a watershed moment in terms
of technologys impact on their craft; as Mauro Fiore, ASC reveals, most of his lighting strate-
gies were planned on virtual sets, with 70 percent of the footage achieved via motion
capture. Nevertheless, he notes, the shows futuristic look was heavily influenced by the live-
action work he spearheaded in New Zealand: Although the motion-capture work was
mostly finished, the actual look of the film was yet to be created. The footage we shot in New
Zealand ultimately defined the overall style of the movie.
Philippe Rousselot, ASC, AFC also took a non-traditional approach to Guy Ritchies
Sherlock Holmes (Super Sleuth, page 60), which adds a bit of brawn to the famous detec-
tives brains. How do I make Sherlock Holmes a Guy Ritchie film? Rousselot muses. I didnt
want it to look like a costume drama. I didnt want it to look pretty. I wanted it to be grungy.
I wanted it to look like RocknRolla or Snatch.
Andrew Lesnie, ASC, ACS reteamed with Peter Jackson on The Lovely Bones (Watch-
ful Spirit, page 48), in which a murdered teenager, trapped in limbo after her death, is able
to observe her family and her killer as the years pass. Andrew and I have worked together
enough that the basics dont have to be discussed, notes Jackson. What we talk about is
the new ideas we want to bring into a particular project.
Good ideas are consistently evident in the work of Caleb Deschanel, ASC, who will be
honored Feb. 27 with the Societys Lifetime Achievement Award. In an overview of his career
(The Right Stuff, page 72), Deschanel shares some of the wisdom he has accumulated
while earning an ASC Award and five Oscar nominations.
Stephen Pizzello
Executive Editor
Editors Note
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Mark your calendars, because on Feb. 20, 2010, something huge is going to happen.
Have you ever wanted to watch your favorite cinematographer light a scene and explain
his or her thought process? Are there questions youve always wanted to ask ASC members
about their lives and careers? Do you wish you could find out the little tricks we use to make a
scene truly memorable? Have you ever wanted to visit the ASC Clubhouse?
Well, all these things, and many more, have been dreams and requests weve received over
the years from American Cinematographer subscribers and, more recently, our Facebook fans,
and weve been working feverishly on a way to make them possible. Next month, they will be.
Friends of the ASC is a new level of ASC membership that will open the door to the
inner workings of the Society and its members. It will give you unprecedented access to new,
exclusive content about lighting, camerawork and associated technologies, as well as access to
industry events featuring ASC members. Thanks to our partners, the vendors who support our
educational and outreach pursuits, it will also help you pursue your professional goals; these
partners will offer you discounts on their products and services.
What will you get as a Friend of the ASC? The list of benefits is growing by the day, but here are just a few of them:
A one-year subscription to the digital edition of American Cinematographer
A Friends of the ASC membership card granting access to exclusive discounts on equipment and services from the top
professional vendors in the industry, in addition to savings at the ASC Store
A free annual event at the ASC Clubhouse especially for Friends of the ASC, so you can meet and talk with ASC members
in person
Discounted admission to select ASC events
Exclusive access to Friends of the ASC content at www.theasc.com, which will include how-to videos about lighting featur-
ing ASC members; technical tips from industry professionals on subjects such as digital intermediates; and Ask the ASC, where
you can address questions to specific cinematographers and have them answered
Exclusive access to historic audio interviews with such ASC legends as James Wong Howe, Karl Struss and Ray Rennahan
And thats just the tip of the iceberg. We plan to add even more features based on what our subscribers say is most inter-
esting and important to them, including discounted admission to select ASC events. All of these benefits will be available for a $100
annual fee. Regardless of your location, you can connect with the ASC in ways that were never before possible.
Friends of the ASC will be officially unveiled on Feb. 20 at the ASC Open House, where attendees will get a firsthand look at
everything this new level of membership offers.
You will be hearing a lot more about this fantastic new program in the near future. Its been in the works for a few years,
and the ASC staff has worked closely with the Societys officers, board members, and active and associate members to make Friends
of the ASC the most exciting, informative and inspiring way for all filmmakers, emerging and established, to be closer to the Soci-
ety and what we do.
Im looking forward to having you join us!
Michael Goi, ASC
President
Presidents Desk
10 January 2010 American Cinematographer
Film. No Compromise.

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Launching the 2011 Hyundai Sonata
By Curtis Clark, ASC
I love the challenge of using light to bring out a cars person-
ality and presence. You can put a certain amount of direct light on
a car, but its the source that provides shaping and contouring. The
bigger the reflective element, the easier it is to manipulate the
contouring of the lines. When you raise the light, the reflection gets
smaller; the closer you get to the car, the bigger it gets. The critical
thing is that the reflection has a clean, white edge to it. You can
see this in the commercials launching the 2011 Hyundai Sonata,
for which I used an overhead soft box as my primary sculpting tool.
In addition to providing direct light, soft boxes create the kinds of
large reflections needed to effectively bring out a vehicles design
features.
One example of a soft box is a Fisher Light, a big unit that
can be suspended and mounted in different ways, usually on a
chain motor or with a crane. It can be repositioned on the fly to
provide the cinematographer with a lot of lighting choices. You can
program fades and chase sequences within the fixture, build in
transitions, or dim down or shade off certain areas of the flicker-
free color-balanced (tungsten or daylight) fluorescent globes to
reduce intensity in certain areas.
If I were shooting in the United States, I would normally use
a Fisher Light, but on the Sonata spots I had my own soft box, a
30'x20' fluorescent unit built for a Hyundai commercial Id shot in
Seoul, South Korea. This particular rig only has two settings, full
strength and half strength. Compared to a Fisher, it doesnt offer
much flexibility in shaping the light, but its bright enough that Im
able to shoot anywhere between T2.8-T8 at 250 ASA. Like a lot of
standard fluorescents, the fixtures globes have a green spike, so I
have to be careful about matching my daylight-balanced lamps
(which, for the Sonata spots, included 18Ks, Pars, Dedos and
Source Fours). Because I cant filter the soft box, I add Plus Green
to all of the supplemental lighting and remove the green in
telecine.
Using Kodak Vision3 250D 5207, I photographed two
different Sonatas, one with a diffuse, metallic body that gave me
soft reflections, the other with a glossy, red paint job that offered
clearer, more specular reflections. The opening shot of the silver
Sonata is a three-quarter view, lit with a combination of my soft
box and supplemental lighting on the ground; the light is reflected
in the windshield and on the hood, and it casts a shadow pattern
beneath the character line, a convex detail in the chassis that runs
from the front wheel arch to the back of the car. The character line
is echoed with a highlight, a parallel line caused by the door panel
curving out, beneath which is a shadow caused by the door panel
angling back in.
I positioned the soft box above the hood at a 45-degree
angle, favoring the drivers side. This gave me the greatest degree
of depth of shadow and the right degree of highlight. The lights
not directly overhead, and its not on the side; if it were, the car
Short Takes
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Cinematographer
Curtis Clark, ASC
had translucent
balloons
specially made
for a commercial
featuring the
2011 Hyundai
Sonata. Keeping
in mind the cars
trajectory as
well as the
moving camera,
the balloons
were
strategically
placed in the
frame to reflect
along the side of
the car.
I
would be too flat. If I moved the light to
the background, the image would be too
contrasty. You have to find a position that
will give you the best balance amongst all
of these choices.
In this first shot, the highlight on
the hood, above the headlight, marks the
start of the cars A-line, which runs along
the hood, up the windscreen, defines the
curvature of the roof and terminates at the
tail light. That shape is very important
its almost like a vanishing point. How the
light and shadows converge around that
shape can evoke movement, even though
the car is stationary.
There is just a bit of highlight
reflection on the grill with the Hyundai
badge, and beneath that is the air intake.
The lower lip of the intake is an important
design feature of the car, so I needed to
draw attention to its shape with highlights
surrounded by shadow. The left side of the
intake is accented by bounce from a bead
board.
Bringing out a cars important
features is not just about the light. Its also
about using the right focal length at the
proper angle from the best distance.
Before I photograph a vehicle, one of the
first things I do is walk around it with my
lenses (in this case, Arri Master Primes)
and a viewfinder, looking to see what
angles, lens heights, distances and focal
lengths will best enhance the cars
contours. A lens thats too long can
compress the car, which is less flattering.
At the other end, if you get too close with
a 14mm, you risk over-exaggerating the
perspective. You dont want to distort the
vehicle to the point where it doesnt
resemble the one the customer sees in the
showroom. Youre there to enhance the
cars intrinsic design features. Embellish
them, reinforce them and draw attention
to them, but always stay true to the actual
design.
Once youve found a look for the
car, how do you maintain it once the car
starts moving? You have to make sure the
lighting transitions reinforce your philo-
sophical approach. The choreography of
your shots should be fairly specific: you
need to know how far the vehicle is
moving and exactly how much of the area
you need to light. Make sure youve got a
Top: The crew positions the balloons onstage. Clarks lighting also included an overhead
soft box (center, above the balloons) and 18Ks (left and right). Middle and bottom: For
another sequence in the commercial, Clark devised a 20'x30' grid of 80 fluorescent bulbs.
The grids reflection on the car echoes a musical-scale graphic that was added in post.
mind the cars trajectory and the camera
position. I had to make sure my lighting
was in the right position to give me the
proper reflective contouring. It can be a bit
of a puzzle.
For the red Sonata, I used the same
lighting tools, but the effect of the light on
the car was different, like lighting a red
mirror. I wanted to create a look combining
the effect of liquid light with the richness
and luminescence of an oil painting. The
camera was on a Technocrane, and it
needed to look like it was constantly
moving around the car. Because of the
roving camera and the rotating pedestal,
the light from the soft box warps and
undulates across the chassis, mimicking
the animated computer-generated pattern
on the 40'-long LED screen in the back-
ground.
In the first shot, the car is on a
turntable, moving left to right through the
frame. Our focus is on the shape of the
headlamp, the shape of the light around it,
and the shape of the fender going into
shadow. Even though were in a close-up,
the combination of the A-line and the
sharp border, which defines the shaded
area beneath the lamp and extends back
across the fender, gives a sense of the
specific elements connection to the rest of
the design aesthetic.
The second shot still focuses on the
front of the car, but in a wider shot that
takes in the hood, the headlights and the
grill. I didnt want to light the side of the
car because it would distract the viewers
eye. Instead, I let a simple accent created
by a chain of three fluorescent bulbs play
along the length of the car, providing a
sense of depth and elongation. A focal
spot unit (like a Source Four) was used to
bring out details in the rims and tires.
The approach to both spots was
impressionistic. I wanted to present
specific and dynamic elements of the cars
design. The viewers already know its a car,
but by the time they see it in its entirety,
those key design elements should be set in
their minds.
To view the 2011 Sonata commer-
cial, visit www.youtube.com/watch?
v=BP21zS_V3qE.
long enough run with enough sources in
place to get direct light hitting the car and
reflections bouncing off of it.
In addition to the overhead soft
box, I designed a grid of 80 fluorescent
bulbs that reflects a pattern onto the
surface of the car. The rig is simple, a
20'x30' metal grid painted black and
suspended with an industrial crane. Its
effect is a poetic rendering of the light,
echoing the floating musical-scale graphics
that were added in postproduction.
I also had translucent, glowing
balloons specially made for the commer-
cial. As the car moves around the balloons,
you see their reflections in the side of the
car. When I plotted out the design of the
driving takes, I had to make sure the
balloon lights were properly positioned
along the length of the shot, keeping in
Above: Clark (right) discusses his plan with
producer Michael Song (center) and 1st AC
Jeoun Sung Ho. Right and below: The red
Sonata was placed on a rotating pedestal
and the camera was mounted on a
Technocrane to maintain a constant sense
of motion.
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Rural Terrorism
By Jean Oppenheimer
Set in northern Germany just prior to the outbreak of World
War I, The White Ribbon (Das Weisse Band) concerns a small, rural
village whose orderly existence is shattered by a string of malicious
acts committed by unknown perpetrators. The rash of misdeeds
among them a barn fire, the kidnapping and torture of a child, and
a horseback-riding accident that injures the town doctor
expose the bankrupt social order that lies just beneath the commu-
nitys respectable surface.
Winner of the Palme dOr at this years Cannes Film Festival,
The White Ribbon is the fifth collaboration between director/writer
Michael Haneke and cinematographer Christian Berger, AAC, follow-
ing Bennys Video, 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance, The
Piano Teacher (AC May 02) and Cach (AC Jan. 06). When Haneke
told Berger he wanted to make the film in black-and-white, my first
reaction was, Oh, nice, the old days! Berger recalls. But shooting
on black-and-white wasnt possible because the producers wanted
a color version for television. So we shot color and achieved the
black-and-white in the digital intermediate.
The color negative actually gave us a crisper, cleaner look
because of its high contrast range and exposure tolerance, he
continues. The rich color tones made for a very fine gray scale, and
because candles, oil lamps and torches frequently were our only
sources of illumination, the stocks stable highlights and shadows
proved a valuable asset.
Berger shot The White Ribbon in 3-perf Super 35mm using
a Moviecam Compact and Cooke S4 prime lenses. I like the
Moviecams simple handling and good viewfinder, and I think the
S4s are still the best for avoiding lens flares, which was especially
important given our practical light sources, he says. I also appre-
ciate the look the Cookes achieve not as hard as Zeiss Primes but
still sharp.
To calculate the values for the final transfer from color to
monochrome, Berger shot tests of every material used for dcor and
Production Slate
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Above: Klara (Maria-Victoria Dragus), Martin (Leonard Proxauf) and
other local children are caught eavesdropping on a round of police
questioning in a scene from The White Ribbon. Left: The
schoolteacher asks Klara and Martin for information.
I
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costumes. I wanted to retain all informa-
tion, from the darkest, deepest black to the
lightest white, he says, adding that set
designer Christoph Kanter and costume
designer Moidele Bickel were outstanding
collaborators.
Haneke wanted to avoid any feeling
of warmth or nostalgia, two qualities
frequently associated with period pieces.
Instead, the filmmakers opted for what
Berger describes as a kind of modern
look, although he readily concedes, I
dont know how to explain modern other
than to say its not nostalgic.
In addition to examining
photographs from the period, Berger stud-
ied Ingmar Bergmans black-and-white
collaborations with Sven Nykvist, ASC, as
well as two more recent black-and-white
films, The Man Who Wasnt There (AC Oct.
01), shot by Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC, and
Good Night, and Good Luck (AC Nov. 05),
shot by Robert Elswit, ASC. He found Unfor-
given (shot by Jack Green, ASC) and 1900
(shot by Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC) especially
helpful in terms of lighting night exteriors
with oil-based sources.
Berger used the B&B Cine Reflect
Lighting System, which he developed a
decade ago in collaboration with lighting
engineer Christian Bartenbach and the
Bartenbach Light Research Center, for all of
his movie lighting. CRLS relies on a power-
ful HMI source Berger used eight 1.2K
HMI Panibeams and a series of
aluminum reflectors that redirect the light to
wherever its needed. The reflectors are
adjustable, can be remotely controlled, and
come in a variety of textures that give
specific shape and quality to the light. No
direct light ever hits the set. Even with a
dimmer on the ballast that reduces the light
by 50 percent, direct light usually is too
strong, says Berger. Its very much like
using different lamps. Some [of the reflec-
tors] are hard, and some are soft; some have
optical surfaces, and some dont. Even
multiple reflections are possible. I always
use the same source, a parallel beamer.
With the exception of the pastors
house, which was built onstage in Leipzig,
the sets for The White Ribbon were built or
found on location in Netzow, Germany. One
of Bergers favorite scenes finds the doctors
children, Anna (Roxane Duran) and Rudi
(Miljan Chatelain), in their kitchen, talking
about death. It was twilight, and we
managed a very decent fill light inside the
room from above the CRLS was bounc-
ing off the sound insulation in the ceiling.
There were no lamps inside the room, only
two small reflectors beside the camera
creating a modest eyelight for Rudi and his
backlight. We had another three reflectors
outside the window sending light into the
room. By combining the CRLS and natural
daylight and changing the sheets of ND gel
on the windows, we were able to convey
the onset of twilight.
A disturbing sequence in the film
shows Rudi wandering through his house in
the middle of the night, calling out for his
sister. He walks down the stairs, through an
unlit salon and then into the dining room,
where a single oil lamp is burning. Still in
search of Anna, he goes back into the salon
and then walks down a dark corridor
toward the kitchen. The scene ends when
Rudi opens a door into a brighter room and
Top: Dinner at
the home of
the town pastor
(Burghart
Klaussner).
Middle: The
town doctor
(Rainer Bock)
and his
daughter
(Roxane Duran).
Bottom: White
ribbons make
Klara and
Martin stand
out in the
childrens choir.
tried to constantly modulate the contrast
between it and the dark. In the room
where Rudi discovers his sister and father,
Berger augmented the practical lamp with a
small source hidden in the corner and
erased the extra shadow in post.
Referring to Hanekes penchant for
dark images, Berger laughs and comments,
Michael dislikes technical restrictions and
has a tendency to just ignore them. That
makes life not so easy for a director of
photography. More light on a scene would
give me more information for postproduc-
tion!
One key scene in the film takes place
outdoors, in bright sunshine. Its a village
dance, where romance starts to blossom
between the towns schoolteacher (Christ-
ian Friedel) and Eva, a shy governess (Leonie
Benesch). No reflectors were needed
because Evas white blouse was reflective
enough, says Berger. With the camera
moving 360 degrees, there was no opportu-
nity to use lighting, anyway! My favorite
Steadicam operator, Jrg Widmer, just
danced along with the characters, and he is
a very good dancer. Gerald had to sit atop
a tall post in order to follow with the
focus.
Later in the film, a distraught Eva
goes to the teachers quarters to tell him
she has been fired. He tries to calm her by
playing his piano. A single oil lamp illumi-
nates the room. Again, the room was
dark, says Berger. How do you light?
How do you handle the shadows that come
from a single oil lamp? You need another
source, but you cant put one in without a
second shadow appearing. The answer was
postproduction. We used two 12-volt halo-
gen lamps to bounce light onto the actors
faces, and we erased the double shadows
in post.
All of the post work was done at
Listo Videofilm in Vienna. For the DI, the
negative was scanned at 4K on a North-
discovers his father (Rainer Bock) and Anna
in a compromising position. The sudden
glare of light is startling, underscoring the
scenes shocking content.
That was very difficult to do,
Berger recalls. Haneke kept saying, Darker,
darker, and I couldnt see anything in the
viewfinder, and the camera was constantly
moving, following this invisible boy. The
entire scene was one long shot. The lens
was wide open, and I had to underexpose
by 2 stops using 5219. It wouldnt have
been printable the analog way!
Berger used three beamers to light
the shot, producing a shimmer of moonlight
on Rudi as he descends the stairs and
moves through a patch of light on the rug in
the hallway. A bit more light filters in here
and there, but overall, the scene is very dark.
Holding focus under such conditions is very
challenging, and my first assistant, Gerald
Helf, did a masterful job, notes Berger. The
little boy is wearing a light nightshirt, and I
Clockwise from top right: Director Michael Haneke
(center) and Steadicam operator Jrg Widmer
prepare to film; Haneke works with actors Christian
Friedel (left) and Leonie Benesch as Christian Berger,
AAC (background) sets up the shot; the church
interior; the CRLS setup used outside the church.
Join a community of fresh artistic voices who
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Success in lmmaking is as much about teamwork as it is about creativity. The programs in Film, Video, and
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CERTIFICATE PROGRAMS INCLUDE:
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CONTINUING EDUCATION:
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(oered through the McGhee Division
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New York University is an afrmative action/equal opportunity institution. 2009 New York University School of Continuing and Professional Studies
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Woolworth Building, 2nd Floor
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scps.nyu.edu/x557 --||N| N\, e\t.!!I
FILM, VIDEO,
AND
BROADCASTING
light; the color-correction was done on a
Baselight 8; and the 2K filmout was done on
an Arrilaser. Berger notes that colorist Willi
Willinger did a superb job.
There is a visual consistency to all of
Bergers work with Haneke. Some of their
stylistic hallmarks are long oners and an
avoidance of wide angles. Michael makes
very precise storyboards, with arrows indicat-
ing movements to the right or left, says
Berger. He draws them himself on the back
of each page of the script; the entire crew
gets a copy.
The camera is kept at eye level or
slightly below, and it never moves on its own
moves are prompted by an action or even
by the finest gesture in an actors face, he
adds. The 32mm and 40mm lenses are our
standard because Haneke prefers the normal
human perspective. On rare occasions, well
use a 27mm or a 50mm. A fluid head allows
the camera to breathe with the actor. So-
called static shots are never really static.
There are always tiny movements, and
theyre led by the actors.
Berger admits that things can get
stressful on Hanekes set. There were times
on The White Ribbon when Haneke pushed
me to the limit, but I have to thank him for
that, because you never fall back on your
repertoire of easy solutions or old tricks. Even
the most common problem becomes a new
challenge.
To meet those challenges, he stresses,
one needs a good crew people you can
trust absolutely. In addition to the afore-
mentioned collaborators, he puts gaffer
Kimber Lee Jerrett and executive producer
Michael Katz in that category. Michael Katz
is an extraordinarily sensitive production
leader, and thats quite rare, he observes.
We had some complex problems on this
project, and he was able to handle all of
them.
TECHNICAL SPECS
Super 1.85:1
3-perf Super 35mm
Moviecam Compact
Cooke S4 lenses
Kodak Vision3 500T 5219, 250D 5207
Digital Intermediate
Printed on Kodak 2302
Through the Looking Glass
by Jon D. Witmer
Its a cold, rainy day when AC arrives
at The Bridge Studios in Vancouver, British
Columbia, where director Terry Gilliam is
leading cast and crew through the second
half of a turbulent shooting schedule on The
Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. A few
months earlier, the production came to an
abrupt halt when its star, Heath Ledger, died
mid-shoot. Ready to throw in the towel,
Gilliam was ultimately convinced to
complete the film by his daughter, producer
Amy Gilliam, and cinematographer, Nicola
Pecorini. Heaths work [on the film] was so
bloody good, and I felt it would have been
totally unfair to Terry and to the film that
Heath wanted to make to not finish it, says
Pecorini.
Ledger plays Tony, an apparent
amnesiac who joins a traveling theater
troupe headed by Dr. Parnassus (Christo-
pher Plummer), who is aided and abetted by
his daughter, Valentina (Lily Cole); his young
assistant, Anton (Andrew Garfield); and his
longtime friend and confessor, Percy (Verne
Troyer). The band takes its horse-drawn
wagon through Londons modern streets,
pausing hither and yon to stage a show
fueled by the doctors unbridled imagina-
tion. We didnt start with a story in mind; it
was just an idea of a traveling theater arriv-
ing in a modern city and nobody paying
attention to this extraordinary, wonderful
little show, says Gilliam, who penned the
screenplay with Charles McKeown. I was
digging through my drawers of ideas that Id
never used, and wed stick things in.
Parnassus divides its time between
the real world and the surreal Imaginarium,
located on the other side of a magic mirror
on the wagons stage. Scenes set in the real
world were shot primarily on location in
London, whereas everything set in the
Imaginarium was saved for stage work in
Vancouver. When Ledger died, the actor had
already completed the London portion of
the shoot, and jumping through the magic
mirror offered Gilliam a reason to have
three different actors step into the role of
Tony: Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin
Farrell.
The Imaginarium reflects the mind of
the individual inside it, so the interior land-
scape shifts radically each time it appears
onscreen. To achieve the different vistas,
Gilliam, Pecorini and visual-effects supervi-
sors Richard Bain and John Paul Docherty
opted to shoot against greenscreen and
bluescreen with certain physical set pieces.
(At the end of the shooting schedule, the
Left to right: Percy (Verne Troyer), Anton (Andrew Garfield), Parnassus (Christopher
Plummer), Valentina (Lily Cole) and Tony (Heath Ledger) update their traveling-theater show
in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
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filmmakers also shot extensive model work
at Bray Studios near Windsor, Berkshire in
the U.K.) When AC enters the stage, a man-
made hill fills half the floor, with Law resting
at the top next to a gnarled tree, his face
dirtied and his neck in a noose. Some 50
space lights have been rigged from the
stages ceiling and run through a board for
selective control of ambience, while Kino Flo
Image 80s line the perimeter to illuminate
the bluescreen, which hangs along all four
stage walls. Were shooting mostly at T3.5
or T4, and the screen is around that level as
well, says Pecorini. I always make sure the
visual-effects guys are pleased with the
nature of the screen, because theyre the
ones who actually have to manipulate it.
The light is almost constantly
moving or changing colors when were in
the Imaginarium, he continues. For exam-
ple, after wrapping out the scene on the hill,
the crew moves on to a sequence that will
ultimately be set in a computer-generated
valley with ladders reaching up into rapidly
moving clouds. To simulate the clouds
effect onstage, Pecorini explains, I opted
for a big piece of diffusion, about 40 by 25
feet, made of different layers of Visqueen for
different densities, with some holes in it. In
order to float it without producing a hard
shadow, we had to support it with some-
thing that was transparent as well. We came
up with helium balloons that we filled with
different densities of smoke, and so we
created a cloud on a leash that we could
move in front of the lights. In addition to
playing in front of the space lights, the
cloud is also walked in front of a row of
four Jumbo lights mounted on a cherry
picker for a directional source. Provided by
the Rome-based company Iride, each Jumbo
contains 16 600-watt GE aircraft-landing
lights.
The filmmakers references for the
Imaginarium sequences ranged from
painters like Maxfield Parrish and Odd
Nerdrum to illustrator Theodor Geisel, a.k.a
Dr. Seuss. To keep their ideas in order,
Pecorini assembled his bible, which
includes references, notes, sketches and
other material. I do a bible for every
movie, he explains. I learned very early
on, even before I was a cinematographer,
that a lot of things get said during prep and
then forgotten. The bible is a way of keep-
ing track of those ideas. We also put in all of
the technical pieces we need in a scene, so
it becomes a bit like an enriched creative
breakdown.
The bible became especially dense
for Parnassus, whose short shooting sched-
ule and tight budget necessitated detailed
storyboards for every visual effect. Because
we had to be so precise, Terry and I actually
stuck to the storyboards and the previs
much more than we usually would, says
Pecorini. We normally do all of these
preparations, and then on the day, we do
what we feel like.
Left: A Visqueen cloud was used onstage for a lighting
effect in an Imaginarium-set sequence with Tony (Jude
Law). Right: Tony (Johnny Depp) guides a woman
(Maggie Steed) through the Imaginarium while director
Terry Gilliam looks on.

