grandeur

Transcription

grandeur

A M E R I C A N C I N E M ATO G R A P H E R • F E B R U A RY 2 0 1 0 • T H E W O L F M A N – C H R I S M E N G E S, A S C , B S C – R E D O N E C A M E R A – S U S P I R I A • V O L . 9 1 N O. 2
FEBRUARY 2010
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Don McCuaig, ASC, CSC
y earliest memories of film
are of sensory experiences
involving popcorn and soda
pop, plus a wide-eyed enchantment
with the larger-than-life images on
the screen. Fate stepped in when I
became a student lens maker in the
military, and I was soon thereafter
handed a camera and told to shoot
the sunset.
“American Cinematographer
was incredibly helpful at the
inception of my cinematography
career, and it remains as valuable to
me as my light meter. For decades,
AC has provided me with the
opportunity to experience my
colleagues’ work through up-close
and personal looks at sets, the
sharing of technical information,
and anecdotes about managing
stage and location dilemmas.
“I remain a perpetual student
of my craft, and AC continues to
provide an informed resource for
information about both film and
digital media.”
©photo by Owen Roizman, ASC
“M
— Don McCuaig, ASC, CSC
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Photo of Randall Einhorn by Joel Lipton
exclusively for Schneider Optics
“On ‘The Office,’ our shots must
appear real – documentary style – as
if we are capturing the moment. That
real feel grounds the subject matter for
our audience. But ‘real’ implies an
imperfect look like blown-out windows.
And, when you’re working in HD,
‘blow out’ can look horrible. That’s
where Schneider HD Classic Softs™ are
my go-to tool. They turn a blow out
into a nice bloom.
And because HD is so unforgiving,
I always use a quarter or a half HD
Classic Soft on our actors. This takes
the edge off the HD and gives them
a look that is both real and attractive
at the same time.
I use filters to help with things I
can’t control so I choose the matchless
quality of Schneider glass. Whether I’m
the Director or the Cinematographer,
Schneider filters make the
good things great and
the bad things better.”
Director and Cinematographer Randall Einhorn
is a two-time Emmy nominee for his work on
the series Survivor. He has shot and/or directed
over 113 episodes of The Office and directed
episodes of series including Modern Family,
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Parks and
Recreation, as well as numerous commercials
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The International Journal of Motion Imaging
On Our Cover: The full moon transforms Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) into a
snarling werewolf in The Wolfman, shot by Shelly Johnson, ASC. (Photo by Frank Ockenfels,
courtesy of Universal Pictures.)
FEATURES
32
46
56
68
Bad Moon Rising
Shelly Johnson, ASC pens a firsthand account of his
work on The Wolfman
Artistry and Conscience
Chris Menges, ASC, BSC receives the Society’s
International Award
Working With the Red
AC technical editor Christopher Probst offers a hands-on
assessment of the Red One camera
46
Terror in Technicolor
Luciano Tovoli, ASC, AIC recalls his visual strategies
for the 1977 horror classic Suspiria
DEPARTMENTS
8
10
12
18
78
82
88
90
90
92
94
96
Editor’s Note
President’s Desk
Short Takes: What’s in the Box?
Production Slate: Fish Tank • Dollhouse
Post Focus: Offhollywood Digital
New Products & Services
International Marketplace
Classified Ads
Ad Index
In Memoriam: Marc E. Reshovsky, ASC
Clubhouse News
ASC Close-Up: Paul Cameron
68
— VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM TO ENJOY THESE WEB EXCLUSIVES —
Q&A: John Cassaday on directing Dollhouse
Podcasts: Werner Herzog and Peter Zeitlinger on Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
• Barry Markowitz, ASC on Crazy Heart • Richard Crudo, ASC interviews Victor J. Kemper, ASC about
The Friends of Eddie Coyle
F e b r u a r y
2 0 1 0
V o l .
9 1 ,
N o .
