American Cinematographer 201112

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Lowell Peterson ASC received an Emmy
nomination for the series Six Feet
Under, and three ASC nominations for
his other television work. He is currently
shooting the eighth and final season of
Desperate Housewives.
B+W Century Schneider
We shot the first seven seasons of
Desperate Housewives on film
but this year I decided to take the
show HD, with Alexa. After a lot
of testing, we ended up using the
same lenses and same Schneider
Black Frost & True-Pol
filters that
gave us our look on film. The only
issue we had was IR pollution when
shooting outdoors on Wisteria Lane.
Schneider came through for us with
some of the first sets of their great new
Platinum IRNDs, and all our color
matching problems disappeared.
The International Journal of Motion Imaging
36 Stepping into the Shadows
Tom Stern, ASC, AFC illuminates secretive life of
FBIs Hoover in J. Edgar
54 Through a Childs Eyes
Robert Richardson, ASC explores 3-D digital capture
on Hugo
68 Silent Splendor
Guillaume Schiffman, AFC shoots black-and-white
silent movie The Artist
78 Its Time to Raise the Curtain
Don Burgess, ASC brings beloved characters back to big
screen in The Muppets
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(Photo by Keith Bernstein, courtesy of Warner Bros.)
8 Editors Note
10 Presidents Desk
12 Short Takes: OK Gos Muppet Show Theme Song
18 Production Slate: Melancholia Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
94 Filmmakers Forum: David Stump, ASC
100 New Products & Services
104 International Marketplace
105 Classified Ads
106 Ad Index
107 2011 AC Index
114 In Memoriam: Andrew Laszlo, ASC
116 ASC Membership Roster
118 Clubhouse News
120 ASC Close-Up: Luciano Tovoli, ASC, AIC
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6
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Peter Suschitzky, ASC
CINEMATOGRAPHER PETER SUSCHITZKY PROVIDES
VISUALS OF A PRISTINE PURITY AUGMENTED BY
THE IMMACULATE FIN DE LEPOCH SETTINGS.
-Todd McCarthy, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
Written and Directed by Woody Allen
Midnight in Paris
EXHILARATING! Midnight in Paris opens
with a prologue, shot with a poets eye by
the great Darius Khondji, that shows off the
City of Light from dawn to darkness in images
of shimmering loveliness. Pity the actors who
have to compete with such an object of desire.
-Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Darius Khondji ASC, AFC
SAD BEN SAD PRESENTS
A ROMAN POLANSKI FILM
CARNAGE
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Pawel Edelman
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Jos Luis Alcaine
AN EXTRAORDINARILY BEAUTIFUL NARRATIVE, PERHAPS
ALMODVARS MOST VISUALLY RAVISHING FILM.
-Karen Durbin, ELLE
TA K E S H E LT E R TA K E S H E LT E R
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY JEFF NICHOLS
A DAZZLING PIECE OF FILMMAKING, AND MUCH OF THE DAZZLE COMES FROM
ADAM STONES CINEMATOGRAPHY, WHICH EXPRESSES THE SWIRLING STATE
OF CURTISS MIND WITH RICHLY VARIED FLAVORS OF LIGHT.
-Joe Morgenstern, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
I N DARKNESS
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Jolanta Dylewska
A film by Agnieszka Holland
Polanskis technical collaborators use every tool in their arsenal to achieve the
illusion of seamlessness: the perspectives offered up by Pawel Edelmans camera
isolates the characters in stationary shots that express relationships visually.
-Justin Chang, VARIETY
AGNIESZKA HOLLANDS BRAVE EPIC!
SINGULAR AND SUPERBLY DRAMATIC!
A passion for life drives a small group of Polish Jews
to take refuge from Nazi collaborators in the sewers
beneath Lvov during World War II. The suspense
here, derived from a true story, is excruciating
and inspiring in equal measure. The hero Socha,
a perfect performance by Robert Wieckiewicz,
brings Oskar Schindler to mind.
-Joe Morgenstern, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Adam Stone
This months issue covers a truly diverse slate of projects,
starting with Clint Eastwoods biographical drama J.
Edgar, an ambitious attempt to crack open the psycho-
logical vault of iconic FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.
With some aspects of Hoovers biography still open
to debate particularly his private life, which stoked
rumors of a romantic relationship with FBI Associate Direc-
tor Clyde Tolson Eastwood and cinematographer Tom
Stern, ASC, AFC chose to render his world as a shadowy
realm of closely guarded secrets. Describing the visual
strategy to AC contributor Michael Goldman, who visited
the set (Stepping into the Shadows, page 36), Stern
offers, We wanted to create a credible noir-esque envi-
ronment inside a federal bureaucracy.
A bold approach was also brought to Hugo by Martin Scorsese and Robert Richard-
son, ASC, who were making their first forays into digital image capture and 3-D. The movies
narrative is drawn from the childrens book The Invention of Hugo Cabret , and its look is
partly inspired by the work of French film pioneer Georges Mlis, who appears as a charac-
ter in the story. As Richardson tells London correspondent Mark Hope-Jones (Through a
Childs Eyes, page 54), Marty selected a large number of images from the book which
spoke to what he had in mind, and he asked all of us [production designer] Dante Ferretti,
[set decorator] Francesca Lo Schiavo, [costume designer] Sandy Powell, [visual-effects super-
visor] Rob Legato and me to be faithful to what [author] Brian [Selznick] had captured.
This guided us toward a world that was created rather than bound to reality.
Fans of the silent-film era can further luxuriate in the lush imagery of The Artist, which
concerns a silent-film star who scorns the arrival of talking pictures. Shot by Guillaume
Schiffman, AFC, the French film is presented as a black-and-white silent picture, in 1.33:1,
with music and title cards substituting for dialogue. AC correspondent Benjamin B met with
Schiffman and director Michel Hazanavicius in Paris, where the duo described their spirited
collaborative style (Silent Splendor, page 68). We like to provoke each other, Schiffman
says, and provocation creates these little sparks that are exactly what the film needs. Were
a good pair. Michel is precise about everything; no detail escapes him. Some people would
say hes a control freak, but I would say hes a real director.
Meanwhile, on The Muppets, ASC member Don Burgess found himself tasked with
bringing beloved characters back to the big screen for the first time since 1999. Burgess tells
New York correspondent Iain Stasukevich (Its Time to Raise the Curtain, page 78) that his
first step was to consult ACs 1979 coverage of The Muppet Movie, particularly the compre-
hensive piece penned by Isidore Mankofsky, ASC, who shot that picture. Burgess was initially
concerned that digital capture might demystify the Muppets, but he happily reports, They
held up great. We were able to enhance the quality of their design without detracting from
their personalities.
[Muppets creator Jim] Henson was truly a genius, the cinematographer adds. He
came up with fully dimensional characters that you totally buy into. You root for them. They
make you laugh. Its really amazing how well it all works.
Stephen Pizzello
Executive Editor
Editors Note
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F O R Y O U R C O N S I D E R A T I O N
B E S T C I N E M A T O G R A P H Y
TOM STERN, A.F.C.,A.S.C.
WWW. WARNE RBROS 2011. C OM
When I first got into this industry, I thought a great deal about the legacy I wanted to leave for
the next generation. I grew up watching incredible movies during the 1960s and 1970s like The
Graduate, Day for Night, The Godfather and The Last Picture Show, movies that seemed to say
something specifically to me. Regardless of fame or fortune, what mattered to me was that I
create something tangible and valuable that could be preserved for the future.
As I progressed in the business, the types of projects I was offered often felt somewhat less
than desirable. Tommy Lee Jones was once asked why he performed in so many bad movies early
in his career. His reply was that he always worked as an actor, not as a truck driver, waiter or bell-
hop. If he was offered three terrible scripts, he took the least terrible one and tried to make some-
thing out of it, but he always worked in his craft.
I adopted the same attitude and embraced the lessons that less-than-respectable jobs could
teach me. Filming erotic thrillers taught me how to light women beautifully and quickly. Shoot-
ing low-budget martial-arts films taught me how to break down action sequences. Shooting no-
budget horror films taught me how to create mood and atmosphere with very few lights. All
these experiences made me the cinematographer I am today and led to the kinds of projects I
can now take on.
We who work in production live a bit of a gypsy life. Ive shot movies on seven continents,
and I kept a studio apartment for 18 years because I was gone nine months a year. Relationships
followed the course they naturally do for single people on the crew: I dated those I met on location. This may have provided va ri-
ety, but it hardly contributed toward stability. Ultimately, a growing dissatisfaction with the quality of my life was preventi ng me from
growing as an artist.
You cannot experience the thrill of leaping from an airplane if a parachute isnt there to support you. When I met Gina, my
wife, I found my support. Her unfailing belief in my worth as a man, husband, father and artist enabled me to achieve what I could
not do on my own. The trust in our relationship freed me to reach further than I ever had, to grasp at windmills without fear o f
being ridiculed or criticized, to truly find my own potential.
So am I still obsessed with leaving a viable legacy behind that will influence future generations? Yes, but now my criteria are
different. When I see my youngest son, Ryan, smile with absolute trust at me every morning, or watch my son Michael teach his
grandparents something new he learned in school, what matters to me is that something tangible and valuable has been created
and preserved for the future, regardless of fame or fortune.
I wish you and yours a peaceful holiday season.
Michael Goi, ASC
President
Presidents Desk
10 December 2011 American Cinematographer
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Muppet Mania
By Iain Stasukevich
Chicago-based rock band OK Go is known as much for its
whimsical, cleverly designed music videos as it is for its music. The
bands latest single is a cover of The Muppet Showtheme song, a cut
from the Muppet-themed Green Album. When the musicians enlist
Jim Hensons lovable creatures to help them with the video, all hell
breaks loose.
The collaboration was actually a match made in heaven,
according to the videos director, Kirk Thatcher. Ive never met four
guys who embody the Muppets freewheeling, creative fun and
incredibly craftsman-like approach to execution more than band
members Tim [Nordwind], Dan [Konopka], Andy [Ross] and Damian
[Kulash], he observes.
Thatcher is actually a Henson veteran: in 1986, Henson hired
him as a character designer. The videos cinematographer, Craig Kief,
had also worked with the Muppets before, on a project for pop
singer Tiffany Thornton.
The filmmakers were presented with some heavy specs for a
two-day shoot. There were 14 sets on three stages at Delphino
Studios in Sylmar, Calif. On the second day, Kief and Thatcher were
joined by 2nd-unit director/visual-effects supervisor Christopher Alen-
der and cinematographer Mateo Londono.
The Muppets and production company Soapbox Films were
coming off four days of production on another Muppet project, so
all the infrastructure was in place. The key Muppet performers,
including Steve Whitmire (Kermit), Eric Jacobson (Piggy and Fozzie),
Bill Barretta (Rowlf and Dr. Teeth) and Dave Goelz (Gonzo), live in
different parts of the country, so their in-person meetings often
means weeks of concentrated work on a variety of projects.
Kief confirms that working with puppets necessitates some
unusual departures from the way he typically shoots. The puppets
like to be shot with wide lenses, up close, he notes. This is partly
because the puppets are very small Kermit is about 18" and
the wide-lens perspective helps to make their movements feel larger
and more alive.
Composition is maintained using the lower frame line as
reference. Handheld work is often avoided, as are vertical camera
moves. Muppets tend to walk in groups of three and five,
Thatcher observes. Then theyll line up and talk to each other, so
many of our shots are proscenium-oriented from the waist up. The
hardest thing to do with a Muppet is an extreme close-up, because
you dont want the audience to discern that the eyes are made of
felt. And over-the-shoulders are difficult because a lot of them dont
have shoulders. In addition, the characters distinctive facial
features discourage camera operators from cutting their close-ups
off at the forehead.
When working, Muppet performers are most comfortable
standing, with their puppets raised over their heads. All Muppet sets
therefore had to be constructed with 3'-high puppeted floors
assembled from 4'x8' steel-deck sections that could be removed at
any time.
This also meant that Kief needed to position his camera, a
Short Takes
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Kermit the Frog,
Animal, Fozzie
Bear and Gonzo
are among the
Muppets who
make mayhem in
OK Gos version
of The Muppet
Show theme
song.
I
BEST CI NEMATOGRAPHY
PHEDON PAPAMICHAEL, ASC
Panavised Arri Alexa, at a height of 8' or 9'.
All of the lights on set had to be raised as
well. Sometimes it takes a while for people
to get into that mode of thinking, says the
cinematographer. Luckily, some of my
crew, including key grips Alex Klabukov and
Bodie Hyman, had worked on the new
Muppets movie, so they were already very
familiar with how this works.
Kief was impressed with the Alexas
handling of the Muppets bright color
palette. The digital image was recorded as
4:4:4 LOG C ProRes HD files to onboard SxS
cards. The only adjustment he made on set
was to inch up the saturation on the main
HD viewing monitor at video village.
The colors were insane, he notes.
Not only was I dealing with Kermits
extreme green and Gonzos blue, but we
also had other craziness, like the band
members colorful suits and a wall of LED
lights. The image held up phenomenally
well, and I knew it would look great when
we started the timing.
One of the videos early gags, a
parody of the classic Muppaphone act,
involves a very tricky shot. The camera
dollies across the musicians faces, then
speeds up (a post effect) and pulls back as
Marvin Suggs (performed by Jacobson)
hurls a pair of mallets over their heads. The
mallets fly past the camera and start a Rube
Goldberg device that sets the rest of the
video in motion.
Jacobson had trouble throwing the
mallets while holding the Suggs puppet, so
Kief and Thatcher came up with the idea to
lock off the camera at the end of the shot,
clear the band from the frame, and then
have Jacobson (sans puppet) toss the mallet.
The Muppet hands and mallets were roto-
scoped back into the hero shot (by artists at
Soapbox) to look as though theyre part of
the action. We used every trick available,
but it doesnt look like it, Thatcher notes.
A few shots later, some penguins
drop a curtain across the frame, and then
pull it back as the camera begins a long
push-in on a dolly. Kermit and pals emerge
from behind the curtains as the dolly passes
by.
To achieve this shot, Londono and
Hyman guided the camera past six rows of
curtains, lighting cues and Muppet perform-
ers. Each time a curtain was pulled back, a
Muppet hit its mark, and 2nd-unit gaffer
Kirean Waugh turned up a 1K or 650-watt
Fresnel, kicking lens flares into the upper
corners of the frame. (The lenses were
Panavision Primos.) The shot looks
completely effortless, even though it was
very complex, says Thatcher. Getting 15
people to have perfect timing to music on a
70-foot dolly took almost seven hours to
accomplish, but we loved the idea of captur-
ing as much in-camera as possible.
Clockwise from top left: the Muppets
puppeteer the members of OK Go; Damian
Kulash performs against greenscreen; the
Arri Alexa was rotated 90 degrees to
maximize resolution.

One of my favorite shots in the
video was something Kirk and [producer]
Kris Eber came up with called the peacock
setup, says Kief. In this scene, the four
band members and four Muppets stand in
a single-file line facing the camera, and then
they lean around each other on a musical
cue. During the shot, Kief had the lighting-
board operator cycle through different
background lighting cues with ETC Selador
Vivid R LED lamps.
When the band and the Muppets
start going crazy and jumping around, I told
[the operator] to just go nuts and start
cycling through the backgrounds, says
Kief. It was fun to see it instantly, live and
in-camera. (In post, Alender thought of
adding flying CG penguins to the shot.)
Kief came across the Selador Vivid
LEDs while searching for a lamp suitable for
lighting a pure white cyc. The problem is
that there are gaps in the LED color spec-
trum, he remarks. The Selador Vivids use
seven LED hues red, red-orange, amber,
green, cyan, blue and indigo that
together create a more complete spectrum
of white light.
By using 14 Vivid lamps above and
14 below the white background cyc, Kief
was able to create a smooth, solid wash of
color that could be changed in an instant.
It was so saturated and clear that it looked
like a post effect, he says. DMX dimmer
control was routed through an ETC Ion
console.
Two big greenscreen shots close out
the video. Klabukov rigged bluescreens and
greenscreens to fly in front of the cyc, and
gaffer Mark Marchetti lit them with 12 Kino
Flo Image 80s (six above and six below)
lamped with alternating green and blue
tubes. The first greenscreen gag reveals that
OK Go are actually puppets being
controlled by the Muppets. The band
members performed in front of a green-
screenwhile wearing a floor-length skirt of
the same chroma-key color. Each member
was photographed individually, with the
camera rotated 90 degrees, and then
combined into a single shot. We needed
more vertical resolution than horizontal
resolution, Kief explains. Getting in close
with the camera and shooting sideways
allowed us to do that.
The reveal of the Muppets
puppeteering the band is a separate shot,
achieved in the same fashion, with the
puppeteers watching the musicians perfor-
mance on a monitor in order to make the
puppets movements match. According to
Thatcher, keying the Muppets has always
been a challenge. Kermit is a few shades off
chroma green, but if he is in an effects shot
with Gonzo, bluescreen cant be used,
either. Theres no single color that works
for everybody, so we had to be flexible and
be ready to shoot either at a moments
notice, says Kief.
Ive shot about 50 music videos,
and this is maybe the most ambitious one,
muses the cinematographer. It also might
be the most fun Ive ever had on a
shoot. Everyone, including the band,
the puppeteers, Kirk, Soapbox and the
Muppets Studio, brought a creative
energy to the video that was exciting and
inspiring.
Clockwise from top left: Tim Nordwind
awakens from his nightmare; cinematographer
Craig Kief and the Alexa on set; key grip Alex
Klabukov uses a Panther crane to fly the
camera over the bedroom set.
S EP ARATED BY WAR.
TES TED BY BATTLE.
B OUND B Y F R I E NDS HI P .
Worlds Collide
By John Calhoun
Cinematographer Manuel Alberto Claro emerged from the
National Danish Film School with a keen desire to work with director
and provocateur Lars von Trier, but he never thought it would actu-
ally happen. Claro, who was born in Chile but moved to Denmark
with his family at age 4, says, The most memorable experiences Ive
had as a viewer were watching his films, so it was a secret dream to
work with him, but his is a different generation than mine, so I never
thought it would be possible. Also, for many years he was kind of
destroying cinema destroying the visuals and I thought that if
he kept going in that direction there would be no space for a
cinematographer.
With the latter remark Claro is, of course, referring to such
Dogme95 projects as The Idiots, and the Brechtian experiments
Dogville (AC May 04) and Manderlay. But then came Antichrist (AC
Nov. 09), which appeared to reverse the trend. With that film,
which made bold use of lighting and high-speed digital cinematog-
raphy (by Anthony Dod Mantle, ASC, BSC, DFF), Claro believes von
Trier returned to an earlier way of looking at filmmaking, to classi-
cal cinema.
Von Triers latest picture, Melancholia, which Claro was asked
to photograph on the recommendation of producer Meta Louise
Foldager, dramatically follows through on this trend. It is the story of
two sisters (played by Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg) and
their divergent responses to a rogue planet called Melancholia that
is on a collision course with Earth. The film is divided into two parts:
Production Slate
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In a striking composition from Melancholia, shot by Manuel Alberto Claro, new bride Justine (Kirsten Dunst) floats Ophelia-like down a
stream in her wedding dress.
I
Justine, named after Dunsts troubled
character, depicts her disastrous wedding
reception at sister Claires palatial estate;
Claire charts the emotional disintegration
of Gainsbourgs character in the face of
Melancholias approach, even as Justine
reaches a state of repose.
As in Antichrist, preceding the body
of the film is an overture, in which the
themes and motifs running through the
movie are prefigured in a series of static and
highly stylized images for example,
Justine attempting to trudge forward in her
wedding dress with her ankles restrained by
yarn, or floating Ophelia-like down a stream
while holding her bouquet. Most of these
striking compositions were created on the
grounds at Swedens Tjlohom Castle,
where all of the movies location work was
shot.
Aurally underscoring this sequence is
the overture to Wagners Tristan und Isolde.
(In a statement accompanying the movies
production notes, von Trier says, With a
state of mind as my starting point, I desired
to dive headlong into the abyss of German
Romanticism. Wagner in spades.)
This 10-minute segment was shot
with the Phantom HD Gold camera at
1,000 fps, yielding a series of painstakingly
slowed-down microseconds of movement.
Lars likes the quality that creates, says
Claro, who notes that this overture was
precisely imagined by the director and story-
boarded accordingly.
The layering of shots was a complex
process in both production and post. In
some of the landscapes, you have the sky
from one direction and the golf course from
three different views, says Claro, who
collaborated closely with visual-effects
supervisor Peter Hjorth. The idea is very
much like a painter creating an image from
his head thats composed of a lot of differ-
ent images. For double shadows [from the
sun and Melancholia], we would shoot one
plate in the morning and one in the after-
noon and combine the two shots.
One shot of the castle with Justine,
Claire, and Claires little boy frontally lit by
the sun, the moon and Melancholia repre-
sented layer upon layer of addition and
subtraction. Claro recalls, We had to clean
some stuff out so you could see the [castle]
more clearly, because there were trees in the
way. It was a huge job to simplify it like a
painter would. (Visual effects were created
Justine and her sister, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), share a rare moment of levity before Earths
impending doom sends Claire spiraling into despair.
by Platige Image and Kingz Entertainment
in Poland, Pixomondo in Germany and Film-
gate in Sweden.)
Lighting instruments also had to be
eliminated in post. You need an extreme
amount of light to shoot at 1,000 fps, and
the lights often had to be so close to the
actors, either in front of or behind them,
that the sources would inevitably be in the
frame, says the cinematographer. We
would have them a few meters away from
the actors, pointing straight at their heads.
The lights for this work were primar-
ily 6K HMI ArriSuns with special high-speed
ballasts, because although the normal
ones are flicker-free, when you get to 1,000
fps, theyre not! says Claro.
Most of Melancholia was not so styl-
istically controlled. With the exception of
the Phantom sequences and several aerial
shots, the film features mostly handheld
camerawork. Lars wanted a kind of docu-
mentary-style camera that followed the
actors, says Claro.
He notes that the director did lay
down one Dogme-style ground rule: no
piece of furniture or prop could be moved
by anyone on the crew once its location was
set. That gave a kind of truthfulness to the
moment, because the camera cant be in
the perfect spot every time, says Claro.
Continuity between takes was deval-
ued, as Claro was not permitted to repeat
camera moves. Sometimes Lars would
notice that I was trying to refine a pan, for
instance, and hed say, Dont do that I
dont want the perfect timing. He wants the
cameraman to be spontaneous like he
wants the actors to be spontaneous; he
wants the camera to react to whats going
on, like in a documentary.
We never did traditional coverage,
he continues. The script supervisor might
say, We dont have a shot of [the actor
saying] that line, and Lars would say, It
doesnt matter. Well just hear it.
Claro shot the bulk of Melancholia
with an Arri Alexa. Most of his previous
features (Reconstruction, Everything Will Be
Fine, Limbo) were 16mm or 35mm shoots,
but, he notes, Lars was not open to shoot-
ing on film he didnt want the limitation
of the length of the rolls. We shot ProRes
4444 and recorded everything to onboard
Codex recorders. That way we could actually
shoot for 90 minutes without stopping. We
never did we never shot anything longer
than 10 minutes but I think the idea that
we could was important to Lars.
Like most of the film, the wedding
reception was shot with Angenieuxs PL-
mount 28-76mm T2.6 Optimo zoom lens.
There was a lot of zooming not for
effect, but just for panning around to follow
the action, says Claro. Its an extra tool,
and it enables you to work really quickly.
Arri/Zeiss Master Primes were used
for the Phantom material and night scenes
for which some of the lighting setups were
so big that we needed 2 more stops, he
adds.
A distinguishing feature of Melan-
cholias first half, Justine, is the romantic
lighting style. Claro recalls, Lars was quite
clear about that from the start. He said,
Danielle Steel, like everything should be a
little over-the-top in happiness. But, of
course, whats going on is not very happy.
(The restless camerawork helps clue the
viewer into that contradiction.)
In interiors, most of which were shot
onstage at Trollhttan Filmstudio in Sweden,
the golden color scheme was achieved with
the use of practicals that are visible on
camera. We put up a lot of lights in the
studio, but we ended up never turning them
on because the Alexa is so sensitive, says
Claro. We lit everything with practicals.
For the location night exteriors, he
used sodium-vapor lights. Theyre very
economical. We had to light up the golf
As the enormous planet Melancholia approaches Earth, Justine, Claire and their respective husbands,
Michael (Alexander Skarsgrd, left) and John (Kiefer Sutherland), keep their eyes trained on the sky.
course at night, and we only needed one
generator for two or three lights. It worked
very efficiently.
The films second half, Claire, with
the greenish-blue planet Melancholia
progressively filling the sky, presents a strik-
ing color contrast. The idea was to have a
colder look because the planet is closing in,
but the imagery feels a lot colder than it
actually is at first because of the transition
from the yellow colors of Justine, Claro
observes. The images do get bluer and
bluer towards the end. I achieved that
mainly with the white balance in the
camera. As the planets close encounter
approaches, Claro began using cyan gels on
the lights, particularly for night scenes.
The handheld camera was also occa-
sionally abandoned for an important shot,
like the one showing Justine lying naked on
a riverbank, bathing in the reflected light of
Melancholia. We shot that from a Tech-
nocrane because we couldnt do it other-
wise it was too complicated because of
the location, says the cinematographer.
Gelled HMIs on cherry pickers and HMI
balloons lit this shot. For another sequence,
Claro used a hard 1.2K HMI on a Tech-
nocrane to simulate the light and shadow
of the rising planet.
Claro reports that the digital grade
of Melancholia, carried out on Digital
The movies
eerie 10-minute
prologue was
shot with a
Phantom Gold
HD camera
running at
1,000 fps.
BEST PICTURE
PRODUCED BY
ROLAND EMMERICH
LARRY FRANCO
ROBERT LEGER
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
ANNA J. FOERSTER
Visions Nucoda Film Master at Trollhttan
Filmstudio,was quite straightforward. Lars
and I were very keen to make it look natural,
not to complicate things. Of course, we
spent a lot of time refining it, but we were
not inventing anything.
A 35mm festival print was struck (on
Fujifilms Eterna-CP 3514DI), but Melancho-
lia was digitally projected for its premiere at
Cannes. Digital just looked right, closer to
what we intended somehow, says Claro.
We went back and made some corrections
to the DCP after timing the print. These
days, when you time both prints and DCP,
you have to pay careful attention to both.
With the Alexa, which was intro-
duced just in time for Melancholias produc-
tion, Claro says he is close to becoming a
digital convert. Before the Alexa, I would
always argue that film looked better. The
limitation with digital has been the defini-
tion of color; film gives you natural-looking
skin tones, whereas most digital formats
require a lot of grading to achieve that. The
Alexas colors are equal to those of film.
I would shoot some movies on
16mm, because that still has its own look.
But if you want a clean, sharp image, the
Alexa and 35mm are practically the same.
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa, Phantom HD Gold
Angenieux Optimo, Arri/Zeiss Master Prime
Top: Claro (standing at left) observes as director Lars von Trier guides his cast through a
tense scene at the wedding dinner. Bottom: Handheld camerawork lends the drama a
documentary feel.