Pecorini shot all of the visual-effects
sequences on Kodak Vision3 500T 5219.
5219 has certain advantages, such as
more information in the undertones, less
grain and better blacks, but [Vision2 500T]
5218 has very little grain, too, and I thought
it was also a good fit. We shot London at
night with 18 because it cost a bit less, and
we shot day exteriors on [Vision3] 250D
5207.
The mirror that bridges the Imagi-
narium and the real world sits in the middle
of Parnassus portable stage, which folds
into the side of his wagon. Production
designer Anastasia Masaro built two
versions of the wagon, one with the stage
open, and the other with it folded up (for
scenes in which the wagon actually moves).
For performances on the open stage,
Gilliam recalls, Nicola positioned a bunch
of lightbulbs around the set. It was crude,
but it was great. It needed the sense of a
little traveling theater without any sophisti-
cated lighting.
Inside the wagons cramped quar-
ters, which serve as the troupes home,
Pecorini incorporated those same stage
lights for illumination, generally using 100-
watt bulbs wired to separate dimmers,
although he would often switch to 60- or
40-watt bulbs if they were prominent in the
frame. Very often I would take one of those
rows of bulbs out of shot and put it on a
magic arm at the height I needed, he
explains. We also used some covered
wagons, which are about 1-foot long and
have one or two 60- or 100-watt bulbs on
dimmers, and the result is like a small China
ball. Those were very easy to position, and
we could even clip them to the curtains.
As the wagon carries the troupe
away from a performance one dreary night,
its riders find Tony (Ledger) hanging from
a noose beneath Blackfriars Bridge. I
couldnt pound too much light there
because it would have killed the back-
ground, but at the same time, we wanted to
see the river, says Pecorini. There was no
way to bring a crane in, so we went to the
roof of a nearby building and set up two
DC16s and four DC8s we rented them
from Iride, and theyre like Mini-Brutes, with
16 and eight 1,000-watt Par 64s. Then I
made sure the real lights on and under the
bridge were properly working, and I had my
guys put spun glass on some of those to
make them softer.
Many of Londons day exteriors were
filmed at Battersea Power Station, a crum-
bling, open-air structure where Parnassus
troupe sets up camp between perfor-
mances. To help shape Londons overcast
skylight, Pecorini lit from the outside with
Jumbo Lights, often through Grid, and other
times through 250 or 251, he says. I
never went higher than CTB in correc-
tion.
The DI is so much faster than
photochemical timing for evening out a day
scene, continues Pecorini, who did the
digital grade at Technicolor London with
colorist Paul Ensby. Gilliam has also
embraced the DI process, noting, I love it
completely. Shoot on film its still the
best medium for gathering the maximum
amount of information and then go
straight to digital. I dont ever want to see
film projected again! I love the DI because
we can fix all the bits that didnt quite go as
well as wed liked in the rush of the daily
shoot. I dont want to sit there and change
things; I just want to tidy things up a bit.
Pecorini rented his camera package
which included two Arricam Lites and
two Arri 435 Xtremes from Technovision
Rome. Ive known them for 32 years, so
Im very good friends with them, he says.
When we got to Vancouver, I spoke with
Denny Clairmont, and he has a long history
of collaboration with Technovision, so we
actually got complete technical support
from Clairmont Vancouver while we were in
Vancouver with Technovision Romes
cameras. I thank Denny for that.
Clockwise from above:
A cluster of Concorde
and Jumbo lights create
a shaft of illumination
for a flashback in a
monastery; Parnassus
strikes a deal with Mr.
Nick (Tom Waits) in a
setting inspired by
painter Odd Nerdrum;
1st AC Dean Morin
(left), Plummer (center)
and cinematographer
Nicola Pecorini get cozy
inside Parnassus
wagon.
Pecorini chose a set of Arri/Zeiss

Ultra Primes, and he admits to using longer
focal lengths than he usually does on a
Gilliam project although the 14mm
remains the directors favorite. We used a
lot of the 32mm, 40mm, and at times even
the 50mm and 65mm because we had no
time and had to achieve a lot of shots,
says Pecorini. I was always operating the
B camera handheld with a longer lens to
stay out of the way of [London A-camera
operator] Pete Cavaciuti, who most of the
time was on a 14mm on the Steadicam.
We also managed to sneak in quite a few
setups with the wonderful 8mm Rectilinear
Ultra Prime. (Pecorinis other key collabo-
rators in London included gaffer Phil
Brookes and best boy electric Joe Judge.
His Vancouver crew included A-camera
operator Jay Kohne, 1st AC Dean Morin,
key grip Mike McLellan and gaffer Stuart
Haggerty.)
Considering the wide-angle
approach that has characterized all of their
work since Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
(AC May 98), Pecorini muses, Terry and I
have come to the conclusion that we apply
cinematic democracy. When you see
things in real life, your eyes give you a very
wide angle of vision, and you decide to
concentrate your attention on one thing
instead of another according to your needs,
your views, your interests and whatever it is
Left: Gilliam
supervises the
setup of a
flashback to
Parnassus
younger days.
The rotating
dingles at left
create a sense
of motion on
the stationary
gondola.
Right: Tony
(Colin Farrell)
reflects upon
his latest
visage.
optimo cine lenses from 15mm to 290mm
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15mm 40mm
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that strikes you at the moment. Terry likes
giving that option to the audience; he
doesnt like dictating what has to be seen.
I dont seem to be able to stop
myself from putting on wider-angle
lenses, Gilliam admits. I look through the
camera and say, I want to see more. Its
almost as if Im trying to climb inside the
film. And I dont like showing things in
isolation I dont think of the world in
that way. Things are always in relation to
other things, and I think those relationships
are just as important as the thing itself.
Long after ACs set visit, Gilliam
looks back over the arduous production
and observes, with marked relief, that the
finished film is an utter miracle. Its actu-
ally the film we set out to make, but it
seems to have made a few quantum leaps
along the way. Its much more of a wild
freak show than we set out to do. One of
my huge regrets is that Ill never get to see
the film we would have made if Heath had
lived through the whole process, but what
we achieved is just wonderful.
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Gilliam (at
camera)
checks the
frame while
Ledger
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on the back
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ERRATA
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angenieux@tccus.com angenieux.com
A
decade in the making, James Camerons Avatar required
four years of production and some major advances in
cinema and 3-D technology in order to reach the screen.
Cameron spent much of the decade exploring the 3-D
format on the hi-def Imax documentaries Ghosts of the Abyss
(AC July 03) and Aliens of the Deep (AC March 05). On both
of those films, he partnered with Vince Pace of Pace HD, who
adapted two optical blocks from Sonys F950 CineAlta HD
cameras to create a 3-D camera with controllable interocular
distance and convergence.
With an eye on Avatar, Pace and Cameron refined their
3-D digital camera system considerably over the course of
their collaborations. A feature-based camera system needed to
be quieter and react more quickly to interocular and conver-
gence changes than our original system did, says Pace. The
original system was perfectly suited to Imax but a bit more
challenged for a feature, especially a James Cameron feature!
The result of their refinements is the Fusion 3-D
Camera System, which incorporates 11 channels of motion:
zoom, focus and iris for two lenses, independent convergence
between the two cameras, interocular control, and mirror
control to maintain the balance of the rig (especially for
Steadicam). The system can also be stripped down to facilitate
handheld work. We also devised a way to have more control
over the interocular distance on Avatar, some shots were
down to
1
3-inch interocular, and others were all the way out
to 2 inches, Pace adds. With all of those elements combined,
youve got an intense 3-D system.
The Fusion 3-D system can support a variety of
cameras. For Avatar, the production used three Sony models:
the F950, the HDC1500 (for 60-fps high-speed work) and,
toward the end of production, the F23. All of the cameras
Conquering
NewWorlds
Conquering
NewWorlds
Mauro Fiore,
ASC helps James
Cameron envision
Avatar, a 3-D
science-fiction
adventure that
combines high-
definition video
and motion
capture.
by
Jay Holben
|
www.theasc.com January 2010 33
have
2
3" HD chips and record images
onto HDCam-SR tape, but on Avatar,
they were also recording to Codex digi-
tal recorders capable of synced simulta-
neous playback, allowing the
filmmakers to preview 3-D scenes on
location. We used the traditional side-
by-side configuration in certain circum-
stances, but thats too unwieldy for
Steadicam work, so for that we created
a beam-splitter version that comprised
one horizontally oriented camera and,
above that, one perpendicularly oriented
camera, forming an inverted L, says
Pace. However, there was a change in
balance when the camera shifted
convergence or interocular distance, so
we created a servo mechanism with a
counterweight to keep the camera in
perfect balance. This Steadicam config-
uration also allowed us to get the inte-
rocular distance down to a third of an
inch. There was a tradeoff: we lost
2
3 of
a stop of light through the beam-split-
ters glass. And for really wide shots, we
needed a larger beam-splitter mirror.
With that rig, we were able to get as
wide as 4.5mm [the equivalent of 15mm
in 35mm], which I believe is unprece-
dented in 3-D. The oversized mirror
wasnt really conducive to handheld
work, so we kept it on a Technocrane P
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.
Ex-Marine Jake
Scully (Sam
Worthington,
opposite) goes
native after his
alien avatar is sent
to the distant
planet Pandora,
where he forges a
close bond with
Navi princess
Neytiri (Zoe
Saldana, above).
The pair ultimately
confront a human
invasion led by
Col. Quaritch
(Stephen Lang,
middle). Below:
Mauro Fiore, ASC
mans an HD
camera.
most of the time.
Avatar is set roughly 125 years in
the future. The story follows former
U.S. Marine Jake Scully (Sam
Worthington), a paraplegic who is
recruited to participate in the Avatar
Program on the distant planet Pandora,
where researchers have discovered a
mineral, Unobtainium, that could help
solve Earths energy crisis. Because
Pandoras atmosphere is lethal for
humans, scientists have devised a way to
link the consciousness of human
drivers to remotely controlled biologi-
cal bodies that combine human DNA
with that of Pandoras native race, the
Navi. Once linked to these avatars,
humans can completely control the alien
bodies and function in the planets toxic
atmosphere. Scullys mission is to infil-
trate the Navi, who have become an
obstacle to the Unobtainium-mining
operation. After Scully arrives on
Pandora, his life is saved by a Navi
princess, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and his
avatar is subsequently welcomed into
her clan. As their relationship deepens,
Scully develops a profound respect for
the Navi, and he eventually leads a
charge against his fellow soldiers in an
epic battle.
For the films live-action work,
Cameron teamed with Mauro Fiore,
Conquering New Worlds

The
paraplegic
Scully regains
the ability to
walk after his
consciousness
is transferred
into a Navi
avatar.
ASC, whose credits include The
Kingdom, Tears of the Sun and The Island
(AC Aug. 05). Jim saw The Island and
Tears of the Sun, and he was apparently
impressed with the way Id treated the
jungle and foliage scenes in both films,
says Fiore. They brought me in for a
three-hour interview, and [producer]
Jon Landau walked me through the
whole 3-D process, the motion-capture
images, the promos and trailers they
had done. The next day, I had a 30-
minute interview with Jim, and we hit it
off. They were already deep into
production on the motion-capture
stages in Playa del Rey, [Calif.,] and
they were preparing to shoot the live-
action footage in New Zealand.
The technology employed on
Avatar enabled Cameron to design the
films 3-D computer-generated envi-
ronments (created by Lightstorms in-
house design team) straight from his
imagination. By the time Fiore joined
the show, the director had been working
for 18 months on motion-capture
stages, shooting performances with
actors who would be transformed into
entirely CG characters. Glenn Derry,
Avatars virtual-production supervisor,
contributed a number of innovations
that helped Cameron achieve what he
wanted. With all of the locations pre-
built in Autodesk MotionBuilder and all
of the CG characters constructed, Derry
devised a system that would composite
the motion-capture information into
the CG world in real time. He explains,
With motion-capture work, the direc-
tor usually completes elaborate previs
shots and sequences, shoots the actors
on the motion-capture stage, and then
sends the footage off to post. Then,
visual-effects artists composite the CG
characters into the motion-capture
information, execute virtual camera
moves and send the footage back to the
director. But that approach just wasnt
going to work for Jim. He wanted to be
able to interact in real time with the CG
characters on the set, as though they
were living beings. He wanted to be able
to handhold the camera in his style and
get real coverage in this CG world.
Jim used two main tools to real-
ize his virtual cinematography, contin-
ues Derry. One was a handheld virtual
A virtual
diagram shows
a pair of
remote
research
stations that
were built in a
former
Mitsubishi
factory in New
Zealand. Gaffer
Chris Culliton
explains,
Because we
had these
exact virtual
models of the
warehouse and
the sets, we
were able to
design and test
the lighting
and
greenscreen
weeks before
we arrived in
Wellington. As
you can see, on
the real set we
decided to go
with 24-light
Dino softboxes
rather than
20Ks on the
rolling truss;
the ability to
change the
bulbs and the
diffusion
allowed us
more options
for a soft,
ambient push.
Between the
Dinos, we also
hung 10K beam
projectors to
create a hard,
warm sun
feeling where
needed.
camera, which was essentially a monitor
with video-game-style controls on it
whose position was tracked in space.
Using the virtual camera during the mo-
cap portion of the shoot, Jim could see
the actors who were wearing mo-cap
suits as the characters they were playing.
For example, by looking through the
virtual camera, hed see Neytiri, the 9-
foot-tall Navi, instead of Zoe Saldana.
Hed operate the virtual camera like a
regular camera, with the added benefit of
being able to scale his moves to lay down
virtual dolly tracks and so on. For
instance, if he wanted to do a crane shot,
hed say, Make me 20-to-1, and when
he held the camera 5 feet off the floor,
that would be a 100-foot-high crane.
The other tool was the
SimulCam, a live-action camera with
position reflectors that could be read by
mo-cap cameras, continues Derry. It
superimposed the CG world and char-
acters into the live-action photography
by tracking the position of the live-
action camera and creating a virtual
camera in the CG world in the same
place. The two images were composited
together live and sent to the monitors on
the set [as a low-resolution image]. For
example, when Cameron was shooting a
scene in a set involving an actor and a
CG Navi, if he tilted the camera down
to the actors feet, the viewfinder would
show not only the actors feet, but also
the Navis feet, the entire CG environ-
ment and the CG details outside the set,
such as action visible through windows.
All of this could be seen in real time
through the SimulCams viewfinder and
on live monitors on the set, allowing the
human actors to interact directly with
the CG characters and enabling
Cameron to frame up exactly what he
wanted.
With the SimulCam, you dont
have to imagine what will be composited
later youre actually seeing all of the
pre-recorded CG background anima-
tion, says Derry. So if you want to start
the shot by following a ship landing in
the background and then settle on your
actor in the frame, you can do that in real
time, as if its all happening in front of
Top and
middle: After
Scully tames
a flying
Banshee on
Pandora (top),
Neytiri shows
him how to
mount the
beast. Below:
Saldana takes
a ride on the
motion-
capture stage.