2
The International Journal of Motion Imaging
Visit us online at
www.theasc.com
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PUBLISHER Martha Winterhalter
————————————————————————————————————
EDITORIAL
EXECUTIVE EDITOR Stephen Pizzello
SENIOR EDITOR Rachael K. Bosley
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Jon D. Witmer
TECHNICAL EDITOR Christopher Probst
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Stephanie Argy, Benjamin B, Douglas Bankston, Robert S. Birchard,
Bob Fisher, Simon Gray, Jim Hemphill, David Heuring,
Jay Holben, Mark Hope-Jones, Noah Kadner, Jean Oppenheimer,
John Pavlus, Chris Pizzello, Jon Silberg, Iain Stasukevich,
Kenneth Sweeney, Patricia Thomson
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American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 90th year of publication, is published
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The ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but
an educational, cultural and professional
organization. Membership is by invitation
to those who are actively engaged as
directors of photography and have
demonstrated outstanding ability. ASC
membership has become one of the highest
honors that can be bestowed upon a
professional cinematographer — a mark
of prestige and excellence.
OFFICERS - 2009/2010
Michael Goi
President
Richard Crudo
Vice President
Owen Roizman
Vice President
Victor J. Kemper
Vice President
Matthew Leonetti
Treasurer
Rodney Taylor
Secretary
John C. Flinn III
Sergeant At Arms
MEMBERS OF THE
BOARD
Curtis Clark
Richard Crudo
George Spiro Dibie
Richard Edlund
John C. Flinn III
John Hora
Victor J. Kemper
Matthew Leonetti
Stephen Lighthill
Isidore Mankofsky
Daryn Okada
Owen Roizman
Nancy Schreiber
Haskell Wexler
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ALTERNATES
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This month’s cover story on The Wolfman (“Bad Moon
Rising,” page 32) comes straight from the source: cinematographer Shelly Johnson, ASC, who offers a first-person account of
his strategies for the show. The article is filled with insights that
provide valuable context for the filmmakers’ creative choices. “A
key decision production made early on was to shoot a large
portion of the film on location, a different stylistic approach than
the one taken on the stagebound Universal classic,” Johnson
writes. “The idea was to ground the story in reality and integrate
our storytelling elements into that setting. I liked this idea, particularly for our night scenes, which we wanted to shoot at a much
larger scale than is possible onstage.”
In discussing his work, Johnson contends that the best images are those that support
good stories, soulfully told: “When I think back on the cinematography I’ve admired over the
years, it’s usually not the prettiest film or the film with the most dazzling action footage that
impresses me. Although I respect those types of movies, the films that get inside me with their
emotional treatment of a story are the ones that hit home.”
Chris Menges, ASC, BSC certainly grasps the value of impactful narratives, which is
just one of the reasons he will receive the ASC International Award later this month (“Artistry
and Conscience,” page 46). No less an authority than Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC pronounces
Menges “probably the greatest cinematographer working today.” Meanwhile, the self-effacing Menges maintains that what inspires him are “good writing and a good story, and hopefully something with political energy.”
Over the course of his illustrious career, Menges has seen camera technology
advance by leaps and bounds. With the advance of digital-imaging chips, today’s cinematographers confront more choices than ever while deciding which format to use on a given project,
but the Red One camera has generated so much interest — and debate — that we felt
compelled to examine its facets in depth, particularly after our most recent reader survey
revealed significant interest in the topic. AC technical editor Christopher Probst has put the Red
through its paces on dozens of shoots, and he assesses the camera in a thorough piece (“Working With the Red,” page 56).