A Mole in the Ministry
By Jean Oppenheimer
War has always been a breeding
ground for spies and a boon for writers of
espionage fiction. The Cold War proved to
be an especially fertile period for British
authors, some of who had actually served in
MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service.
The most famous fictional agent is Ian Flem-
ings James Bond. 007s more taciturn but
equally effective counterpart is John Le
Carres George Smiley, the unprepossessing
figure at the center of Tinker Tailor Soldier
Spy. The antithesis of the handsome,
charming Bond, Smiley (played by Gary
Oldman) is, in the words of Tinker director
Tomas Alfredson, someone you would
immediately forget if you saw him on the
street.
Set in 1973, Tinker follows Smileys
attempt to uncover a double agent who has
infiltrated the highest echelon of MI6. We
were not making a film about the glamour
of MI6, emphasizes cinematographer
Hoyte van Hoytema, FSF, NSC, speaking to
AC from his home in Sweden.
Instead, he continues, the film is
about the lonely players of the Circus [the
in-house name for MI6], who operate in a
desolate world where no one can be
trusted. It is a melancholic world set in small
rooms drenched in nicotine and bureau-
cratic sweat.
Tinker reunited Hoytema with
Alfredson, his collaborator on Let the Right
One In (2008). When they began prepping
their new film, a key visual reference was
London, City of Dreams , a book of
photographs by Erwin Fieger that depict
everyday life in 1960s London. The
images, taken with extremely long lenses,
present a voyeuristic but also very poetic
view of London, observes Hoytema. They
have a documentary feel but obviously were
taken with great care and [precision]. I really
got inspired by that.
He and Alfredson decided on a
grainy, somewhat colorless look for the
picture. We wanted the grain to be visible,
and I conducted a series of tests before
choosing Fuji Reala [500D 8592] for day
material and Eterna 500T [8573] for
nights, says Hoytema. With the Reala, I
often underexposed the key by half a stop.
Since the Eterna is slightly less grainy, I
underexposed it a bit more.
The monochromatic palette,
achieved primarily through production
design and the digital timing, contributes
significantly to the movies claustrophobic
atmosphere. Hoytema is quick to note,
however, that this gray world is offset with
occasional hints of color: a green sweater
here, an orange bedspread there. He credits
production designer Maria Djurkovic with
playing a crucial role in creating the very
specific design and feel of the film.
The 57-day shoot was primarily a
one-camera affair, with Hoytema operating
a Panaflex Millennium.His camera package,
provided by Panavision London, included
Primo prime lenses and Primo 3:1 (135-
420mm) and 11:1 (24-275mm) zooms, and
he points out that he actually used the latter
as zooms, in keeping with the style of
1970s cinema.
Hoytema notes that in Sweden, he
often works with a zoom lens in conjunc-
tion with a fluid head that allows him to
manually zoom, giving the movement an
MI6 agent George Smiley (Gary Oldman) modifies his look in a scene from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
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BEST CI NEMATOGRAPHY
St ephen Gol dbl at t , ASC, BSC
www.DreamWorksAwards.com
2011 DreamWorks II Distribution Co., LLC
Cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt makes the most of the Southern locations,
giving even the dirt roads and decaying frame houses a kind of gauzy beauty.
LOS ANGELES TIMES, Betsy Sharkey
organic feel. For Tinker, however, he
favored a mechanical zoom. When I look
at films from the 70s, I like the fact the
zooms are so functional and solid. They
have a beginning and an end, and I liked
that idea for this movie.
The primary reason I chose Panavi-
sion is its front-of-the-gate filtering system,
he adds. I have this strange love for shoot-
ing even bright exteriors as wide open as
possible and stacking NDs in front of the
lens on very sunny days I used a 1.2 and
a .9 and was stopping down as much as 7
stops!
Another stylistic decision was to
frame characters through objects such as
doorways, hallways and windows, or
temporarily place them behind objects alto-
gether. We wanted to paint a world in
which everybody is looking in on something
and everyone is under suspicion, explains
Hoytema.
One notable example of this strategy
shows Smiley entering his home. The
camera is inside the house, two rooms back
from the front entry, framing him through a
few different doorways. Another example is
a wide shot of an MI6 agent striding down
the sidewalk, screen right to screen left, on
the far side of a busy street. The camera is
in the foreground, and the man disappears
every time a car or bus passes. Other pedes-
trians scurry across the road, blocking him
for a second or two. The agent is in focus,
the vehicles and people are not, and the
feeling of voyeurism is unmistakable.
One of the most beautiful shots in
Tinker is an early-morning wide shot of
Budapest. After a few seconds, the camera
starts pulling back, and it keeps going,
eventually gliding through what appears to
be the top of a bell tower where boys are
playing. As the camera continues to pull
back, we see more of the building. The
structure is so tall, and the camera so high,
it seems an impossible shot to achieve, but
Hoytema explains that it was quite simple:
the building, which he describes as a
bastion, was on a hill, and the front faced a
ravine, with the city in the distance, while
the backyard was flat a good place to lay
tracks for a 50' Technocrane. I knew the
Scorpio head that came with the Tech-
nocrane wouldnt fit through [the small
Top: Control (John Hurt, center) convenes his top agents for a status report. Bottom:
Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, FSF, NSC (at camera) stands by as director Tomas
Alfredson discusses a scene with the actors.
Please visit www.TWCguilds.com
for more information. Artwork 2011 The Weinstein Company. All Rights Reserved.
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
BEN SMITHARD
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
HAGEN BOGDANSKI
CORIOLANUS
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
GUILLAUME SCHIFFMAN
IRON LADY
The
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
ELLIOT DAVIS
t wc p r ou d l y p r e s e n t s
f or y ou r c on s i de r a t i on
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
BARRY ACKROYD
opening at the top of] the bastion, says the
cinematographer, so I substituted a flight
head. It fit by the millimeter as long as
we pulled the crane at exactly the right
angle.
With the exception of several crane
shots, the camera was always on a dolly or
tripod. One key scene captured on a tripod
is a six-minute monologue delivered by
Smiley as he sits in a chair and stares straight
ahead. He is recalling his encounter with a
Soviet agent, Karla, as a younger British
agent, Peter (Benedict Cumberbatch),
listens from behind him. Smiley never
shows emotion or reveals what he is think-
ing, but he gets so caught up in his recol-
lection that he unwittingly exposes some-
thing of his inner self.
It was actually a very hard scene to
shoot because it was so out of character for
[Smiley], says Hoytema. Tomas and I
wanted it to feel intimate, naked. For a brief
moment, we are let into Smileys soul.
The first part of the monologue
shifts back-and-forth between a straight-on
shot of Smiley and a profile shot, but as he
becomes lost in his thoughts, the camera
stays on his face. The scenes intensity
comes from Gary Oldmans performance,
Hoytema submits. At one point, he leaned
forward in his chair, and the 35mm lens was
only inches from his face. Its so intimate it
becomes a bit uncomfortable.
We wanted to feel Karlas presence,
so I went slightly darker than usual with the
lighting to create the feeling of somebody
else in the room, he continues. I used
Kino Flo tubes to simulate practical lamps,
and I bounced small Fresnels into poly board
hanging on the walls. Most of the lights
were on the floor, a placement I dont
normally like to do.
Hoytema admits to being a bit
conservative when it comes to sources. I
didnt want anything to feel overlit in this
film, and I often worked with the key
slightly underexposed.
Hoytemas
framing and
compositions
consistently
suggest
surveillance, as
illustrated by
these shots of
Smiley meeting
with colleagues.
RYAN GOSLING RYAN GOSLING

for your consideration in all categories including
best cinematography newton thomas sigel, a.s.c.
Several daytime office interiors take
place in relative darkness. The chief of MI6,
Control (John Hurt), is a volatile, paranoid
man whose dark, messy office (a practical
location) appears to reek of cigarette smoke
and musty furniture. Almost all daylight is
shut out by the heavy drapes on his
windows.
I faked it a bit, says Hoytema. A
closed curtain gives a little light, but not
enough for exposure, so I enhanced it a bit
with small Kino Flos on top of some
cupboards. The smoke in the room made it
obvious where the light sources were, so
we darkened that scene a bit in the DI.
At one point, Peter throws open the
curtains and sunlight streams into the room.
For this Hoytema employed one of his
favorite lighting techniques: eyebrows,
wide frames of Ultrabounce placed above
the windows outside with 12Ks bouncing
into them from the ground. He added some
direct light, filtered 12K ArriMaxes on cherry
pickers, and made sure there was a lot of
smoke in the room.
Hoytema has used his eyebrows
on several recent films, including The
Fighter (AC Jan. 11), and notes that he typi-
cally has all of the sources on the ground.
This was the case for a scene in Tinker set in
the office of diplomat Oliver Lacon (Simon
McBurney), a space with large windows
along one wall. Hoytemas crew set up the
eyebrows outside the windows, this time
placing 12K and 18K lamps on the ground
to bounce into them.
Hoytema often used ordinary tube
lights and was meticulous about finding the
right models. Tube lights were very thick in
the 1970s, but those no longer exist, so the
art department built some out of frosted
Plexiglas pipes with smaller tube lights
inside. They had the proper appearance.
Renting lights in London proved
quite a challenge: War Horse, Hugo and
the latest Pirates of the Caribbean feature
were all in production there at the same
time. Here we were, this small produc-
tion! laughs Hoytema. We were happy
to get any kind of lamp! We had Fresnels
next to old 12Ks, and we got all the scruffi-
est 18Ks. In terms of the look, though, it
didnt matter, because we were bouncing
the light.
For one scene in Smileys house,
Hoytema switched to balloon lights
imported from Germany. We had two 6-
meter sausage-shaped helium balloonstied
between the house and the backdrop, and
that beautifully simulated an overcast sky,
he says. (These balloons and a 4-meter one
were also used in Budapest for a scene at
an outdoor caf, where one of Smileys
colleagues is working undercover.)
The interior of Smileys house was a
set built in a gym at the Inglis Barracks, a
former military base in north England that
served as the productions primary location.
It became our own backlot, says
Hoytema. It was wonderful, because the
buildings kind of breathed that period of
history. The patina on the buildings was
wonderful and very filmic.
Hoytema gives high marks to his
entire crew, singling out focus puller Simon
Hume (a safe haven on a difficult shoot),
gaffer Al Martin (a big help on my first job
in England), key grip Colin Stratten
(incredibly sensitive to the rhythm and
tone of the scenes), and B-camera opera-
tor Peter Taylor, who handled a second
camera on the conference-room scenes.
Our second-unit team, led by
[director] Mikael Marcimain and [cine-
matographer] Jallo Faber, was also fantas-
tic, he adds.
The productions processing and
dailies were handled by iLab London, and
Hoytema carried out the DI at The Chimney
Pot in Stockholm. The Chimney Pot is one
of my favorite post companies, he says,
not least because of [colorist] Mats Holm-
gren, who has a good eye for detail and
good taste and is fully engaged in the
psychological curve of the film.
He notes that he is also grateful to
Henric Larsson, president of The Chimney
Pot, for facilitating a 4K scan of the nega-
tive.
I wanted as little resolution conflict
as possible between the bigger analog grain
size and the digital pixel size, but the other
post houses we talked to said a 4K scan was
either impossible or prohibitively expen-
sive, says Hoytema. Henric found a way.
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
3-perf Super 35mm
Panaflex Millennium
Panavision Primo
Fujifilm Reala 500D 8592, Eterna 500T 8573
Digital Intermediate
Smiley takes a call. He is someone you would immediately forget if you saw
him on the street, notes Alfredson.
2011 Sony Electronics Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Sony, make.believe and their respective logos are trademarks of Sony.
Visit sony.com/35mm
We are Super 35mm.
A camera for every price and production.
What do lm school students, masters of videography, a Pulitzer Prize winning photographer and honored members
of the ASC all have in common? 35mm cameras from Sony
. From motion pictures to stills, nobody has more ways to

shoot 35mm. Award-winning breakthroughs in color palette, exposure latitude, low-light sensitivity and sharpness will
upgrade your imagery. While Sony affordability, ergonomics and workow help make you more productive than ever.
So the choice is no longer which 35mm camera. Its which Sony camera.
Top row, left to right: Curtis Clark, ASC; Richard Crudo, ASC; Daryn Okada, ASC; Dennis Dillon, DP; Francis Kenny, ASC
Bottom row, left to right: Cassie Brooksbank, Senior, USC School of Cinematic Arts; Cameron Combe, Student Filmmaker, Cal State Long Beach;
Brian Smith, Award-winning Photographer; Brooke Mailhiot, Cinematographer
I
ts March 2011, and director Clint Eastwood is consult-
ing with cinematographer Tom Stern, ASC, AFC; A-
camera/Steadicam operator Stephen Campanelli; and
gaffer Ross Dunkerley before making up his mind about
a complicated Steadicam sequence for the period drama J.
Edgar. The men are standing in a corridor built on Warner
Bros. Stage 16 that is designed to look like a hallway in the
Clint Eastwoods
J. Edgar, shot by
Tom Stern, ASC, AFC,
puts an infamous
American center stage,
but not exactly in
the spotlight.
By Michael Goldman
|
Stepping into the
Shadows
Department of Justice in the 1920s.
With a couple of brief comments and a few nods, the
filmmakers reach agreement on how to execute the scene.
Eastwood has decided not to line up the 50 extras playing
FBI agents all the way down the hall, which was the orig-
inal plan. Instead, he orders the extras to face each other in
two lines, and asks Leonardo DiCaprio, who is playing J.
w ww.theasc.com December 2011 37
Edgar Hoover, to walk between them.
Campanelli is to weave between the
actors to shadow DiCaprio and
capture multiple POVs for Hoover
and the men he is addressing within
the same fluid shot.
All of the crucial Department
of Justice/FBI office scenes in J. Edgar
were shot on this opulent set,
designed by James J. Murakami.
These scenes range from Hoovers
takeover of the fledgling Bureau of
Investigation as a young man in the
1920s, to his final moments in office
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Opposite page:
An elderly J.
Edgar Hoover
(Leonardo
DiCaprio) listens
to secretly
recorded
audiotapes of
Martin Luther
King Jr. This
page, top: While
still a young man,
Hoover is
promoted to FBI
director. Middle:
Director Clint
Eastwood and
cinematographer
Tom Stern, ASC,
AFC discuss a
setup. Bottom:
Hoover forges
very close
relationships
with his personal
secretary, Helen
Gandy (Naomi
Watts), and
associate director,
Clyde Tolson
(Armie Hammer).
50 years later.
Stern, like Eastwood, didnt see
the need for much talk about the
logistics of the scene at hand.
Everyone agreed it would be shot with
the Steadicam, and that the lighting
wasnt going to change. The set had a
hard ceiling, and for 1920s scenes like
this one, Murakamis team built prac-
tical Hyperion lights fitted with deli-
cate 250-watt bulbs into the ceiling,
and Dunkerleys crew rigged them to
a dimmer to help extend the bulbs
life, since each lasts only about three
hours.
In terms of a shot like this,
Clint delegates the specifics, and we
know what he likes and we do it,
Stern says of the corridor scene. He
likes the spontaneity of things
figuring it out on the spot and he
doesnt want to dilute that with too
much discussion. He has confidence
in us, and for this scene, once we knew
how the actors would be arranged, we
knew how to light it and shoot it.
Stepping into the Shadows

Top: After
anarchists bomb
the home of his
mentor, U.S.
Attorney General
A. Mitchell Palmer,
Hoover bikes to
the crime scene.
Middle and
bottom: In frame
grabs from the
film, Hoover
greets Gandy
after she joins the
FBIs secretarial
pool, then takes
her on a date to
show off the
meticulous card-
catalog system he
has organized at
the Department
of Justice.
Eastwood calls this constantly
being in a flexible state, able to make
adjustments, but adds that he largely
had the sequence, like the rest of J.
Edgar, in his head. I knew what I
wanted to do; we just had to figure out
where to put [the FBI agents], he
says. We wanted to give the scene a
big feel, make it as scopey as we
could, and yet get the head shots we
needed. Lots of people would spend
one or two days on this, but we dont
feel the need to do that.
In many ways, J. Edgar is a typi-
cal example of how tightly Eastwoods
visual sense is intertwined with his
veteran crews abilities. The film is a
period piece/psychological drama that
unfolds in a non-linear fashion, and it
is characterized by a noirish lighting
aesthetic. But the story also called for
aging DiCaprio and other actors
using practical techniques to an extent
never before seen in an Eastwood
film, and the picture also features
more soundstage work than is typical
for the director.
The filmmakers accomplished
these things on a shooting schedule
(39 days) and budget (just over $30
million) that were far closer to those
of Gran Torino (2008) than todays
tent-pole fare. Thus, despite some
CG set extensions and the strategic
use of the digital-intermediate
process, producer Rob Lorenz
suggests that J. Edgar represents the
way they used to make movies. Its
heavily dependent on proper art
direction and practical techniques.
Not much has changed in
Eastwoods camera package over the
years, and for J. Edgar Stern once
again employed Panavision cameras
and C-Series anamorphic lenses. We
used to use the E-Series, too, but we
dont use many of those anymore,
says 1st AC Bill Coe. Wed have the
C-Series primarily because they were
Top: Hoover
establishes an
intimate rapport
with Tolson.
Bottom: Stern
sets up another
scene staged in
the same site.
because those focal lengths dont exist
in the C-Series.
We used just about the full
range of C-Series on this picture,
continues Coe. Clint starts with a big
wide shot on something like a 25mm
to get the whole room, and then he
moves in. For the close-ups, hell
usually end up on a 75mm, but on
this movie he even used a 100mm or
135mm to get in really close and
capture that fantastic acting.
The filmmakers relied on
production design and subtle lighting
tricks to visually separate the storys
various time periods, but this work
was taken a step further in the DI
suite by Technicolor Hollywood
colorist Jill Bogdanowicz, who signif-
icantly desaturated the 1920s
sequences to contrast them with the
later eras.
But more generally, Sterns
noirish lighting scheme stands out
faces half in shadow, low-lit rooms
and the like are omnipresent, par-
ticularly in the office scenes, many
of which feature even less fill light
than Eastwood usually uses. In
fact, Campanelli says, Stern and
Dunkerley went all the way with
dark lighting, so much so I sometimes
smaller, and we would use them only
on Steadicam. But Clint and Tom
loved the quality of the C-Series so
much that they have become our
primary lenses. Well only use a
135mm or 180mm out of the E-Series

This page, top:
After assuming
the title of FBI
director, Hoover
delivers a stern
address to the
agents under his
command.
Bottom: Hoover
and Tolson talk
business in their
corridor of power.
Opposite page: A
lighting diagram
illustrates Sterns
approach to the
set, which AC
visited during
production.
had a hard time seeing through
my viewing system. But it looks
fantastic.
During scenes involving the
younger Hoover, Sterns crew would
occasionally use 2K and 4K Mole-
Richardson Ziplights for fill and
nothing more. Dunkerley notes that
this created just enough soft light to
prevent Eastwoods beloved shadows
from being too hard or over-the-top.
When asked if he had in mind
some of the stylized lighting hed
done as a gaffer for the late Conrad
Hall, ASC, particularly on their final
collaboration, Road to Perdition (AC
Aug. 02), Stern says there was no
direct connection. He notes,
however, that there is always a philo-
sophical or emotional connection to
his relationship with Hall when he
lights for Eastwood.
Road to Perdition wasnt in my
mind, but Connies approach was,
he explains. One of the things I
learned from him is the importance
of serendipity, to not get too locked
into anything. His approach was like
Clints: see how the actors feel, see
their skin in the room and the
volume in the room, and then figure
out how to light it. We therefore use
very few lighting plots or plans; we
just go and do it.
This was complicated by

Top: Hoover and
Tolson observe as
a wood expert
examines a ladder
used in the
kidnapping of
Charles
Lindberghs infant
son. Middle:
Hoover confronts
the prime suspect,
Bruno Hauptmann
(Damon
Herriman).
Bottom:
Following
Hauptmanns
conviction,
Hoover marches
him past the
media.
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J. Edgars nonlinear structure.
Throughout the film, says Stern, we
pretty much wanted Hoovers office to
stay dark. As we went along, I became
more confident about throwing things
into black, as Clint loves, and letting
people come out of it. We wanted to
further and finish it off in the DI.
To light the hero corridor for
the 1960s sequences, Dunkerley
brought in practical ceiling fixtures
that were modified to accommodate
Kino Flo tubes, and added Arri T-12s
at both ends of the corridor to make
a brighter statement, just give it some
snap. We were mainly filming there
when it was supposed to be daytime.
Ambient light was created in all
of the rooms adjacent to the main
corridor, including Hoovers office,
with overhead soft boxes comprising
two 6K space lights going through
bleached muslin. These were skirted
with black Duvetyn to prevent spill.
Sunlight is a near-constant
feature in Hoovers office. Depending
on the scene, it sometimes brightens
the room, but more often it is tamped
down by closed blinds. Stern therefore
had Dunkerley design the rooms
lighting for maximum flexibility.
We hung a track system
outside all the windows so that we
could shuffle 12K tungsten lights and
put them everywhere we wanted
while also keeping the backing visible
create a credible noir-esque environ-
ment inside a federal bureaucracy. Its
about levels, how far to push it. If the
scene was more emotionally noir, I
typically ramped up the visual noir. Id
get it about three-quarters where I
wanted it, and then wed go even

Top: Hoover
keeps close and
loving counsel
with his mother,
Anne Marie (Judi
Dench). Bottom:
As her health
fails, Hoover
maintains a
bedside vigil.
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outside the windows, says
Dunkerley. That said, we had even
more lights, primarily Arri T-24s and
T-12s, available on stands so that if
the camera wasnt seeing out the
window, we could more easily adjust
the light in the room. When the
camera was looking out the window,
we relied on the hanging lights.
Campanellis Steadicam was
the main method of filming on the
Dept. of Justice set. Weve always
used a lot of Steadicam because Clint
likes to keep the camera and actors
free, says Campanelli. But on this
movie, we also did much longer
Steadicam shots than we normally
do. Id run down the hallway, follow-
ing the actors as they went from
room to room.
Indeed, a single Steadicam
move actually captures two sequences
at one point. The move follows
Hoover and his partner, Clyde Tolson
(Armie Hammer), as they leave
Hoovers inner office and walk
through his outer office. The camera
tracks backwards with them into a
waiting room, through a couple of
doors, and then makes a 90-degree
turn into the hallway, still tracking
backwards ahead of the actors. The
camera continues following them
down the hallway as they stop in a
doorway and then enter another
room, Hoovers crime lab. At that
point, Campanelli is behind the
Top: Hoover heeds
Tolsons sartorial
suggestions as
hes measured for
a finely tailored
suit. Middle: The
pairs relationship
heats up when
they share
adjoining suites
on a trip.
Bottom: Late in
their lives, Hoover
attempts to rouse
Tolson after his
friend suffers a
debilitating
stroke.