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you. On every take, the CG elements
are going to replay exactly as theyve
been designed, and you can shoot
however you want within that world.
Because the SimulCam becomes
a virtual camera in a virtual world, it can
be placed anywhere in space. Standing
more than 9' tall, the Navi are larger
than humans by a ratio of 1.67:1. If
Cameron wanted a shot to be at the
Navis eye level, he would ask the
system operator to make him 1.67:1,
which would reset Camerons height to
that level. In other words, he could
continue to handhold the camera on the
real stage floor while standing at a
height of 9' in the virtual world. Jim
used the SimulCam as a kind of virtual
viewfinder to direct the performances
and get the shots he wanted, and then,
in post, wed tweak things further, says
Derry. We could redo the art direction
Quaritch talks
to Scully
while testing
an Armored
Mobility
Platform suit.
This sequence
was shot in
the former
Mitsubishi
facility in
New Zealand,
where
Culliton and
key grip
Richard Mall
created the
illusion of a
100'-tall
space by
hanging
greenscreen
teasers of
different
lengths, which
hid the light
fixtures and
the real 22'
ceiling.

of the set by moving a tree, moving a
mountain, or adjusting the position of a
ship or the background players. For Jim,
its all about the frame; whats in the
frame tells the story.
Virtual camera operator Anthony
Arendt, who also operated the Fusion
cameras alongside Cameron in the L.A.
unit, recalls, After Jim was happy with
his takes from the SimulCam, they were
still far from ready to send to Weta. We
screened every shot in 3-D with him in
a theater nicknamed Wheels and
Stereo, and he gave us meticulous notes
on every aspect of the shots. He gave the
virtual artist notes on the overall scene
and all of its detail; he gave stereogra-
pher Chuck Comiski notes on the 3-D;
and he gave me specific notes on the
camera moves. Because the recorded
motion-capture images lack depth-of-
field, he also gave me detailed notes on
depth-of-field cues that would help
Weta down the line. We treated depth-
of-field as if we were shooting with one
of the 3-D Fusion cameras.
As the project progressed, we
figured out ways to give Jims
SimulCam shots the specific feel of
different moves: Steadicam, Techno-
crane, handheld and so on. We could do
that a number of different ways,
depending on how the shot started and
what Jim wanted to end up with. In the
theater, wed play back Jims SimulCam
shots through MotionBuilder and then

Military helicopters fire their missiles into Pandoras toxic atmosphere. The staggered
teasers strategy was also employed for these greenscreen shots.
re-operate the shots according to his
notes. He was very specific. For example,
he gave me a note that said he wanted a
shot from one of the Scorpion gunships
to feel like it was shot from a Tyler
mount, not a Spacecam. His attention to
detail was mindblowing!
After 18 months of motion
capture, Cameron brought in Fiore to
shoot live-action footage onstage at
Stone Street Studios in Wellington, New
Zealand. About 70 percent of the movie
is motion capture, and the rest is live-
action, says Fiore. Although the
motion-capture work was mostly
finished, the actual look of the film was
yet to be created. The footage we shot in
New Zealand ultimately defined the
overall style of the movie.
Because all of the sets were created
in MotionBuilder long before any physi-
cal construction began, Fiore was able to
take a virtual tour of the sets and plan his
approach. We spent a good month in
Los Angeles laying out the lighting plan
in the virtual sets, the cinematographer
recalls. We were able to position specific
fixtures and see exactly what it would do
in the environment. We had accurate
measurements of the real stages, so we
knew where we had to work around low
ceilings or support beams, for example,
and we could solve those problems well
before we ever set foot on the stages in
New Zealand. We also spent a great deal
of time blocking scenes on the virtual
sets. Basically, all of our tech scouts were
done virtually.
This process revealed a problem
that Fiore and his gaffer, Chris Culliton,
would confront in the Armor Bay set. A
massive armory on Pandora, this set
piece would stand 100' tall and hold
hundreds of Armored Mobility Platform
suits, large, robot-like devices that the
soldiers can control. In reality, the set was
constructed in a former Mitsubishi
factory in New Zealand, and only two
AMP suits were made, one functional
and one purely for set dressing. The ceil-
ings in the factory were just 22' high, so
the rest of the set had to be created digi-
tally. The challenge was that a lot of the
shots in the Armor Bay were looking up

Top: Scully
makes his way
through
Pandoras
jungle foliage
while trailed
by Dr. Grace
Augustine
(Sigourney
Weaver).
Middle:
Director James
Cameron
offers
Worthington
and Weaver a
demonstration
of proper
military
technique on
the motion-
capture stage.
Bottom:
Worthington
jumps a horse
also covered
with mo-cap
sensors.
at this great expanse of a 100'-tall loca-
tion that simply didnt exist we were
looking up into our lighting fixtures and
the ceiling, says Culliton. We had to
find a way to light from above yet still
have a greenscreen up there so the rest
of the set could be added later.
To solve the problem, Culliton
and key grip Richard Mall took a cue
from the theater world and hung green-
screen teasers of different lengths from
the ceiling. The teasers were hung in
between the rigging; the lights were
clear to illuminate the set, but from the
camera position, the teasers hid the
fixtures. We hung the teasers perpen-
dicular to the ceiling, covering roughly
150 feet of ceiling space, with about 6 to
10 feet of space between each teaser,
says Culliton. If you stood in the corner
and looked up, it appeared as a single
piece of greenscreen. On the camera
side, between the teasers, we hung Kino
Flos to light the green; wed normally
use green-spike tubes for greenscreen,
but because of the lights proximity to
the actors and the set, we went with
standard tungsten tubes. To light the
set, we hung 10Ks gelled with
1
2 CTB,
and we had about 50 10-degree Source
Four Lekos gelled with
1
4 CTB and
1
4
Hampshire Frost hanging between the
teasers. Those gave us little hits and
highlights throughout the set.
Greenscreen, in abundant supply
on the shoot, was often placed close to
actors and set pieces for particular
composite effects, which led to concerns
about green spill. Fortunately, while
touring the Weta Digital facility, Fiore
found a solution with the help of fellow
ASC member Alex Funke. We went
over to visit with Alex, who shoots the
miniatures for all of Wetas work, and he
showed us this 3M Scotchlite material,
the same highly reflective material thats
used in traffic signs and safety clothing.
He put it around the miniatures and lit
them with ultraviolet light, which
allowed him to pull really clean mattes
without corrupting the rest of the set.
Using standard black-light
fixtures, Fiore and his team began
attaching the Scotchlite material to
Shut-Eye
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43
specific aspects of a set or environment
that would need to be replaced in post.
Nearby, they would hide a small UV
black-light fixture, which would retro-
reflect the bright green from the
Scotchlite back to the camera without
affecting the area around it. In some
situations, we also used green UV paint
on various surfaces to achieve the same
results, notes Fiore. These areas were
small enough that we could light them
with small sources. A 12-inch or 24-
inch black-light tube was really all we
needed.
The UV technology was also
applied to the avatar booths, tight,
coffin-like enclosures that resemble
MRI equipment. After a soldier lies
down on a table, he is inserted into the
booth, where his consciousness is
projected into the body of his alien
avatar. Circling around the opening of
these machines is a spinning display of
colored liquid (a CG effect). Because
the CG area was very close to the actors
and other set components, Fiore used
the UV paint on the rim of the machine
to prevent spill and create a clean matte
for the CG work.
At the onset of principal photog-
raphy in New Zealand, a dailies trailer
incorporating two NEC NC800C digi-
tal projectors was set up so the filmmak-
ers could view each shot in 3-D as it was
completed. Playing back the recorded
footage via a synchronized feed from a
Codex digital recorder, Cameron and
Fiore could experience the 3-D effects
on location and refine them as needed,
shot-by-shot. We called it the pod,
Fiore recalls. In the beginning, we were
checking on nearly every shot to make
sure the lighting was solid and the
convergence and interocular were
correct. It was a very laborious way to
start working, but it was necessary. The
cameras themselves were a bit finicky in
the beginning, and sometimes getting
them to match up was a challenge. If
one was even slightly off in terms of
focus, the whole effect was ruined.
Avatar was Fiores first digital
feature he had shot a commercial on
HD and his first foray into 3-D.

Virtual-production supervisor Glenn Derry (top) aims the SimulCam, which allowed the filmmakers
to shoot live motion-capture footage and immediately see a low-resolution version of the CG
animation on a monitor (middle). Bottom: Cameron and Fiore review their work on set.
One of the things that was really tricky
for me was the
2
3-inch-chip 3-D
cameras extended depth-of-field, he
says. Its a lot like the depth-of-field
you get with 16mm. Its really difficult
to throw things out of focus and help
guide the audiences eye. Shallow
depth-of-field is an interesting dilemma
in 3-D, because you need to see the
depth to lend objects a dimensionality,
but if you have too much depth-of-field
and too much detail in the background,
your eye wanders all over the screen, and
youre not sure what to look at. I had to
find new ways to direct the audiences
eye to the right part of the frame, and
we accomplished that through lighting
and set dressing. We strove to minimize
the distractions in the background. I
learned that if I controlled the degree of
light falloff in the background, I could
help focus the viewers attention where
we wanted it. Instead of working with
circles-of-confusion, I had to create
depth-of-field through contrast and
lighting levels, which was a really fun
challenge.
Once we started shooting, we
quickly discovered that highlights in the
background were a problem, because
depending on the convergence of the
scene, two distinct images of that high-
light might diverge, creating a ghosting
effect that was very distracting, contin-
ues Fiore. Even a practical fluorescent
could cause a problem. I tried a few
experiments, like putting polarizing gel
on the highlight sources and a Pola on
the lens and then trying to dial them
out, but as soon as the camera moved,
the effect was gone. So I had to bring in
smoke, where I could, to bring down
the contrast.
Fiore also had to rethink his
approach to composition. Anytime
youre in a position where one lens is
obstructed by an object and the other
isnt say, when youre shooting over
someones shoulder or through a door-
way you get into a situation your eyes
cant comfortably handle in 3-D.
Whenever we got into that type of situ-
ation, we had to be very careful to
ensure both lenses were seeing both the
obstruction and the clear view.
Because so much of the films
world is virtual, Fiore was constantly
matching interactive lighting with
elements that would be comped into
the image in post. An example of this is
a plasma storm that takes place on
Pandora. What is a plasma storm? No
one knows its all inside Jims head!
Fiore exclaims with a laugh. We had to
figure out a way to create a fantastic
event that no one had ever seen before.
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45
One of Pandoras fearsome creatures, a Thanator, takes Scully by surprise.
In the scene, Scully is in a remote
science lab with Dr. Augustine
[Sigourney Weaver], and they see the
storm happening outside the windows.
We had to find a way to create the effect
of the storm on their faces. He turned
to the DL.2, a DMX-controlled LCD
projector that acts like an automated
light source. By utilizing a preset anom-
alous pattern in the DL.2 and project-
ing the image through Hampshire Frost
onto the actors faces, Fiore achieved a
unique look for the storms lighting
effects.
Interactive lighting was also
crucial for selling process shots inside
vehicles, such as the military helicopters
that swarm around Pandora. The heli-
copters were built on a gimbal system,
says Culliton. The gimbals were strong
and capable of some good movement,
but they only created about 15 degrees
of pitch and roll. Jims paramount
concern is realism, and helicopters move
a lot more than 15 degrees, especially on
military maneuvers. When they turn,
they turn very quickly. We had to find a
way to represent that speed and velocity
through light. Fiore explains, We put
a 4K HMI Par on the end of a 50-foot
Technocrane arm and used the arms
ability to telescope and sweep around to
get the feeling of movement in the heli-
copters. When the helicopter turned,
that sunlight would move through the
cockpit, throwing shadows from the
mullions onto the faces of the actors. By
exploiting the Technocranes arm, we
could quickly zip the light from one end
to the other and create the impression of
fast movement.
Because the light was positioned
on a remote head controlled by standard
camera wheels, Fiore asked his camera
operators to control the light. To assist

46
Augustine
examines
mission data
with Scully,
Spellman
(Joel Moore,
right) and
Chacon
(Michelle
Rodriguez,
background).
the operator, a small lipstick camera was
mounted to the Par and fed back to the
operators monitor, allowing him to
operate the lamp just like a camera; he
could aim the beam precisely where
Fiore wanted it to hit the helicopters.
For the climactic sequence, in
which a human army descends on
Pandora to attack the Navi, the stages at
Wellington werent large enough to hold
the construction crane required to drop
a mock helicopter full of soldiers.
Instead, the production moved outside
to the parking lot, setting the scene
against a 400'-wide-by-50'-high curved
greenscreen (built out of industrial ship-
ping containers faced with plywood and
painted chroma green). The sequence
takes place during the day, but Cameron
insisted it be shot night-for-day. At first
I thought he was insane, recalls Fiore.
But when I thought about it, I realized
it made a lot of sense. We had to be able
to completely control the light without
worrying about sun direction or cloud
coverage. As crazy as it might seem to
shoot an outdoor day scene at night, it
was the right decision.
Two 100-ton construction cranes
were positioned to hold a lighting truss
over the outdoor set. (A third crane
supported the helicopter.) We built a
60-by-40-foot truss structure complete
with grid and walkways, says Culliton.
We basically turned the outdoors into
a working greenbed! Above the truss,
we suspended a 100K SoftSun through
a large frame of Light Grid and Blue,
mimicking the ambience of the
Pandoran sky. We also hung a combina-
tion of 7K and 4K Xenons and 4K
HMI beam projectors to get shafts of
daylight through the vegetation, which
was added later.
This entire production was
extraordinary, the most extraordinary
experience of my career so far, says
Fiore. The challenge for me, and what
really got me excited about the film, was
to use the tools to tell the story in the
best way possible. It required a lot of
experimentation and a reinterpretation
of how I deal with composition and
lighting. There were times when it was
a miserable experience, but I know that
everything from here on out is going to
be a lot easier! If youre going to delve
into new technology and a new world,
Jim Cameron is the guy to do it with.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.78:1
High-Definition Video
Sony F950, HDC1500, F23;
SimulCam
Canon zoom lenses
47
A
story centered on the brutal murder of a 14-year old girl
wouldnt seem likely to yield a film for the whole family,
but that was exactly director Peter Jacksons intent with
The Lovely Bones, an adaptation of Alice Sebolds 2002
novel. I wanted to make a film my daughter could see, a film
with hopeful things to say about life after death, says
Jackson. A coming-of-age story with a significant twist, the
film is narrated by Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) after she is
murdered by a neighbor, George Harvey (Stanley Tucci).
Unable to accept her own death, Susie is caught in between,
in a kind of limbo between heaven and earth. The book is
written from Susies point-of-view, and she has a very strong,
powerful voice, says Jackson. Her journey is reclaiming her
life from the man who killed her. How she escapes the label
Susie Salmon, murder victim is the thrust of the film.
Susie watches over her family as they struggle to cope
with her death, which eventually shatters her parents
marriage. The poignancy of the film is that Susie stays 14
while her family grows older, says Jackson. Through the
Salmon family, we see the years pass. When Susie is killed, in
1973, her younger sister, Lindsey [Rose McIver], is 12, and by
the films conclusion, Lindsey is almost 20 and expecting a
baby.
The Lovely Bones is Jacksons fifth collaboration with
director of photography Andrew Lesnie, ASC, ACS, follow-
ing the Lord of the Rings trilogy (AC Dec. 01, Dec. 02 and
Watchful Spirit
Andrew Lesnie,
ASC, ACS
reteams with
Peter Jackson on
The Lovely
Bones, in which
a murdered teen
tracks her killer.
by
Simon Gray
|
Jan. 04) and King Kong (AC Dec. 05).
Apart from great skills and ideas, the
very best working relationships are
those based on trust and friendship,
notes the director. Andrew and I have
worked together enough that the basics
dont have to be discussed. What we
talk about is the new ideas we want to
bring into a particular project.
Principal photography was sched-
uled over three separate shoots. The
filmmakers first shot on location in
Pennsylvania from late summer 2007
through the following winter, taking
full advantage of the regions dramatic
change of seasons. The set for the inte-
rior of the Salmon house was also built
and shot during this stage of the
project. Lesnies key crew comprised
gaffer Jay Fortune, key grip George
Patsos, camera/Steadicam operator
Kyle Rudolph and 1st ACs Carlos
Guerra, Bobby Mancuso and Michael
Asa Leonard.
Norristown, Pennsylvania, in
1973 was a very particular pocket of
America with a very specific culture,
and I wanted to make sure we captured
that completely, says Jackson. One of
the main requirements for the
Pennsylvania locations was that they P
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.
Opposite:
Susie
(Saoirse
Ronan)
approaches a
lighthouse in
an in-
between
sequence
that leads to
a grisly
discovery.
This page,
top: Susie
and her
father, Jack
(Mark
Wahlberg),
bond in his
study.
Middle:
Andrew
Lesnie, ASC,
ACS lines up
a shot in the
set with
Peter Jackson
(foreground).
Bottom:
George
Harvey
(Stanley
Tucci), Susies
murderer, is
seldom
shown in full
view in the
film.
have geographical proximity, especially
the Salmons and Harveys homes.
Thats very important to the underly-
ing sense of unease, notes Jackson. Its
disturbing that Susies missing,
presumed murdered, and Susie and the
audience are the only ones who know
its the guy living four doors down. He
even has all the evidence of her murder,
including her body, in his house.
The cornfield where Susies
kidnapping and murder take place lies
between the safety of the school and
her house Harvey, almost within
plain sight, has dug a small room under
the cornfield. Susie leaves school late
one afternoon, and as she walks across
the field towards home, she drops one
of her books, and a note from a boy she
has arranged to meet falls out and
blows across the field. As she gives
chase, the camera reveals Harvey,
standing in the middle of the otherwise
empty field. He attempts to persuade
Susie to climb down into the under-
ground room, which he has furnished
with toys. Initially reluctant, she is
finally won over when Harvey taunts
her that the other kids will see it first.
Set in the late afternoon, the
scene was filmed over two days in a
variety of weather conditions. Lesnie
combined a cool ambience (Kodak
Vision2 200T 5217 with an 81EF filter
on the lens) with warm tungsten light-
ing in the background to provide sepa-
ration. From the cornfield, you can see
the school soccer field and some of the
neighborhood houses, he explains.
Jays crew rigged 10 unsnooted Mole
Pars on each of four poles surrounding
the soccer field, and we also had tung-
sten light a mix of Nine-light Maxis
and 2K and 5K Fresnels emanating
from the nearby houses.
Some time later, in a night scene,
Susie is shown escaping from Harveys
underground room and running across
the cornfield. (It is, in fact, her spirit
that has escaped.) Lesnie lit the scene
with 12K Pars on two 135' Condors,
with smaller HMIs and tungsten
sources backlighting the naturally
occurring mist. He recalls, Saoirse
Watchful Spirit
Top: Harvey
keeps an eye
on his prey.
Middle: Susie
comes face-
to-face with
Harvey on her
way home
from school.
Bottom:
Harvey
successfully
lures the girl
into his
underground
toy room.
came out of that hole at full pelt, and I
filmed her from the back of a quad-
bike, handholding the camera. It was a
rough ride over an area the size of
several football fields. Letting her run
in the semi-darkness or having her
backlit for sections of it was fine,
because the shadows are telling the
story as much as the highlights.
Lesnies main cameras were
Arricam Lites and Arri 435s, and he
regarded Angenieux Optimo zoom
lenses, particularly the T2.6 15-40mm,
as invaluable on the shoot. We shot
the majority of the film on that lens.
The 15mm end is nice and wide, and
the 40mm is close enough to get into a
head-and-shoulders frame size without
too much distortion. If I chose to ride
the zoom during a shot, we had that
option. (The production also carried
T2.6 17-80mm and 24-290mm
Angenieux Optimos, as well as a set of
Arri Ultra Primes.)
To capture scenes in a local
shopping mall, the production took
over the MacDade Mall in Holmes,
Pa., where only two shops were in use.
Knowing Jacksons predilection for
roaming with a freewheeling camera,
Lesnie established an unobtrusive
high-level ambience in the shopping
center using practicals and fake
skylights created by production
designer Naomi Shohan. I noticed
during the location scouts that some of
the malls had skylights providing stabs
of sunlight that livened everything up,
he recalls. This malls ceiling contained
halogen lamps with a green spike, and
the narrow ceiling space precluded
hanging lamps. Fortune and Shohan
devised what Lesnie describes as an
ingenious solution. He explains, We
selected sections down the length of the
mall from which to remove the ceiling
paneling. The art department then
built a circular structure made out of
solid polystyrene that was attached to
the metal section of the roof. We
crammed as many Image 80s and other
Kino Flos as we could into the circle.
An egg crate helped focus the light
while maintaining its softness. The
Top: Preparing a
night shoot in
the cornfield.
Middle: Harvey
checks on his
secret room.
Bottom (from
left): 1st AC
Colin Deane,
camera
operator
Cameron
McLean, Lesnie,
1st AC Dean
McCarroll and
stills
photographer
Pierre Vinet
capture Harvey
at home.
Stretched-
muslin ceilings
helped the
team reduce
lighting
technology in
house interiors.
malls halogen lights were switched off,
and the rest of the sources practicals
and household fluorescents were a
complete mish-mash of color tempera-
tures, with pools of what appeared to be
daylight coming through skylights,
says Lesnie. He kept lights off the floor,
using the ambience in the mall to allow
long Steadicam, handheld and crane
shots.
In keeping with the style of
houses in southeast Pennsylvania, the
Salmon and Harvey homes feature
small rooms and low ceilings. Peter
likes to choreograph scenes on the
move busy, chaotic family scenes
such as the kids getting ready for school
that roll from one room to the next,
notes Lesnie. In order to reduce the
amount of lighting technology in the
set, we put up stretched-muslin ceiling
pieces, which are light and look solid.
They allowed us to add more fill if
required and provided easy access for
other departments.
For daylight scenes in the
Salmon house, 5Ks and 10Ks were
hung on TransLite rails outside the set,
and at least one lamp was put in place
for each window. It was very easy to
slide the lamps into position, and
because all the light was coming from
outside, Peter could design complex
choreography inside, says Lesnie.
The set became energized, and every-
one got into a good working rhythm.
For night scenes, space lights hung
around the windows gave a soft blue
rim on the window ledges, while prac-
ticals and Jem balls illuminated the
interiors. We used Jem balls all the
time for ambient light or to replicate
the light from the practicals, says
Lesnie. Theyre great lights soft,
compact and dimmable.
In a particularly poignant scene,
Top: A gazebo
figures
prominently
in Susies in
between,
serving as a
motif for her
varying
emotional
states.
Bottom: The
filmmakers
prepare to
shoot on
location in
New Zealand.
Watchful Spirit
Susies father, Jack (Mark Wahlberg),
sees her ghost reflected in the window
of his study, where he and Susie had
spent hours putting model ships in
bottles. To replicate the light from the
candle Jack is holding, Lesnie used a
rod holding peanut globes that had
been dipped in orange ink. There
wasnt enough space between Mark and
the window to get a normal light in, he
explains. I could simply hold the wand
in the right position so the light
appeared to come from the candle.
Several of the bulbs were constantly on,
and others pulsated through a chaser.
After taking a break for
Christmas, the filmmakers resumed
production at Stone Street Studios in
Wellington, New Zealand, where they
shot interiors such as Harveys under-
ground room, his house, and some
additional scenes in the Salmon house.
Lesnies crew for this leg of the shoot
included gaffer David Brown, key grip
Dion Hartley, operator/Steadicam
operator Cameron McLean, A-camera
1st AC Colin Deane and B-camera 1st
AC Dean McCarroll. The third and
final part of the shoot, also shot in New
Zealand, involved Susies in-between
sequences, a mix of studio and location
work. For that material, the gaffer was
Danny Williams, the key grip was
Tony Keddy, and the camera crew
comprised McLean, Deane and B-
camera 1st AC Brenden Holster.
Harveys underground room is
not much bigger than a walk-in
closet, says Lesnie. To get a master of
the scene, I used a Libra head on a 15-
foot GF modular crane looking up as
Susie and Harvey come down the
ladder, then pulling back to see the
entire room. We shot the rest of the
scene with two handheld cameras.
The set is adorned with candles, which
Lesnie augmented with dyed peanut
bulbs hidden behind various ornaments
and wooden beams. The only other
light was a 2' 4-bank Kino Flo gelled
with
1
2 CTO, with barn doors and
blackwrap cutting spill. Ideally, I
would have kept the shadows towards
camera, but the space was prohibitive,
so I kept the Kino right on the floor,
says Lesnie.
Above: Jack
thinks he catches
a glimpse of his
missing daughter
in his study
window. Right:
(from left) Gaffer
Jay Fortune,
Lesnie and
Jackson sit in
what Lesnie calls
the only safe
place during an
expansive
Steadicam shot
around the
Salmon
household.
Watchful Spirit
A MEMBER OF THE ARRI RENTAL GROUP