Readers have also requested more historical articles, so we’ve obliged with a look
back at one of the most visually spectacular horror films ever made, Dario Argento’s occult
chiller Suspiria, shot by Luciano Tovoli, ASC, AIC (“Terror in Technicolor,” page 68). In helping
director Argento mount his masterpiece of operatic mayhem, Tovoli imbued the film with vivid
primary colors that give it the feel of an inescapable acid trip — a daring strategy that caused
the cinematographer’s loyal crewmembers some concern: “I was always telling the production
designer and scenic painter, ‘More red! More blue!’” Tovoli remembers. “I made the same
recommendation to my very patient gaffer, Alberto, and, like a good friend, he asked me, ‘Are
you sure? It’s becoming quite disturbing!’ And to my inalterably happy face he asked, ‘Are you
searching to be fired?’”
Tovoli persevered, and his instincts lent the nightmarish images great power: Suspiria
is now considered a classic of the genre, proving yet again that risk is often rewarding.
8
Stephen Pizzello
Executive Editor
Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.
Editor’s Note
Stefan Sonnenfeld
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© Kodak, 2009. Kodak and Vision are trademarks.
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President’s Desk
Does anyone set out to make a bad movie? I don’t mean in a tongue-in-cheek way, where you
purposely put in dialogue and situations that are blatantly ridiculous to elicit a laugh. I mean in a really
earnest, “I-hope-this-is-the-worst-movie-ever” way?
I don’t think so. In fact, I think the bad movies we think of as guilty pleasures are the ones whose
makers were convinced they had Citizen Kane II on their hands.
I was thinking about this as I leafed through one of my favorite books. It’s a collection of the
blandest postcards you could ever hope to find, the kind that look like they came off a dusty metal
rack that had been in a truck stop somewhere off the interstate for decades. The book is called, appropriately, Boring Postcards (compiled by Martin Parr and published by Phaidon). Even though the book
is filled with images like obscure turnpikes that no one would ever care about, and a factory that makes
a ball bearing in only one size, as you go through the book, you instinctively start to wonder about the
thought process involved in the images. Someone set up the camera there, where the building would
look as flat as architecturally possible, and someone else thought that picture was worth making into
10,000 postcards. It becomes an almost hypnotic journey of discovery as you study each postcard and wonder why the photographer chose
to do an aerial shot of a factory that looks like nothing from the sky.
It certainly takes a great deal more effort to make an entire feature film than to take a photo, so aspiring to mediocrity would not
seem to be high on a filmmaker’s list of goals. In my personal collection, I have more than 10,000 movies on DVD and Laserdisc. When I
recently inventoried them to weed out duplicates, I discovered I had a large number of films that others would call trash. Sure, I have Fellini’s
81⁄2 and several different versions of D. W. Griffith’s silent films, along with milestone movies from every era in the history of cinema. But next
to those, just as neatly shelved and categorized by genre, are titles that would not be given a moment’s thought by any serious student of
cinema: The Pom-Pom Girls, The Bloodthirsty Butchers, Battle of the Amazons and The Naughty Stewardesses. And I had seen each of them
more than once.
There are a lot of one-shot wonders in my collection, filmmakers who came out of nowhere and were never seen again after their
one bad opus. But the ones that are especially impressive actually carved out entire careers making films that the average Godard fan
wouldn’t think twice about. Take Al Adamson. The first time I saw The Naughty Stewardesses at a drive-in, I was blown away by the Ronettesstyle title music and the graphics. Al worked in every exploitation genre, from biker chicks to horror flicks, and you could tell the man loved
making movies when you watched one of his five-day epics. Hikmet Avedis was the king of the tawdry sexploitation film, with credits such
as The Stepmother, Dr. Minx and Scorchy. His film The Teacher, though marketed as a sexy coming-of-age comedy, actually went into dark
territory by killing off the main character at the end (and it was Jay “Dennis The Menace” North!). And what can I possibly say about Andy
Milligan that The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! hasn’t already said?
When I was an instructor at Columbia College in Chicago, I made my class go see a movie called Ms. 45, directed by Abel Ferrara. It’s
an exploitation film about a mute girl who is assaulted and gets revenge on all the men in New York. I had seen it at a grindhouse and was
impressed by the intensity of the performances, the edgy look of the low-budget lighting, and the filmmakers’ attempt to do something
more than what was expected from such a movie. It was still an exploitation film, but it was an experience that remained in your mind long
after you left the dank smell and sticky floors of the theater. It entertained and excited your imagination.