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CONFIDENCE.
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actors, so he pivots and tracks to that
door as the actors walk down past a
set of desks to the spot where the
drama of the scene takes place.
That was pretty cool,
Campanelli recalls. Basically, it was
one Steadicam shot for two scenes
with lots of dialogue. Thats what you
call a high-energy shot.
Of course, such shots make
Coes job more complicated, but he
says he is well used to it. Steadicam
presents problems for a focus puller
because generally, the actor and
camera will be moving in places were
not aware of because we dont use
marks, says Coe. You have to go by
instinct. Clint tells me to use the
Force, and thats pretty much how I
do it. Its freeform, but at a high level.
If I think something isnt sharp
enough, Ill tell them I think I can do
better.
One of the challenges involved
in scenes depicting key characters as
old men and women was the makeup
they wore. DiCaprios aging makeup,
which took six-and-a-half hours to
apply and two hours to remove, was
handled by his longtime makeup
artist, Sian Grigg, while Hammer and
Naomi Watts (who plays Hoovers
assistant, Helen Gandy) were aged by
Eastwoods regular makeup team, led
by Tania McComas.
The schedule allowed only a
single day of makeup tests for
DiCaprio, but Eastwood was so
pleased with Griggs work that he
didnt shy away from close-ups of
Hoover as an old man. Stern was
likewise confident. With special-
effects makeup, theres always a
tension between the makeup artist
and the cinematographer, Stern
observes. But in this case, I found
fantastic collaborators in Sian Grigg
and [DiCaprio hairstylist] Kathy
Blondell. When we first met, Sian
pulled out a monocle that she uses,
and it was the same one I use, so we
hit it off right away.
In the DI, I only found a
single flaw on Leos makeup, and we
softened it up easily enough, contin-
ues the cinematographer. Its impor-
tant to avoid thermal problems on set
for actors who are heavily made up,
but with Clint we never have a real
hot set. The way I tended to light this
film was also friendly to the makeup.
Two scenes in J. Edgar are
crucial to understanding Hoovers

Hoover films a
public service
announcement
with the help of
his loyal
secretary.
With special-effects
makeup, theres
always a tension
between the makeup
artist and the
cinematographer,
but in this case, I
found fantastic
collaborators.
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emotional and psychological state
and, therefore, the larger story. The
first comes as he mourns the death of
his beloved mother (played by Judi
Dench); weeping, he dons some of
her jewelry and clothing in front of a
mirror. It was a tricky scene to
capture, primarily because DiCaprio
was left to improvise in front of the
mirror, and the crew couldnt know
precisely what he would do in the
highly emotional moment.
Clint, being an actor, didnt
want Leo to torment himself too
much, so we got the wide shot on the
first take, Campanelli recalls. Clint
told me, Just see what happens, and
we got it all in a couple of takes.
Because the acting was impro-
vised, the lighting had to be, too, and
that meant adopting what Dunkerley
describes as an unorthodox way to
light for a Clint Eastwood movie.
Thats the first time I can
recall things getting that loose
Clint didnt want to limit what
Leo could do in any way, continues
Dunkerley. I actually put the key
light, a 650-watt Tweenie, on a pole
and danced the light around Leo
while Campy filmed him. Wherever
I sensed the lens was, I tried to keep
the light at an interesting angle. I

Top: Hoover
receives a fateful
phone call in his
office. Bottom:
Eastwood (far
right) checks the
set while operator
Steve Campanelli
lines up an
overhead angle of
Hoover at
his desk.
actually used a C-stand arm and oper-
ated the way a microphone boom man
would hold a mic.
If wed done it with multiple
cameras or different lenses, we would
have had to light with broader strokes
to make it softer and, therefore, less
dramatic, he adds. But because its
an Eastwood film, it was all single-
camera.
The other key sequence reveals
Hoover and Tolsons relationship as
something more than professional.
While traveling together, the two men
come to blows in their hotel room
over Hoovers pretense of being inter-
ested in women. Their confrontation
culminates with a kiss as they roll on
the floor. Once again, the scene was
largely improvised. Clint never
choreographs those things because he
trusts the actors he has cast, says
Stern. So we went handheld. The
scene starts out kind of warm and
friendly, and then it changes when
Hoover mentions Mrs. Hoover and
Tolson goes berserk. Basically, we just
followed their fight and stayed on
them as it culminated in the kiss.
I was on a 3-foot slider with
the camera on a sandbag to do a push-
in as they fell in front of me in silhou-
ette and profile, face-to-face,

Eastwood and DiCaprio discuss a scene set in Hoovers home.
52
Campanelli recalls. Armie was on
top and Leo was on the bottom, and
we basically wanted to do a push-in
as their lips locked. Again, we got it
on the first take. We shot some addi-
tional coverage between the two
guys, but really, we got the main part
in one or two takes.
Despite J. Edgars short filming
schedule, Bogdanowicz was able to
get a head start on the final timing
because, for the first time, Eastwoods
team relied on Technicolor for
HD dailies. (These were timed by
dailies colorist Mark Sachen, with
Bogdanowicz supervising.) This
meant that much of the negative was
scanned at an early stage, and so, as
the cut evolved, Bogdanowicz was
able to experiment with the look
both with and without Stern, who
was commuting from another shoot
while J. Edgar was in post.
Clint liked what wed done,
but, of course, he said he wanted even
more desaturation and blacker
blacks, Bogdanowicz says with a
chuckle. He wanted a very strong
differentiation between the 1920s and
the 1960s. He kept telling me, Go for
Iwo Jima, referring to Letters from Iwo
Jima [AC March 07], which meant a
pretty extreme look.
For the 1920s sequences,
Eastwood and Stern occasionally
asked Bogdanowicz to add a soft
vignette to the frame. That gives
those shots an older feel, suggesting a
darker lens, perhaps, she says. It also
helps the 1960s material feel more
modern [by contrast]. We didnt want
the vignettes to be distracting,
though. Theyre just a subtle way to
direct the eye to the center of the
frame and suggest a vintage feeling.
Stern raves about the DIs abil-
ity to help him deliver the blacks
Eastwood craves. Clint builds these
worlds on blacks, he observes. Ive
understood that since I started work-
ing for him as a gaffer under [cine-
matographer] Bruce Surtees. Richer,
deeper blacks have always been the
marching orders, but now we are
greatly aided by film stocks with more
dynamic range and the tools we have
in the DI. Today we can really explore
that black corner of things far more
than we could 30 years ago.
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53
W
riter Brian Selznick has described his childrens book,
The Invention of Hugo Cabret , as not exactly a novel,
not quite a picture book, not really a graphic novel, or
a flip book, or a movie, but a combination of all these
things. Using a mix of prose and shaded pencil drawings, the
book tells the fictional story of 12-year-old Hugo, who lives a
secret life within the walls of a 1930s Paris train station. Into
this narrative is woven the true story of French film pioneer
Georges Mlis, who directed groundbreaking special-effects
films at the turn of the 20th century but later endured finan-
Robert Richardson, ASC explores
3-D on Martin Scorseses Hugo,
an adaptation of an imaginative
childrens book.
By Mark Hope-Jones
|
Througha
Childs Eyes
cial ruin and wound up selling toys at
the Gare Montparnasse.
Charmed by the highly visual
story and its connection with cinema
history, Martin Scorsese enthusiastically
signed on to direct Hugo, an adaptation
of Selznicks book, after Graham King
purchased the film rights in 2007.
Director of photography Robert
Richardson, ASC, a regular Scorsese
collaborator, admits that it was a
modest surprise to learn of the direc-
tors idea to shoot Hugo in 3-D, though
it did echo the books innovative
mlange of storytelling techniques and
illustrative style.
The visual approach centered
initially around Brians illustrations, the
depth of which begged for a provocative
translation, and 3-D provided that for
us, says Richardson. Marty selected a
large number of images from the book
which spoke to what he had in mind,
and he asked all of us [production
designer] Dante Ferretti, [set decorator]
Francesca Lo Schiavo, [costume
designer] Sandy Powell, [visual-effects
supervisor] Rob Legato and me to be
faithful to what Brian had captured.
This guided us toward a world that was
created rather than bound to reality.
Atop this Marty placed the
extraordinary accomplishments of
Georges Mlis, allowing us to swim in
the waters from which Mlis created
his highly imaginative work, he adds.
Selznicks illustrations are black-
and white, so for color references the
filmmakers turned to photographic and
cinematographic processes that were in
use in Mlis time. Richardson notes,
Still and motion-picture photography
were both in formative stages at the turn
of the century. Autochrome had recently
been developed and patented by
Lumire, and it became the principal
photographic color process of that time.
In addition to looking at Autochrome,
we spent numerous hours at the British
Film Institute viewing examples of tint-
ing and toning in early silent films. Out
of all that came the realization that there
could be no better movie to shoot in
3-D than one dealing with the time
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Opposite: Hugo
Cabret (Asa
Butterfield) tries
to evade the
crafty station
inspector (Sacha
Baron Cohen).
This page, top:
Hugo shows
Isabelle (Chlo
Moretz) one of
his fathers
inventions.
Middle: The
youngsters enjoy
a magical view
of Paris from the
clock tower.
Bottom: Director
Martin Scorsese
(center) and
Robert
Richardson, ASC
plan out a shot.
period in which pioneers such as Mlis
and Lumire were creating such
astounding and magical work.
With no experience in 3-D cine-
matography, Scorsese and Richardson
turned to Vince Pace of Cameron Pace
Group to provide expertise, guidance
and a complete 3-D workflow, in addi-
tion to Fusion 3D camera rigs. Tests
carried out at CPG in Los Angeles and,
later, on the set in London allowed
Richardson to explore how he might
work with the medium.
I like to utilize backlight
often hard backlight or toplight, for
that matter, says the cinematographer.
In our tests we found that the glints
from the hard light created ghosting,
which can encumber the viewing of a
film. Although I felt I should learn as
much as possible about what made a
strong 3-D image, I also believed my
vision and the style intended for Hugo
should lead the 3-D, not the other way
around. How to best balance these
thoughts is what Vince brought to me.
Too often people are educated
about 3-D in a way that devalues their
previous knowledge, and thats unfortu-
nate, because 3-D is elevated by good
2-D techniques and skills, Pace
observes. Cinematographers have been
working with perspective and dimen-
sion through lighting for a long time
it wasnt new with 3-D and we can
only build something great on a good
foundation.
After initial 3-D tests caused
Scorsese some concern, Pace supervised
a reshoot just days before production
started. Demetri Portelli, the shows
stereographer, explains, We needed to
find a 3-D style that would pool the
creative and technical talents of the
entire camera team. Bob Richardson set
the bar very high, and we wanted to find
solutions and protocols that would facil-
itate a 3-D execution that met his
expectations for image quality. The
filmmakers committed to capturing
every single shot in 3-D, and some shot
requirements were challenging. Vince
told me that no matter what, when
Marty and Bob requested something, I
Through a Childs Eyes

These frame grabs of Georges Mlis (Ben Kingsley) performing a magic trick show the scene as
Alexas Log C file (top), with the on-set viewing LUT applied (middle), and with the final grade (bottom),
which incorporated an Autochrome emulation.
New On-set Color Management Tool Coming Soon.
would have to make it work in 3-D; this
meant questioning old rules, finding
new solutions and incorporating the
cinematographers style into the depth
space.
As with any relationship, notes
Richardson, there was give-and-take.
A commitment to dimensional-
ize live on set means satisfying a broad
range of concerns and having the right
people to allow the artistic leaders to
execute a plan, Portelli observes. Some
testing and training is necessary for the
entire crew, because each department is
affected by the format in various ways.
With 3-D tools in the filmmakers tool-
box, a new language is emerging in our
trade, a constantly evolving language
that involves digital-workflow solutions
and depth-within-space concepts.
Finding a digital-workflow solu-
tion was our first obstacle, and it
absorbed a fair amount of gray matter,
Richardson recalls. The volume of data
was prodigious.
After screening the reshoots
supervised by Pace, the filmmakers
decided shooting stereo would not be a
restricting factor. It was at that moment
that Bob realized he could participate in
3-D, says Pace, and from that point on
Hugo was in the hands of the right
people: Marty and Bob.
Shooting 3-D necessitated digi-
tal capture, another medium with
which Richardson was unfamiliar.
However, the camera he selected, Arris
Alexa, was unfamiliar to almost every-
one in the world at that time, because it
had not yet been released to the public.
I decided to use the Alexa after testing
what was then on the market, says
Richardson. The Alexa was by far the
finest in respect to quality. The next step
was to make sure we could get enough
of them to build two 3-D rigs for the
start of shooting that meant four
cameras. Arri made a strong effort and
eventually guaranteed us these cameras.
Testing the Alexa was compli-
cated because it was a prototype, and
the software was constantly develop-
ing, he continues. I made no compro-
mise for digital capture, but I did alter
my perception of the final product,
which for me was an immense leap.
Many filmmakers shoot with digital
capture and then attempt to create a
film look, but I decided instead to fully
embrace digital cinema and create a
look that best utilized what the Alexa
could capture.
When Marty would look at the
Top: This final
frame, which also
illustrates the
Autochrome
emulation, shows
Mlis in his
toyshop at the
Gare
Montparnasse.
Bottom:
Richardson dons
RealD glasses to
check out a 3-D
effect in the
toyshop set.

size of the 3-D rig with a wry smile, Id
remind him that the Enchanted
Cottage [a nickname for the bulky
three-strip Technicolor camera] created
a great number of brilliant films, he
adds.
It was Portellis responsibility to
adjust the interocular (IO) distance and
convergence for each shot; this often
involved pulling one, the other or both
while the cameras were rolling. I pull
live with a wireless Preston [FI+Z]
because during the shot, something or
someone might get closer to the camera
than I anticipated, and then I have to
gradually bring down the IO and
perhaps the convergence, says Portelli.
Its not my place to call cut, so I have
to be prepared. There really is a differ-
ence between capturing 3-D live with
two cameras on a rig [and shooting 2-D
and converting in post]. True 3-D is
very beautiful and very remarkable.
Every frame in Hugo was a commit-
ment to the medium, and were proud
of that.
Richardson, who operated the
camera rig whenever he could,
acknowledges that he was initially
confounded by the subtle changes to the
framing that resulted from Portellis
wireless work. Marty is extremely
precise about composition, just as I am,
says the cinematographer. I would be
viewing a shot, and without my altering
the framing I would find the composi-
tion drifting. At first I didnt understand
what the issue was I thought it might
be the mirror. But I soon located the
culprit: Demetri.
Portellis adjustments to IO and
convergence during a take meant phys-
ical changes on the 3-D rig, with one
camera either moving farther away from
the other or rotating on an axis. When
you put two cameras on a rig, you only
want one eyepiece, and, of course, you
want it to be on the static camera,
explains Portelli. We couldnt do that
initially because for those first few
weeks, there was no way to flip the
fixed-eye camera into the eyepiece, as
that camera was seeing a mirror reflec-
tion. So the camera Bob was operating

This series of frames showing Hugos father (Jude Law) at work depicts the
Alexas Log C file (top), the on-set viewing LUT applied (middle), and the final
grade with Autochrome emulation (bottom).
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explains. Also, mirrors are defective by
nature, whether minutely or more so,
and the organic mirrors are easily
damaged. We used only prime lenses
and tended to work between 18mm and
75mm.
Changing lenses on the rig and
ensuring they were matched could take
up to 15 minutes. To minimize this
time delay, Richardson continues, I
would ask that the next lens we wanted
to use be placed on a second rig in
advance, and instead of swapping lenses,
we changed rigs. Sometimes, however, I
would call for a new lens after Marty
decided upon a composition.
The first lens changes and rig
alignments established problem areas
and helped streamline the process, says
Portelli. The camera department
became like a pit crew at an auto race:
each person had a very specific job to
accomplish to get the lens changes
down to as little time as possible.
A sophisticated dailies pipeline
was set up at Shepperton Studios, where
the majority of the shoot took place.
(Two weeks were spent on location in
Paris.) As part of its Slate2screen
service, CPG provided all of the hard-
ware required to process the large
amount of data generated on set and to
make any slight stereo corrections to the
footage immediately after it was shot.
The production hired a freelance
colorist, Greg Fisher, in order to get the
dailies as close to the final color grade as
possible.
It was never our intention to
have that type of facility on the set,
Richardson notes. We started off
trying to work with EFilm in Los
Angeles, but transporting the data on a
daily basis proved too difficult. In addi-
tion, most labs are set up to grade on a
white screen, and [our 3-D viewing
technology] RealD requires a silver
screen. We found that utilizing our 3-D
screening room put us within reach of
timing the dailies ourselves all we
needed was a grader. When I met with
Greg, I was deeply impressed by his
knowledge. He agreed to take on the
project, and he suggested that with a

would suddenly move when I changed
the IO. It was a learning process for Arri
as well; they had to adapt the Alexa for
3-D rigs. They soon developed a solu-
tion that allowed me the full ability to
build depth without disturbing the
camera operator.
In addition to working with
brand-new cameras, Richardson chose
lenses that were hot off the production
line: Cooke 5/i primes. Matched pairs
were delivered to the set as fast as the
Leicestershire factory could manufac-
ture them, supplementing sets of Cooke
S4 primes.
Testing in prep established that it
was best to avoid very wide or long
lenses with the 3-D rigs. Going wider
than 18mm required a larger mirror,
which meant a larger rig, Richardson
Top: Lighting grip Howard Davidson (left) provides fill for the young leads as Steadicam
operator Larry McConkey, SOC captures the shot with his Steadicam hard-mounted on a
dolly. Visible at foreground left are the hands of 1st AC Gregor Tavenner and his Preston
remote focus unit. The use of a monitor for focus pulling is becoming quite common now
that cameras like the Alexa produce such high-quality video signals, McConkey notes, but
here Gregor is doing it the old-fashioned and still often the best way, estimating the
distance by eye with occasional reference to the sonar measuring system mounted on
the Steadicam. Bottom: McConkey and Tavenner (at left of camera) at work on another
Steadicam shot.
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[FilmLight] Baselight he could do color
corrections while the [Quantel] Pablo
made 3-D corrections in the same
room.
Fisher created a display LUT for
the projected dailies, and a version of the
same LUT was made for the monitors
on set. This helped the filmmakers
with 3-D decisions on set, as the images
had a similar tonal curve to the
projected images, says Fisher. There is
a relationship between the grade of the
image and how depth is perceived, so
getting the monitors close to what we
were looking at projected ensured a
better translation from set to the
theater.
Using his own 3-D monitor as a
reference, Scorsese demanded an
aggressive approach to the 3-D, and he
would request more or less [of the
effect] depending upon the sequence
and the intention he had in mind, says
Richardson. He would often push
Demetri to go beyond the acceptable
and then pull back to where he felt the
3-D worked best.
I would sometimes hear Martys
voice on the radio telling me to use
more IO or less IO, recalls Portelli. At
other times, hed say, Demetri, Im
going to concentrate on the actors, so its
your job not to miss any 3-D opportu-
nities. In those instances, Id take the
script and Martys notes and try to bring
the best 3-D depth to every shot.
Hugo (Asa Butterfield) spends
much of his time inside the Paris train
station, for which a vast, detailed set was
created at Shepperton by Dante
Ferretti. Long, flowing takes showing
the boys movements through the hustle
and bustle of the station were achieved
with Richardson operating a stabilized
head on a mobile crane. However, it
became clear in prep that the skills of
Larry McConkey, SOC, Scorseses
long-time Steadicam operator, would
also be required, and this presented a
challenge: no practical Steadicam solu-
tion for the Fusion/Alexa rig existed.
A couple of months before
production, Bob called me up at about 5
in the morning and said, Larry, youve
got to get on a plane to L.A. right now
so you can work with Vince on design-
ing this gear! recalls McConkey.
Thats how it started for me. When I
got to L.A., the CPG team showed me
what they had for a Steadicam, and I
started to laugh because it was just so
impossible.
McConkey and CPGs engineers
spent the next six weeks developing a rig
that built upon a patent-pending design
Pace originally developed for Avatar
(AC Jan. 10). The team focused on
shedding weight wherever possible and
incorporating a counterbalance system
that would compensate for IO and
convergence adjustments during a take.
It was vital for McConkey and
Portelli to work together closely
throughout the shoot. Portelli recalls, I
would try to be considerate [of Larry] in
my choices of when to pull. For exam-
ple, Larry might suggest that I should
adjust as he went through a doorway.
Each shot ended up being a little
dance between me and Demetri, says
McConkey. If he was very consistent
and he was then I knew when
those changes were coming, and I could
build them into my sensory expecta-
tions.
Scorsese wanted most of the
images to suggest Hugos perspective,
which meant a lot of low-angle shots. I
investigated using a modified Segway to
get low-mode shots, says McConkey.
It was a very liberating way of doing
fast shots through a crowd, and I ended
up using it for a little chase scene. After
the first take, we heard Marty yelling
and screaming. We thought something
was terribly wrong, but it turned out to
be because he loved it!
The last shot in the movie is a
single, long Steadicam shot that could
not have been accomplished any other
way, or without the Fusion rig working
as well as it did, he adds.
To allow as much freedom of
movement as possible on the station set,
Richardson lit it mainly from above.
We used soft boxes overhead that were
gelled Full Blue, while the stage lip was
surrounded by Dinos and Maxis, he
says. Depending on the direction, wed
use the Dinos to create a general back-
light, adding gel when necessary. The
reasoning behind overheads with Blue
was that I could alter the color temper-
ature of the Alexa without filters or a
loss in stop. If I wanted a white top, Id
set the camera at 5,600K and not use