Florida Los Angeles New Jersey New York North Carolina
www.arricsc.com
Cinematography by
Andrew Lesnie ACS, ASC
THE
BONES
Cameras & lenses
from
Although The Lovely Bones has
an overall tone of hope, Harvey is its
dark heart. The audience learns who
killed Susie very early on, says Jackson.
Theres no revealing the mystery, but
we do tease in the sense that we only
see Harveys face for the first time when
Susie does. In a flashback scene, when
Harvey initially meets the Salmon
family, we use various techniques to not
reveal him we see him in soft focus,
or hes obscured by foreground objects,
such as flowers. Inside his own house,
he is often lit almost in silhouette.
As the years go by, Susie discov-
ers she isnt Harveys only victim; he is
actually a serial killer. In one of her in-
between scenes, she is drawn toward a
lighthouse, and when she enters it, its
Harveys house, and she is bombarded
with imagery of the other victims.
Rather than undertaking a complicated
visual-effects sequence, Jackson wanted
the encounters to happen in real time,
with no cuts. I wanted to blend
Harveys house with the sites where
hed dumped the bodies: a swamp, a
ditch, underneath the floorboards, in an
old shack, and underneath a freeway,
says Jackson. I wanted to be able to
film Susie in Harveys kitchen, then pan
across and suddenly be in the swamp,
then pan back to be back in the
kitchen. It was an idea that was almost
impossible to explain the only way
to do it was to actually do it.
Naomi Shohan worked it all out
and built a fantastic set blending the
house with the exterior locations, he
continues. It was strangely simple:
theres a kitchen, and when the wall ran
out, the set became a concrete freeway
upright, then an old garbage heap with
a body in it. At one point, Susie walks
down the stairs and trips and falls, and
as she rolls out the bottom of the stairs,
she keeps on rolling down into a ditch
that was built for real. Lesnie notes,
Some of the transitions required light-
ing changes from a house interior to
whatever situation Susie found herself
in, in this case a ditch in the middle of
the night that was moonlit and very
dark.
Much of the spectacular imagery
in Susies in between is CGI created
by Weta Digital, but several elements
were live-action. That imagery
expresses Susies subconscious desires
and changes depending on her mood,
explains Lesnie. Strange as it may
sound, the object that links her in
between with the real world is a
gazebo. The idea for this specific visual
Above: One of
Jacks ships-in-
a-bottle takes
on surreal
dimensions in
Susies in
between.
Bottom:
Filming in a
barley field
that provided
elements for
another in-
between
sequence.
Watchful Spirit
motif came about when Lesnie and
Jackson were scouting locations in
Pennsylvania. We saw quite a few
gazebos on the corners, and we thought
it was a great vehicle for Susie to travel
to different places in and could itself
become a visual motif of her emotional
states, recalls Lesnie. Jackson adds,
She comes to realize that the gazebo
represents hope when shes killed,
she is about to have her first date, and
the boy was going to meet her at the
gazebo in the local shopping mall.
When she feels alone and afraid, the
gazebo is a refuge for her.
Jack comes to suspect Harvey for
his daughters murder, and in one scene,
he runs into the cornfield at night
because he thinks Harvey is destroying
evidence; Jack enters the field armed
with a baseball bat, only to run afoul of
a large teenager ( Jack Abel) with his
girlfriend. To capture the scene, the
filmmakers built a large section of the
cornfield onstage and used two
cameras, one on a Technocrane that
followed Wahlberg and rose to reveal
the entire field, and the other on a dolly
capturing Wahlberg in profile.
Because Susie wants to prevent Jack
from pursuing his course of action, we
needed to keep her presence close to
him without letting her leave the
gazebo, says Lesnie. Since were view-
ing events from Susies perspective, we
could change the shape of the gazebo
to allow her to run with her father, so
we physically reconfigured the gazebo
into a long deck. In order to externalize
her state of mind, we made the land-
scape quite violent; we had Dinos
simulating firelight and Lightning
Strikes units buried in the cornfield.
Early in her travels through her
in between, Susie meets Holly (Nikki
SooHoo), a teenager and fellow victim
who becomes a friend and roommate of
sorts. This sequence was shot in a forest
in Glenorchy, on New Zealands South
Island, in the regions 2008 winter. The
combination of short days and tall trees
presented Lesnie with some challenges.
The forest was so dark that I only had
enough light for an exposure after 10
a.m. he recalls. I pushed [Kodak
Vision2 500T] 5218 one stop and shot
57
To simulate Susie drifting down through a watery environment, Saoirse was lowered
slowly on a wire rig, with fans below taking out some of the gravity effect, says Lesnie.
We bounced HMI Pars into 10-by lam reflectors loosely tied and shaken to create a ripple
effect. We filmed this at 120 fps with two Arri 435s, one on a Scorpio head on a Giraffe
crane, which doubled the height of her fall by starting low and craning up to the ceiling,
and the other on a Steadicam, maintaining a slow-moving wide shot.
without any filtration. It got dark again
after 3:30 p.m., and I needed sky in the
background to keep the image alive, so
we put three 6K Pars on a large ridge-
line in the forest and camouflaged the
stands. When we werent doing shots
that included the ridgeline, I used those
three lamps to shoot down into back-
ground, adding a bit of smoke. If we
did see the ridgeline, I turned off two of
the Pars and had the other one point-
ing straight at us, as if it were the sun
giving a hot spot. At one point I had
the real sun on the horizon as well as
the Par while doing a long tracking
shot; we slid the Par sideways so wed
only have one source coming through
the forest at any one time! Rather than
using lights in the foreground, I simply
bounced ambient light onto the actors.
It looked more realistic that way.
Lesnie shot most of The Lovely
Bones in 4-perf Super 35mm, but
two digital cameras, a Red One and a
1080p C-mount Ikonix HD-RH1
(outputting to an HDCam-SR-1 deck
and viewed on an HD monitor), were
used for some material. Jackson used
the Red to capture some landscapes in
Pennsylvania and New Zealand for the
in-between sequences, and Lesnie
used the Ikonix (with 2.8mm, 4mm
and 8mm Fujinon lenses) to give
Harveys perspective a distinct visual
motif. Peter and I were looking for a
way to make Harveys world look a little
bizarre, says the cinematographer. For
example, we used the Ikonix to film
him from inside the dollhouses he
makes for a living, dramatically empha-
sizing the disparity of scale; having a
giant Harvey looming outside the doll-
house reinforces that he is master of his
domain. The Ikonix was also great for
showing, in a very specific way, things
that were important only to him, such
as cuttings in his scrapbooks and the
Watchful Spirit
Lesnie
prepares to
negotiate a
shopping mall
with key grip
George Patsos
(left) and
dolly grip
Louis Sabat.
58
combination lock on the safe holding
Susies body.
A little more fill light was
required for the Ikonixs slightly aggres-
sive contrast, and Lesnie was careful to
avoid clipping the highlights, which
were defocused during the 2K digital
intermediate to match the 35mm
footage. Of course, the 1080p signal
isnt as high-quality as 35mm, but the
dynamic, almost surreal shots have their
own look, he observes.
Jackson also used the Ikonix to
achieve an unusual shot early in the
film, when Susie and Jack succeed in
putting a model ship in a bottle. The
director wanted a shot from inside the
bottle as the ship slides through the
neck and the sails and masts are raised.
Lesnie put an OConnor head on a 3'
Slider Camera Movement System.
With a long lens rod on top of the
head, the camera cable was fed through
the tube, and the Ikonix was gaffer-
taped to the end of the rod. Peter, who
operated that setup, could then slide the
whole thing back and forth, tracking in
as well as panning, says Lesnie. Its
the equivalent of a dolly but on a 3-foot
slider.
The productions HD dailies
were graded by Sam Daley at
Technicolor New York and Jon Newell
at Park Road Post in New Zealand.
The final grade was done at Park Road
Post on Quantels Pablo by David
Hollingsworth and Florian Utsi
Martin. Throughout the shoot, Lesnie
e-mailed a detailed report on each days
filming, along with graded stills, to
Daley and Newell every evening. I told
them to grade the footage like they
were grading the finished film, he says.
Sometimes people stare at ungraded
images for months on end and become
so used to the film looking that way,
they think its how the final product
should look. I wanted to avoid that.
With our workflow, if an HD cut was
shown to the studio, they saw some-
thing much closer to the finished prod-
uct. This approach worked so well that
some of the looks Sam and Jon applied
to the dailies are in the final film.
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Super 35mm, 4K Digital Capture,
Arricam Lite, Arri 435, Red One,
Ikonix HD-RH1
Angenieux Optimo, Arri Ultra Prime,
Fujinon lenses
Kodak Vision2 500T 5218,
200T 5217
Urban
effect
filters
Create a Sodium effect
with tungsten or daylight
New LEE
642 Half Mustard Yellow
604 Full CT Eight Five
643 Quarter Mustard Yellow
650 Industry Sodium
651 HI Sodium
652 Urban Sodium
653 LO Sodium
www.leefilters.com
Tink LEE
59
S
herlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and Dr. John
Watson ( Jude Law) are riding inside a carriage. As they
exchange playful banter, we catch glimpses of London
circa 1890 outside the window. The scene cuts to a spec-
tacular wide shot from the London Bridge: in the background
is the giant Tower Bridge, under construction; on the Thames
below are cargo ships; and above is a dark, cloudy sky. The
image freezes, becoming painterly. Sitting at the back of the
digital-intermediate suite at Technicolor in London, Philippe
Rousselot, ASC, AFC muses, Its beautiful. Do we want to
mess it up? He turns to colorist Adam Inglis and adds, I
know a storm is coming, but after all, it is the middle of the
day. Inglis says, Perhaps a little lighter? The two men try a
few variations and settle on a slightly more sunlit version of the
image, with a more upbeat feeling.
Spending time with Rousselot and Inglis during the DI
process for Sherlock Holmes gives one a renewed appreciation
for the range of finesse and finessing involved in color-
timing a feature film. Some of their work involved matching
disparate shots to provide seamless transitions, but much time
was also spent refining the contrast and color of the image to
provide just the right mood. The visual precision required is
remarkable. Whereas traditional photochemistry involves a
unit of one printer light, Inglis explains, Our basic unit is a
half printer light, and occasionally a quarter printer light.
Rousselot notes, Its like
1
9 tones in music: once you train
your ear, you can hear them.
Directed by Guy Ritchie, Sherlock Holmes gives Arthur
Conan Doyles famous detective a stylish, contemporary twist.
Holmes is eccentric and athletic, and Watson, his roommate
and assistant, is dashing. Their chemistry is at the heart of the
film, and their exchanges are humorous, in particular when the
Super
Sleuth
Super
Sleuth
Philippe Rousselot,
ASC, AFC uses
creative deduction
to craft a striking
look for Guy
Ritchies Sherlock
Holmes.
by
Benjamin B
|
jealous Holmes repeatedly discourages
Watsons affection for his fiance, Mary
(Kelly Reilly). Holmes has an adversar-
ial relationship with his own love inter-
est, Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams).
The film is my interpretation of
Conan Doyles vision, says Ritchie.
Im not sure its more modern; its just a
different take. Weve upped things that
have been previously marginalized. For
instance, Conan Doyles Holmes was a
rather robust individual, an expert in
martial arts. We tried to be true to that
vision, so in a way this film might be
more authentic than previous produc-
tions.
The story follows Holmes efforts
to debunk the alleged supernatural feats
of arch-villain Lord Blackwood (Mark
Strong), who, after being hanged,
appears to come back from the dead to
terrorize London with acts of black
magic, ultimately endangering the
British government itself. Holmes
intricate, brilliant deductions are illus-
trated in stylish bursts of flashback
images. Hes an intellectual action hero,
[and] I think most people are not used
to action heroes being intellectual,
notes Ritchie. I dont see why we cant
have our cake and eat it, too!
This is what they call in the
business a four-quadrant movie, the U
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Opposite:
Sherlock Holmes
(Robert Downey
Jr.) searches for
clues, backed by
his loyal
sidekick, Watson
(Jude Law). This
page: The duo
brainstorm at
221B Baker
Street, a set
built in
Brooklyn.
Bottom:
Philippe
Rousselot, ASC,
AFC finds his
frame.
director adds with amusement. I didnt
know what that meant six months ago,
but the idea is you can take the family.
(A four-quadrant movie is one that
appeals to all demographics: young and
old, male and female.)
Rousselot, whose recent credits
include The Great Debaters (AC Jan. 08),
The Brave One, Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory (AC July 05) and Constantine
(AC April 05), was recommended to
Ritchie, and the director is enthusiastic,
to say the least, about Rousselots
contributions to the project. Philippe is
the fastest cinematographer Ive ever
worked with, and it was the least
amount of fuss Ive ever had with a
cameraman, he says. Hes a bit of a
legend, but hes so humble an egoless
individual. You wont get me to shut up
about the positive aspects of Philippe
Rousselot! Hes a gentleman, hes smart,
hes hard-working, hes fit, hes tenacious
and hes talented!
Rousselot recalls that one of the
questions he asked himself at the outset
of the production was: How do I make
Sherlock Holmes a Guy Ritchie film? I
didnt want it to look like a costume
drama. I didnt want it to look pretty. I
wanted it to be grungy. I wanted it to
look like RocknRolla or Snatch. He
initially decided to ground his approach
in realism, with the intent to re-create
the warm gas, oil and candlelight
sources of the late 19th century. He
laughs as he recalls how these precon-
ceived ideas fell by the wayside on the
first day of location shooting: You
should never shoot on the first day of
shooting! he jokes.
The location was a Freemason
temple where Blackwood takes over a
sect and demonstrates his powers with a
spectacular feat. The marble interior,
Rousselot recalls, was beautiful, but I
really struggled there, because every
time we placed a light it was reflected in
the marble. Its as if you had mirrors all
around. Actually, it would have been
easier with mirrors, because then we
could have lit the entire place with one
light! To complicate matters further,
Ritchie set up a long, complex
Steadicam shot, almost 360 degrees,
which was cut in the editing. So the only
thing we could do was put lights on the
floor or the ceiling. Rousselot ended up
using two helium balloons hovering
above and, when necessary, a few sources
on the ground.
I started out on this film wanting
warm, soft lighting with dark corners,
and contrast in the overall image, but
that was very difficult to achieve on this
sequence, and I was never happy with it,
says the cinematographer. When I
worked on it in the DI, I went the other
way; I made the image very cold. He
assesses the scenes final look as 180
degrees away from what I thought at
first. Its completely different, but I feel it
tells the story a lot better. Its darker,
more sinister. There are actually many
scenes in this film that ended up very
different from what I thought to do at
the beginning, I think for the best.
Whats paradoxical is that its the
method thats important, not the result
because the result escapes you, he
continues. You can control the light, the
exposure and the choice of film stock,
but you cant completely control every-
thing thats in front of the camera. Its an
ensemble. So the result is something you
discover when the film is finished. More
so than on any other film I have done,
the result in Sherlock Holmes is
Super Sleuth
Holmes
often finds
himself at
odds with
the alluring
Irene Adler
(Rachel
McAdams),
and keeps a
close eye on
Watsons
romantic
prospects.
Rousselot
notes that
he kept the
look of the
main
characters
faces a bit
on the cool
side: I
prefer a cold
skin tone to
a warm one.
I find it more
elegant and
also closer
to the period
in those
days, people
stayed out of
the sun.
completely different from what I imag-
ined, even on the day of shooting. It was
a day-by-day discovery.
The films images have a crisp,
sometimes edgy look, with soft lighting
and strong contrast; its a look far
removed from a traditional period piece.
The look was completed in the DI by
an occasional, slight softening of the
shadows and some highlights, creating a
subtle smear, and a grade that deepened
and sometimes gilded the blacks of an
already-contrasty image. Usually you
want detail in the blacks, but on this
picture we purposely lost detail, notes
Rousselot. It looks like those 19th-
century paintings that used bitumen.
Bitumen, he explains, was a black paint
made from coal tar that degraded over
time, eventually damaging the works of
Delacroix and others who had used the
material to create strong blacks in their
paintings.
The location work in Sherlock
Holmes was shot in Great Britain, and
the soundstage work was shot across the
Atlantic, on the Armory stages in
Brooklyn. There, the production built
the interiors of Holmes and Watsons
Baker Street flat and of the Tower
Bridge site where the third-act show-
down takes place. Because of the
productions tight schedule, Rousselot
worked with two gaffers, both longtime
collaborators: Chuck Finch in England
and Jack English in America. Finch
proudly claims to have been the one to
introduce Rousselot to Chinese lanterns
on Hope and Glory (1987). Obviously,
says Finch, hes come a long way with
them since then! Indeed, to many cine-
matographers, the moving Chinese
lantern is Rousselots signature source.
Finch recalls that the Sherlock
Holmes team was often rapidly moving
from one difficult English location to
another, and he uses a very British
expression to express the hectic pace:
Every day it was kick, bollock and
scramble. The most difficult thing was
coming in and out of places. It was a
challenge, and Philippe was the ideal
man for the job. Noting Rousselots
proclivity for soft light, he adds, Ninety
percent of our lighting was done with
Chinese lanterns. Other sources were
mostly bounced; sometimes it was a
simple 2K Blonde aimed at a poly-
styrene board. The crew would occa-
sionally add a frame of Lee 250 diffusion
to soften HMI China balls.
Finch reports that when an actor
moved across an interior, Rousselot
would often use a Fisher boom (normally
used for microphones) to move a
Chinese lantern with a 250-watt or 500-
watt tungsten bulb to provide a constant,
soft key above the actors face.
To thwart the dastardly Blackwood (Mark Strong, far left),
Holmes must also roll up his fists. Portions of this sequence
were shot in slow-motion with the Phantom HD camera.
Bottom: Director Guy Ritchie (wearing tie) preps the scene.
Holmes athleticism is high-
lighted in a spirited boxing match, a
sequence shot as a night interior in a
small hall. The scene is painted with
distinctive orange hues, motivated by an
onscreen grid of peanut bulbs wrapped
in muslin that mimics the luminous
wire meshes of the gas mantle lamps of
yore. Rousselots lighting was character-
istically simple: Rows of 500-watt
Chinese lanterns were in a skirted box
above the ring, supplemented by a simi-
lar arrangement above the bar on the
other side of the room, and a few soft
sources dotted the floor. Here, as on
most tungsten interiors, the lights were
on a dimmer board, allowing Rousselot
to quickly modulate the warm wash of
soft light.
A Phantom HD camera was
used to create bursts of slow-motion in
two fight sequences, one during the
boxing match and another at the very
beginning of the film. The Phantom
was ramped from 24 fps to 800 fps and
back, and Rousselot estimates that he
rated the camera at 100 ASA, although
its difficult to say because its not film.
He used two 20Ks bouncing off 12'x12'
Ultrabounce to provide the brief blasts
of light required. You cant use sources
Super Sleuth
Taking control
of a sinister
sect,
Blackwood
demonstrates
a mastery of
black magic.
Helium
balloons were
used to
provide
ambient
lighting in
some of the
shows larger
locations.
under 5K, as they will flicker at high
speeds, he notes. He adds that it was a
struggle to match the Phantom footage
with the film footage in the DI.
A restaurant scene in which
Holmes rudely confronts Watsons
fiance was shot on location in a tradi-
tional gentlemens club. Rousselot
placed a 650-watt Chinese lantern
between the seated actors and hung a
grid of China balls from first-floor
balustrades to light tables around them.
I like to hang a Chinese lantern
between the actors, he notes. If you get
close, you can get a T3.5-T4. I play with
some black wrap to get less light here or
there, or sometimes Ill put a small
diffusion frame on an arm underneath
the Chinese lantern to re-diffuse it.
Like most setups in Sherlock
Holmes, the restaurant scene was shot
with two cameras. Rousselot likes the
design of two criss-crossing cameras,
in this case one on Holmes and one on
Mary. When its possible, I love to do
that, because having both actors on
camera when theyre talking to each
other gives the scene an extraordinary
energy. The two cameras were usually
both wide or both tight. We did that
systematically. Most of the time youre
going to edit the wide with the wide,
and the tight with the tight. I will
change the lighting between the wide
and the tight shots, but lets put it
Top: Framestore
created digital
matte paintings
of the buildings
and sky to add
a 19th-century
feel to this
grand view of
Londons
Houses of
Parliament.
Middle and
bottom:
Watson signals
a warning
while
investigating a
slaughterhouse,
part of a
sequence shot
on location at
docks in
Liverpool.
this way, never in a way that would be
offensive. On the close-up, I might
lower the light to get more into the eyes.
I try to put the light as close to the edge
of frame as possible, so when were tight
I can lower it a bit.
He adds that the restaurant
confrontation was another scene that
we rescued from the tradition of oil
lamps and rendered colder in the DI
than what realism would have
mandated. He describes the grading
changes as adding a little blue in the
highlights to help the skin tone and
simultaneously diffusing the highlights
to get the skin to glow a little. Indeed,
a subtle but distinctive trait of the cine-
matography in Sherlock Holmes is
Rousselots treatment of the main char-
acters faces, which are somewhat cool.
I tried to get away from the Hollywood
orange skin tone, he explains. I prefer
a cold skin tone to a warm one. I find it
more elegant and also closer to the
period in those days, people stayed
out of the sun. So I avoided reds and
pinks.
One night-exterior sequence
involves Holmes and Watson arriving
on a ship and sneaking around docks to
investigate a slaughterhouse. Rousselot
Super Sleuth
The films climax
takes place on
the upper level
of the
unfinished
Tower Bridge, an
effect that was
realized with
the help of
effects artisis
at Double
Negative, who
combined CGI
with live-action
photography
shot on practical
sets. The
original plate
was shot on an
exterior set at
Leavesden
Studios, with
the actors filmed
walking against
a greenscreen
wall. The rest of
the shot,
including the
Thames River,
the Tower of
London, the sky,
the distant city,
the Tower
Bridge and even
the foreground
bridge railings,
are completely
CG.
K
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.
Film. No Compromise.
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remembers the location scout in
Liverpool well: We were standing there
in the drizzle, and we said, Okay, they
come from the river, they get to the little
lighthouse and they see the big factories
in the distance. So Im looking at a shot
that covers 180 degrees of bare land-
scape, with a huge factory building in
the distance, and its supposed to be
night. And there are bodies of water
that would require backlight. Lighting
that whole landscape was daunting,
involving maybe eight or nine genera-
tors, a huge amount of work and the
expense! So I turned to Guy and said, I
have good news and bad news. The bad
news is that I cant light this its too
vast. The good news is that we can do it
day-for-night.
Thank God, adds Rousselot,
for the DI and CGI! Because each
shot required CG elements to place the
scene in the 19th century, the cine-
matographer could rely on the visual-
effects team to modify the sky, which is
always the big challenge in day-for-
night photography. If you want to sell
the idea of night, you have to sell the
sky, he observes. On a moonlit night,
the sky is bright, even if its almost black.
Also, if you have practical lights, doing
day-for-night is very complicated,
because practicals cant overpower
daylight. Knowing a DI lay ahead,
Rousselot exposed the day-for-night
footage normally, although I certainly
didnt overexpose.
To create moonlight in the day-
for-night footage, he used backlight or
sidelight. For a Technocrane shot of
Holmes and Watson on the deck of the
boat, he used a 100K SoftSun on a
cherry picker to provide backlight
from the moon. He used backlighting
from the sun wherever possible and
pounded HMIs on a 12-by to create
backlight on a closer shot of Holmes
and Watson leaning against the light-
house wall.
Visual-effects supervisor Chas
Jarrett explains that to create the night
skyline, 2nd-unit cinematographer
Alan Stewart shot day-for-night back-
ground plates. Two Arri 435s were
mounted on a single Libra head and
shot across each other so we could stitch
the two shots together and pan and scan
within a 4:1 image, says Jarrett. 6K
HMI Pars were placed on the shore in
the middle of the frame to create reflec-
tions in the water. We painted out the
HMIs, added CG gas lamps, cloned the
reflections and moved them around,
says Jarrett.
Inglis describes the day-for-night
grading as a mixture of pale colors and
silvery darkness. He explains, First we
desaturated a lot, because at night you
dont see color, and then we added a
subtle cyan wash. Finally, we brought
the skies down, which was quite tricky
because they varied with each shot.
Harsh sunlight turns to day-for-night
very easily because it has a silvery qual-
ity. Philippe noted that night isnt really
blue; its gray.
While Rousselot was shooting in
the U.K., English was preparing the
lighting on the sets being built in
Brooklyn. I had one day of pre-light, so
I relied completely on Jack, a wonderful
gaffer who has been my collaborator for
20 years, says Rousselot. I use him
whenever I shoot in the States. He
spent a month on the sets for Sherlock
Holmes, prepping the Tower Bridge and
Baker Street sets.
The apartment on Baker Street is
the setting for several scenes, including
Holmes elaborate experiments to test
his theories about the case. The
windows look out on a TransLite back-
Super Sleuth
An elegant
gentlemens
club serves as
the setting
for a
confrontation
between
Holmes and
Watsons
fiance, a
sequence the
filmmakers
captured with
two cameras.
ing. The filmmakers chose to not
remove the ceiling of the set. The base
lighting involved space lights just
outside the windows that could be
lowered for different ambiences, a few
Nine-light Mini-Brutes through 216
diffusion to provide fill on the side
facing the windows, and occasional
Chinese lanterns on the floor.
Jarrett encourages the use of
TransLites over greenscreen because he
believes its more economical, and he
often had the visual-effects department
make the transparencies. A TransLite
was also used on a location, an office
overlooking the Thames from which
Holmes makes a daring escape, but
Jarrett notes that the TransLite had to
be replaced with a greenscreen for
several shots where the camera got close
to the window, because we werent sure
the TransLite would hold up with that
perspective.
Jarrett estimates there are 300
greenscreen shots in Sherlock Holmes,
many of them in the climactic sequence
that takes place on an upper level of the
Tower Bridge construction site. This
was shot on a set completely surrounded
by greenscreen walls and floor.
Rousselots team lit the set with a ceiling
grid of 300 space lights that were placed
on dimmers. I wasnt using all the space
lights at once, but I needed to be able to
have lighting variations, says Rousselot.
They were divided in rows and
columns so that I could balance the
greenscreen and the actors. Indeed,
minimizing green spill on the actors was
a major challenge. The filmmakers tried
to keep the set at least 20' from the
screen, which implied building it 20' off
the floor. Off-camera portions of the
screen were covered in black drapes.
The Tower Bridge sequence
begins with a Technocrane shot swoop-
ing around Irene as she runs. Jarrett
explains that CG wobble, weave and
rolling were added to the image to
Super Sleuth
70
Rousselot
(left) confers
with Ritchie
and an
unidentified
crewmember.
make it feel as if it was shot with a heli-
copter. The multiple ironies of creating
a virtual helicopter move to add realism
to a greenscreen set in a 19th-century
story are not lost on the filmmakers.
Inglis notes that the last days of a
DI are often fully occupied by a CGI-
laden final act. On a lot of films now,
you end up with a very short space of
time to grade what is sometimes the
hardest scene in the film: the big finale,
says the colorist. And its often the hard-
est thing because its mostly CGI. On
Sherlock Holmes, this process was greatly
simplified by the use of digital mattes;
for a few key scenes, effects facilities
Double Negative and Framestore sent
both the final image with the composite
effect and black-and-white mattes of the
separate elements. In the Tower Bridge
sequence, this meant an outline matte
for the stormy CG sky, a second matte
for the CG bridge, and a third (fore-
ground) matte of the actors silhouettes
cut out from the greenscreen. Inglis
could then use the mattes to, for exam-
ple, grade the foreground actors sepa-
rately from the CG sky or bridge.
After praising 2nd-unit cine-
matographers Stewart and Neal
Norton, camera operator Des Whelan,
and the other members of his crew,
Rousselot assesses the evolution of the
movies look: Guy wanted to make the
film realistic as opposed to stylized, but
he also wanted to give the film a recog-
nizable look, which in a way is a contra-
diction. But contradictions are always
interesting! This meant we had to try to
find something that was neither realistic
nor stylized, and I think we finally
found it at the end of the DI.
As a filmmaker, Im really trying
to get away from reality I want to
create an enhanced reality, affirms
Ritchie. Philippe and I talked about a
look, and, like all these things, you sort
of change things on the day. It sort of
naturally percolates. Lighting is not
necessarily an intellectual process. Its an
art form, and I suppose with any art,
you really have to put your intellect out
of the equation. I dont think it comes
from the mind; it comes from some-
where else, rather like music.
TECHNICAL SPECS
Super 1.85:1
Super 35mm and
Panaflex Millennium, XL; Arri 435;
Phantom HD
Panavision Primo lenses
Kodak Vision3 500T 5219,
Vision2 250D 5205
71
O
n The Black Stallion (1979), his first feature as a direc-
tor of photography, future ASC member Caleb
Deschanel had an opportunity to collaborate with a
director, Carroll Ballard, whose goal was the kind of
visually poetic feature cinematographers long to shoot. After
wrapping the project, however, Deschanel was far from
certain that an illustrious career awaited him. The produc-
tion was difficult; many of the Canadian crewmembers were
deeply skeptical of Ballards improvisational approach, and
the director and cinematographer had begun to have their
own doubts. Deschanel was reassured, however, when his
wife, actress Mary Jo Deschanel, saw the finished film. She
was blown away by it, he recalls, and she got so mad at
Carroll and me for having been so cautious, so negative. He
went on to win the Los Angeles Film Critics cinematogra-
phy prize and earn BSC and BAFTA award nominations for
his work on the film.
Deschanels cinematography career, which so far
TheRight Stuff
Caleb Deschanel, ASC is
honored with the Societys
Lifetime Achievement Award
amid his still-thriving career.
by Jon Silberg
|
TheRight Stuff
includes such memorable films as
Being There (1979), The Right Stuff
(1983), The Natural (1984), Fly Away
Home (1996), The Patriot (2000), The
Passion of the Christ (2004), National
Treasure (2004) and Ask the Dust
(2005), has indeed been impressive,
and its still going strong. Next month
he will accept the ASC Lifetime
Achievement Award, the latest honor
on a roster that includes an ASC
Award (for The Patriot), two other
ASC nominations (for The Passion of
the Christ and Fly Away Home), and
five Academy Award nominations (for
The Passion of the Christ, The Patriot,
Fly Away Home, The Natural and The
Right Stuff ).
A native of Philadelphia, Pa.,
Deschanel became interested in
photography as a boy after receiving a
Kodak Brownie Hawkeye as a gift. He
took up the hobby in high school,
shooting photos for the school news-
paper and yearbook, but when he
began considering colleges, he decided
to pursue a career in medicine. He
enrolled in Johns Hopkins University,
thinking he would become a doctor,
but his interest in the visual arts soon
took hold, and he began studying art
and photography. A meeting with New
York-based photographer George
Pickow led to an opportunity to work
as his assistant during summer breaks
from Hopkins. I knew I wanted to be
involved in photography, but at that
point I hadnt thought of it as a career,
says Deschanel.
Working in the darkroom and
watching Pickow shoot the eclectic
assignments that were typical of a
successful photographers shop in the
mid-1960s helped push Deschanel
closer to the idea of pursuing photog-
raphy as a profession. George did all
kinds of stuff catalogs, album
covers, magazine covers, recalls
Deschanel. Hed take six models and
some wigs out for a couple of days and
shoot a years covers for one of the
murder magazines that were popular at
the time. He could use each model at
least twice by changing her wig.
Deschanel spent his free time in New
Yorks revival houses, where he mainly
watched foreign films; the French New
Wave and Italian neo-realism made a
strong impression. Those films just
felt more accessible to me than the big
studio movies of that time, and I really
liked the themes and stories, he
recalls. They were much more natu-
ralistic. There was a certain casualness
to them, and it made me realize you
could actually do a movie like that
instead of Ben-Hur. The French film-
makers didnt have the budget for 20 P
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Opposite:
Caleb
Deschanel, ASC
(right) consults
with director
Philip Kaufman
during filming
of The Right
Stuff. This
page, top:
Kaufman and
Deschanel
flank
legendary pilot
Chuck Yeager
on a break
during the
shoot. Bottom:
Deschanel
takes to a
crane to
capture a shot
for the film.
arc lights to fill all the shadow areas.
Even now, the big studio films of the
1950s and 60s seem artificial to me.
After graduating from Hopkins
with a bachelors degree in liberal arts,
Deschanel decided to follow two
friends and fellow Hopkins grads,
Walter Murch and Matthew Robbins,
to the University of Southern
Californias School of Cinema and
Television. I wasnt going to USC
necessarily to study cinematography,
but I knew how to use a light meter, so
I got enlisted to shoot a lot of student
films in my first year. He also applied
his experience to documentary work
for companies such as Encyclopedia
Britannica and Churchill Films. After
completing the requirements for his
USC degree, in 1968, Deschanel
enrolled in the first class at the
American Film Institute along with
such aspiring filmmakers as David
Lynch and Terrence Malick. Today its
a real school with real classes, but at
that time it was more of a place to hang
out, he notes. There was a great
screening room, and we could drink
hot chocolate, watch films by
Hitchcock and John Ford, and trade
ideas.
He shot quite a few films at the
AFI, including Malicks first directorial
effort, the short film Lanton Mills. The
school agreed to grant him a small
stipend so he could intern on a profes-
sional movie set, but Deschanels
choice of cinematographer proved
unacceptable to the powers-that-be: he
wanted to observe New York cine-
matographer (and future ASC
member) Gordon Willis. At that
point, Willis had only two features to
his name, End of the Road and Loving,
and the AFI had never heard of him,
recalls Deschanel. But Id seen those
movies and decided that was the kind
of work I wanted to do, so I stuck to my
guns. He paid his own way to intern
with Willis on The People Next Door. I
observed every aspect of what Gordon
did on that film. I spent time with him
at the lab, and I could see how he
exposed film and where the printer
lights were. I would go around the set
and read all the lights, and then Gordy
would call out, 2.8, and Id think,
Wow, that seems gutsy! He talked to
me about his ideas on every aspect of
the job. I realized that hed set his expo-
sures so that nobody could print it any
differently than he wanted.
The important thing I learned
from him, though, was how important
The Right Stuff