So, by all means, celebrate Kurosawa, Kubrick and Coppola, because great cinema is an uplifting experience. But keep your other eye
open for those movies that live on the ragged edge of acceptability. You just might be surprised at how good bad cinema can be.
Michael Goi, ASC
President
10
February 2010
American Cinematographer
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Short Takes
I
Crafting What’s in the Box?
By Iain Stasukevich
The science-fiction short film What’s in the Box? hit the
Web shrouded in mystery. Viewers didn’t know whether it was a
mobile-phone commercial or the trailer for an adaptation of the
video game Half-Life. In fact, Tim Smit — who co-wrote,
directed, shot, acted in and designed visual effects for the short
— intended the project to be a submission for a director’s workshop, not the viral sensation it became.
Told from a first-person perspective, What’s in the Box?
follows an unnamed scientist as he attempts to escape the terrifying effects of an experiment gone horribly wrong. Smit is cagey
about answering the film’s titular question, but the 24-year-old
Dutchman does reveal something about his own influences. He
grew up on video games and Hollywood action movies, but
because the Netherlands doesn’t have much in the way of an
entertainment industry, he chose to pursue a career in science
and make short films in his spare time. “Film is something I’ve
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February 2010
always been interested in, and even though my career choices
took precedence, the interest never went away,” he says.
Indeed, while studying nanoscience at Radboud University in
Nijmegen, Smit produced and directed videos for the school, and
in 2007, he participated in a “fake trailer” contest for the film
Grindhouse.
For his entry in the Grindhouse competition, Rise of the
Dirtnappers, he won a Sony HDR-SR5 Handycam. The lightweight hi-def camera records to an internal hard-disk drive and
uses a 1⁄3", 2.1-megapixel CMOS sensor to capture 1920x1080
HD images. It proved perfect for shooting What’s in the Box? “I
was interested in first-person shooters [video games], particularly
Half-Life, because they let you look through the eyes of the main
character,” says Smit. “I wanted to do something like that with
film, but I didn’t have access to actors or professional gear.” He
and co-writer Thibaut Niels devised a treatment in which “the
viewer would be the main character, and I’d only need a few
people to assist me.”
That main character is a scientist who wakes up on the
Images courtesy of Tim Smit.
The woodshed at
right was one of
the 3-D elements
created for the
short film What’s
in the Box?
Director, cowriter,
cinematographer
and visual-effects
artist Tim Smit
used Autodesk
3ds Max to
construct the real
woodshed’s
crumbling
counterpart, and
he executed the
final composite in
Adobe After
Effects.
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Right: An early
CG effect
reveals
ominous clouds
converging
around a pair
of towers.
Below: Smit
enhanced
abandoned
streets —
which were
captured in
camera by
shooting early
in the morning
— with CG
rubble.
floor of a laboratory, disoriented and
sporting a bloody nose. Rushing to a
window, he sees ominous clouds
converging on a pair of nearby towers.
He retrieves a small, black box with a
pulsing red ring and aims it toward the
towers, and it emits a surge of energy
that causes the towers to explode.
Retreating from the window, he dons his
Computer Brain Interface (a headband
that provides an informative heads-up
display, as in a first-person-shooter video
game), grabs a few accoutrements and,
still carrying the box, exits the building.
In addition to the SR5, which Smit
mounted to a skate helmet, the filmmaker captured some shots with a handheld Sony HDR-HC1. He kept both
cameras at their widest zoom setting for
maximum depth-of-field, and set the
14
February 2010
shutters to 1⁄250 for outdoor scenes and
1⁄50 for indoor scenes. In the opening
sequence in the lab, Smit operated the
HC1 while Niels provided the main character’s hands. “I needed to have total
control over the camera,” says Smit. “We
tried using the helmet camera at first, but
I wasn’t fully able to see what the camera
was seeing, so I ended up [handholding]
the camera over Thibaut’s shoulder.” He
used only the location’s existing fixtures
to light the scene.