Richardson lines up a shot of Moretz in the clock-tower set. He recalls, When Marty would [note]
the size of the 3-D rig, Id remind him that the Enchanted Cottage [3-strip Technicolor camera]
created a great number of brilliant films.
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the surrounding lights. Or I might
decide to use the overheads as a cool top
and work at 3,200K.
The notion of mixing color
temperatures was carried forward into
the final grade, for which Richardson
again sat with Fisher. Their approach
was to combine warm light with much
cooler areas, creating an anonymous,
cold feel for the city that contrasts with
the warmth surrounding the characters.
We were using our Autochrome LUT
a little bit throughout most of the film,
as it gave us some continuity to the
look, says Fisher. In general terms, it
suppressed the green and magenta, and
it would swing skin orange rather than
red, and it would swing blues towards
cyan. It was really quite useful as a start-
ing point, and wed adapt it from one
scene to the next, or even from shot to
shot. The degree to which we used it
was quite variable.
Flashback sequences provided an
opportunity to incorporate the look of

66
Richardson (at eyepiece) and Tavenner (partially visible next to camera) capture a warmly lit
scene of Hugo and his fathers creation.
silent-film tinting and toning. A scene
of Hugos father (Jude Law) walking
through a museum at night features a
blue tint and a warm tone, with the
character standing out against a cool
background. The application of such
looks was, however, tempered by the
overriding need to elicit an appropriate
emotional response in the audience.
Early friends-and-family screenings
revealed that the look developed for one
flashback showing Hugo with his father
was too austere, and as a result, viewers
were not responding to the father char-
acter. It had a dreamlike quality, but it
did make you feel a little disconnected,
says Fisher. That was an instance
where we discarded the look and started
again.
For scenes showing Mlis (Ben
Kingsley) making films at the height of
his career, another silent-era color
process, hand painting, was used as a
reference. We tried to make specific
colors pop out while suppressing the
others, so the palette is quite limited, but
there is strong color in the frame,
explains Fisher. Essentially we were
narrowing the tonal range of the
selected areas, so they appeared more
like a single block of color.
We also added vignettes for a
few of the flashbacks, and for a scene of
Mlis performing magic in a theater
we defocused the outside of the vignette
in both eyes, which reduced the 3-D
effect, he continues. Outside the
vignette there was almost no depth,
whereas inside the vignette the 3-D was
normal. It sort of put the image in a
bubble, which was quite interesting.
Reviewing several reels of Hugo
with AC during the final grade,
Richardson expressed certainty that the
result could never have been achieved if
the filmmakers hadnt captured in 3-D.
Not making stereography decisions on
the set is simply giving away creative
choices and opportunities its like not
choosing your lens, he says. It doesnt
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make a great deal of sense for a director
to make a 3-D film and not embrace
3-D. Certainly, you can just assign a
consistent IO and place the conver-
gence upon the subject, but I believe
that only by shooting in 3-D can one
accurately determine which IO should
be chosen for a specific shot. From my
perspective, it is better to direct than
select.
In the future, perhaps post
rendering will prove faster and cheaper
and provide greater flexibility than a
3-D rig, he adds. But I have no inter-
est in predictions. Let be what may be.
67
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T
his years Cannes Film Festival had more than its
customary share of controversy, but one film met with
almost universal praise from the public and critics alike:
The Artist, directed by Michel Hazanavicius and shot by
Guillaume Schiffman, AFC.
A witty, moving celebration of Hollywood and film-
making, the French film is presented as a black-and-white
silent picture, in 1.33:1, with music and title cards substitut-
ing for dialogue. The story follows silent-film star George
Valentin (Jean Dujardin), who scorns the arrival of the
talkies. At the height of his career, Valentin helps an aspiring
actress, Peppy (Brnice Bjo), break into the business, and as
she rises to celebrity in talking pictures, he stubbornly sticks
with silents and loses everything but his faithful dog. But
Peppy remains loyal to Valentin, and she eventually persuades
him to take a new role in the movies.
When AC met with Hazanavicius and Schiffman in
Paris, the camaraderie between the filmmakers was evident.
The Artist is their third collaboration, as well as their third film
with leading man Dujardin. (The three previously teamed on
two spy-film spoofs based on a French James Bond character,
OSS 117.)
Hazanavicius recalls that he prepared for The Artist by
inviting his close collaborators to a studious retrospective of
silent films. I wanted to get both Guillaume and [composer]
Ludovic [Bource] involved early, says the director. We went
to see films at the Cinemathque on a big screen, which isnt
the same thing as looking at them on a DVD or computer. I
wanted us to immerse ourselves in the world of silent films.
Silent Splendor
Silent Splendor
The Artist, directed by
Michel Hazanavicius and shot
by Guillaume Schiffman, AFC,
tells a classic Hollywood story
in black-and-white and
without sound.
By Benjamin B
|
Once we had been immersed, the idea
was to forget the specifics.
The pictures budget allowed for
only seven weeks of production, and
Hazanavicius and Schiffman spent
three months prepping in Los
Angeles, finding a crew, shooting tests
and scouting locations. Prep is essen-
tial for me, notes Schiffman. I even
go to actors readings. I need to see the
actors at work.
Hazanavicius draws his own
storyboards, and he tells AC that
Schiffman often teases him about his
meticulous framing. We like to
provoke each other, adds the cine-
matographer, and provocation creates
these little sparks that are exactly what
the film needs. Were a good pair.
Michel is precise about everything; no
detail escapes him. Some people would
say hes a control freak, but I would say
hes a real director. After all, its his
film!
I almost never comment about
the lighting, however, notes Haza-
navicius. When you have a collabora-
tor like Guillaume, an essential pillar of
your film is autonomous, which frees
you to attend to other things.
Schiffman recalls that Haza-
navicius was very clear about the visual
themes of The Artist. The first thing
he spoke to me about was the duality
of Jeans character. He has a dark side
and a luminous side, so I played with
that all the time. The cinematogra-
pher often set a shadow in the frame
alongside Valentin, be it a shadow of
the actor or a dark diagonal in the
background.
As for Peppy, continues
Schiffman, I had to ensure that she
became more and more luminous. That
could be tough when she and Jean were
together in a scene. Theres a soft aura
that follows Peppy everywhere and at
times becomes very luminous I used
a lot of soft light with her. At the same
time, I avoided putting too many bright
spots in her eyes, because in films of
that era there werent many sources in
the eyes. [Lighting] was usually one big
source. U
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Opposite: Silent-film star
George Valentin (Jean
Dujardin) and talkie star
Peppy Miller (Brnice
Bjo) eventually find
success together in The
Artist. This page, top:
Valentin is at the peak
of his fame when the
film begins. Middle:
Peppy, just a girl in the
crowd at the time,
surprises the star with a
sudden kiss at his films
premiere. Bottom:
Director Michel
Hazanavicius points the
way for Guillaume
Schiffman, AFC
(standing on ladder).
Silent Splendor
One distinctive aspect of The
Artists monochrome palette is that the
image sometimes has a reduced
contrast, with muted whites and a rich
gradation of mid-tones. Black-and-
white without gray is too flashy,
Schiffman observes. Although many
filmmakers speak about black-and-
white, Michel kept talking to me about
the gray tones, saying, I want to go
towards that.
In an early scene, Peppy goes to
Valentins empty dressing room to scrib-
ble her thanks on his mirror, and after
she does so, she plays with his coat,
which is hanging on a coat rack.
Schiffman muted the whites of the
scene. I wanted to see the filaments in
the bulbs around his mirror, he says. A
2K keys Peppy, giving a direction to
light, but the shadows are all but erased
by fill. When Valentin enters the room,
the wall behind him is graduated in
grays by nets and flags, but a top cutter
casts a sharp dark shadow above.
The central image of the film is
one character falling while another
rises, says the director. This motif is
literally illustrated in a scene shot in Los
Angeles famous Bradbury Building,
where Valentin encounters Peppy on the
stairs. Schiffman keyed the scene with a
20K from the side to create a single,
sharp shadow of Valentin on the wall
behind him. A 4K HMI balloon above
augments and then replaces the daylight
coming through a skylight, and the
toplight acts as a bright fill that suffuses
Peppy as she calls out to Valentin from
above. The scene ends with the one-
time star fading into the crowd as he
walks down the stairs.
Hazanavicius also charted a visual
journey for Valentin that went from
contrast to gray and back. When he
and Peppy are shown at the peak of their
careers, theyre very contrasty hes in
a tuxedo at the beginning of the movie,
and at the end, when shes a big success,
shes in a white dress, he says. In
between, [Valentins palette] is going
toward the grays. Thats easy to say, but
then you have to hold to it during 35
days of shooting. The strength of a
collaborator like Guillaume is that he
takes on the visual ideas and reinterprets
them.
When Peppy visits Valentin in
the hospital, the image is suffused in
white light. Thats Michel provoking
me! laughs Schiffman. He made the
entire set white, and I told him it would
complicate the lighting. He looked at
me, smiled and just said, Yes.
Its the [films] first happy
ending, responds the director, so it
needed to be very white, just like the
breakfast sequence afterward, when
Top: Cast as an extra in Valentins new movie, Peppy sneaks into his dressing room and frolics with his
suit. Bottom: Schiffman checks the light on Dujardin for a scene from one of Valentins hit films.
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shes in a white dress.
The filmmakers tested a range of
different frame rates for The Artist
before settling on 22 fps. For
Hazanavicius, the slight speed-up was
a way to free the actors from the ques-
tion they all asked me, which was, Do
you want us to act in the style of the
1920s? I didnt want them to overact, so
I liberated them by shooting at 22 fps.
That way they didnt have to worry
about conveying the period through
performance, but we still gave the film a
taste of the 20s, or at least of the image
we have of films of that period.
He adds that 18 fps had a slap-
stick feel, but with 22 fps I could stay in
melodrama.
The filmmakers sought to use
tools that were true to their subject:
35mm negative, soft lensing and hard
lighting. After testing black-and-white
negatives, Schiffman opted for the
speed of Kodak Vision3 500T 5219 to
help achieve deep focus. Duboi colorist
Richard Deusy used a Lustre plug-in to
desaturate the dailies, which were trans-
mitted to the set via the Internet.
The filmmakers shot mostly
single camera, using a PanArri 435ES.
(1st AC Jennifer Ann Henry notes that
Hazanavicius wanted a loud camera.)
Schiffman chose a set of old Panavision
Super Speed lenses and a Lightweight
Zoom-2. True to the era, the typical
focal length used was a 40mm, occa-
sionally a 50mm; a 75mm was some-
times used for close-ups. Schiffman
kept the T-stop between T2.8 and T4 to
get some depth-of-field. On exteriors,
NDs were added to keep the stop
consistent with interiors.
To help fashion a unique look,
Schiffman asked Panavision optical
engineer Dan Sasaki to create custom
attachments that screwed into the
fronts of the Super Speed lenses to
soften the image in certain scenes. The
cinematographer chose a mix of Tiffen
Glimmer Glass 3 and Soft/FX filters to
Silent Splendor
Top: The
filmmakers
capture a scene
for Valentins
passion project,
Tears of Love,
which proves
financially
ruinous for him.
Bottom:
Schiffman checks
the light on Bjo
for a scene in
which Peppy,
now a star in her
own right, sees
Tears of Love
play to a near-
empty house.
obtain a strongly diffused look.
Hazanavicius chose to shoot in
the eras 1.33:1 aspect ratio, noting that
he actually prefers it to 1.85:1. With a
close-up in 1.33, the actor takes up the
entire frame theres the actor, his
natural aura and nothing else. You can
also shoot a [full] body, and it isnt lost
in the frame. It gives presence back to
the actor.
Schiffman, who operated the
camera, remembers that he had to
suppress his geared-head reflexes to
leave less space around the actors.
Hazanavicius recalls, Guillaume
tended to leave a little space in front of
the face, like you do naturally, and I
would say, Push him against the frame
to fit the shadow in. What interested
me was that we were sometimes shoot-
ing two characters: Jean and his
shadow.
The director adds that the old
Academy aspect ratio can also simplify
storytelling. When you want to say
only one thing per image, 1.33 helps,
and that makes the story more fluid.
You really can have only one piece of
information in the frame at a time.
Schiffman asked veteran U.S.
gaffer Jim Plannette to join his crew,
and the two put together a lighting
package that featured a lot of hard-light
units, combining Mole-Richardson
tungstens and LTM HMIs, and even
some old-fashioned Zip soft lights.
Vintage practical movie lights were
obtained from History for Hire.
Plannette says the local
Hollywood crew loved working on the
unusual production. Everyone involved
was so enthusiastic about doing the
movie that we all looked forward to
going to work every day, he says. And
its a wonderful-looking movie.
The director believes his
tendency to play the music for a given
scene during the take helped to unify
Silent Splendor
Top: Broke and
unemployed,
Valentin screens
footage from
happier days in
his tiny
bungalow.
Bottom: The
filmmakers prep
a shot of
Valentin
contemplating
the wreckage of
his career.
the crew and cast. The music helped
the actors to structure their acting, but it
also created a general ambience, he
says.
Schiffmans use of hard light
distinguishes The Artist from most
contemporary cinematography, which is
dominated by soft lighting. He recalls
using up to 40 hard sources on the film-
premiere scene, in which Peppy literally
bumps into Valentin under the theater
marquee.
Plannette, whose father worked
on films in the silent era, observes that
although todays units are more
compact, the quality of hard-light
sources havent changed that much
since the old days. He adds that todays
18K HMIs compare well to arcs, yield-
ing the same intensity and better shad-
ows, and that the design of
Mole-Richardson Fresnel lenses is
pretty close to that of yesteryear.
Underscoring this point, he notes that
in some setups in The Artist, the
vintage lights in frame contributed to
the lighting scheme alongside the
modern fixtures.
Surveying his films many allu-
sions to legendary silent movies,
Hazanavicius happily acknowledges
borrowing from von Sternberg,
Murnau, Vidor and Chaplin. However,
Silent Splendor
Legendary gaffer Jim Plannette (left) joins Schiffman to check the light on location. Plannette
had a unique relationship to the material, in that his father worked as a gaffer in the silent era.
76
he emphasizes that what interested me
the most was telling a story with
images. In a silent film, everything goes
through the image. You cant quote
images for the sake of quoting. Every
image absolutely has to tell a story.
Michel gave us a framework of
historical images, says Schiffman, and
to find yourself in that, you have to
really analyze those images, watch them
again and again, and dream about them.
From there we were very free. We didnt
think about them anymore, and we did
what we wanted to do.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.33:1
35mm
PanArri 435ES
Panavision Super Speed, LZ-2
Kodak Vision3 500T 5219
77
The filmmakers prep a crane shot for Valentins disastrous opening night.

I
n The Muppets, the first big-screen appearance of Jim
Hensons family of creations since 1999s Muppets from
Space, humans Gary (Jason Segel) and Mary (Amy
Adams) join Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy and a colorful
cast of characters in a last-ditch effort to save the Muppets
theater from sinister oil baron Tex Richman (Chris Cooper).
Director James Bobins penchant for absurdist comedy
his credits include the series Da Ali G Show and Flight of
Its Time to
Raise
the
Curtain
The Muppets, shot by
Don Burgess, ASC, sends
the beloved characters on
a new adventure.
By Iain Stasukevich
|
the Conchords made him well suited
to give the subject matter a unique spin.
James has a fantastic energy and an
infectious sense of humor, and he was
very passionate about making this
movie, says director of photography
Don Burgess, ASC, whose credits
include The Book of Eli , Terminator 3:
Rise of the Machines (AC Aug. 03) and
Spider-Man (AC June 02).
While Bobin and production
designer Steve Saklad scoured previous
Muppet features and televisions The
Muppet Show for ideas that could be
transposed for the new film, Burgess
used ACs coverage of the original
Muppet Movie (see July 79), shot by
Isidore Mankofsky, ASC, as his own
starting point. For material like this, it
was important to understand how
things were done in the past, says
Burgess.
Indeed, the teams approach to
the new film did not vary much from
the way things were done more than 30
years ago. The main difference is that
this Muppets marks the characters first
digitally captured feature. Burgess used
a Red One with the upgraded
Mysterium-X sensor he had used its
predecessor on The Book of Eli in 2009,
and after testing the upgraded camera,
he was confident it could handle the
Muppets bold color palette.
The extreme clarity of the digital
image was a concern, however. Early
on I wondered if more detail would be a
problem, says Burgess. Would the
Muppets lose some of their charm if you
saw them too perfectly? But they held up
great. We were able to enhance the
quality of their design without detract-
ing from their personalities.
Burgess consistently kept the Red
set at 800 ASA, but I lit to 400 ASA,
which is what I set my meter to, to get a
more accurate exposure in protecting
the exposure range of the camera.
Shooting at 4K resolution, the
filmmakers recorded to 16GB flash
cards whose data was downloaded and
checked on set immediately. Following
that, the footage was colored by the on-
set colorist, Carissa Tudor, and those P
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Opposite page:
The beloved
Muppets troupe
returns to the
big screen in The
Muppets. From
left to right are
Floyd Pepper,
Fozzie Bear, Lew
Zealand, Janice,
Swedish Chef,
Camilla the
Chicken, Dr.
Bunsen
Honeydew,
Gonzo, Scooter,
Beaker and Dr.
Teeth. This page,
top: Miss Piggy
and Kermit
resume their
tempestuous
relationship.
Middle: Kermit
takes a
melancholy stroll
in the real world.
Bottom:
Cinematographer
Don Burgess,
ASC frames the
famous frog.
colored files were then given to [digital
technicians from] Light Iron, who were
also located on set, and the files were
backed up and sent to the studio, says
Burgess.
We used cards rather than hard
drives so we could check the footage
carefully throughout the day and main-
tain a steady workflow of downloading
files and color timing, adds the cine-
matographer. Not having bulk down-
loads [from hard drives] allowed us to
catch problems earlier and keep up to
speed with the coloring.
The Muppets opens in the quaint
hamlet of Smalltown, U.S.A., home to
Gary and Mary. The towns exterior was
created on location in Whittier, Calif.,
and on portions of the Warner Bros.
backlot. To lend the setting a diffused,
dreamlike quality, Burgess used Tiffen
Black Pro-Mist filters on the lens,
1
8 for
wider shots and for close-ups.
When Gary tells Mary that his
24" felt-skinned brother, Walter, will be
tagging along on their trip to
Hollywood, Mary is disappointed. She
slips into a reverie wherein she dreams
of Paris, where Gary appears as a knight
in a shining tuxedo, dismounts his
mighty steed and kneels before her with
a wedding ring. This day-exterior
fantasy sequence was actually shot
onstage at Universal Studios, where the
actors were surrounded by greenscreen
backings that were later replaced with
painterly Paris exteriors created by Look
FX.
Burgess captured the scene at
T5.6. Above the actors, a 40'x40'
bleached-muslin butterfly helped soften
an overhead cluster of 6K space lights,
while 20Ks positioned behind 8'x8'
frames of Light Grid provided back-
light. Fill was supplied by additional
20Ks bounced off 20'x20' frames of
bleached muslin. Burgess further
enhanced the scenes dreamlike feel with
a Tiffen White Pro-Mist filter.
Smalltowns idealized Middle
America stands in sharp contrast to
what they find in Los Angeles. Gary,
Mary and Walter are expecting to see a
picture-postcard Hollywood they
Its Time to Raise the Curtain

Top: Moping around
in his mansion while
pining for the good
old days, the reclusive
Kermit takes a stroll
down memory lane,
singing Pictures in
My Head as paintings
of his old Muppet
friends come to life.
Middle: Overhead
banks illuminate the
hallway on location at
Greystone Mansion in
Beverly Hills. Bottom:
Burgess and gaffer
Rafael Snchez
ponder their options
while setting up the
hallway scene.
B e c a u s e i t m a t t e r s .
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A
fter its broadcast debut in
September 1976, the television
series The Muppet Show became
an international hit, leading to
the release of the 1979 live-action
musical feature The Muppet
Movie. The Muppets first
big-screen foray was shot by
ASC member Isidore Mankofsky,
who provided a detailed account
of his strategies in the July 1979
issue of AC. What follows are
excerpts illuminating aspects of
Mankofskys approach.
For screen format we
tested 1.85 and Panavision
anamorphic. Panavision would
have caused fewer framing prob-
lems, but the format proved too
large and overpowering for the
Muppet figures. Equipment
considerations and the need for a
dependable video-monitoring
system also helped turn us to 1.85.
Image size was best from a
medium close-up to a fairly wide
shot. Fabric flaws became very
obvious and distortion was a prob-
lem in extreme close-ups. We
tested shooting from above, below
and a little above eye level.
Looking down on the Muppets
proved to be too condescending,
and the rather small size of the figures
made shooting from below out of the
question. The best camera height was a
little above eye level. Generally, the
Muppets took to the big screen with
only a few changes in normal lens-
image size considerations. When we
filmed Muppets and people together, we
used a slightly longer lens and kept the
Muppets slightly forward of the people.
This made the Muppets look their best.
Tests showed that directional
soft light, hard kickers, or side light with
enough fill light to penetrate the shad-
ows worked well. The vivid, multicol-
ored Muppet fabrics caused some
problems. Very light Miss Piggy, mid-
range Kermit, and quite dark Gonzo
made it necessary to set many nets to
balance the lighting. Once again the
problem of filming Muppets and people
at the same time had to be solved; in
many instances they had to be lighted
separately.
The opening scene of the film is
a shot of Kermit sitting on a log in the
swamp, strumming a banjo and singing.
[It] was originally scheduled to be shot
on location in Georgia, but that proved
too impractical so special effects built
a submersible container in which Jim
Henson was encased, with his arms
sticking up through a log and an oxygen
supply fed in to him. There was one
instance where he spent more than
three hours underwater, trapped inside
| Isidore Mankofsky, ASC on The Muppet Movie |
this container. His only contact
with the outside world was his little
monitor, which gave him a visual
account of Kermits performance.
For this sequence an entire
swamp was built in the lake on the
backlot of Studio Center in
Hollywood, and about 40 cypress
trees were cut down and flown in
from Georgia. We started with the
camera mounted on a 40' extension
on a Titan crane and dissolved
from an aerial shot made in Florida
as we pulled in and zoomed from
25mm to 500mm, finally picking
up Kermit in close-up. The most
difficult part of it was that we had
to get the crane out over the water
without rippling the surface or
giving away the fact that there were
grips trying to steady the camera
move. It was one of the most
remarkable crane moves Ive ever
seen anyone perform.
One of the great occupational
hazards was the abundance of
holes that had to be cut or dug in
the set to give our Muppet opera-
tors a place to work. Its ironical
that after Id spent a lot of time
warning people to watch out for
the holes, the first to fall into one
was me.
From the photographic stand-
point, probably the most difficult
sequence in The Muppet Movie was the
finale, which involved 265 Muppets.
We had to start on an extremely tight
shot of Kermit so that we wouldnt give
away the gag, and pull back to the far
end of the set to reveal the entire group
of Muppets, and, in doing so, miss all
the people who were standing there
holding their hands in the air. There
were about 200 people, some holding
two Muppets, and we had to take the
scene quite a number of times in order
to avoid picking up all those people who
were standing there in a hole in the
floor. It wasnt easy.
Isidore Mankofsky, ASC takes a meter reading with
Kermit the Frog and his nephew, Robin, on the set of
The Muppet Movie (1979).
imagine it as it was in its glory days,
says Saklad. Instead, they discover
Hollywood Boulevard is filled with
people who want to steal their money,
and they find the Muppet studio and
theater completely abandoned.
The theater and attached studio
backlot are comprised mainly of real
locations in Hollywood, but Saklad
admits to playing fast and loose with
reality. For example, the Muppet studio
exterior was shot at the gate to Jim
Henson Studios on La Brea Avenue,
while the backlot was a mix of the
Crossroads of the World mall on Sunset
Boulevard and Walt Disney Studios in
Burbank. The art department added a
classic studio arch to the Henson gate,
tagging the faade with graffiti, scatter-
ing trash on the curb and parking a
derelict bus (belonging to the Muppet
band Electric Mayhem) in the court-
yard.
With set dressing and some CG
aging, Hollywoods El Capitan Theatre
served as the exterior of the Muppets
run-down theater. The theater interior
was created on Universals Stage 28,
which houses a replica of the Paris
Opera House used in 1925s The
Phantom of the Opera . The theater set
needed a condemned look that still
hinted at its glory days, and the film-
makers received permission to make it
look more like a classic American
Vaudeville house.
I worked on a lot of Broadway
productions back in the 1980s, so I
have deeply personal memories of what
the guts of a theater look like, says
Saklad, whose team repainted the set,
raked the stage, installed a wall behind
the audience and added a balcony rail
to suggest an upper level. A proscenium
was constructed above the stage, and
the wings, backstage area and Muppet
dressing rooms were erected on a
single, connecting footprint.