Right: Deschanel
at work on Being
There, his first
collaboration
with director
Hal Ashby.
Below: The
cinematographer
glances up
during filming of
More American
Graffiti, his
second feature
credit.
it is to conceptualize the way youre
going to shoot a film, Deschanel
continues. Think about All The
Presidents Men. Its about the minutiae
that build and can bring down an
entire government, and the whole
visual approach contrasts the small
with the large, focusing on the finest
details and then widening out to a
broader perspective. If you conceptual-
ize something like that and stick to it,
the audience may never realize what
you have in mind specifically, but your
choices can still communicate it to
them on some subconscious level.
Willis remarks, As a cinematographer,
Ive tried to do what I thought was
appropriate for a given story, and I
think Caleb has always shared that
perspective. If Ive helped, in some
small way, to focus his thinking over
the years, I couldnt be happier. He
understands the elegance of simplicity,
and I think his visual choices have been
superb.
After shooting more short films
and documentaries, Deschanel wrote,
directed and shot Trains, a short film
that won the Silver Bear at the 1976
Berlin Film Festival. The next year,
Ballard, a neighbor and collaborator on
some documentary films, brought him
aboard The Black Stallion, Ballards first
feature. The production was filmed in
Sardinia and Canada. Back then, the
Toronto crew was used to TV produc-
tions and that fast mode of working
they were used to directors whod shoot
from a list of shots, says Deschanel.
Carroll hated call sheets. He wanted
to be able to change his mind and
shoot what he felt like shooting. Id say,
Guys, Carroll is a really wonderful
filmmaker, but they didnt believe it.
Ballard credits Deschanel for his
perseverance and ingenuity through-
out the shoot. Caleb has a tremendous
eye, and he can invent things right on
the spot, he says. For example, there
was a scene where the boy [Kelly
Reno] is supposed to get on the horse
thats standing in the water, and we just
couldnt get the horse in the water. We
decided to shoot the scene from under-
water, where you could just see hooves
and feet, so we could use a different
horse. Neither of us had ever done any
underwater photography, but Caleb got
this very old housing for the clair and
just did it with the most rudimentary
equipment imaginable. Really, some of
the neatest shots in the movie are
things I didnt even know he was
shooting.
Ballard recalls a particularly
rough day when he was sure the entire
project had become a mistake. I was
just wiped out, and I was sure the film
was a catastrophe, says the director.
Caleb and I were walking together,
trying to get back to the car, and we
came across this river that just seemed
to appear out of nowhere. We had to
get across the river to get to where we
were going, and Caleb said, Come on.
Get on my back and Ill carry you
across. Ill never forget it. He was kind
of like that the whole way through the
film.
Once completed, The Black
Stallion sat on the shelf for two years.
The suits at United Artists said it was
unreleasable, Ballard recalls. They
said, What is this, some kind of art
film for kids? It wasnt until 1979,
when Ballards friend Francis Ford
Coppola threw his support behind the
film, that it reached theaters and
achieved critical acclaim and box-office
success.
Deschanel was offered his
second feature by George Lucas, one of
his classmates at USC. Lucas was
producing More American Graffiti
(1979), a sequel to his phenomenally
successful American Graffiti, and he
and director Bill Norton wanted visuals
that were somewhat experimental:
16mm newsreel, anamorphic 35mm,
standard 35mm and multiple-screen
psychedelic imagery. (The films alter-
nate title is Purple Haze.) The 16mm
material really showed me what a great
medium film is, Deschanel notes. We
Deschanel
offers his
daughters,
Zooey (at
camera) and
Emily, a
glimpse of life
on the set
during filming
of The
Sluggers Wife.
blew it up to 35mm and it still looked
too good. We ended up making prints
of the 16mm material and then strik-
ing negatives from the prints to give it
more of the gritty, contrasty look we
wanted. The experience was valuable,
and I think a lot of the movie is cool,
but Im afraid it became a series of
mechanical devices that overtook the
story.
While seeking his next cine-
matography opportunity, Deschanel
was approached by Hal Ashby about
shooting Being There. The two had met
when Deschanel was still at USC,
planning a documentary about film
editors that never came to fruition;
Ashby had been a successful editor
before moving on to directing. Ashby
took a chance on Deschanel despite
the fact that neither of his two previous
features had opened yet. Being There,
which stars Peter Sellers as a simple-
minded gardener who is mistaken for a
brilliant political philosopher, is prob-
ably the film most influenced by my
relationship with Gordon Willis, says
Deschanel. The way I lit the film and
our use of tableau-style shots were all
influenced by my internship with
Gordy.
Soon thereafter, Deschanel
made his feature-directing debut with
The Escape Artist (1982), shot by
Stephen Burum, ASC. Deschanel then
shot two more films for Ashby, the
Rolling Stones concert film Lets Spend
the Night Together (1983) and the
comedy The Sluggers Wife (1985). The
Stones film offered him a chance to
coordinate multi-camera shooting at
an array of large arena concerts.
Deschanel recalls that Ashby was
dividing his time between the Stones
film and another project during prep,
and the cinematographer often found
himself planning coverage based on
the bands frustratingly impermanent
set list. The Stones werent always
delighted to find themselves on camera
while offstage, he adds. At one point,
Keith Richards spotted [Steadicam
inventor] Garrett Brown filming him
backstage and turned and shoved the
Steadicam really hard. Now, Garretts
6-foot-6, and he doesnt like people
shoving his Steadicam. I saw the
expression on Garretts face, and I
knew he would really like to pummel
Richards; I also knew that would not
be a good idea five minutes before the
show! I caught Garretts eye and shook
my head. Fortunately, he calmed down,
regrouped and followed the Stones out
onstage in front of 75,000 screaming
fans. Its an amazing shot.
Philip Kaufmans adaptation of
Tom Wolfes nonfiction bestseller The
Right Stuff (AC Nov. 83) offered
Deschanel the chance to try his hand
at an epic canvas. The movie tries to
get to what the right stuff means and
who has it, he says. There are two
perspectives: Chuck Yeagers and the
astronauts. Its two different eras but
the same idea. Yeager lives in a simpler
world, whereas the astronauts live in a
world of hype and bravado. But after
the astronauts get squeezed through
the hype and come out the other end,
they survive with the right stuff, too.
Asked about one of the films
most famous images the shot that
shows the astronauts walking down a
hallway Deschanel remarks, I
think those images only have meaning
within the larger context of the whole
film. You have to earn the right to say,
The Right Stuff

Top:
Deschanel
checks Robert
Redfords
light during
filming of The
Natural as the
actor chats
with director
Barry
Levinson.
Right:
Levinson and
Deschanel
line up a shot.
CALEB DESCHANEL, ASC
w w w . p a n a v i s i o n . c o m
Congratulations Caleb
on receiving the
AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CINEMATOGRAPHERS
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Caleb
Congratulations on this distinguished honor. Your creativity
and vision have inspired filmmakers throughout the world
Lucky for us your artistry will continue to excite us for years to come
,
.
!!!
This shot means this. And you
establish this with all the shots that
come before, the shots that show you
the everyday activities and humilia-
tions these guys had to go through to
reach the point where they become
heroic and extraordinary. I think thats
a major difference between still
photography, which is about the mean-
ing of an individual image, and cine-
matography. Kaufman recalls that the
famous hallway shot came together at
the last minute, when he and
Deschanel noticed the way the light
looked in the hallway of the office
space they were using for preproduc-
tion. It was a totally improvised shot
it was never scheduled, says the
director. I just said, Lets get the guys
into their suits and walk them down
the hall. It was probably a half-hour of
shooting time, but that shot ended up
being talked about and imitated. It
worked because Caleb and the actors
really shared an enthusiasm about
getting the film made.
One of the shoots other unex-
pected moments, Kaufman adds, was a
bit hairier. We were shooting a scene
with chimpanzees at USC, and one of
the chimps attacked Caleb as he was
setting up the camera. [The chimp
wrangler] got the chimp away from
Caleb, and he just went right back to
setting up the camera!
The Right Stuff went on to earn
eight Academy Award nominations,
including Deschanels first, and won
four statuettes. Deschanel notched his
second Oscar nomination for his next
feature, The Natural (AC April 85),
Barry Levinsons adaptation of Bernard
Malamuds novel about a mysteriously
gifted baseball player, Roy Hobbs
(Robert Redford). The story begins
with a bolt of lightning striking a tree
whose wood is then crafted into a base-
ball bat one of many mythic images
that gave Deschanel the cue to apply a
somewhat expressionistic approach to
his cinematography.
One of the films best-known
shots isolates Glenn Close, who plays
Hobbs first love, from the surrounding
crowd in the stands during a baseball
game. Deschanel used an ethereal
backlight to illuminate her gossamer
hat and blonde hair. We figured a nice
way to get Roy to notice her would be
to put some intense light on her,
Deschanel at
work on Carroll
Ballards Fly
Away Home, a
production that
employed
Ultralight aircraft
to get unique
perspectives of
its winged
subjects.
The Right Stuff

M E M B E R P O R T R A I T
Gil Hubbs, ASC
W W W . T H E A S C . C O M
TO SUBSCRIBE BY PHONE:
Call (800) 448-0145 (U.S. only)
(323) 969-4333 or visit the ASC Web site
stumbled into cinematography
when a friend asked me to help
shoot an industrial film. We
had a Bolex camera and three
lights, and I thought the process
was a lot more fun than working
as a waiter. After that, I bought an
Arriflex camera for $800 and
started shooting anything I could,
mostly working for free.
My education has come
from many people who have been
kind enough to share their
experiences. Ron Dexter, ASC
introduced me to American
Cinematographer, and it was as
if a magicians secrets had been
revealed. I realized the only limits
to my future would be the ones I
placed on myself. AC continues
to be an inspiration and a
constant reminder that every
creative accomplishment starts
with an idea.
Gil Hubbs, ASC
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recalls the cinematographer. [Co-
costume designer] Bernie Pollack came
up with the hat she wears its not
really even a hat, its just a white,
translucent ring. I decided to put a
185-amp Baby Arc in the stands above
Glenn and have some of the extras
stationed between her and the light.
On cue, one extra would move and the
light would get brighter, and then
someone else would move and it would
get even brighter. By the time all the
people walk away, her hat and hair are
exploding with light. She stands up,
and Roy sees her because the light
behind her has become almost blind-
ingly bright.
Deschanel joined the ASC in
September 1984 after being proposed
for membership by Burum, Haskell
Wexler and Conrad L. Hall. Shortly
thereafter, he decided to spend more
time closer to home and took nearly a
decade off from shooting. He started a
commercial-production company,
Dark Light Pictures, and took up
directing. During those years, he tack-
led commercials, the 1988 feature
Crusoe and some episodic television
(including three episodes of Twin
Peaks).
He returned to cinematography
with Andy Bergmans It Could Happen
to You (AC July 94) and then reteamed
with Ballard on Fly Away Home (AC
June 97), which tells the story of a girl
(Anna Paquin) who leads a family of
orphaned geese back to their home.
Ballards work methods remained
similar to those on their first collabora-
tion, but this time, the two men were
completely sure of their approach.
Fortunately, the kind of film we were
making allowed Carroll to work the
way he likes to work, Deschanel says.
The Right Stuff

Top: Deschanel
makes a
last-minute
adjustment to Bai
Lings crown for a
scene in Anna
and the King.
Right: The
cinematographer
prepares a
crane shot
on the show.
We had a little girl, her father [ Jeff
Daniels], some geese and the Ultralight
airplanes. It was like having a boy and a
horse Carroll could drastically alter
a lot of the scenes at will and still have
everything work out.
After shooting Forest Whitakers
Hope Floats (1998), Luis Mandokis
Message in a Bottle (1999) and Andy
Tennants Anna and the King (1999),
Deschanel signed onto Roland
Emmerichs The Patriot (AC June 01),
a Revolutionary War drama starring
Mel Gibson and Heath Ledger.
Roland was great to work with, says
Deschanel. He was used to working in
a grand scale and made it seem easy.
The project provided the rare opportu-
nity to shoot 65mm, which the film-
makers used for the battle scenes.
Deschanel notes, We never struck a
70mm print, but even when its
reduced to anamorphic 35mm, 65mm
gives you so much more detail. Its like
scanning film: even if youre releasing
in 2K, scanning at 4K or higher looks
better. He regards The Patriot as an
example of a particularly successful
collaboration with a production
designer, in this case Kirk Petrucelli.
Its always great to work with a
production designer who understands
what you need to be able to do with
lighting. Ive been lucky to work with a
lot of fine ones, and the house interiors
Kirk did on The Patriot were just so
well designed. We were able to get light
into all those spaces and still have them
look very natural while shooting from
any angle.
Deschanel then shot the 2003
features The Hunted (for William
Friedkin) and Timeline (for Richard
Donner). After wrapping Timeline,
Donner recommended Deschanel to
his friend Mel Gibson for The Passion
of the Christ (AC March 04). Deschanel
acknowledges that he didnt anticipate
the controversy Gibsons film would
generate. I read the script and saw a
story about someone who shoulders the
burden of others pain and absolves
them of responsibility, and that seemed
like an exciting premise to me, he says.
I was brought up as a Quaker, so
the story was new to me. Quakers
just sit around in excruciating silence
and hope peace will happen. The film-
makers approach emphasized a height-
ened realism. Mel wanted viewers to
feel as though they were there, and
using the Aramaic language certainly
contributed to that, says the cine-
matographer. I was inspired by the
work of some of the painters Id studied
in college. At Hopkins, a wonderful
teacher named Phoebe Stanton got me
excited about many Renaissance
painters. Mel is a big fan of Caravaggio,
and we thought The Passion was a great
chance to use that kind of imagery as
inspiration for the visuals.
Deschanels most recent cine-
matography credits are the family
drama My Sisters Keeper (2009) and the
fantasy film The Spiderwick Chronicles
(AC March 08). He has recently
returned to directing television on
occasion, including episodes of Law &
Order and an episode of Bones, which
stars his daughter Emily. His younger
daughter, Zooey, is also a successful
actress; she recently co-starred in (500)
Days of Summer. Deschanel says he and
his wife neither encouraged nor
discouraged their children to work in
the business. We impressed upon
them the idea that to do anything well,
you have to love it and work hard at it.
I think they understood that because
theyd grown up seeing the hard work
that goes into making movies. Theyre
both very talented, but they also know
talent is only part of the picture; theres
also luck and a lot of hard work and
dedication.
Kaufman observes that Des-
chanels daughters have a good role
model on all fronts. Talk about the
right stuff, he marvels. Caleb showed
that when we worked together. He was
totally committed and did whatever was
necessary to get the movie done.
The Right Stuff