Top: Kermit and his
human pal Gary
(Jason Segel) meet
with evil oil baron
Tex Richman (Chris
Cooper) to see if
they can save the
Muppet theater
from his greedy
clutches. Bottom
left: Richman and
his Muppet
henchmen are
unmoved by the
frogs appeals.
Bottom right:
Kermits loyal
young fan, Walter,
sneaks into the
frogs office a
scene shot at Jim
Henson Studios
in Hollywood.
www.clairmont.com
Over the years,Clairmont Cameras Lens Department has always been the most
supportive and innovative for my needs. Theyve modified specialty lenses as well as
found me a matching set of the older style Cooke Speed Panchros to film with.
Recently they were the first to test and acquire the latest lenses I was looking for on
a project. I can also say that Ive never been at a loss with their vast filter inventory
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black & white. In the end,its not just about renting camera equipment. It's about
Clairmont Cameras commitment and involvement in tailoring the equipment to your
individual needs and finding the right solution to your problem.
Ed Lachman,ASC
The idea, says Saklad, was that
the director could stage a continuous
shot from the audience onto the stage,
follow it over to Kermits desk in the
wings, and then move up the stairs to
the dressing rooms. That wasnt possible
with the Muppets TV-show set.
In prep, Burgess and other key
members of the production team spent
time with the Muppet performers
led by Bill Barretta (Rowlf, Swedish
Chef, Dr. Teeth) to learn how they
rehearse and perform. The filmmakers
then designed their approach around
the puppeteers needs. Our goal was to
compose an image that was acceptable
in both the normal world and the
Muppet world, says Burgess.
He explains that the Muppet
style of framing is proscenium-
oriented, with the puppets lined up in
a row, which makes it a challenge to
compose consistently interesting shots
without drawing attention to the fact
that the frame is always cropped at the
bottom of the puppet. Theres no
room for any error, and [A-camera
operator] Matt Moriarty did a fantastic
job maintaining that bottom line,
notes the cinematographer.
Shooting on Stage 28 offered the
filmmakers the ability to work with a
puppeted floor, a stage with removable
4'-square floor modules that allows the
puppeteers to stand upright while work-
ing. The puppeted floors mandated
specific blocking and staging on the part
of the performers, and Burgess often
mounted his camera on a Technocrane
to reach over the puppeteers pits.
When the Muppets first reclaim
their abandoned theater, it is in dreadful
condition. Its dirty and filled with
cobwebs, and there are holes in the roof
that let large shafts of sunlight in, says
Burgess.
10K MoleBeams were hung from
the stage perms, and their individual
beams were visible through a layer of
smoke that also served to fill in shadow
details. Burgess further bumped up the

Clockwise from top left: As the Muppets and their
human friends enter their old theater, they find it
in tatters; Gary gets drenched as a crane-mounted
camera captures an overhead angle; Walter, up on
the scrubbing end of a broom, gets a lift from his
brother, Gary, while the other love of Garys life,
Mary (Amy Adams), helps them renovate the
theater. The theaters interior was shot on
Universal Studios Stage 28, which houses a replica
of the Paris Opera House used in the 1925 movie
classic The Phantom of the Opera.

ambience with 6K space lights, and he
shaped the action on the floor with large
bounced sources and 2K Blondes and
1K Redheads fitted with Chimeras.
The filmmakers didnt always
have access to the custom-designed
floors of a soundstage, however. One
particularly challenging location was the
historic Greystone Mansion in Beverly
Hills. In the film, the palatial property
belongs to Kermit, whose fortunes have
vanished. He now lives as a recluse.
James wanted [the mansion] to
reflect a certain period, in this case the
1970s, says Burgess. The location was
decked out with shag carpeting, 1970s
furniture and autographed photos of
people who were famous during the
Carter Administration. Saklad notes,
To be Muppety, which is the term we
used to define our look, there is a sense
of period to even contemporary things.
Burgess lit the living room from
overhead with a 16'-tall 12'x16' free-
standing aluminum box truss built by
key grip Michael J. Coo. Atop the truss
were two adjustable 1'x20' box trusses
that spanned the length of the room.
The rigs support legs were hidden
behind cleverly placed pilasters. Burgess
and gaffer Rafael Snchez worked out a
practically motivated lighting plan,
using Blondes, Redheads and 750-watt
Lowel Rifa 66s as soft sources, and 750-
watt Lekos to highlight parts of the set.
A large blackout tent was
constructed outside the floor-to-ceiling
windows on one end of the room, where
a 10K gelled with CTB created a moon-
light effect for a scene in which Kermit
plays a forlorn tune on the piano. The
Muppets lighting requirements are
really no different than those of any
other actor, says Burgess. Some things
work just fine and some dont work at
all, and you make those discoveries
while youre making the movie.
A lot of [the Muppets] dont
have noses, so you dont have to worry
about nose shadows, adds Snchez.
And their eyes have a permanent
sparkle. They catch the light really well!
Kermits mansion is bisected by a
150'-long hallway lined with paintings
of Muppets, which hang behind aged
scrim dust covers. To capture a tracking
shot following Kermit out of the living
room and down this memory lane,
Coo attached Muppet performer Steve
Whitmires traveling puppet rig (a small,
flat dolly) to one end of a Fisher 10
dolly. Whitmire controlled Kermit
while lying on his back, and Moriarty
rode the dolly with the camera on a
Steadicam.
As Kermit sings the song
Pictures in My Head, the paintings
lining the hallway come to life and sing
along with him. During prep, Burgess lit
and shot stills of each Muppet involved
in the gag, and artists then used the
photos as reference for the oil paintings.
The paintings come to life through the
assistance of a visual-effects transition,
and the live paintings were shot with
the actual puppets inside framed shad-
owboxes built into alcoves set in false
walls. Burgess and Snchez re-created
Top: Gary and Mary wish Kermit well as he and his friends prepare to stage a star-studded telethon
to save their theater. Bottom: Kermit strums his banjo while performing The Rainbow Connection
with Scooter, Swedish Chef, Fozzie Bear, Miss Piggy, Sam Eagle and Beauregard.

the lighting they used to shoot the
Muppets stills with 4x4 tungsten Kino
Flos and 650-watt Tweenies for
keylight and 2x2 tungsten Kino Flos for
fill. Incandescent sconces and a 250-
watt Jem Ball provided general ambi-
ence in the hallway, and a
dolly-mounted fish light, a Chimera
with three medium-base socket mounts
holding 250-watt globes, gave Kermit a
constant keylight.
When I took this job, I had no
idea how much fun Id have creating
dramatic scenes, says Burgess. Theres
a lot of emotion in this film and in these
characters. You can really see what
Kermit is thinking in that scene.
[Jim] Henson was truly a
genius, the cinematographer continues.
He came up with fully dimensional
characters that you totally buy into. You
root for them. They make you laugh. Its
really amazing how well it all works.
In one scene, the Muppets visit
the conniving Richman in his office, on
the top floor of his skyscraper in down-
town Los Angeles, to plead their case.
The scene was actually shot on the 51st
floor of an L.A. high rise, and the film-
makers were determined to see the city
outside the windows. We felt the
Muppets played best against real-world
villains, so we put them in real-world
environments, says Saklad.
To balance the light inside and
outside, Burgess crew fitted the
windows with ND.3 and ND.6 hard
gels, then tied into the buildings main
line and lit from the floor with an array
of HMIs, including 400-watt and 800-
watt Jokers, Arri M18s and an 18K
bounced off an 8'x8' UltraBounce
through Light Grid.
Richman rebuffs the Muppets
with a musical number of his own, for
which Burgess integrated disco lights
and effects into the existing office set.
Snchez explains, At the proper
moment, we shuttered the 18K to tran-
sition to a more rock n roll lighting
style.
For the song, the crew brought in
light trees and truss pre-rigged with Par
cans. Additionally, 800-watt Jokers with
Leko adapters were used as follow spots,
and Clay Paky Alpha 700s and 1200s
added a Las Vegas flavor. When the
song ends, the lighting returns to
normal across a cut.
The Muppets soon decide that
the only way to save their property is to
mount a star-studded telethon complete
with special guests and musical acts.
Burgess wanted to introduce increas-
ingly complex lighting cues as the
Muppets rehearse and the telethon
progresses. We started out very simple,
with just ambient light in the empty
Top: Mary, Gary and
Walter wait at the
bus stop for the
gleaming coach that
will take them on a
trip from their
quaint, musically
inclined hometown,
Smalltown, U.S.A.,
to Hollywood.
Bottom: Walter is
ready for his next
take of a scene in
which he and Gary
see-saw during the
Everythings Great
montage.
theater, he explains. Four overhead
trusses rigged with Clay Pakys, Par cans
and far cycs were hung upstage of the
proscenium. The stage was flanked with
Par-can trees, and 6K space lights over-
head once again provided ambient fill.
The telethon kicks off with a re-
creation of The Muppet Shows opening
sequence, and thats when we start to
get more theatrical, says Burgess. He
and Snchez designed their lighting
around the individual acts, which grow
in size and complexity until the event
culminates in a duet between Kermit
and Miss Piggy (The Rainbow
Connection) that explodes into an elab-
orate finale performed by the entire cast.
High End Systems DL.3 units
projected graphics onto the Sharkstooth
backdrops behind Kermit and Piggy,
while Clay Paky 1200s and 700s
scanned the stage. Two Super Trouper
spotlights were hung over the audience,
and were raised and lowered to light
different parts of the stage. At the
climax of the performance, a 50'
Technocrane makes the biggest move of
the show, starting with a close up of
Animal onstage and then pulling back
to reveal the entire cast and audience.
We saved all our big lighting cues and
camera moves for that moment, and I
think it really pays off, says Burgess.
The Muppets was graded in 2K at
Light Iron Digital, where Burgess
worked with colorist Corinne
Bogdanowicz. (Light Iron also provided
Outpost 2D on-set data processing and
Live Play services.) Light Iron has a lot
of experience with Red data, and
Corinne did a great job, says Burgess.
We didnt push anything drastically
one way or the other. It was more taking
what we shot and balancing it out. I
pushed Smalltown just a bit warmer
than what I shot.
Burgess also timed a 35mm
answer print at Deluxe Laboratories. He
feels that the gradual phasing-out of
35mm release prints isnt such a bad
thing, unless you live in New York or
L.A., where the prints are always the
best.
As a cinematographer, he says,
all youre looking for is a fair and honest
representation of your work.