Top: Deschanel
lines up an
overhead angle
for The Patriot.
Middle: The
cinematographer
checks the light
on his wife, Mary
Jo Deschanel, for
an interior scene
in the
Revolutionary
War drama.
Bottom:
Deschanel checks
Jim Caviezels
light during
filming of The
Passion of the
Christ.
Inside Technicolors New Hub
by Michael Goldman
An August story in the Los Angeles Times declared that
Technicolor had recently invested more than $200 million in its
production facilities at a time when much of Hollywood is scal-
ing back. The article referenced the debut of Technicolors new,
six-story headquarters in Hollywood and expansions at other Tech-
nicolor facilities around the world, and alluded to Technicolors goal
of keeping pace with the digital revolution that has reshaped the
entertainment industry.
The new building does retain some familiar components,
such as two floors dedicated to traditional telecine systems and the
companys servicing of tape-to-tape color-correction. The buildings
physical location, near the venerable Sunset-Gower Studios, is
where the film industry was born more than a century ago, and its
interior walls, adorned with vintage photos, spotlight Technicolors
rich Hollywood history.
Still, a tour of the facility makes it clear that the company
has embraced the industrys inexorable move toward digital
production and post workflows and is offering comprehensive
ways to manage those new paths. In truth, Technicolor was pursu-
ing that agenda long before it moved into its new headquarters,
which has become a foundation upon which the companys vari-
ous digital initiatives can finally come together. For the first time,
Technicolor is able to plug its Creative Bridge on-set service and
equipment-rental business, its DP Lights previsualization service, its
data-centric Fanfare dailies-mastering system, its HD Dailies on
Demand viewing system, and its evolving Web-based, remote
color-timing collaboration system for digital-intermediate work-
flows directly into a single, centralized, digital hub for clients in all
sectors, working in all formats and using a myriad of workflow
approaches.
The concept is that we should have a data-centric model,
but one that is agnostic, explains Marco Bario, vice president of
theatrical postproduction for the company. Once you build your
hub, it doesnt matter if the material was acquired on film or digi-
tally, or what your production workflow was. You can connect to
our systems and we can turn the material into data, perform the
services needed and make it all look good coming out the back end.
Id like to say this was all figured out exactly when we
drew up plans for the new building, but in some ways, the egg
came before the chicken, he continues. We wanted a new
headquarters, but we couldnt build it just for todays workflows.
This was an opportunity to start with a blank piece of paper and
integrate all these different solutions into one building. Weve
essentially built a pipeline that resembles a DI pipeline, except it
runs from the very start of the process to the very end.
In planning the new facility, Technicolor knew many of its
customers would continue acquiring on film while a growing
customer base would be capturing digitally. They would all need
different workflows, so the idea was to build something robust
enough to let them do whatever they want to on the front end,
knowing our pipeline here could support it, says Bario.
DP Lights, a front-end previs system designed to give cine-
matographers more color control throughout production and into
the DI process, now enables productions to emulate different film
stocks, grades and saturation levels during early testing, dailies,
the editorial process and so on, all without altering the original
data. Weve updated the system to export information in the
industry-standard ASC CDL format all along the chain, says Brian
Gaffney, vice president of Technicolor Creative Bridge. On set,
clients can shoot however they want and get a color-correction
system that has real-time, dynamic film emulation integrated into
it. They can switch back to their original picture to see the blacks
or the highlights with some true, meaningful value, and they can
plug all of their data into our pipe with increased options.
Through Creative Bridge, Bario says Technicolor is main-
taining a link between production and post, allowing filmmakers
to compare what they shoot with what they envision for their final
imagery, without having to continually develop proprietary meth-
ods for doing so. Central to that concept is that any and all data,
from any stage along the path, will be easily accessible at other
stages. Technicolor officials say the company has collaborated with
various vendors to incorporate almost all currently significant file
formats and software tools into the pipeline.
Post Focus
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Technicolors new Hollywood headquarters honors the companys
heritage while keeping pace with modern technology.
I
As data leaves the set and travels
through the Technicolor hub, the
companys Fanfare system plugs into the
process to offer a single, integrated pipeline
for handling both film-acquired and digi-
tally acquired dailies. By building a solution
for dailies coming from either acquisition
universe, Technicolor intends to avoid the
worst aspects of the process in both worlds;
for example, the company will no longer
need to re-scan and re-grade film-acquired
material that has already been telecined for
dailies.
Built upon Technicolors Bones
Dailies technology, Fanfare aims to bring
the color, deliverables and archiving
pipelines together in a single process. At
press time, Technicolor was finalizing the
elimination of videotape from the deliver-
ables process, meaning that after initial film
scans, the entire approach will be file-
based. In traditional telecine, we make
files from videotapes and send those to the
customer, but in this workflow, we have
files already, says Bario. We are well into
development on having the ability to take
the files this system generates, bake in color
and other important factors, and then
transport [that new file] as a deliverable.
This is more efficient and accurate and
saves a generation. Soon, we will have a
render farm and a management system
that will start making those files in the back-
ground while the colorist continues work-
ing. We expect to make the first two file
formats Avid DNX and MPEG-2 for stan-
dard-def DVDs by early 2010, and well
then refine the GUI [graphical user inter-
face] and add additional file formats.
During ACs visit, Technicolor
demonstrated the real-time, remote-collab-
oration capabilities of its DI arm, which was
recently used to color-correct the teaser for
Christopher Nolans Inception. The project
allowed cinematographer Wally Pfister, ASC
to work from Technicolors Soho facility,
collaborating in real time with colorist Chris
Wagley, who was using DaVinci Resolve
color-correction technology at Technicolors
new Hollywood headquarters. After the
grading session, 4K data was rendered out
at the new building and simultaneously
sent to Technicolors Pinewood laboratory in
London and answer-print facility in North
Hollywood for filmouts. Pfister calls the
experience a great convenience that did
not exist in the past, adding that he
found the session flawless, functioning
just as if we were all in the same room
together.
In keeping with the concept that
filmmakers should be able to utilize dailies
anywhere, at any time, Technicolor has
connected another tool to its hub: HD
Dailies on Demand. Essentially, that service
allows users to receive and view Fanfare
dailies on a standard computer through a
secure Web browser or, in a process
dubbed Technicolor Remote Grading, a
proprietary GUI. The approach revolves
around offering content creators an HD-
quality, high-encode bit rate playback
server capable of supporting DMX-
encoded content, played out any number
of ways, with that data then available to
the editorial team to maximize their ability
to take advantage of earlier work done on
those dailies. Clients get a cheaper
encode rate, because instead of making a
For international distribution
see www.chrosziel.com
Chrosziel GmbH | Klausnerring 6 | 85551 Heimstetten/Munich | Germany
Tel. +49 (0)89 9010 910 | Fax +49 (0)89 4470 861
E-mail: info@chrosziel.com | Internet: www.chrosziel.com
tape for their dailies system and another
for the DVDs, plus digitizing all their mate-
rial for their Avid, we make a single digiti-
zation pass for editorial, says Gaffney.
They can play content at full HD band-
width or as full 2K files [off Technicolors
Fanfare server], and they can receive dailies
[online] and drag them to their desktop
with the ability to scroll to any scene, reel
or take, or see all clips at once.
The colorist Sparkle, who in his
years at Technicolor has worked on both
the film and broadcast sides, raves about
having such collaborative tools and the
ability to plug into the larger data pipe for
his commercial and television work. He
calls Technicolors new hub and workflow
paradigm a global approach to the prob-
lem. People can be off somewhere work-
ing on their next project while theyre
finishing the current project with us. This
benefits us in broadcast, commercials and
features, all of which have access to the
same [infrastructure]. There was a time
when you came to us, did your [film] scans
for your feature, and then went to the
marketing department, where they did
their edit, and then you had to rescan your
material. Now, everything is readily avail-
able to all of us, anywhere.
HPA Honors Post Professionals
The Hollywood Post Alliance
recently presented its fourth annual HPA
Awards during a gala event at the Skirball
Cultural Center in Los Angeles. The HPA
Awards honor top post talent in features,
television and commercials. Judges this
year included ASC members Antonio
Calvache, David Darby, Fred Goodich,
Levie Isaacks, Denis Maloney, Bill Neil and
Yuri Neyman.
ASC President Michael Goi and
Daryn Okada, ASC presented the awards
for Outstanding Color Grading to ASC
associate member Stefan Sonnenfeld of
Company 3, for the Pepsi Pass commer-
cial; Siggy Ferstl of Company 3, for the
Yankee Stadium Tribute: Yogis Bronx TV
special; and ASC associate member Steven
J. Scott of EFilm, for the feature Julie &
Julia (AC Aug. 09). Other nominees in the
category were Valerie Junge of Big Sky
Editorial (American Express, Members
Moments); Alex Bickel of Outside Editor-
ial (Jaguar, XJ Launch Film); Sergio
Cremasco of Rumblefish (Four Single
Fathers); Tim Vincent of LaserPacific
(Mad Men, The Jet Set); Dave Cole of
LaserPacific (Pride and Glory); and Natasha
Leonnet of EFilm (Defiance).
Outstanding Editing awards were
presented to Chris Dickens, ACE, for Slum-
dog Millionaire; Lynne Willingham, ACE,
of Sony Pictures Entertainment, for Break-
ing Bad, ABQ; and Neil Gust of Outside
Editorial, for the Jaguar ad XF/XK.
Outstanding Compositing awards
went to Nelson Sepulveda, Ben OBrien,
Matthew Brumit and Robert Hoffmeister
of Industrial Light & Magic (Transformers:
Revenge of the Fallen); Thomas Tannen-
berger, Olcun Tan, Shane Cook and Josiah
Howison of Gradient Effects (Krupp, Eine
Deutsche Familie); and Colin Renshaw of
Animal Logic (Toyota, Ninja Kittens).
Outstanding Audio Post awards
were given to Chris Jenkins, Frank A.
Montano, Scott Hecker and Eric Norris of
Universal Studios Sound (Watchmen);
Thomas Harris, Michael Ferdie, Chris
Reeves, Mark Fleming and Tom Dahl of
Walt Disney Studio Post Production
Services (Fringe, Unleashed); and
Nathan Dubin of Margarita Mix Santa
Monica (Honda Civic, Grooves).
Three Engineering Excellence
awards were also presented. DVS Digital
Video Systems earned one for Clipster, a
complete hardware and software turnkey
finishing system capable of performing
uncompressed image processes at up to
4K resolution in real time. Signiant earned
an award for its Content Distribution
Management software, which was devel-
oped to centrally manage, secure, acceler-
ate and implement business-process
automation for digital media content.
Finally, S.two Corp. earned an award for
the OB-1 Uncompressed Digital Recorder,
which provides on-board flash-based
recording and interfaces to a complete
workflow system for post and archiving.
Sound designer Ben Burtt was
honored with the Charles S. Swartz Award
for Outstanding Contribution in the Field
of Post Production, and Paul Haggar was
honored with the HPA Lifetime Achieve-
ment Award.
These awards honor those who
make the art happen, the collaborative
partners throughout the creative process,
says HPA President Leon Silverman, an ASC
associate member. It is no small accom-
plishment to contribute to a vision and
make it reality.
Left: Fanfare Dailies offers a streamlined post
workflow. Below: Dan Lion, vice president of
Technicolor Creative Bridge, reviews footage in a
digital suite.
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How Digital SLRs Can Change the Way
We Make Movies
by Shane Hurlbut, ASC
I first saw the Canon EOS 5D Mark II digital SLR at an ASC
function at Samys Camera in Los Angeles, just prior to the
cameras commercial release. The 2-pound camera, which has a
36mm x 24mm 21-megapixel CMOS sensor, can shoot
1920x1080 video at 30 fps (recording to UDMA compact flash
cards), and its ASA range is adjustable from 50 to 25,600. I have
since shot a number of projects with the 5D, and Ive never been
so excited by the creative possibilities a camera offers cinematog-
raphers. With its incredibly small footprint, which enables a light-
ning-fast working method, this camera truly is a game-changer.
The lightbulb went on over my head when I considered
Canons long history in still photography. Motion-picture cine-
matography originated with still photography, but HD technology
has, by and large, been based on ENG videography, an awesome
achievement in documenting the news, but not the proper foun-
dation for theatrical features. What weve been missing is an HD
camera born out of the still-photography tradition, and thats
exactly what weve been handed with Canons 5D (and 7D, but Ill
get to that later).
The 5Ds small size and light weight make it infinitely versa-
tile and nimble, enabling you to move quickly and capture
perspectives that would be impossible with any other camera
system, and its sensor size provides what are essentially the depth-
of-field characteristics of VistaVision. It would be a good sensor in
any body, but the fact that it showed up in a 2
1
2-pound still
camera completely shifts the paradigm for moviemaking. You can
handhold the 5D in ways unthinkable with film cameras, and for
long periods without fatigue. Sure, you can still mount it on sticks,
dress it up with a mattebox and create a monster, but thats
moving in the wrong direction.
As an example, lets talk about car mounts. People have
said we can throw away the speed-rail rig a film camera requires
and use a small suction-cup rig for the 5D, but thats not going far
enough. With the 5D, we can even throw out the suction cups.
Shooting from a pickup truck, I can stand in the bed and reach
forward to handhold the camera right outside the driver-side
window, moving the camera in ways not possible with a rig while
getting closer than a pursuit arm could allow. Inside cars, too, you
can move the camera easily and capture perspectives no other
camera system can deliver.
My first chance to put the 5D through its paces came when
McG asked me to shoot a series of 10 three-minute Webisodes
that served as an interactive marketing campaign for Terminator
Salvation (AC June 09). We shot all 10 episodes in three days.
After that, I used the 5D to shoot the feature-length documentary
Cheech & Chongs Hey Watch This, directed by Christian Charles
and produced by the Weinstein Co., and which mixes footage
from the comedians live stage show (shot with Panasonic AJ-
HPX3700 VariCams) with a series of backstage vignettes (shot
with the 5D). I shot the entire feature in three days.
Ive also used the 5D to shoot a series of short recruitment
videos for the U.S. Navy. One features a Navy swimmer perform-
ing a water rescue; we follow him from the base, where he gets
the call, into the rescue chopper, out over the ocean and down
into the drink, where he rescues a downed pilot. We shot all of
that action including shots inside the helicopter, from one
helicopter to another, and underwater in three hours with
seven 5Ds.
Filmmakers Forum
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Left: Shane Hurlbut, ASC adjusts a Canon EOS 5D Mark II
digital SLR in a helmet-cam rig worn by a Navy SEAL. Above: A
handheld rig is used to follow the action indoors.
I
The way I work fast is to increase
the number of cameras Im carrying. On
The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday, the
feature Im shooting now for directors
Scott Waugh and Mike McCoy, we started
with seven 5Ds, and that wasnt enough.
When we went up to 15 cameras, we
became incredibly efficient. We keep a
handful of cameras stripped down and
ready for whatever unforeseeable mount-
ing situation the day might call for, and all
the rest are built in a different configura-
tion at the beginning of the day, so theres
always a camera ready to go for any situ-
ation. We never have to waste time
switching a camera from handheld mode
to helmet-cam mode, Steadicam mode or
whatever the situation requires. Carrying
so many cameras does not increase our
footprint, however. With the 5D, I go in
with a crew of five to nine, and all of the
cameras and their accessories fit in nine
Pelican cases.
Working like this requires an open
mind and a back-to-film-school approach
in which everyone is flexible enough to
tackle multiple jobs. The projects Ive
mentioned wouldnt have been possible
without my elite team, which includes my
longtime camera operators, Gary Hatfield
and Rudy Harbon, and camera assistants
Marc Margulies, Darin Necessary and
Mike Svitak. When we go out on a shoot,
I can give each of them his own camera,
and we can knock out a huge number of
setups in a very short time. Everyone has a
great sense of framing, composition and
light. Weve also come up with kits for
each camera that fit everything you need
to shoot a movie inside one Pelican case:
ND, memory cards, backup batteries,
chargers, etc.
Since the 5D is still new to
moviemaking, the way I use it is continu-
ally evolving. For example, we made the
Terminator Webisodes before Canon
released the free, downloadable firmware
upgrade for the 5D that enabled manual
adjustment of ASA, shutter speed and
f-stop; this marked a huge step forward in
making the camera production-friendly.
Prior to the firmware release, we used
Nikon lenses so we could at least set the
f-stop on the lens itself, but we then had
to trick the camera into its other
for years, and asked if he had a Panavision
lens adapter for a Canon still camera. It
turned out there were two sitting around
from the old Kodak/Panavision PreView
system. We were about to shoot aboard
an aircraft carrier, so I took the Panavision
adapter and mounted a Primo lens to the
5D for a Steadicam shot following two
SEALs all through the ship. When I looked
at the monitor, everything fell into place.
This little DSLR camera was giving me an
image that looked just like film.
Because of the 5Ds lightweight
plastic body, the Primos can torque the
mount in a way that makes the FIZ motor
pop off, so Guy McVicker and Dan Owens
at Panavision Hollywood have designed a
mounting bracket that essentially
supports the lens, with the camera hang-
ing off the back of the Primo. Im sure this
is a glimpse of the future of moviemaking,
when well literally mount a chip on the
back of a high-quality motion-picture
lens.
Because the 5Ds sensor is so huge,
we figured the widest Primo we could
actually put on the camera was the
settings by panning it around until it
settled on
1
50 shutter and 500 ASA. We
then locked the camera for the take, but
as soon as we cut, the settings were lost.
Even with manual control over the
exposure settings, the still lenses were
troublesome, most noticeably in terms of
focus pulling. In our early days of working
with the 5D, Gary Hatfield rigged a coffee
stir stick to the lens that he could adjust
using three notches he made on the side
of the camera corresponding to full (infin-
ity), half (2') and empty (8"). Though we
made it through with that configuration,
this system was especially dubious consid-
ering the cameras extremely shallow
depth-of-field.
We worked with Panavision Holly-
wood, first to put together some helmet-
cam rigs for the Terminator Webisodes,
and eventually to attach Panavisions FIZ
remote-focus units to the cameras. With
FIZ units on still lenses, we went into
production on The Only Easy Day Was
Yesterday, which follows real Navy SEALs
on training missions and incorporates that
footage into an overarching fictional
narrative. When we started shooting, we
applied a hybrid approach, using 5Ds to
capture unique and visceral angles to
underscore the action when the SEALs
were on missions, and using 35mm for the
expository scenes that would set the stage
for the action.
The 5Ds small footprint gives us
access to areas wed never get into if we
showed up with a 35mm package and a
50-person crew. Easy Day could not be
made with any other camera currently
available; theres no other way to capture,
in such high quality, the sense of immedi-
acy we want for the SEALs sequences. We
can give helmet-cam rigs to the soldiers to
get POV shots over the gun barrel and in
other action; we can be in the chopper
over the pilots shoulder; and we can be in
the river getting blasted with water. We
can put the audience right in the thick of
things and capture all of the action in real
time.
Keen to see where else we could
push this camera, I called Dan Donovan,
the senior marketing executive who has
been my contact at Panavision Hollywood
Hurlbut used
the camera to
follow Navy
SEALs on their
maneuvers for
the feature
The Only Easy
Day Was
Yesterday.
The camera
allowed a
wide variety
of angles to
be captured
quickly.
35mm. But then Canon released the EOS
7D, with an APS-C-sized (roughly 23mm x
15mm) 18-megapixel sensor that lets us
use the entire range without vignetting.
So instead of going back to still lenses for
the wide work, we can use Primos for
everything (unless, of course, were using
a helmet-cam rig). The only drawback is
that the 7Ds sensor doesnt seem as nice
in its handling of underexposure and
overexposure. But the 7D shoots in 24p,
so you dont have to worry about convert-
ing footage from 30 fps, and it also has
dual Digic 4 Imaging Processors and is
capable of shooting 60 fps.
The color space with both cameras
is incredibly narrow: 8-bit color depth in
video mode. And if you dont feed the
sensor enough light, the camera cycles
into lower bit depths to capture the
image, resulting in an even more fragile
image that stands almost no chance of
surviving color correction. (Consequently,
you have to constantly monitor the
cameras color temperature and ensure
that what youre shooting is as close as
possible to the desired final image.)
However, the camera gives us a leg up in
that it can shoot at an ASA well over 500,
and its better to increase the ASA, even
at the cost of increasing digital noise,
because it gives you a tighter workspace
with your color.
On Easy Day, Ive been shooting
night exteriors at 1,600 ASA, and to
smooth over the digital noise, I recently
shot a test on Kodak Vision3 500T 5219,
rolling a couple hundred feet on a gray
card. Technicolor processed the film and
transferred it so we could play with it digi-
tally, and with After Effects, we were able
to dial out the gray and extract only the
grain, which we then laid over the
footage from the 5D. The 5219 grain
pattern totally absorbed the digital noise.
The 7Ds smaller sensor results in
greater depth-of-field compared to the
5D, meaning you can shoot at a T2
instead of a T5.6 and still have a fighting
chance of keeping things in focus. On
both cameras, though, the latitude is
pretty extraordinary, and Ive learned that
you cant use a light meter. Ive been in
situations where my meter read T.7 and
we were exposing at a T4, and the subject
looked like he was keyed.
Shooting with still lenses, I was
seeing about 5 stops below key and
about 3 stops over. When we went to
the Primos, the latitude increased by
about 1 stops in both directions. After
seeing the Primo glass combined with the
5Ds sensor, weve decided to shoot the
remainder of Easy Day even the
sequences wed planned to shoot with
35mm with a combination of the 5D
and 7D.
Bandito Brothers is the Los Ange-
les-based production company Ive
worked with on all of these 5D projects. I
like to think of the company as a one-stop
shop from prep through post, and its
modus operandi is in keeping with the
small-footprint mentality the 5D encour-
ages. Everyone wears multiple hats on a
Bandito production, and the companys
facility gathers everything you need to
make a movie under one roof: three edit-
ing bays, an Inferno bay, a screening
theater, a full color-timing suite, a cafete-
ria, a conference room, and production
offices set up in army tents.
Weve recently been working on
what we call the sizzle reel for The Only
Easy Day Was Yesterday, an extended
trailer that the producers can show to
potential distributors. Honestly, every time
I watch it, I well up because of what weve
been through to get to this point. The 5D
and 7D are at the cutting edge, and
theyve thrown me plenty of curveballs,
but Im convinced that riding this wave
will take us into whatever the future para-
digm of moviemaking might be. Falling
off the board is part of the ride. We get
back up and keep going. We embrace the
cameras quirks, and we push the cameras
to be better, even as they push us.
To see footage shot with the
Canon EOS 5D Mark II, visit www.hurlbut
visuals.com.
Top and
middle:
Working with
Panavision
Hollywood,
Hurlbut has
taken to
mounting
Primo primes
and zooms on
the camera.
Im sure this
is a glimpse
of the
future of
moviemaking,
when well
literally
mount a chip
on the back
of a high-
quality
motion-
picture lens,
he writes.
Bottom:
Hurlbut and
camera
assistant Mike
Svitak (left)
set up a shot
for a U.S.
Navy
recruitment
video.
JOIN HOLLYWOODS
PROFESSIONALS IN
2010
June 4-5, Expo and Premier Seminars
June 3-5, The Film Series & Competition
June 6, Master Class Seminars
The Studios at Paramount, Hollywood, CA
phone: 310.472.0809
fax: 310.471.8973
email: info@cinegearexpo.com
www.cinegearexpo.com
LiteGear Offers LiteRibbons
LiteGear Inc., a specialty lighting
company owned and operated by
on-set lighting technicians, has
announced the official availability of
its LED LiteRibbon system. The system
consists of a flexible LED ribbon,
flicker-free dimmers, and a complete
line of power supplies and distribu-
tion. LiteRibbon is available in Warm
White, Cool White, Diffused Silicone,
RGB and other color configurations.
Able to be cut into custom lengths
in 1" increments, LiteRibbon is complemented by LiteDimmer, a
high-frequency, high-capacity LED dimmer capable of flicker-free
operation regardless of camera speed, shutter angle or ramping.
LiteRibbon strips are easily powered by 12 volts of DC power from
supplies, batteries or automobile adapters. The system can also be
made waterproof.
Al DeMayo, LiteGears head of engineering, says, Techni-
cians like the ability to easily create custom light fixtures that meet
their unique needs. On the fly, guys can whip up something that
fits into a handheld prop, spaceship or even the [illuminated]
power source for a certain iron superhero. LiteRibbon has been
tested and proven on such features as Star Trek (AC June 09) and
the upcoming Iron Man 2 as well as such series as Bones, The
Mentalist and Southland.
For more information, visit www.litegear.com.
Dadco Shines with 24K HMIs
Dadco, manufacturer of the Sunray line of HMI lighting
fixtures, has introduced two 24K HMIs, the Challenger SunArc and
the G4. Both fixtures are designed with a host of advanced
features, including a cost-effective convertibility allowing each unit
to operate as a 12, 18 or 24K light.
Boasting 30-percent more light output than
18K discharge lights, both the Challenger
and G4 are ETL listed to UL standards and
built by highly trained IATSE Local
Union craftsmen.
In addition to the Sunray prod-
uct line, Dadco manufactures a line of
specialty lighting fixtures and AC
power-distribution systems. For more
information, visit www.dadcopowerand
lights.com.
LEDZ Expands Brute Line
LEDZ has introduced the Brute3,
a versatile, lightweight, 5500K LED
fixture. The Brute3 boasts a circular
beam with a long throw, and the lights
various accessories including an
onboard battery make it useful in a
variety of situations.
The Brute3 is available in differ-
ent kit options, including a car kit with
two head units and an extended battery
that clips to a belt or c-stand; the
extended battery will run the fixture for up to 4 hours. Addition-
ally, LEDZ provides the following photometrics for the Brute3:
Distance Footcandles Diameter
2' 400 1.5'
4' 90 2'
6' 48 3'
8' 30 4'
10' 22 5'
All LEDZ products are available through worldwide
distributor Hollywood Rentals. For more information, visit
www.led-z.com.
Panasonic Updates P2 Mobile
Panasonic has introduced the solid-state AJ-HPM200 P2
Mobile, a P2 HD mobile recorder/player.
The HPM200 offers all of the popular features found in its
predecessor, the AJ-HPM110, and adds such functionality as
enhanced editing with separate source and record windows, play-
back from external disk drives,
AVCHD compatibility (with the AJ-
YCX250G option card), up-
conversion of live video inputs in
real time, FTP and Giga-bit Ether-
net interfaces for expanded
network connectivity and 24p
time code input for production
applications, including use as a
source for a dailies process.
With DVCPro HD and AVC-
Intra standard compatibility,
AVCHD optional compatibility and
expanded input/output connec-
tions, the HPM200 P2 Mobile is a
New Products & Services
SUBMISSION INFORMATION
Please e-mail New Products/Services releases to:
newproducts@ascmag.com and include full contact
information and product images. Photos must be
TIFF or JPEG files of at least 300dpi.
comprehensive and versatile master-quality
HD field recorder that can be used with a
wide array of camera systems. The field
recorder offers 10-bit independent-frame
4:2:2 quality recording in a variety of high-
definition formats and frame rates, includ-
ing 1080p (native), 1080i and 720p, as
well as standard-definition DVCPro50/25
and DV.
With enhanced editing functions
and network capabilities, the HPM200 has
increased appeal for use in production
facilities, news, sports and live-event stag-
ing applications. The HPM200s split-
Europe's leading training course on digital cinema and HDTV
Early bird rates until 3! January 20!0
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?==Film & Television University "Konrad WolI"
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Camtrol Opens Operating
Possibilities
The Camtrol stabilizing platform for
video and DSLR cameras is now available.
Following a no rules, only tools philoso-
phy, Camtrol offers users balance, support
and freedom while enabling dynamic
shooting possibilities.
Features of the Camtrol include a
LANC remote receiver, true-feel Action
Control Grip (ACG), fully articulated joint
system, channeled
mounting plate and
retractable landing
gear. The ACG
provides for natural
hand positioning and
control, and the
channeled mounting
platform helps keep
the system centered,
level and easy to
handle. The platform
also adds critical
weight for stability, and its cushioned
design prevents camera slippage and
unwanted vibration.
Camtrols three 360-degree rotating
ball joints enable both low angle and over-
head shots, and the four swing-out legs
give the user a quick and safe way to reset
the Camtrol in different positions. A vertical
stabilizing bar properly adjusts the systems
center of gravity and also enables two-
handed control. Additionally, the sturdy T-6
aluminum body offers protection and
support in case the camera is dropped.
The Camtrol has a recommended
price of $399.99. For more information,
visit www.camtrol.com.
screen function displays both the source
and recorded images simultaneously for
easier editing, and other new features
enable clip exchange, multiple clip selec-
tion, undo/redo last action, auto record
and text memo. The P2 Mobile also offers
two-channel voiceover recording and real-
time audio memory during playback.
In addition to the connections
offered on the HPM110 including HD-
SDI input/output, analog com-
ponent/composite and audio, IEEE 1394
and USB 2.0 the HPM200 adds compat-
ible AES Digital audio inputs and outputs
as well as high-speed eSATA and Giga-bit
Ethernet. The P2 Mobile ensures high-
quality recording with 10-bit 4:2:2 AVC-
Intra or compatibility with existing DVCPro
editors when connected to any HD-SDI-
equipped camera, camcorder, deck or
device; professionals can then randomly
access and view content selected via
thumbnail clips on the units built-in 9"
LCD monitor.
Additional features include RS-
422A for remote-control operation, a
range of recording functions (including
loop record), eight 16-bit digital audio
channels, built-in waveform and
vectorscope, broadcast-level editing
controls with a jog/shuttle dial (100x
forward/reverse speed) and audio faders,
an SD card slot and assignable user files.
The P2 Mobile boasts a durable, compact,
laptop-style design with a magnesium die-
cast frame for easy transport. It operates
on either AC or DC power and is backed
by a five-year limited warranty program.
For more information, visit
www.panasonic.com/broadcast.
Atlas Supports, Stabilizes
Cameras
The Atlas Camera Support and
Stabilization System uses patented over-
the-shoulder support combining a
comfortable harness with a flexible fiber-
glass rod to hold a camera. This design
takes the cameras weight off the opera-
tors shoulders and arms and distributes it
to the operators core, enabling longer
periods of shooting without fatigue.
A Velcro strap with an attached D-
ring wraps around the cameras handle
and allows the camera to be connected to
the fiberglass rod using an adjustable
webbing strap. The rod, which is held in
place with a tunnel casing on the back of
the operators harness, then absorbs vibra-
tions before they reach the camera,
making for smooth shots even when
moving. The regular-duty Atlas can accom-
modate cameras from 4 to 14 pounds,
while a heavy-duty option works with
cameras up to 30 pounds.
www.atlascamerasupport.com.
Key Grip Systems
Unveils Monotracks
KGS Development, a subsidiary of
Key Grip Systems Belgium, has introduced
the Monotracks system.
Designed for ease of use, the
Monotracks are precision machined from
carefully chosen aluminum alloys. The
lightweight, rigid, symmetrical tracks boast
a sleeper assembly allowing for fast setup
in a variety of shooting situations. The
Monotracks high-resistance stainless-steel
connectors and pre-stressed mechanical
assembly contribute to the track systems
precision, while plastic profiles guarantee
the tracks are protected during transport.
www.kgsd.eu.
Sony Pictures Opens Colorworks
Sony Pictures Entertainment has
opened Colorworks, a full-service digital-
intermediate facility located on its historic
lot in Culver City. The 14,000-square-foot
center, housed in Stage 6, features state-
of-the-art technology offering real-time 4K
processing in a full digital workflow.
The facility can scan and manage
film in 4K to ensure the highest quality
archival and distribution product for new
and restored motion-picture projects. To
manage the extraordinary size of digitized
motion pictures, the DI center houses
nearly 3.5 petabytes of computer storage.
In fact, Colorworks digital-file-based work-
flow leads the studios development of a
digital production and distribution infra-
structure called the Digital Backbone.
Digital intermediate and mastering
are a lesser known but critical piece of the
filmmaking puzzle, says Gary Martin,
president of Production Administration and
Sony Pictures Studio Operations. We are
thrilled to have our own center here on the
lot, but more than that, the facility and the
personnel are truly top of the line. The
Colorworks team includes colorists John
Persichetti, Steve Bowen and Trent John-
son; projects that have already gone
through the Colorworks pipeline include
Michael Jacksons This is It, Zombieland and
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.
www.sonypictures.com.
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CLASSIFIED AD RATES
All classifications are $4.50 per word. Words set in bold face or all
capitals are $5.00 per word. First word of ad and advertisers name
can be set in capitals without extra charge. No agency commission or
discounts on clas si fied advertising.PAYMENT MUST AC COM PA NY ORDER.
VISA, Mastercard, AmEx and Discover card are ac cept ed. Send ad to
Clas si fied Ad ver tis ing, Amer i can Cin e ma tog ra pher, P.O. Box
2230, Hol ly wood, CA 90078. Or FAX (323) 876-4973. Dead line for
payment and copy must be in the office by 15th of second month
preceding pub li ca tion. Sub ject mat ter is lim it ed to items and ser vic es
per tain ing to film mak ing and vid eo pro duc tion. Words used are sub ject
to mag a zine style ab bre vi a tion. Min i mum amount per ad: $45
CLASSIFIEDS ON-LINE
Ads may now also be placed in the on-line Classifieds at the ASC
web site.
Internet ads are seen around the world at the same great rate
as in print, or for slightly more you can appear both online and in
print.
For more information please visit
www.theasc.com/advertiser, or e-mail: classifieds@theasc.com.
Classifieds
EQUIPMENT FOR SALE
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Advertisers Index
16x9, Inc. 98
AC 4, 79
AFI 87
Aja Video Systems, Inc. 17
Alan Gordon Enterprises
99
Apparition 5
Arri 41
Arri CSC 55
AZGrip 98
Backstage Equipment, Inc.
95
Band Pro Film & Digital 9
Barger-Lite 6
Birns & Sawyer 98
Burrell Enterprises 98
Camera Image 97
Canon 83
Cavision Enterprises 29
Chapman/Leonard Studio
Equipment Inc. 13
Chapman University 19
Chrosziel Filmtechnik 85
Cine Gear Expo 93
Cinematography
Electronics 89
Cinekinetic 98
Cinerover 98
Clairmont Film & Digital 25
Convergent Design 46
Cooke Optics 6
Deluxe 39
Eastman Kodak 11, 67, C4
Equipment & Film Design 27
Evidence Productions 98
Film Gear 43
Filmtools 91
Filter Gallery, The 98
Focus Features C2-1
FTC West 98
Fuji Motion Picture 53
Glidecam Industries 21
High Def Expo 103
Hollywood Post Alliance 89
Hochschule 95
Innoventive Software 91
K 5600, Inc. 71
Kino Flo 47
Laffoux Solutions, Inc. 98
Lee Filters 59
LitePanels 2
Movie Tech AG 99
MP&E Mayo Productions 99
MSM Design 91
NAB 101
Nevada Film Commission 81
New York Film Academy 69
New York University 23
Oppenheimer Camera Prod.
98
P+S Technik 45,
Panasonic Broadcast 37
Panavision 77
PED Denz 43, 99,
Photon Beard 99
Pro8mm 98
Rosco Laboratories, Inc. 58
Shelton Communications 98
Stanton Video Services 6
Summit Entertainment 7
Super16 Inc. 98
Technicolor 15
Telescopic 99
Thales Angenieux 30-31
Tiffen C3
VF Gadgets, Inc. 99
Willys Widgets 98
www.theasc.com 70,
83, 95, 99
Zacuto Films 99
ZGC, Inc. 6, 45
Zipcam Systems 57
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Society Welcomes Denault
Growing up in New Yorks Hudson
River Valley, Jim Denault, ASC developed
an early fascination with photography and
received his first camera when he was 7
years old. His passion eventually took him to
the Rochester Institute of Technology, where
he earned a bachelors degree in photogra-
phy.
Denault credits 2001: A Space
Odyssey, which he saw at the age of 9, for
making him aware of cinematography. But
it wasnt until 1986, when he was hired as
the boom operator on the low-budget inde-
pendent feature Cheap Shots, that he real-
ized not all filmmakers grew up in Holly-
wood. He began working steadily as an
electrician, climbing the ranks to gaffer and
then cinematographer.
His credits as director of photogra-
phy include the features Boys Dont Cry,
Real Women Have Curves, Maria Full of
Grace (AC May 04) and The Sisterhood of
the Traveling Pants 2. He earned an Emmy
nomination for his work on the series
Carnivle, and he shot episodes of the series
Six Feet Under, In Plain Sight and Royal
Pains.
Lukk Becomes Associate
New associate member Howard
Lukk began his work with the ASC while
serving as director of technology for Digital
Cinema Initiatives. Along with fellow associ-
ate member Walt Ordway, Lukk contacted
the ASC to seek members input in the
establishment of standards for digital exhibi-
tion. That collaboration led to the ASC-DCI
Stem test. Lukk is currently the director of
media systems at Pixar Animation Studios.
Tosi Honored in Fort Lauderdale
Mario Tosi, ASC was recently
honored with the inaugural Lifetime
Achievement in Cinematography Award at
the 24th annual Fort Lauderdale Interna-
tional Film Festival. The festival screened a
retrospective of his films, including Carrie,
MacArthur, The Betsy, The Main Event and
The Stunt Man. A native of Rome, Italy, Tosi
settled in Fort Lauderdale after enjoying a
Clubhouse News
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Top to bottom: Jim Denault, ASC; Mario Tosi,
ASC (right) and Fort Lauderdale International
Film Festival President Gregory von Hausch;
Robert Primes, ASC; Lance Acord, ASC (left)
and AC associate editor Jon D. Witmer.
busy career in Hollywood. This recognition
makes this town ever more my city, he
says.
Deakins, Farrar Honored in L.A.
The 13th annual Hollywood Film
Festival and Hollywood Awards recently
honored Society members Roger Deakins
and Scott Farrar. Deakins received the
Hollywood Cinematographer Award, while
Farrar took home the Hollywood Visual
Effects Award for his work on Transformers:
Revenge of the Fallen (AC Aug. 09).
Deakins received another honor, the
2009 Nikola Tesla Award in Recognition of
Visionary Achievement in Filmmaking Tech-
nology, at the International Press Academys
14th annual Satellite Awards.
Primes Dines with FilmFellas
Robert Primes, ASC recently joined
cinematographers Trent Opaloch, Philip
Bloom and Jens Bogehegn for Zacuto Films
Web series FilmFellas. The foursome talked
shop around the dinner table, discussing
creative freedom, the art of collaboration,
and how to maintain a projects vision. A
lively debate centered upon DSLR cameras
impact on filmmaking.
To watch FilmFellas, visit
www.zacuto.com.
ASC Busy at HD Expo
Lance Acord, ASC discussed his
work with AC associate editor Jon D.
Witmer in a keynote presentation at HD
Expo Los Angeles in November. Focusing on
Acords continuing collaboration with direc-
tor Spike Jonze, the conversation touched
on the features Being John Malkovich,
Adaptation and Where the Wild Things
Are.
Also at HD Expo, Rodney Taylor,
ASC joined the panel discussion 3-D:
Creativity, Imagery and Cinematography;
Yuri Neyman, ASC led an intensive work-
shop on Gamma & Density Co.s 3cP
system; and associate member Larry
Parker participated in the panel Hard
Core, Revolutionary and Indispensable:
Must-Have and Must-See Gear.
Two Events in One: Createasphere/EXPLORE (formerly HD EXPO) presents the
Entertainment Technology Exposition and Digital Asset Management Conference & Exposition
For all the details and to register, log on to: createasphere.com/DAM
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igital Asset Management
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n