Top: Fozzie, Miss
Piggy and Kermit
exult in some
media adulation.
Bottom:
A crane-mounted
HMI is aimed
at the Kermit
statue atop Jim
Henson Studios.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
Digital Capture
Red One
Arri/Zeiss Ultra Primes
Converting Immortals to 3-D
By David Stump, ASC
The ongoing debate over the technology and commerciality
of 3-D cinema has overshadowed what I believe are the most impor-
tant aspects of this powerful medium: its abilities to create an
immersive audience experience and propel a story in a way that
simply isnt possible in 2-D. I recently had the opportunity to serve as
lead stereographer on Immortals, a picture Im confident that view-
ers will enjoy more because of its effective use of 3-D.
I became involved with the project after Ken Halsband, the
executive vice president of physical and postproduction for Relativity
Media, contacted me during the preproduction process. To ensure
the full realization of director Tarsem Singhs vision, he assembled a
Relativity 3-D design team to act as a bridge between Tarsem and
the 3-D post house. The key members of the team were 3-D execu-
tive producer Christopher Brown, 3-D stereo-pipeline supervisor
Johnathan Banta and me.
One of our first tasks was to conduct extensive vendor test-
ing to determine which stereo-conversion specialists we would use.
Prime Focus was selected to handle the majority of the 3-D conver-
sion and final conform, and 3D Revolution and Mikros Image were
each selected to take on much smaller portions of the film.
After an initial test of shooting in native 3-D, the decision was
made to shoot in 2-D (under the supervision of cinematographer
Brendan Galvin) and add 3-D effects in post. The choice was dictated
in part by the blistering production pace Tarsem wanted to maintain;
he likes to move quickly, typically shooting 50-70 setups a day, and
his drive is infectious, galvanizing the cast and crew and translating
to the energy onscreen.
Another factor was Tarsems awareness that in the past few
years, 3-D conversion technology has reached a point where it is not
only a viable option, but also a preferable one in certain situations
and with the right preparation. Deciding whether to shoot in native
3-D or synthesize 3-D in post boils down to a matter of photo-
graphic purity vs. artistic control. In an industry that has refined the
art of deconstructing a story and then reconstructing it in post with
immense control and deliberation, it makes sense to apply the same
measure of control to 3-D.
That said, creating 3-D in post is a long, painstaking process.
Although it allows a filmmaker to determine every aspect of 3-D, it
also forces him to do so, because nothing lands in the right place
accidentally.
The conversion process also requires a very refined set of
skills. Not everyone can see in 3-D with the degree of precision
required to create a correct, comfortable and entertaining stereo-
scopic movie. In addition to this visual acuity, you must thoroughly
understand the techniques employed to convert the images. You
have to learn to speak the language of the digital artists doing the
work, and understand the steps involved: rotoscoping, initial depth
placement, sculpture and depth refinement, edge cleanup and
general finish in-painting. Once you develop these skills, you can
Filmmakers Forum
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Theseus (Henry
Cavill) dispatches
a combatant in a
3-D action
sequence from
Immortals.
control anything in the image based on the
filmmakers direction.
Before we converted a single frame,
Tarsem sat down with members of the
Relativity design team and Prime Focus to
explain his vision for the underlying
emotions of each scene, and how he
wanted to enhance those emotions. He
told us he saw Immortals as a moving
Renaissance painting, and pointed out that
in the art of that period, each plane isnt
merely a flat object; rather, it possesses a
specific dimensionality. He also observed
that most stereo conversions were just
bodies splayed out in depth. He wanted to
see objects, especially faces, with volume. It
was very important to him that the films
characters whether they were gods,
Titans or mortals be tangible creatures
that viewers would feel they could reach
out and touch.
Based on these sessions, we created
a philosophy document and an outline of
the moments we wanted to accentuate.
The challenge, as on any production, was to
stay on track and ensure the work
proceeded according to plan. To give the
characters the volume Tarsem wanted, we
focused on sculpting the forms, creating
an almost tactile sense. The idea was to
transform the visual medium into an
immersive sensory experience in which
viewers feel the contours, cheekbones
and roundness of a persons face. This
notion of sculpting is not something thats
available in 3-D native acquisition. When
youre shooting onstage, in addition to
lighting and framing you can determine
convergence, interaxial distance and lens.
But the stereo photography is still essentially
a recording of reality rather than a creation
of a new 3-D universe.
In any movie, no matter how
thrilling the action or how sweeping the
vistas, it is the characters who matter most.
After all, its the protagonists and antago-
nists with whom audiences engage and
form emotional connections. Tarsems
approach to 3-D allowed us to enhance
that experience as well.
Henry Cavill, who plays the hero,
Theseus, went through months of rigorous
conditioning and training to achieve the
warriors commanding physique. His love
interest, the oracle Phaedra, is played by
Freida Pinto. We used 3-D to enhance both
actors physicality so that Cavills rippling
muscles and Pintos flawless skin and lush
contours would be as appealing onscreen
as they are in person.
In another example, Mickey Rourke,
playing King Hyperion, often handled
props, leaned against walls or placed his
hands on his head in agony. Because
Rourke brought such a focus to his hands,
it was important to give them, along with
his overall physical carriage, their own place
in 3-D.
Throughout the film, we regulated
the overall depth from scene to scene and
even from frame to frame. As Tarsem
pointed out, sometimes it is best to let
certain scenes look flatter so that when
more pronounced 3-D comes back, the
audience really feels the effect. He also
noted that his style, which favors many
long tableaux, lends itself particularly well
to 3-D. Movies that are reliant on rapid-fire
editing may linger unnaturally long on
certain shots to show off a 3-D effect, but
if those longer shots are shown in 2-D, they
suddenly seem too long and awkwardly
edited. Because this longer style of editing
was part of Tarsems approach, it was
incumbent upon our teams to keep the eye
moving around the scene with well-
sculpted forms.
Our team worked daily with Ben
Murray, Prime Focus talented stereogra-
pher, and his lead artists to execute the
depth plan. As shots were completed, Ben
would review each one for consistency and
quality. The movie is just under 2,000 shots
long, so counting left eye and right eye, we
created 4,000 shots, plus another 1,000
matte elements, for a total of more than
5,000 shots a very daunting job!
Immortals is an effects-heavy show,
and many scenes were shot against green-
screen, which required additional coordina-
tion between the visual-effects and 3-D
teams. At first glance, it might seem as
though the visual-effects world would natu-
rally integrate into 3-D work, but its not
that simple. Though some effects artists
and facilities are very receptive to working in
3-D, and many of the tools are the same,
you get a range of reactions to 3-D from
CGI artistic teams. Stereo 3-D is old tech-
nology, but to production communities
today, we are in pioneer territory. Not many
people have delivered 3-D from CG houses,
and deliveries for stereo conversion must
always be managed.
At times, the visual-effects vendor
would export entire composites and even
entire workflows to Prime Focus, as there
would be fine detail, or translucent
elements in images, that couldnt be
isolated with rotoscoping alone. About
two-thirds of the composite shots were
handed off for 3-D work as elements or
mega-composites. Johnathan Banta, our
technical 3-D specialist, led the initial effort
to guide the visual-effects vendors on
proper turnovers to Prime Focus. (He also
assisted on the 3-D composite Sistine
Chapel shots at the end of the movie.)
As the cut developed, the Relativity
design teams main goal was to monitor
shots and give Prime Focus the creative
edge to start the roto process early, while
keeping them updated on the progression
of the cut. Chris Brown oversaw this
process, making sure all the vendors and
post departments were communicating
constantly. Together we built a pipeline to
suit our needs. Along with Prime Focus
producer Rohan Desai and Prime Focus
production manager Franklin Mascarenhas,
we set up a global 3-D production work-
flow and data-movement pipeline to move
images across three continents for review
and approval by the director and studio.
The Prime Focus production team
monitored the budget and worked with
other Prime Focus departments to assign
and supervise the teams in charge of roto-
scoping and View-D, the companys propri-
etary 3-D conversion tool. The Relativity
design team and visual-effects producer
The epic world
of the film
includes the
cliffside village
of Kapros.
Dennis Hall
1957-2011
In honor of Denny Hall, an extremely
gifted cinematographer and dear friend.
Denny had a contagious sense of humor
and a very generous nature. We celebrate
his passion for life, amazing talent, and
invaluable contribution to the flm industry.
We are privileged to have known Denny
and he will forever be in our hearts.
Jack Geist managed the other visual-effects
vendors, which included Tippett Studios,
Scanline VFX, Rodeo FX, BarXseven, Image
Engine and Modus, coordinating delivery of
their shots to Prime Focus. We compiled
reports on the day-to-day progress of the
show, overseeing schedules and artists
logistics, and the coordination of the vast
Prime Focus team in India. Vici Post Solu-
tions also assisted in the movement of data
across the globe.
Another critical component of creat-
ing 3-D is color, and we were fortunate to
have color designer Lionel Kopp, who had
collaborated with Tarsem on his earlier films,
leading the charge. Prime Focus was able to
generate mattes that Kopp could use
during 3-D color grading to isolate and
correct individual elements using his Digital
Vision Nucoda. He admits he was initially
skeptical about the 3-D conversion, but he
says he later found it to be a very elegant
process that was engaging to work with on
an artistic level.
To me, good 3-D means people can
sit down, put on the glasses and lose them-
selves in the movie without thinking about
it being 3-D until its over. As Tarsem noted,
if you are aware of the 3-D, its a problem.
3-D is a great, great tool, but ultimately only
a tool, and our job on Immortals was to
manage the experience so that viewers
would stay immersed in the story. The audi-
ence will be the judge of our success.
Clockwise from
top: Mythical
soldiers march
toward a large-
scale battle; a
soldier (Conrad
Pla, far left)
helps Stavros
(Stephen Dorff)
and Theseus
fend off enemies;
Poseidon (Kellan
Lutz) wields a
hammer.
PRG Illuminates TruColor Foton
Production Resource Group has introduced Foton, the first
fixture in the companys new TruColor line of digital lighting for image
capture.
Foton incorporates remote-phosphor technology, allowing it to
achieve a CRI of more than 95 with
a nearly continuous light spectrum
previously unattainable from tradi-
tional LED sources. The fixture was
designed to eliminate color-accuracy
issues inherent in LED lighting for
film and television production.
Foton is completely flicker-free at
any frame rate, silent and water-
proof, and it generates almost no
heat. Models matching tungsten
sources are available in AC or DC. (Daylight models will be released
early next year.) Power consumption is less than 30 watts.
Local dimming from 0 to 100 percent is achieved with negligi-
ble shift in CCT. The Foton AC unit also allows for output control
through any external dimmer.
Foton utilizes a bayonet-style system for attachments to alter
the beam characteristics. The unit ships with three open-face reflec-
tors, providing 20-degree, 40-degree and 60-degree beam angles in
a single-source hard light. With the 20-degree reflector attached,
Foton delivers more than 400 lux at 3 meters. Barn doors and gel
frames are also available.
Foton is available through PRGs worldwide dealer network for
$895 for the fixture, yoke mount and three reflectors.
For additional information, visit www.prg.com.
Panasonic Expands 3-D
Camcorder Line
Panasonic Solutions Com-
pany has introduced the AG-
3DP1, a 3-D twin-lens P2 HD
shoulder-mount camcorder with
10-bit 4:2:2 independent-frame
1920x1080-resolution AVC-
Intra recording.
The 3DP1 incorporates two pairs of
1
3-type full-HD 2.2
megapixel 3-MOS imagers with enhanced sensitivity and a 20-bit Digi-
tal Signal Processor to acquire native 1920x1080 images. The twin-
lens system adopted in the camcorders optical section allows the
convergence point to be adjusted, and functions for automatically
correcting horizontal and vertical displacement are also provided.
Panasonics integrated professional 3-D camera recorders automati-
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.
cally recalibrate without any need for external equipment.
The 3DP1 records AVC-Intra 100/50 and is 50Hz/60Hz switch-
able. In AVC-Intra 100/50, the camcorder records in 1080 at 59.94i,
29.97pN, 23.99pN, 50i and 25pN and in 720p at 59.94p, 50p,
29.97pN, 23.98pN and 25pN. For creative flexibility, the 3DP1 has vari-
able frame-rate recording for creating slow-motion effects. In 720p
mode, a user can choose from 20 variable frame steps between 12 and
60 fps.
The 3DP1 is equipped with dual optical, wide, 17X zoom lenses
and can record for up to 80 minutes on dual 64GB P2 cards in AVC-
Intra 100 1080/24pN. The camcorder offers professional interfaces
including dual HD-SDI outs, HDMI (3-D compatible) out, and two XLR
connectors. It offers genlock and time-code inputs for multi-camera
operation. It is also equipped with a remote terminal for focus, iris,
zoom, record start/stop and convergence point.
The camcorders 3.2" LCD screen provides the option to switch
among left, right and overlay image display.
The 3DP1 offers all the benefits of the file-based P2 HD work-
flow, including instant recording startup, clip thumbnail view, continu-
ous recording and interval recording. The 3DP1 boasts low power
consumption and operates on a 12-volt (Anton Bauer) battery.
For additional information, visit www.panasonic.com/broadcast.
JVC Upgrades
ProHD Camcorder
JVC Professional Prod-
ucts Co. has introduced the GY-
HM150 ProHD handheld camcorder. Based
on the ergonomic design of the popular GY-
HM100, the GY-HM150 is built to handle
demanding production environments. Addi-
tionally, an encoder and digital signal proces-
sor adopted from JVCs 700 series cameras
deliver improved HD recording and add
support for standard-definition workflows.
With its three CCD imagers, the GY-HM150 offers full HD
1080p, 1080i and 720p recording at a variety of frame and bit rates.
JVCs native file recording provides native .MOV files for Final Cut Pro
or Adobe Premiere, as well as native .MP4 files for other NLE systems.
The camcorder can also record 480i SD footage as standard DV files
(.AVI or .MOV).
The GY-HM150 records to non-proprietary SDHC media cards
and also accepts SDXC cards. In addition to relay mode for uninter-
rupted recording, the camcorder allows simultaneous recording to
both memory cards for instant backup or client copy.
A new Pre Rec (retro cache) feature continuously records and
stores up to five seconds of footage in cache memory, which helps
prevent missed shots. There is also a new
time-lapse (interval) recording option, and
the new Clip Cutter feature allows
unwanted footage to be trimmed from the
beginning or end of existing clips in the
camera, reducing file sizes and conserving
space on the media card.
Other new features include an
upgraded LCD monitor and color viewfinder,
as well as a new 3.5mm input for use with
optional wired remote controls for focus,
zoom, iris and recording functions.
Manual controls on the GY-HM150
have been improved, with an iris dial next to
the built-in Fujinon 10:1 HD zoom lens and
six user-assignable buttons. The camcorder
ships with a shotgun microphone and
provides two XLR audio inputs with phan-
tom power, plus manual audio level controls
with audio meter.
The GY-HM150 is available for
$3,495. For additional information, visit
http://pro.jvc.com.
Colorfront Offers On-Set Live for
3-D Productions
Colorfront has launched On-Set Live,
which uses live correction and analysis of
streams from stereo camera rigs to deliver
cost and time savings on the set of 3-D
movie and television productions.
Based on Colorfronts On-Set Dailies
digital dailies system, On-Set Live provides
real-time dual-stream processing for look
management and advanced color grading.
On-Set Live offers dual-channel HD-
SDI video inputs and outputs for 2-D, 3-D or
two-camera 2-D capture, with 3-D LUT
support, color-space conversion and calibra-
tion. All the features of On-Set Dailies are
available in On-Set Live, including Color-
fronts color science for all major digital
cameras, printer lights, ASC CDL and
advanced color grading; high-quality resizing
and DVEs; and real-time burn-in of various
metadata, time codes and logos. Built-in
histogram and waveform monitoring allows
accurate visualization of shots on location.
On-Set Live is fully compatible with
Colorfronts On-Set Dailies for two-way inte-
gration between live shooting and dailies
processing. On-Set Live also shares OSDs
industry-leading compatibility with a wide
range of cameras and color pipeline work-
flows, including support for IIF ACES, Arri
Look files and ASC CDL.
Colorfront also recently introduced
the latest version of On-Set Dailies, which
boasts powerful new features that add
capabilities in stereographic analysis, work-
flow and grading. Many of these features
have been added in response to the
tremendous uptake of the system for both
feature and episodic television production,
says Aron Jaszberenyi, managing director of
Colorfront. The unprecedented processing
speed offered by OSD together with
wide support for the major color pipeline
workflows and the easy way it handles
tedious tasks such as metadata logging,
audio syncing, multiple delivery creation
and versioning has made it a big hit.
For additional information, visit
www.colorfront.com.
Canon Opens Hollywood
Support Center
Canon U.S.A., Inc., has opened the
Canon Hollywood Professional Technology
and Support Center at Sunset Gower
Studio in Los Angeles. The office will foster
support, research, service and training for
Hollywoods entertainment industry.
We want to offer a one-stop shop
where our clients can come to ask ques-
tions and explore our various products with
the help of our highly qualified technical
and engineering staff members, says
Yuichi Ishizuka, executive vice president and
general manager, Imaging Technologies
and Communications Group, Canon U.S.A.
The center provides a well-equipped
venue for working with professionals in a
range of imaging industries, including film
and television production and still imag-
ing.
Comprehensive product-repair ser-
vices for Canon professional products will
be available in the facility; on-site repair
operations will include two state-of-the-art
camera body and lens adjustment rooms,
Canons most advanced adjustment and
calibration equipment, local spare-parts
inventory and a professional repair staff.
The Canon Hollywood Professional
Technology and Support Center will also
serve as a field extension of Canons
Research and Solution Engineering Dept.,
dedicated to ensuring current and future
products meet or exceed the demands of
Canons clientele. The staff will assess
market demands and expectations for new
professional imaging technology and look
to build them into future product genera-
tions and customer-support provisions.
The facility and its staff will also offer
hands-on education to current and poten-
tial clients on the latest Canon professional
products. Courtesy visits by both existing
and potential clients in the industry can be
arranged to explore opportunities and
assess Canons full capabilities. Guilds,
unions or organizations affiliated with film
and television production are encouraged
to inquire about hosting seminars, events
and industry gatherings at the new center.
The center will also host Canon Live
Learning workshops, fee-based seminars
for professionals and enthusiasts looking to
further their education. The facility will also
offer other industry-related events covering
a wide range of technical and creative
topics within the professional production
segment.
www.usa.canon.com.
Gamma & Density Releases
3cP iPad App
Gamma & Density Co. has made the
mobile version of its 3cP Image Control Pro
system available through the Apple App
Store for use with the iPad. The app helps
cinematographers establish the desired
look of a project and maintain artistic and
technical control over their images.
The app features built-in waveform
monitor, vectorscope and tonal curve. It
allows cinematographers and digital-imag-
ing technicians to grade, crop and mask
images on a precisely calibrated Rec 709
number of clients who were very busy or
geographically remote, and they were
saying, Isnt there a way we could do this
remotely? ColorCorrection.com was the
answer.
To get started with the service, film-
makers simply upload a still image from
their project onto ColorCorrection.com,
and then receive back a set of color-
corrected looks to choose from. The film-
makers can refine and rework those options
until they are satisfied. Its our way of help-
ing filmmakers see how great their film can
look without having to shell out any money
or get locked into a commitment before
seeing what we can do, says Martin Roe,
co-founder and head of operations.
Once filmmakers have established
their key look, ColorCorrection.com mails a
hard drive to collect a copy of the filmmak-
ers media files, or gives them direct upload
access. Communication is managed on the
Web every step of the way, allowing film-
makers to remotely communicate with the
colorist despite geographical distance.
Utilizing DaVinci Resolve and Apple Color,
ColorCorrection.com implements the grade
until it is locked and then mails the material
back to the filmmakers.
Filmmakers are just charged a
simple per-minute-of-footage rate to imple-
ment their look, says Roe. This approach
to pricing also has the added advantage of
allowing filmmakers to get a much clearer
idea of their color-correction costs up
front.
With ColorCorrection.com, we
have created a model that both gives access
to independent filmmakers and also allows
them the time and the process to take
advantage of professional-grade color-
correction services, says Byrne. Above all,
whats most important is that we are a
company of filmmakers, not just a company
of colorists.
www.colorcorrection.com.
screen and generate LUTs to send to post.
Other tools include printer lights, color
wheels, video RGB controls, curves, digital
spot meter with zone system, dynamic
range slider, and generation of 3-D LUTs
and CDLs in multiple formats.
3cP Image Control Pros Image Ruler
utility allows users to evaluate exposure and
color values, see the changes made in the
app applied to the images and translate
those changes into terms understood by
everyone in production and post.
Custom profiles such as film stocks,
filters, push/pull, bleach bypass and more
are available as built-in presets and any
custom color corrections saved with meta-
data profiles are transferable to post houses
thanks to 3cP Image Control Pros adoption
of ASC CDL and IIF ACES utilities.
3cP Image Control Pro can work as a
standalone app by transferring frames
directly from the cameras SD memory card
or via USB using the iPad Camera Connec-
tion Kit. When used in conjunction with 3cP
Set + Post, 3cP Image Control Pro allows
users to produce dailies and to work with a
variety of workflows and camera systems.
www.gammadensity.com.
ColorCorrection.com Provides
Indie Solution
ColorCorrection.com has launched,
providing an innovative approach to profes-
sional color-correction services for indepen-
dent film productions.
ColorCorrection.com was born out
of frustration, says Ryan Byrne, founder
and CEO of the Web-based service. We
felt that this part of the post industry wasnt
set up in a way that allowed every indie
filmmaker the opportunity to access profes-
sional color correction.
ColorCorrection.coms co-founder
and chief colorist, Charles Haine, adds,
Not every filmmaker knows his or her way
around a color studio, so a lot of time is
often spent just helping them learn how to
talk about color so they know what to ask
for. And when youre paying $200 to $300
an hour, its a frustrating experience for the
client.
I have a lot of clients who love to
come in and sit in the suite, Haine contin-
ues. But I was seeing an increasing
Polecam Introduces Starter Pack
Polecam has introduced the entry-
level Starter Pack, a modular system created
in response to demand for a simple, effec-
tive crane for DSLR camera systems. The
Starter Pack features an electronically
controlled high-precision motorized head
and delivers dynamic, long reach, broad-
swinging and high-angle crane shots.
Polecam Starter Pack comes
complete with a three-section 3.5-meter
boom made of the same military-grade
high-strength carbon fiber as the standard
rig, says Jeremy Curtis, Polecams sales-
and-marketing manager. A 3.5-meter rig is
hugely versatile, and anyone needing even
greater reach can upgrade to a five-section
6-meter boom simply by adding extra poles.
For applications where a specific boom
length is sometimes required, we can supply
half or quarter sections. There is even the
option of expanding to a seven-pole 8-
meter length. As with all Polecam rigs,
camera cables can be accommodated inside
the boom for maximum operational secu-
rity.
Like the standard Polecam jib, the
Starter Pack can be mounted on any stan-
dard professional camera tripod or harness
mount. It comes with all the essential
modules needed to form the rig, including
the Polecam Back End, three interlocking
1.18-meter carbon-fiber poles, rig wiring
loom, joystick, pan-and-tilt head, AC power
unit, rigging stand and saddle-bag set.
Additional options include a video monitor
and battery mounting plates.
www.polecam.com.
Denz Offers Camera Plate
Accessories manufacturer Denz has
introduced the BP-Multi Camera Plate,
which is compatible with cameras from Arri,
Red, Sony and Panasonic.
The BP-Multi Camera Plate attaches
to the camera via
3
8" or " screws, and the
plate is compatible with both 19mm and
15mm rod systems. A Red Epic Adapter
Plate is also available, allowing users to affix
their Epic cameras with industry-standard
accessories.
www.denz-deniz.com.
Petrol Rolls With DSLRs
Petrol Bags, a Vitec Group brand, has
introduced the DSLR Camera Rollpak, a
professional solution for transporting a DSLR
camera complete with cine-style accessories
such as a mattebox and follow-focus system.
The versatile Rollpak doubles as a
camera trolley and backpack. The main
chamber is contoured to fit a DSLR camera
with the lens attached. An ultra-wide U-
shaped opening offers fast and easy access.
Removable dividers fold into pockets for
storing and organizing important acces-
sories. Contents are further protected on all
sides by layers of durable, cushioned red
fabric. Additionally, a padded rear pocket is
designed to hold a laptop with up to a 17"
screen.
When used as a backpack system,
the Rollpaks ergonomic design ensures
correct weight distribution and greater carry-
ing comfort. The Rollpak also folds away and
stores easily. Heavy-duty inline wheels and
an adjustable trolley handle provide smooth
rolling. Polypropylene-injected legs lift and
safeguard the bottom of the bag from
damage and adverse elements such as dirt
or water. Other features include a flash
memory card mini pouch that can hold up to
four cards, an envelope-style zippered side
pocket, and an exterior zippered front
pocket with personal organizer.
www.petrolbags.com.
International Marketplace
Optimo Carry Handles
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Advertisers Index
16x9, Inc. 104
3ality Technica 73
Abel Cine Tech 65
AC 103
Aja Video Systems, Inc. 81
Alan Gordon Enterprises 105
Arri 45
ASC 1
Astrodesign, Inc 89
AZGrip 105
Backstage Equipment, Inc.
6
Barger-Lite 104
Blackmagic Design 49
Burrell Enterprises 104
Cavision Enterprises 93
Chapman/Leonard Studio
Equipment Inc. 83
Cinematography
Electronics 4
Cinekinetic 104
Clairmont Film & Digital 85
Codex Digital Ltd., 91
Convergent Design 71
Cooke Optics 53
Deluxe C2
Denecke 104
Eastman Kodak 47, C4
EFD USA, Inc 87
Film District 33
Film Gear 95
Filmtools 103
Film Und Videotechnik 104
Friends of the ASC 113
Fujifilm 57
Glidecam Industries C3
K5600 75
Keslow Camera 97
Kino Flo 77
Lowell 51
Mo-sys Ltd. 95
Movie Tech AG 105
NBC/Universal 99
Oppenheimer Camera Prod.
104
Osram 59
P+S Technik 63, 105
Paramount Pictures 11, 15,
19, 23, 27
Panasonic 43
PED Denz 104, 105
Pille Film Gmbh 104
Pro8mm 104
Schneider Optics 2
Sony Pictures Classics 7
Sony Pictures Entertainment
13, 21, 25
Sony Electronics 35
Super16 Inc. 105
Tessive 103
Thales Angenieux 61
Tiffen 51
Transvideo 67
VF Gadgets, Inc. 104
Visual Products 6
Walt Disney Company
17, 29
Warner Bros. 5, 9
Weinstein Company, The 31
Welch Integrated 115
Willys Widgets 104
www.theasc.com 4, 52, 66,
76, 105, 106, 119
Zacuto Films 105
106
www.theasc.com December 2011 107
Tree of Life, The,
Aug. p. 28
Absence, The, May p. 12
Adjustment Bureau, The,
March p. 26
Alcaine, AEC, Jos Luis,
Oct. p. 16
All Good Things, Jan. p. 24
America in Primetime,
Nov. p. 24
ANAMORPHIC
Biutiful, Jan. p. 30
Brighton Rock,
Sept. p. 20
Candidate, The,
Nov. p. 12
Cowboys & Aliens,
Aug. p. 58
Green Hornet, Feb. p. 26
J. Edgar, Dec. p. 36
Larry Crowne, July p. 14
Super 8, July p. 24
Thor, June p. 40
Anonymous, Sept. p. 28
Arrival, The, Aug. p. 12
Artist, The, Dec. p. 68
ASC CLOSE-UP
Couffer, Jack, Jan. p. 96
Delbonnel, Bruno,
July p. 88
Grobet, Xavier, Oct. p. 88
Houghton, Tom,
Aug. p. 88
Markowitz, Barry,
Feb. p. 84
Mindel, Dan, Nov. p. 96
Muren, Dennis,
April p. 104
Notarile, Crescenzo,
March p. 84
Schliessler, Tobias,
May p. 96
Semler, Dean,
June p. 106
Spinotti, Dante,
Sept. p. 104
Tovoli, Luciano,
Dec. p. 120
Baffa, ASC, Christopher,
May p. 94
Bailey, ASC, John,
Feb. p. 46, Sept. p. 103
Battle: Los Angeles,
April p. 20
Beato, ASC, ABC, Affonso,
May p. 28
Beebe, ASC, ACS, Dion,
July p. 36
2-PERF
Fighter, The, Jan. p. 42
Straw Dogs, Oct. p. 52
3-D
3-D on a Budget,
Nov. p. 60
Captain America: The
First Avenger,
Aug. p. 48
Dolphin Tale, Oct. p. 74
Faeries, Bouygues
Telecom, April p. 12
Green Hornet, The,
Feb. p. 26
Green Lantern, July p. 36
Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows,
Aug. p. 40
Hugo, Dec. p. 54
Immortals, Dec. p. 94
Optical Filtration and
3-D, April p. 52
Pina, Sept. p. 44
Pirates of the Caribbean:
On Stranger Tides,
June p. 26
Sanctum, Feb. p. 36
Thor, June p. 40
Three Musketeers, The,
Nov. p. 46
Tron: Legacy, Jan. p. 52
3-PERF
Cinema Verite, May p. 28
City of Life and Death,
July p. 54
Country Strong,
Feb. p. 46
Fringe, March p. 47
Help, The, Sept. p. 56
Killing, The, March p. 42
Martha Marcy May
Marlene, Nov. p. 18
Tempest, The, Jan. p. 18
There Be Dragons,
May p. 41
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,
Dec. p. 28
35MM (1.33:1, 1.78:1, 1.85:1)
Cameraman: The Life &
Work of Jack Cardiff,
May p. 18
Margin Call, Oct. p. 22
Meeks Cutoff, April p. 74
Skin I Live In, The,
Oct. p. 16
Bellflower, July p. 46
Bennett, ASC, Bill,
March p. 82
Beristain, ASC, BSC, Gabriel,
May p. 41
Bernstein, ASC, Steven,
June p. 20
BLACK-AND-WHITE
July p. 54
God of Love, May p. 12
Raging Bull, June p. 56
Blauvelt, Christopher,
April p. 74
Blow Out, Nov. p. 68
Boyd, ASC, ACS, Russell,
Feb. p. 16
Boyle, FBKS, Geoff,
Nov. p. 60
Brighton Rock, Sept. p. 20
Bunraku, Nov. p. 80
Burgess, ASC, Don,
Dec. p. 78
May p. 18
Candidate, The, Nov. p. 12
Cao, Yu, July p. 54
First Avenger,
Aug. p. 48
Caso, ASC, Alan, April p. 82
Chapman, ASC, Michael,
June p. 56
Charles, Cliff, Nov. p. 79
Chingirian, Roger, Aug. p. 22
Chivers, Steven, May p. 18
Circumstance, Sept. p. 16
July p. 54
Clark, ASC, Curtis,
April p. 86, Aug. p. 12
Claro, Manuel Alberto,
Dec. p. 18
Coll, Richard, May p. 18
COMMERCIALS
Faeries, Bouyges
Torture, Woolite,
Oct. p. 12
Couffer, ASC, Jack,
Jan. p. 96
Country Strong, Feb. p. 46
Cowboys & Aliens,
Aug. p. 58
Cox, Brandon, Nov. p. 12
Criminal Minds: Suspect
Behavior, May p. 82
Crosignani, Magela,
March p. 20
Crudo, ASC, Richard,
June p. 106
Cundey, ASC, Dean,
April p. 102
Deakins, ASC, BSC, Roger,
Jan. pp. 64, 70; May p. 94;
Nov. p. 32
Defenders, The, April p. 82
Delbonnel, ASC, AFC, Bruno,
July p. 88
DeMarco, Frank, Oct. p. 22
Detroit 1-8-7, March p. 66
Devils Double, The,
April p. 71
DIGITAL CINEMATOGRAPHY
Nov. p. 24
Anonymous, Sept. p. 28
Arrival, The, Aug. p. 12
April p. 20
Bellflower, July p. 46
May p. 18
Captain America: The First
Avenger, Aug. p. 48
Behavior, May p. 82
Decoding Digital
Imagers: Part 1,
May p. 60
Decoding Digital
Imagers: Part 2,
April p. 68
Defenders, The,
April p. 82
Detroit 1-8-7, March p. 66
Devils Double, The,
April p. 71
Drive, Oct. p. 28
Eye of the Storm, Ben
Lovett, Jan. p. 12
Faeries, Bouygues
Femme Fatales,
Aug. p. 22
Fringe, March p. 47
God of Love, Feb. p. 12
2011 American Cinematographer Index
Compiled by Christopher Probst
Index by Cinematographer, Title, Format, Subject and Author
Hanna, April p. 26
Hugo, Dec. p. 54
Human Target,
March p. 38
In a Better World,
April p. 68
In Time, Nov. p. 32
Justified, March p. 16
Last Lions, The, Feb. p. 20
Last Man Standing,
June p. 20
Melancholia, Dec. p. 18
Mill & The Cross, The,
June p. 16
Muppets, The, Dec. p. 78
Nowhere Near Here,
March p. 12
Pina, Sept. p. 44
On Stranger Tides,
June p. 26
Prom, May p. 52
Redemption of General
Butt Naked, The,
April p. 64
Sanctum, Feb. p. 36
Oct. p. 16
Sleep Forever,
Portugal.The Man,
Sept. p. 12
The Muppet Show
Theme Song, OK Go,
Dec. p. 12
Thor, June p. 40
Nov. p. 46
Tiny Furniture, Jan. p. 82
Torture, Woolite,
Oct. p. 12
Will Do, TV on the
Radio, June p. 12
DIGITAL INTERMEDIATE
March p. 26
All Good Things,
Jan. p. 24
April p. 20
Brighton Rock,
Sept. p. 20
Bunraku, Nov. p. 80
May p. 18
First Avenger,
Aug. p. 48
July p. 54
Country Strong,
Feb. p. 46
Cowboys & Aliens,
Aug. p. 58
Devils Double, The,
April p. 71
Hanna, April p. 26
Deathly Hallows,
Aug. p. 40
Imperialists are Still
Alive, The,
March p. 20
In A Better World,
April p. 68
In Time, Nov. p. 32
Jane Eyre, April p. 16
Machine Gun Preacher,
Oct. p. 44
Martha Marcy May
Marlene, Nov. p. 18
Mildred Pierce,
April p. 42
June p. 16
Pariah, April p. 62
On Stranger Tides,
June p. 26
Red Riding Hood,
April p. 78
Rise of the Planet of the
Apes, Aug. p. 18
Sanctum, Feb. p. 36
Oct. p. 16
Super 8, July p. 24
There Be Dragons,
May p. 41
Thor, June p. 40
Dec. p. 28
Tree of Life, The,
Aug. p. 28
Way Back, The,
Feb. p. 16
DIRECTOR INTERVIEWS
Abrams, J.J., July p. 24
Alender, Christopher,
Jan. p. 12
Anderson, Paul W.S.,
Nov. p. 46
Campbell, Martin,
July p. 36
Dickerson, ASC, Ernest,
June p. 20
Durkin, Sean, Nov. p. 18
Durra, Zeina,
March p. 20
Eastwood, Clint,
Dec. p. 36
Favreau, Jon, Aug. p. 58
Feste, Shana, Feb. p. 46
Glodell, Evan, July p. 46
Gondry, Michel,
Feb. p. 26
Hardwicke, Catherine,
April p. 78
Haynes, Todd, April p. 42
Hazanavicius, Michel,
Dec. p. 68
Irritu, Alejandro
Gonzlez, Jan. p. 38
Jarecki, Andrew,
Jan. p. 24
Joubert, Beverly,
Feb. p. 20
Joubert, Dereck,
Feb. p. 20
Keshavarz, Maryam,
Sept. p. 16
Kosinski, Joseph,
Jan. p. 52
Majewski, Lech,
June p. 16
Matheny, Luke,
Feb. p. 12
McCall, Craig, May p. 18
Nolfi, George,
March p. 26
Nussbaum, Joe,
May p. 52
ONeal, Dugan,
June p. 12
Pahnl, March p. 12
Ragen, Michael,
Sept. p. 12
Rees, Dee, April p. 62
Refn, Nicolas Winding,
Oct. pp. 28, 32
Russell, David O.,
Jan. p. 42
Strauss, Eric, April p. 64
Tamahori, Lee,
April p. 71
Thatcher, Kirk, Dec. p. 12
Yates, David, Aug. p. 40
Zombie, Rob, Oct. p. 12
DOCUMENTARIES
Nov. p. 24
May p. 18
Last Lions, The,
Feb. p. 20
Butt Naked, The,
April p. 64
Dod Mantle, ASC, BSC, DFF,
Anthony, Oct. p. 87
Drive, Oct. p. 28
Dryburgh, ASC, Stuart,
Jan. p. 18, Nov. p. 79
Egilsson, ASC, Eagle,
Jan. p. 94
Ettlin, Lukas, April p. 20
Lovett, Jan. p. 12
Faeries, Bouygues
Fanthorpe, Simon, May p. 18
Femme Fatales, Aug. p. 22
FILMMAKERS FORUM
Assessing the Merits of
24-Frame Video
Playback, Sept. p. 84
Bringing ENG Style to
Detroit 1-8-7,
March p. 66
Converting Immortals to
3-D, Dec. p. 94
Shooting Dolphin Talein
3-D, Oct. p. 74
Shooting High Speed,
July p. 72
The Bunraku Experi-
ence, Nov. p. 80
The Challenges of
Shooting a Feature
With the Canon 7D,
Jan. p. 82
The Importance of the
Image Interchange
Framework,
April p. 86
Finnerman, ASC, Gerald
Perry, July p. 84
Foerster, Anna J., Sept. p. 28
Fong, Larry, July p. 24
Fox, John, Nov. p. 79
Freeman, ASC, Jonathan,
Nov. p. 79
Fringe, March p. 47
Geddes, ASC, CSC, David,
Oct. p. 87
God of Love, Feb. p. 12
Goldblatt, ASC, BSC,
Stephen, Sept. p. 56
Goldman, ABC, Adriano,
April p. 16
Green Hornet, The,
Feb. pp. 26, 30
Grobet, ASC, AMC, Xavier,
Oct. p. 88
Gunter, ASC, Rick F.,
Nov. p. 79
Hanna, April p. 26
Deathly Hallows,
Aug. p. 40
Hill, Ryan, April p. 64
HISTORICAL
Blow Out, Nov. p. 68
Taxi Driver, June p. 56
Hobbs, Boyd, May p. 12
Hodge, Joel, July p. 46
Hoffman, Nicholas,
May p. 18
Houghton, ASC, Tom,
Aug. p. 88
Hubbard, Brian Rigney,
Sept. p. 16
Hugo, ASC, Michel,
Jan. p. 92
Hugo, Dec. p. 54
Human Target, March p. 38
Hutchens, Peter, April p. 64
Immortals, Dec. p. 94
Imperialists Are Still
Alive, The, March p. 20
In a Better World,
April p. 68
IN MEMORIA
Finnerman, ASC, Gerald
Perry, July p. 84
Hugo, ASC, Michel,
Jan. p. 92
Laszlo, ASC, Andrew,
Dec. p. 114
Miyagishima, Takuo,
Oct. p. 86
Peterman, ASC, Don,
May p. 92
Polito, ASC, Gene,
March p. 78
Steadman, ASC, Robert,
Feb. p. 80
INSTRUCTIONAL
3-D on a Budget,
Nov. p. 60
24-Frame Video
Playback, Sept. p. 84
Decoding Digital
Imagers: Part 1,
May p. 60
Decoding Digital
Imagers: Part 2,
June p. 68
Justified Adopts
Academys New
Workflow,
March p. 16
3-D, April p. 52
July p. 72
Image Interchange
Framework,
April p. 86
Tips on Location
Scouting, Sept. p. 68
In Time, Nov. p. 32
Johnson, ASC, Shelly,
Aug. p. 48
Joubert, Dereck, Feb. p. 20
Katznelson, BSC, DFF, David,
Nov. p. 78
Kennan, ASC, Wayne,
Nov. p. 79
Kenny, ASC, Francis,
March p. 16
Kief, Craig, Jan. p. 12,
Dec. p. 12
Kchler, BSC, Alwin,
April p. 26
La Fountaine, Christian,
Nov. p. 79
Lachman, ASC, Ed,
April p. 42, Nov. p. 78
Last Lions, The, Feb. p. 20
Last Man Standing,
June p. 20
Laszlo, ASC, Andrew,
Dec. p. 114
Lesnie, ASC, ACS, Andrew,
Aug. p. 18
Libatique, ASC, Matthew,
July p. 86, Aug. p. 58
Liebler, Todd, Nov. p. 79
LIGHTING DIAGRAMS
First Avenger,
Aug. p. 48
Straw Dogs,Oct. p. 52
Super 8, July p. 24
Nov. p. 46
Lindenlaub, ASC, BVK, Karl
Walter, Oct. p. 74
Lipes, Jody Lee, Jan. p. 82,
Nov. p. 18
Louvart, Hlne, Sept. p. 44
Loves Me Not, May p. 12
Lubezki, ASC, AMC,
Emmanuel, Aug. p. 28
Oct. p. 44
MacPherson, ASC, CSC,
Glen, Nov. p. 46
Majewski, Lech, June p. 16
Manley, ASC, Chris,
July p. 86
Markowitz, ASC, Barry,
Feb. p. 84
Marsh, Nicola, Nov. p. 79
Martha Marcy May
Marlene, Nov. p. 18
Mathieson, BSC, John,
Sept. p. 20
Matlosz, Jim, July p. 72
McCall, Craig, May p. 18
McCurdy, BSC, Sam,
April p. 71
McLachlan, ASC, CSC,
Robert, March p. 38
Melancholia, Dec. p. 18
Middleton, CSC, Greg,
March p. 47
Mildred Pierce, April p. 42
June p. 16
Mindel, ASC, Dan, Nov. p. 96
Miranda, ASC, Claudio,
Jan. p. 52
Mooradian, ASC, George,
Jan. p. 94
Morgan, ASC, Donald A.,
Nov. p. 79
Morgenthau, ASC, Kramer,
May p. 94, Nov. p. 78
Mortal Kombat, July p. 18
Moss, ASC, Peter, Feb. p. 82
Moxness, CSC, David,
March p. 47, Nov. p. 78
Muppets, The, Dec. p. 78
Muren, ASC, Dennis,
April p. 104
Murphy, ASC, Fred,
Nov. p. 79
MUSIC VIDEOS
Eye of the Storm,
Ben Lovett, Jan. p. 12
Sleep Forever, Portu-
gal.The Man,
Sept. p. 12
The Muppet Show
Theme Song, OK Go,
Dec. p. 12
Will Do, TV on the
Radio, June p. 12
Myrick, David, June p. 12
Nelson, Arlene, Nov. p. 79
NEW ASC ASSOCIATES
Cole, David, Nov. p. 94
Galerne, Gilles,
Nov. p. 94
Haynie, Joshua,
Nov. p. 94
McHugh, Karen,
Nov. p. 94
Okun, Jeffrey,
Sept. p. 102
Ouri, Ahmad Nov. p. 94
Rom, Domenic,
April p. 102
Schklair, Steve,
Sept. p. 102
Treanor, Jeffrey,
Sept. p. 102
NEW ASC MEMBERS
Dod Mantle, Anthony,
Oct. p. 87
Egilsson, Eagle, Jan. p. 94
Geddes, David, Oct. p. 87
Mooradian, George,
Jan. p. 94
Moss, Peter, Feb. p. 82
Perkal, Dave, Nov. p. 94
Silver, Steven V.,
Oct. p. 87
Slovis, Michael,
March p. 82
Varese, Checco,
March p. 82
Walker, Mandy, Oct. p. 87
Weaver, Michael,
Nov. p. 94
Notarile, ASC, Crescenzo,
March p. 84
Nowhere Near Here,
March p. 12
OLoughlin, ACS, Jules,
Feb. p. 36
OShea, ASC, Michael D.,
March p. 50
Pahnl, March p. 12
Pariah, April p. 62
Perkal, ASC, Dave, Nov. p. 94
Peterman, ASC, Don,
May p. 92
Pfister, ASC, Wally, July p. 86
Pina, Sept. p. 44
On Stranger Tides,
June p. 26
Polito, ASC, Gene,
March p. 78
POST FOCUS
Affordable Apps Poised
to Transform Post,
Aug. p. 72
Alan Caso, ASC Unfet-
ters a Digital Shoot,
April p. 82
Cinelicious Invests in
Films Future,
Sept. p. 78
EFilm Opens DI Suite at
Universal, Jan. p. 78
HPA Honors Outstand-
ing Achievements in
Post, Jan. p. 79
Mobileviz Provides
Rolling Hub,
Aug. p. 76
MTI Films Control
Dailies Simplifies TV
Post, Feb. p. 64
Prime Focus Expands in
New York, July p. 70
Restoring Mlis
Marvel, Oct. p. 68
Sokolsky, Stanley Detail
KB Workflow,
May p. 82
Warner Bros. MPI
Facilitates Fast Finish
for Red Riding Hood,
April p. 78
PRESERVATION/RESTORATION
Trip to the Moon, A,
Oct. p. 68
Prieto, ASC, AMC, Rodrigo,
Jan. p. 30
Prom, May p. 52
Ragen, Michael, Sept. p. 12
Red Riding Hood,
April p. 78
Butt Naked, The,
April p. 64
Rho, Jonathan, May p. 18
Richardson, ASC, Robert,
Dec. p. 54
Apes, Aug. p. 18
Roizman, ASC, Owen,
March p. 82
Rousselot, AFC, Philippe,
July p. 14
Ruiz-Anchia, ASC, Juan,
Nov. p. 80
Sakharov, ASC, Alik,
Oct. p. 52
Salvage, Ian, May p. 18
Sanctum, Feb. p. 36
Sarossy, BSC, CSC, Paul,
Nov. p. 79
Schaefer, ASC, AIC, Roberto,
Oct. p. 44
Schiffman, AFC, Guillaume,
Dec. p. 68
Schliessler, ASC, Tobias,
May p. 96
Schneider, ASC, Aaron,
July p. 86
Schneider, Logan, Nov. p. 24
Schwartzman, ASC, John,
Feb. p. 26
Seale, ASC, ACS, John,
Feb. p. 54
Semler, ASC, ACS, Dean,
June p. 106
Seresin, BSC, Michael,
Jan. p. 24
Serra, ASC, AFC, Eduardo,
Aug. p. 40
Shah, Byron, May p. 52
Sigel, ASC, Newton Thomas,
Oct. p. 28
Sikora, Adam, June p. 16
Silver, ASC, Steven V.,
Oct. p. 87, Nov. p. 79
Simmons, ASC, John,
Nov. p. 79
Oct. p. 16
Sleep Forever,
Portugal.The Man,
Sept. p. 12
Slovis, ASC, Michael,
March p. 82
Snyman, Michael, Nov. p. 79
Sborg, DFF, Morten,
April p. 68
Sokolsky, ASC, Bing,
May p. 82
Soos, CSC, Christopher,
April p. 12
Speciale, Joia, Nov. p. 79
SPECIAL LAB PROCESS
July p. 54
Cowboys & Aliens,
Aug. p. 58
Spellman, Tim, Nov. p. 79
Spinotti, ASC, AIC, Dante,
Sept. p. 104
Steadman, ASC, Robert,
Feb. p. 80
Stein, ASC, Peter, May p. 94
Stern, ASC, AFC, Tom,
Dec. p. 36
Strauss, Eric, April p. 64
Super 8, July pp. 24, 28
SUPER 8MM
Super 8, July p. 24
SUPER 16MM
All Good Things,
Jan. p. 24
May p. 18
Imperialists Are Still
Alive, The, March
p. 20
Oct. p. 44
Mildred Pierce,
April p. 42
Super 8, July p. 24
SUPER 35MM
March p. 26
All Good Things,
Jan. p. 24
April p. 20
Bunraku, Nov. p. 80
First Avenger,
Aug. p. 48
July p. 54
Country Strong,
Feb. p. 46
Fringe, March p. 47
Hanna, April p. 26
Deathly Hallows,
Aug. p. 40
Loves Me Not,
May p. 12
Oct. p. 44
Martha Marcy May
Marlene, Nov. p. 18
Pariah, April p. 62
Apes, Aug. p. 18
There Be Dragons,
May p. 41
Dec. p. 28
Way Back, The,
Feb. p. 16
Szalay, CSC, HSC, Attila,
Nov. p. 78
TELEVISION
Nov. p. 24
ASC Career Achievement
in TV Award,
March p. 50
Behavior, May p. 82
Defenders, The,
April p. 82
Detroit 1-8-7,
March p. 66
Emmy Nominees,
Nov. p. 78
Femme Fatales,
Aug. p. 22
Fringe, March p. 47
Human Target,
March p. 38
Last Man Standing,
June p. 20
Mildred Pierce,
April p. 42
The Muppet Show
Theme Song, OK Go,
Dec. p. 12
There Be Dragons,
May p. 41
Thor, June p. 40
Nov. p. 46
Dec. p. 28
Toll, ASC, John, March p. 26
Torture,Woolite,
Oct. p. 12
Tovoli, ASC, AIC, Luciano,
Dec. p. 120
Tree of Life, The,
Aug. p. 28
Trip to the Moon, A,
Oct. p. 68
Tron: Legacy,
Jan. pp. 52, 60
Troost, Brandon, Oct. p. 12
True Grit, Jan. p. 70
Van Hoytema, FSF, NSC,
Hoyte, Jan. p. 42,
Dec. p. 28
Varese, ASC, Checco,
March p. 82
VISUAL EFFECTS
March p. 26
Lovett, Jan. p. 12
Mortal Kombat,
July p. 18
Apes, Aug. p. 18
Super 8, July p. 28
Tree of Life, The,
Aug. p. 34
Walker, ASC, ACS, Mandy,
April p. 78, Oct. p. 87
Walker, John, May p. 18
Way Back, The, Feb. p. 16
Weaver, ASC, Michael,
Nov. p. 94
Weaver-Madsen, Dagmar,
May p. 12
Webster, Bobby, Feb. p. 12
Welland, James, May p. 18
Wexler, ASC, Haskell,
May p. 94
Wiegand, Lisa, March p. 66
Will Do, TV on the Radio,
June p. 12
Williams, Bob, May p. 18
Wolski, ASC, Dariusz,
June p. 26
Wunstorf, ASC, Peter,
March p. 42
Yatsko, Tom, March p. 47
Young, Bradford, April p. 62
Zambarloukos, BSC, Haris,
June p. 40
Zamboni, Zach, Nov. p. 79
Zsigmond, ASC, Vilmos,
Jan. p. 94, April p. 102,
May p. 94, Sept. p. 102,
Nov. p. 68
Index by Author
Anderson, John
Tortured Souls,
June p. 56
Argy, Stephanie
Affordable Apps Poised
to Transform Post,
Aug. p. 72
Justified Adopts Acad-
emys New Work-
flow, March p. 16
Sonys F65 Makes
Debut With The
Arrival, Aug. p. 12
Image Interchange
Framework,
April p. 86
Bergery, Benjamin
3-D on a Budget,
Nov. p. 60
Big Bang Theory,
Aug. p. 34
Cosmic Questions,
Aug. p. 28
Immersive Dance,
Sept. p. 44
Letting Go, Jan. p. 30
Silent Splendor,
Dec. p. 68
Sony Introduces F65
Camera, SR-R4
Recorder, June p. 88
Birchard, Robert S.
Restoring Mlis
Marvel, Oct. p. 68
Bosley, Rachael K.
A Jane Eyre for Today,
April p. 16
Master Plans,
March p. 26
Calhoun, John
A Woman of 2 Worlds,
March p. 20
Worlds Collide,
Dec. p. 18
Elrick, Ted
Dark Family Dynamics,
Jan. p. 24
Wicked World,
April p. 26
Fauer, ASC, Jon
In Memoriam,
Dec. p. 114
Favreau, Jon
A Maturing Collabora-
tion, Aug. p. 62
Goldman, Michael
Alan Caso, ASC
Unfetters a Digital
Shoot, April p. 82
Behind the Music,
Feb. p. 46
Dangerous Beauties,
Aug. p. 22
Home Invasion,
Oct. p. 52
Kombat Cinematogra-
phy, July p. 18
Mobileviz Provides
Rolling Hub,
Aug. p. 76
Ring of Power,
July p. 36
Scalawags in Stereo,
June p. 26
Sokolsky, Stanley Detail
KB Workflow,
May p. 82
Stepping into the
Shadows, Dec. p. 36
Sundance 2011:
Spirited Images,
April p. 68
Tough Love, Jan. p. 42
Warner Bros. MPI
Facilitates Fast Finish
for Red Riding Hood,
April p. 78
Weekly Wonders,
March p. 38
Gray, Simon
Simian Rebellion,
Aug. p. 18
Total Immersion,
Feb. p. 36
Heuring, David
A Saint and a Sinner,
May p. 41
Man of Action,
Oct. p. 44
Holben, Jay
Academy Lauds
Sci-Tech Luminaries,
May p. 22
Cinelicious Invests in
Films Future,
Sept. p. 78
Crafting a Gentle Look,
July p. 14
Hammer of the Gods,
June p. 40
Time Bandit,
Nov. p. 32
True Survivors,
Feb. p. 16
Weekly Wonders,
March p. 42
Hope-Jones, Mark
Darkest Hour,
Aug. p. 40
Spotlighting a
Legendary
Cinematographer,
May p. 18
Through a Childs Eyes,
Dec. p. 54
Irritu, Alejandro Gonzlez
Irritu on Method,
Jan. p. 38
Kadner, Noah
Back to the Grid,
Jan. p. 52
First Dance, May p. 52
Lindenlaub, ASC, BVK, Karl
Walter
Shooting Dolphin Tale
in 3-D, Oct. p. 74
Lipes, Jody Lee
The Challenges of
Shooting a Feature
With the Canon 7D,
Jan. p. 82
Matlosz, Jim
July p. 72
Oppenheimer, Jean
A Cinematic Passport,
Feb. p. 54
A Cultural Cataclysm,
July p. 54
A Mole in the Ministry,
Dec. p. 28
A Woman on the
Verge, April p. 42
Airing Dirty Laundry,
Sept. p. 56
Bad Medicine,
Oct. p. 16
Last Man Standing
Brings Alexa to
Detroit, June p. 20
Lessons Well Learned,
March p. 50
Living Out Loud,
May p. 28
Probst, Christopher
Decoding Digital
Imagers: Part 1,
May p. 60
Decoding Digital
Imagers: Part 2,
June p. 68
Refn, Nicolas Winding
Pretty in Pink With a
Head Smash,
Oct. p. 32
Ruiz-Anchia, ASC, Juan
The Bunraku Experi-
ence, Nov. p. 80
Sadler, Nic
Crime la Mod,
Sept. p. 20
Silberg, Jon
Caught on Tape,
Nov. p. 68
Photographing Movie
History, March p. 58
Stasukevich, Iain
A Classic Reborn,
June p. 58
A Mighty Pen,
Sept. p. 28
Adding 3rd Dimension
to Hornet, Feb. p. 30
Alaska Locations
Enhance Sleep
Forever, Sept. p. 12
Aliens Strike L.A.,
April p. 20
All for One, Nov. p. 46
An All-American Hero,
Aug. p. 48
ASC William A. Fraker
Heritage Award
Honors 2 Students,
May p. 12
Barba and Preeg on
Tron: Legacy,
Jan. p. 60
Bringing Street Art to
the Screen,
March p. 12
Career Opportunities,
Nov. p. 12
Creating an Animated
Eye of the Storm,
Jan. p. 12
God of Love Aims for
Amour, Feb. p. 12
ILM Projects Terror,
July p. 28
Its Time to Raise the
Curtain, Dec. p. 78
King of New York,
Oct. p. 62
Masked Men,
Feb. p. 26
Monster Out of the
Box, July p. 24
Muppet Mania,
Dec. p. 12
On-the-Rack Fashion,
Oct. p. 12
Prime Focus Expands
in New York,
July p. 70
Shooting Faeries in
3-D, April p. 12
Shot Down in Flames,
July p. 46
Sundance 2011:
Spirited Images,
April p. 74
The Tempest Hits
Hawaii, Jan. p. 18
TV on the Radios Vision
of a Romantic
Future, June p. 12
Weekly Wonders,
March p. 47
Stump, ASC, David
Converting Immortals to
3-D, Dec. p. 94
Swann, Monte
24-Frame Video Play-
back, Sept. p. 84
Thomson, Patricia
A League of His Own,
Jan. p. 64
Animal Instincts,
Feb. p. 20
Capturing a Financial
Freefall, Oct. p. 22
Displaying True Grit,
Jan. p. 70
Entering Bruegels
World, June p. 16
Love in Iran, Sept. p. 16
Mind Control,
Nov. p. 18
Sundance 2011: Spirited
Images, April
pp. 62, 64, 71
Tiffen, Ira
3-D, April p. 52
Tips on Location Scout-
ing, Sept. p. 68
Wakelin, Simon
EFilm Opens DI Suite at
Universal, Jan. p. 78
MTI Films Control
Dailies Simplifies TV
Post, Feb. p. 64
Wiegand, Lisa
Bringing ENG Style to
Detroit 1-8-7,
March p. 66
Witmer, Jon D.
Documentary
Television, Nov. p. 24
HPA Honors Outstanding
Achievements in
Post, Jan. p. 79
In Memoria: Jan. p. 92,
Feb. p. 80, March
p. 78, May p. 92,
July p. 84, Oct. p. 86
Nonlinear Motion-
Control Time Lapse,
Feb. p. 68
Once Upon a Time in the
West, Aug. p. 58
Road Warriors,
Oct. p. 28
STATEMENTOF OWNERSHIP,
MANAGEMENTAND CIRCULATION
Title of publication:
AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER
Publication no. 0002-7928
Date of filing: October 24, 2011
Frequency of issue: Monthly
Annual subscription price: $50
Number of issues published annually: 12
Location of known office of publication:
1782 N. Orange Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90028.
Location of the headquarters or general business offices of the
publishers: Same as above.
Names and address of publisher: ASC Holding Corp., 1782 N. Orange
Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90028; Publisher, Martha Winterhalter, Executive
Editor, Stephen Pizzello, 1782 N. Orange Dr., Hollywood, CA 90028. Owner:
ASC Holding Corp.
Known bondholders, mortgages, and other security holders owning
or holding 1 per cent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages or
other securities: same as above.
Extent and nature of circulation: Total numbers of copies printed (net
press run): average number of copies each issue during preceding 12
months, 34,566; actual number copies of single issue published nearest to
filing date, 34,000.
Paid and/or requested circulation: Paid/Requested Outside-County Mail
Subscriptions stated on Form 3541: average number of copies each issue
during preceding 12 months, 24,958; actual number of copies of single issue
published nearest to filing date, 24,978.
Paid and/or requested circulation: Sales through dealers and carriers,
street vendors and counter sales, and other non-USPS paid distribution:
average number copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 7,199;
actual number of copies single issue published nearest to filing date, 6,790.
Total paid and/or requested circulation: average number copies each
issue during preceding 12 months, 32,157; actual number copies of single
issue published nearest to filing date, 31,768.
Free distribution by mail (samples, complimentary and other free
copies): average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months,
1,828; actual number copies of single issue published nearest to filing date,
2,000.
Total free distributions: average number of copies each issue during
preceding 12 months, 1,828; actual number copies of single issue published
nearest to filing date, 2,000.
Total distribution: average number of copies each issue during preceding
12 months, 33,985; actual number of copies of single issue published near-
est to filing date, 33,768.
Copies not distributed (office use, left over, unaccounted, spoiled
after printing): average number of copies each issue during preceding 12
months, 581; actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to
filing date, 1,232.
Total: average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months,
34,566; actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing
date, 35,000.
Percent Paid and/or Requested Circulation: average number of copies
each issue during preceding 12 months, 94.6%; actual number of copies of
single issue published nearest to filing date, 94.08%.
I certify that the statements made by me above are correct and complete.
Martha Winterhalter, Publisher
112
the Nazis invaded Hungary in 1944. His
family was soon separated and sent to vari-
ous concentration camps. He was pressed
into a forced-labor unit of the Hungarian
Army. After two escapes, he was captured
and transported to Bergen-Belsen concen-
tration camp in Germany, and then to There-
sienstadt in Terezin, Czechoslovakia. Andy
was the only member of his immediate
family to survive the camps.
After the war, he briefly worked in a
Budapest film lab. He described the experi-
ence when I interviewed him for Cine-
matographer Style: My first job in the film
business was using a broom. In war-torn
Hungary, there was no film production to
speak of. I didnt think there was any future
in my staying there. I packed a suitcase and
left the country illegally, I might add.
He arrived in New York on Jan. 17,
1947, committed to making a new begin-
ning. His love of the United States and
appreciation for its freedoms and opportuni-
ties remained forever with him.
In 1950, he was drafted to serve in
the Korean War. He was assigned to the U.S.
Army Signal Corps, where he was trained as
a motion-picture cameraman.
Andy married Ann Granger in 1952.
They raised four children in Locust Valley,
Long Island. I worked on many assignments
with his son Jeff, who now runs the family
ranch in Montana. In a recent note, Jeff put
a fine point on what made his father so
special: He was such a beautiful, loving
person; kind, talented, principled, adventur-
ous, unconventional, spiritual and imagina-
tive. Most of all, to me he was magical. He
could take bleakness or disappointment and
turn it to happiness, and somehow made
every day worth remembering. He loved
life, and his was a testament to overcoming
adversity with optimism, faith and good will
to others.
Andy is survived by his wife, Ann;
sons Andrew Jr., Jeff and Jim; a daughter,
Elizabeth; and five grandchildren.
It is with the deepest sorrow that we
must say, Its a wrap. Goodbye, dear
friend. You will be missed.
By Jon Fauer, ASC
Andrew Laszlo, ASC died Oct. 7 at his
home in Bozeman, Mont., after a brief
illness. He was 85.
His 40-year career as a cinematogra-
pher began in the golden age of television on
series such as The Ed Sullivan Show , The
Naked City and The Phil Silvers Show. His
feature credits included The Night They
Raided Minskys, The Out of Towners, Lovers
and Other Strangers, The Owl and the Pussy-
cat, The Warriors, Southern Comfort, First
Blood, Streets of Fire , Innerspace and
Newsies.
He was a member of the International
Photographers Guild, the Directors Guild of
America, the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences, and the Academy of Tele-
vision Arts and Sciences.
Andy was a mentor and inspiration to
an entire generation of cinematographers.
He traveled the world conducting seminars
on his own, and training aspiring cinematog-
raphers as part of Eastman Kodaks Student
Filmmaker Program. He changed my life
when he visited Dartmouth College, where
his lecture, originally scheduled for one hour,
lasted two days. Several years later, he hired
me on Top of the Hill. That led to a long run
of jobs together and a lifetime of friendship.
After retiring in 1994, Andy pursued
his hobbies of fly-fishing, inventing, wood-
working and machining. He also wrote prolif-
ically, publishing four novels, an autobiogra-
phy and three books about his career in film,
including Its a Wrap, whichchronicles such
adventures as a secret trip to Havana to film
Fidel Castro as he took power during the
Cuban Revolution, the Beatles landmark
Shea Stadium concert, and the cultural chal-
lenges of a nine-month shoot in Japan for
Shogun.
Most of us knew Andy as a larger-
than-life John Wayne type: strong and
mostly quiet, except for those times when
on-set circumstances dictated that someone
take charge and lead a large crew to accom-
plish the task at hand. He was uniformly
admired by his crews and respected for both
his talent and how he treated his fellow
workers. His physical strength was such that
he was unfazed by long night shoots or the
toughest locations.
When we filmed Comeback in Thai-
land, weeks of handheld shooting in swel-
tering heat and humidity had many of the
crew losing weight at an alarming rate, but
Andys rugged frame hadnt lost a pound. He
looked at me and said very seriously, I was
once as scrawny as you. I didnt understand
what he meant until years later, when I read
his autobiography, A Footnote to History ,
which revealed how he had overcome all
obstacles with unimaginable courage.
Lszl Andrs was born on Jan. 12,
1926, in Ppa, Hungary. His studies at a pres-
tigious private school were cut short when
Andrew Laszlo, ASC, 1926-2011
In Memoriam
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n
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.
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p