When you were a child, what films made the strongest
impression on you?
I can recall two, both very dramatic pieces: Bonnie and Clyde
(1967) and Wait Until Dark (1967).
Which cinematographers, past or present, do you most
admire, and why?
There are so many great cinematographers its hard to say, but
probably ASC members Caleb Deschanel and Jordan Cronenweth,
because when I was a young cinematographer, producers were
always asking me to make our movies look like the films shot by
those gentlemen. I loved to study their work.
What sparked your interest in photography?
My uncle was a great amateur photographer. Hed take
Kodachrome slides and come over to the house and set up his
projector, and wed all sit around the living room
watching his slide shows. I was mesmerized by
the crispness and color of the photographs.
Where did you train and/or study?
I attended Pasadena City College for two years,
but I am mostly self-taught. I worked a graveyard
shift at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and on
slow nights, which were many, I read everything
about filmmaking that I could get my hands on.
At that job, I earned enough money to rent
cameras, buy 16mm film and pay for processing
so I could make short films. I ruined a lot of film.
Who were your teachers or mentors?
I was fortunate to meet a cinematographer named Henning
Schellerup, who was a great teacher. He was shooting movies for
a company called Sunn Classics, and he asked me to work as his
second camera assistant. Working at Sunn Classics was like film-
maker boot camp; I learned so much. As an AC, Id load film, pull
focus, set up cameras, and sometimes go off and shoot second
unit. It gave me the training no school could have given me at the
time.
What are some of your key artistic influences?
I like to watch a lot of movies and television. I get the most from
seeing other cinematographers work. Good or bad, I learn a lot.
How did you get your first break in the business?
I was officially moved up to director of photography on a TV movie
by producer Andrew Mirisch and director E.W. Swakhamer. I had
been operating on movies of the week and met both men while
we were shooting a series of Westerns, Desperado, for NBC. They
liked my operating, looked at a demo I put together, and decided
I would be a good choice to shoot the next two Desperado movies
for them.
What has been your most satisfying moment on a project?
Once, when things were pretty tough and I thought my work
wasnt very good on a series I was shooting, I came home to find
a message on my machine from Woody Omens, ASC, telling me
Id been nominated for an ASC Award. I celebrated all night. It
validated the work I was struggling with. I kept that message on
my machine for the longest time and played it back whenever I
doubted myself.
Have you made any memorable blunders?
Conveniently, I dont remember most of them! On the first TV
movie I shot, I underexposed the night work on the first day. Feel-
ing pressure from the producer, I rushed to get the scene done on
time I wasnt ready but shot anyway. The next day, I got the lab
report, and my stomach sank. Thats the worst feeling a cine-
matographer can have. They forgave me first day and all
but I have not underexposed film since then.
What is the best professional advice youve
ever received?
Stay true to yourself. When everything is crazy
around you and you feel like youre being forced
into making all the compromises, do what is
right for you and make the compromises you
can live with. In the end, what people see on the
screen is what they remember you by.
What recent books, films or artworks have
inspired you?
Im a little weird in that trade magazines and
tech books inspire me. Magazines like American
Cinematographer and Popular Science stretch my imagination and
get me thinking.
Do you have any favorite genres, or are there genres you
would like to try?
I would love to do another Western. I also love period pieces and
sci-fi. Id like to create my own vision of something with no real
boundaries or rules to adhere to.
If you werent a cinematographer, what might you being
doing instead?
I always wanted to be an astronaut, but since NASA isnt likely to
accept my application, Id probably work in visual effects. I like
doing CGI.
Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for
membership?
George Spiro Dibie, Richard Rawlings Jr. and Sy Hoffberg.
How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?
It has validated the 30 years Ive been in this business. Being a
member of an elite group of people is an honor in any field. Being
invited to join the ASC is by far the best recognition Ive ever
received. Having ASC after my name is an honor and a privilege.
Billy Dickson, ASC Close-up

P
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B
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D
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J
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M I C H A E L G O I , A S C
ONFILM
I believe in magic. As a child, I watched 8 mm
movies projected on the living room wall at a
friends house and gazed at the frames as they
danced toward the light. That these images
on a piece of celluloid could tell stories, take
me to strange places, teach me about the
past, and inspire me toward the future was
absolutely magical to me. When I was 8 years
old, my parents bought me a secondhand movie
camera and I never looked back. ... The power
of cinematographic images circles the entire
world. It goes beyond entertainment, beyond
information. It is an indelible document of who
we are and what we believe; something that
cannot be erased a work of art born from a
passion for light and shadow. When I nish
a movie, I still ask the projectionist if I can
rewind the last reel so I can see the frames and
watch the cuts go by. The magic is still there.
Michael Goi, ASC earned an Emmy
nomination for My Name is Earl and ASC
Award nominations for the television films
The Fixer and Judas. He has earned more than
50 credits, including The Mentalist, Who
Killed Atlantas Children?, The Dukes, Red Water
and Expecting Mary. Goi is president of the
American Society of Cinematographers.
[All these programs were shot on Kodak motion picture lm.]
For an extended interview with Michael Goi,
visit www.kodak.com/go/onlm.
To order Kodak motion picture lm,
call (800) 621-lm.
www.motion.kodak.com
Eastman Kodak Company, 2009.
Photography: 2009 Douglas Kirkland

American Cinematographer 01 2010 Usa

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