American Society of Cinematographers Roster
OFFICERS 2011-12
Michael Goi,
President
Richard Crudo,
Vice President
Owen Roizman,
Vice President
John C. Flinn III,
Vice President
Victor J. Kemper,
Treasurer
Frederic Goodich,
Secretary
Stephen Lighthill,
Sergeant-at-Arms
MEMBERS
OF THE BOARD
John Bailey
Stephen H. Burum
Richard Crudo
George Spiro Dibie
Richard Edlund
Fred Elmes
Michael Goi
Victor J. Kemper
Francis Kenny
Isidore Mankofsky
Robert Primes
Owen Roizman
Kees Van Oostrum
Haskell Wexler
Vilmos Zsigmond
ALTERNATES
Michael D. OShea
Rodney Taylor
Ron Garcia
Sol Negrin
Kenneth Zunder
Allen Daviau
Roger Deakins
Jan DeBont
Thomas Del Ruth
Bruno Delbonnel
Peter Deming
Jim Denault
Caleb Deschanel
Ron Dexter
Craig Di Bona
George Spiro Dibie
Ernest Dickerson
Billy Dickson
Bill Dill
Anthony Dod Mantle
Stuart Dryburgh
Bert Dunk
Lex DuPont
John Dykstra
Richard Edlund
Eagle Egilsson
Frederick Elmes
Robert Elswit
Geoffrey Erb
Scott Farrar
Jon Fauer
Don E. FauntLeRoy
Gerald Feil
Steven Fierberg
Mauro Fiore
John C. Flinn III
Ron Fortunato
Jonathan Freeman
Tak Fujimoto
Alex Funke
Steve Gainer
Ron Garcia
David Geddes
Dejan Georgevich
Michael Goi
Stephen Goldblatt
Paul Goldsmith
Frederic Goodich
Victor Goss
Jack Green
Adam Greenberg
Robbie Greenberg
Xavier Grobet
Alexander Gruszynski
Changwei Gu
Rick Gunter
Rob Hahn
Gerald Hirschfeld
Henner Hofmann
Adam Holender
Ernie Holzman
John C. Hora
Tom Houghton
Gil Hubbs
Shane Hurlbut
Tom Hurwitz
Don McAlpine
Don McCuaig
Seamus McGarvey
Robert McLachlan
Geary McLeod
Greg McMurry
Steve McNutt
Terry K. Meade
Suki Medencevic
Chris Menges
Rexford Metz
Anastas Michos
Douglas Milsome
Dan Mindel
Charles Minsky
Claudio Miranda
George Mooradian
Donald A. Morgan
Donald M. Morgan
Kramer Morgenthau
Peter Moss
M. David Mullen
Dennis Muren
Fred Murphy
Hiro Narita
Guillermo Navarro
Michael B. Negrin
Sol Negrin
Bill Neil
Alex Nepomniaschy
John Newby
Yuri Neyman
Sam Nicholson
Crescenzo Notarile
David B. Nowell
Rene Ohashi
Daryn Okada
Thomas Olgeirsson
Woody Omens
Miroslav Ondricek
Michael D. OShea
Anthony Palmieri
Phedon Papamichael
Daniel Pearl
Edward J. Pei
James Pergola
Dave Perkal
Lowell Peterson
Wally Pfister
Bill Pope
Steven Poster
Tom Priestley Jr.
Rodrigo Prieto
Robert Primes
Frank Prinzi
Richard Quinlan
Declan Quinn
Earl Rath
Richard Rawlings Jr.
Frank Raymond
Tami Reiker
Judy Irola
Mark Irwin
Levie Isaacks
Peter James
Johnny E. Jensen
Torben Johnke
Frank Johnson
Shelly Johnson
Jeffrey Jur
Adam Kane
Stephen M. Katz
Ken Kelsch
Victor J. Kemper
Wayne Kennan
Francis Kenny
Glenn Kershaw
Darius Khondji
Gary Kibbe
Jan Kiesser
Jeffrey L. Kimball
Adam Kimmel
Alar Kivilo
David Klein
Richard Kline
George Koblasa
Fred J. Koenekamp
Lajos Koltai
Pete Kozachik
Neil Krepela
Willy Kurant
Ellen M. Kuras
George La Fountaine
Edward Lachman
Ken Lamkin
Jacek Laskus
Denis Lenoir
John R. Leonetti
Matthew Leonetti
Andrew Lesnie
Peter Levy
Matthew Libatique
Charlie Lieberman
Stephen Lighthill
Karl Walter Lindenlaub
John Lindley
Robert F. Liu
Walt Lloyd
Bruce Logan
Gordon Lonsdale
Emmanuel Lubezki
Julio G. Macat
Glen MacPherson
Paul Maibaum
Constantine Makris
Denis Maloney
Isidore Mankofsky
Christopher Manley
Michael D. Margulies
Barry Markowitz
Steve Mason
Clark Mathis
ACTIVE MEMBERS
Thomas Ackerman
Lance Acord
Lloyd Ahern II
Herbert Alpert
Russ Alsobrook
Howard A. Anderson III
Howard A. Anderson Jr.
James Anderson
Peter Anderson
Tony Askins
Charles Austin
Christopher Baffa
James Bagdonas
King Baggot
John Bailey
Michael Ballhaus
Andrzej Bartkowiak
John Bartley
Bojan Bazelli
Frank Beascoechea
Affonso Beato
Mat Beck
Dion Beebe
Bill Bennett
Andres Berenguer
Carl Berger
Gabriel Beristain
Steven Bernstein
Ross Berryman
Michael Bonvillain
Richard Bowen
David Boyd
Russell Boyd
Jonathan Brown
Don Burgess
Stephen H. Burum
Bill Butler
Frank B. Byers
Bobby Byrne
Patrick Cady
Antonio Calvache
Paul Cameron
Russell P. Carpenter
James L. Carter
Alan Caso
Michael Chapman
Rodney Charters
James A. Chressanthis
T.C. Christensen
Joan Churchill
Curtis Clark
Peter L. Collister
Jack Cooperman
Jack Couffer
Vincent G. Cox
Jeff Cronenweth
Richard Crudo
Dean R. Cundey
Stefan Czapsky
David Darby
Robert Richardson
Anthony B. Richmond
Bill Roe
Owen Roizman
Pete Romano
Charles Rosher Jr.
Giuseppe Rotunno
Philippe Rousselot
Juan Ruiz-Anchia
Marvin Rush
Paul Ryan
Eric Saarinen
Alik Sakharov
Mikael Salomon
Harris Savides
Roberto Schaefer
Tobias Schliessler
Aaron Schneider
Nancy Schreiber
Fred Schuler
John Schwartzman
John Seale
Christian Sebaldt
Dean Semler
Eduardo Serra
Steven Shaw
Richard Shore
Newton Thomas Sigel
Steven Silver
John Simmons
Sandi Sissel
Bradley B. Six
Michael Slovis
Dennis L. Smith
Roland Ozzie Smith
Reed Smoot
Bing Sokolsky
Peter Sova
Dante Spinotti
Terry Stacey
Ueli Steiger
Peter Stein
Tom Stern
Robert M. Stevens
David Stockton
Rogier Stoffers
Vittorio Storaro
Harry Stradling Jr.
David Stump
Tim Suhrstedt
Peter Suschitzky
Alfred Taylor
Jonathan Taylor
Rodney Taylor
William Taylor
Don Thorin
John Toll
Mario Tosi
Salvatore Totino
Luciano Tovoli
Jost Vacano
Theo Van de Sande
Eric Van Haren Noman
Kees Van Oostrum
Checco Varese
Ron Vargas
Mark Vargo
Amelia Vincent
William Wages
Roy H. Wagner
Ric Waite
Mandy Walker
Michael Watkins
Michael Weaver
Jonathan West
Haskell Wexler
Jack Whitman
Gordon Willis
Dariusz Wolski
Ralph Woolsey
Peter Wunstorf
Robert Yeoman
Richard Yuricich
Jerzy Zielinski
Vilmos Zsigmond
Kenneth Zunder
ASSOCIATE MEMBERS
Alan Albert
Richard Aschman
Kay Baker
Joseph J. Ball
Amnon Band
Carly M. Barber
Craig Barron
Thomas M. Barron
Larry Barton
Wolfgang Baumler
Bob Beitcher
Mark Bender
Bruce Berke
Bob Bianco
Steven A. Blakely
Mitchell Bogdanowicz
Michael Bravin
William Brodersen
Garrett Brown
Ronald D. Burdett
Reid Burns
Vincent Carabello
Jim Carter
Leonard Chapman
Mark Chiolis
Denny Clairmont
Adam Clark
Cary Clayton
David Cole
Michael Condon
Sean Coughlin
Robert B. Creamer
Grover Crisp
Peter Crithary
Daniel Curry
Ross Danielson
Carlos D. DeMattos
Gary Demos
Mato Der Avannesian
Kevin Dillon
David Dodson
Judith Doherty
Cyril Drabinsky
Jesse Dylan
Jonathan Erland
Ray Feeney
William Feightner
Phil Feiner
Jimmy Fisher
Scott Fleischer
Thomas Fletcher
Gilles Galerne
Salvatore Giarratano
Richard B. Glickman
John A. Gresch
Jim Hannafin
William Hansard
Bill Hansard, Jr.
Richard Hart
Robert Harvey
Josh Haynie
Charles Herzfeld
Larry Hezzelwood
Frieder Hochheim
Bob Hoffman
Vinny Hogan
Cliff Hsui
Robert C. Hummel
Roy Isaia
George Joblove
Joel Johnson
John Johnston
Marker Karahadian
Frank Kay
Debbie Kennard
Milton Keslow
Robert Keslow
Larry Kingen
Douglas Kirkland
Timothy J. Knapp
Karl Kresser
Chet Kucinski
Chuck Lee
Doug Leighton
Lou Levinson
Suzanne Lezotte
Grant Loucks
Howard Lukk
Andy Maltz
Steven E. Manios, Jr.
Steven E. Manios, Sr.
Peter Martin
Robert Mastronardi
Joe Matza
Albert Mayer, Jr.
Bill McDonald
Karen McHugh
Andy McIntyre
Stan Miller
Walter H. Mills
George Milton
Mike Mimaki
Michael Morelli
Dash Morrison
Nolan Murdock
Dan Muscarella
Iain A. Neil
Otto Nemenz
Ernst Nettmann
Tony Ngai
Mickel Niehenke
Jeff Okun
Marty Oppenheimer
Walt Ordway
Ahmad Ouri
Michael Parker
Warren Parker
Kristin Petrovich
Ed Phillips
Nick Phillips
Joshua Pines
Carl Porcello
Howard Preston
David Pringle
Phil Radin
Christopher Reyna
Colin Ritchie
Eric G. Rodli
Domenic Rom
Andy Romanoff
Frederic Rose
Daniel Rosen
Dana Ross
Bill Russell
Kish Sadhvani
David Samuelson
Steve Schklair
Peter K. Schnitzler
Walter Schonfeld
Wayne Schulman
Juergen Schwinzer
Steven Scott
Alec Shapiro
Don Shapiro
Milton R. Shefter
Leon Silverman
Garrett Smith
Timothy E. Smith
Kimberly Snyder
Stefan Sonnenfeld
John L. Sprung
Joseph N. Tawil
Ira Tiffen
Steve Tiffen
Arthur Tostado
Jeffrey Treanor
D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 1
Bill Turner
Stephan Ukas-Bradley
Mark Van Horne
Richard Vetter
Dedo Weigert
Franz Wieser
Evans Wetmore
Beverly Wood
Jan Yarbrough
Hoyt Yeatman
Irwin M. Young
Michael Zacharia
Bob Zahn
Nazir Zaidi
Michael Zakula
Les Zellan
HONORARY MEMBERS
Col. Edwin E. Al drin Jr.
Neil A. Armstrong
Col. Michael Collins
Bob Fisher
David MacDonald
Cpt. Bruce McCandless II
Larry Parker
D. Brian Spruill
ICSC Issues Mission Statement
Building on the foundation created
during this years International Cinematogra-
phy Summit Conference at the ASC Club-
house, the participating societies recently
issued a collective statement of purpose:
Cinematographers must continue
the development of our craft as an art form,
and at all levels promote the highest stan-
dards of visual storytelling within the creative
community.
Our vision is to foster and encourage
dialogue between all societies, governments,
ministers of culture, manufacturers, produc-
ers and directors to further nurture and
protect the visual integrity of the final prod-
uct.
We, as cinematographers, are the
custodians of the image. This is our heritage
and our responsibility.
Additionally, a number of ASC
members have been busy with activities
borne out of the ICSCs collaborative spirit.
Robert Primes, ASC presented the results of
a Single Chip Camera Evaluation during an
Imago event in Oslo, Norway; ASC members
Curtis Clark and Frederic Goodich and
Nigel Walters, BSC traveled to Seoul, South
Korea, where Clark screened his short The
Arrival and lectured on IIF ACES, and Good-
ich led a 3-D workshop for KSC members;
and, at press time, Haskell Wexler, ASC
was planning a trip to Copenhagen,
Denmark, at the invitation of Jan Weincke,
DFF and the Danish society to participate in a
master class for Imago members.
Sony Introduces F65 to Society
Sony recently introduced its F65
CineAlta digital motion-picture camera to
ASC members with an event at the Club-
house. Sony reps demonstrated the
systems new features and screened
footage shot with the camera.
In his opening remarks, Sonys senior
vice president, Alec Shapiro, noted that the
company would price the camera to be
affordable and accessible for most filmmak-
ers. He added that Sonys tech centers in
Japan have the capacity to produce 30
million imagers per month, and announced
the cameras delivery date as January 2012.
Otto Nemenz will be the first rental house
to receive the camera.
Satoshi Kanemura, Sonys vice presi-
dent of Beyond HD Production Solutions,
followed Shapiro and ran through some of
the cameras technical specs.
During the second half of Sonys
presentation, the company screened The
Arrival, an F65 short conceived, directed
and shot by Curtis Clark, ASC (see Short
Takes, AC Aug. 11), and other demos
showcasing the cameras capabilities in vari-
ous shooting environments and conditions.
Arri Hosts Oktoberfest
Arri sponsored an Oktoberfest-
themed gathering at the Clubhouse to
mark the U.S. debut of its Alexa Studio digi-
tal camera system. The evening afforded
ASC members an opportunity to become
acquainted with the latest addition to the
growing Alexa family in a festive atmos-
phere replete with a lederhosen-clad live
band. Details about the camera can be
found in our recent coverage of the
features Anonymous (AC Sept. 11), In Time
(Nov. 11) and Hugo (page 54).
Bailey Receives Lifetime,
Mentorship Awards
John Bailey, ASC was the recipient
of the inaugural Lifetime Achievement
Award in Cinematography at the Big Bear
Lake International Film Festival in Septem-
ber. This marked the festivals 12th year.
Bailey also recently received the
Kodak Mentorship Award in recognition of
his dedication to educating the next gener-
ation of filmmakers through his professional
career and personal endeavors. He accepted
the award during the International Cine-
matographers Guilds Emerging Cine-
matographer Awards luncheon.
ASC Participates in
Createasphere
A number of Society members
participated in Createaspheres recent Enter-
tainment Technology Expo in New York.
Events included the first public East Coast
screening of the Single Chip Camera Evalu-
ation, hosted by Robert Primes, ASC ; a
breakfast for Friends of the ASC; an East
Coast ASC member meeting; and a panel
discussion with Society members Richard
Crudo, Sandi Sissel and Primes, moder-
ated by AC contributor Iain Stasukevich.
The event concluded with a two-day
postproduction master class, which
included a keynote conversation featuring
Ed Lachman, ASC and Technicolor colorist
Sam Daley.
Society Members at Cine Gear
The Cine Gear Expo recently made
its New York City premiere with a two-day
event. Each day featured a panel, Dialogue
with Top Cinematographers and Discussion
on New Technologies. Sol Negrin, ASC
moderated the first days panel, which
comprised Mauricio Rubenstein and Society
members Tom Houghton, Ken Kelsch,
Anastas Michos, Frank Prinzi and Sandi
Sissel. On day two, Dejan Georgevich,
ASC moderated the panel, which featured
Ron Fortunato, ASC ; Dave Insley; Lewis
Rothenberg; Richard Rutkowski; Dave Satin;
and Michael Slovis, ASC.
Clubhouse News
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Guests enjoy Arri's Oktoberfest event.
When you were a child, what film made the strongest impres-
sion on you?
Viscontis La Terra Trema (1948), shot by G.R. Aldo.
Which cinematographers, past or present, do you most
admire?
G.R. Aldo, for his classic and almost baroque sense of color in light-
ing; Gianni Di Venanzo, for his black-and-white work and
modern sense of composition; and Peppino (Giuseppe) Rotunno,
ASC, AIC, and Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC, for whom I have no special
words we grew up together, and they are simply phenomenal
visual artists.
What sparked your interest in
photography?
When I was 16, I discovered through
the magnificent work of Henri
Cartier-Bresson and Paul Strand that
photography could be an art.
Where did you train and/or
study?
I studied cinematography at the
Centro Sperimentale di Cine-
matografia in Rome, where I met
Nestor Almndros, ASC two years
before Storaro arrived. Rotunno
teaches there today. As you see, there is a circle in my life formed by
the same group of persons, a comfortable Roman nest that shares
habits, expectations, inspirations and dreams.
Who were your early teachers or mentors?
Indirectly or directly, all the artists Ive already mentioned.
What are some of your key artistic influences?
I try to find the time to transform myself into a pilgrim, wandering
the streets of Venice, Florence and Rome on a quest for new discov-
eries. But Ive finally accepted the fact that one life is simply not long
enough to see all the gifts my beautiful country offers.
How did you get your first break in the business?
After earning the CSC diploma in 1958, I searched for someone who
believed in diplomas! I found Vittorio De Seta, a director who was in
search of a kind of factotum assistant for a short film on Sardinia. We
came back eight months later with Banditi ad Orgosolo , which
played to great acclaim at the Venice Film Festival.
What has been your most satisfying moment on a project?
Re-teaming with Dario Argento this year for a 3-D version of Drac-
ula, 34 years after we made Suspiria!
Have you made any memorable blunders?
While operating the camera on one of my first films (with no video
assist at the time), I was so fascinated by what the actor was doing
that I inadvertently included in the frame 100 of the 150 feet of
track wed laid down! Since then, Ive hired the most talented
camera operators I could find, and my nights have been restful.
What is the best professional advice youve ever received?
The edges of the frame are often more interesting than the center.
What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you?
Im re-reading the first part of Dantes Divina Commedia, Linferno.
Often he draws the most impressive
fresco with only four verses. Only the
divine Michelangelo can compete
with him. I have to add that I studied
and learned French reading Flaubert
and Celine, and English reading
Melville and Kerouac. They gave me
the invaluable gift to be able to
communicate in other idioms and
understand other cultures.
Do you have any favorite genres,
or genres you would like to try?
I dont see my films as belonging to
any genre. A nice group of them are
quite bad; most are good enough to deserve the salary; and very few
are quite remarkable (according to others), and surely that happened
when I had enough courage to take a lot of risks.
If you werent a cinematographer, what might you be doing
instead?
I would be a good lawyer to help my colleagues become legally
recognized as authors of photography and co-authors of their
films. I tried to contribute to the solution of this injustice by found-
ing Imago in 1992, when I was president of the AIC. I received
enthusiastic approval and immediate support from representatives
of the BSC, BVK and AFC. Today, led by our wise and tireless presi-
dent, Nigel Walters, BSC, Imago includes 32 European and 15 extra-
European cinematographer societies (www.imago.org). By far, this
has been my most important idea and my best achievement.
Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for
membership?
Peppino Rotunno, Vittorio Storaro and Steven Poster.
How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?
To be part of such a society of film artists is invaluable.
Luciano Tovoli, ASC, AIC Close-up
P
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Film matters. Tell the world why
at www.kodak.com/go/filmmatters

Film. No Compromise.

American Cinematographer 201112

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