Outside, cars, bicycles and
personal effects litter the street, their
owners strangely absent. A futuristic
cityscape looms in the distance. The earth
trembles, and fiery debris rains down
from the sky. No sooner does the scientist
take refuge in an abandoned bus than
armed soldiers in protective white suits
flank the vehicle, their electronically
filtered voices cutting the silence. For this
sequence, Smit wore the SR5 helmet rig,
freeing his hands to work with props; he
was able to work completely on his own
until the soldiers appear.
Smit designed and animated all of
the visual effects in Adobe After Effects
(which he also used to color correct the
short) and Autodesk 3ds Max. “My main
interests are environmental effects and
explosions, but I’m not a professional
digital artist, so the most difficult stuff —
like the towers exploding, and the sky
and clouds — required a lot of trial and
error,” he says. He did, however, capture
the empty streets entirely in camera,
which “was quite tricky to do,” he
recalls. “We shot most of our stuff very
early on, between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m.,
when the majority of pedestrians were
still at home. For the scene inside the
bus, we looked for a street that wasn’t a
major road and had a dead end. We
found an industrial area of Nijmegen and
asked the businesses nearby if it would
be okay to film there, and then we
dressed it up with cars and the bus,
which we got for free for an hour if we
promised to show the logo of the bus
company.”
When two of the soldiers enter
the bus, the scientist straps a strangelooking gadget to his hand and points it
at the nearest soldier. A thrumming
Clockwise from
top left: Smit
demonstrates the
helmet-cam rig
he used to
capture a
first-person
perspective;
created in 3ds
Max, this
gunship proved
to be one of
Smit’s biggest
visual-effects
challenges; the
director's concept
art for a soldier;
two soldiers as
they appear in
the short.
sound fills the air, and the soldiers double
over in pain. The scientist escapes out the
vehicle’s back door and runs down the
street; suddenly, two rocket-propelled
missiles tear through the sky and obliterate a house at the end of the block. A
gunship descends, spewing hot lead into
the street. The scientist ducks into an
empty house, but not before a soldier
tags him with a bullet. “For the running
scenes, we had the HC1 mounted to a
stabilizer,” says Smit. “It was a simple
system, a combination of metal rods and
weights, that we built in a couple of
hours. It looks like a ‘T’; I just mounted
the camera to the top of the horizontal
bar, and I’d hold [the stabilizer] out in
front of me. That restricted me to one
arm [to use in frame], but it gave the
running shots a bit more steadiness.”
The gunship, created in 3ds Max,
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February 2010
proved to be one of the most challenging
effects elements. “The majority of the
effects are 2-D, because I’m not so skilled
in character animation or making 3-D
models, although I knew specific effects
would call for that,” says Smit. He
learned to use the software by taking
advantage of Internet tutorials and
instructional books; in the latter category,
Deconstructing the Elements With 3ds
Max, by Pete Draper, was especially helpful. “I researched the artists that inspired
me and just kept practicing,” says Smit.
The only other element of What’s
in the Box? that utilized a 3-D model is a
woodshed that the scientist uses for shelter before it’s blown open by the soldiers.
Smit took digital stills of a real woodshed
and built its crumbling counterpart in 3ds
Max. Using the SR5, he shot the smoke
and dust elements against a greenscreen
set up in his back yard. Visual-effects
composites and editing were then
performed in After Effects. For post work,
Smit downscaled the 1920x1080 footage
to 960x450 to “put less strain on my
computer.”
After it was uploaded to YouTube,
What’s in the Box? soon topped 1 million
views, and Smit has since received offers
to expand the project into a feature. In
the meantime, though, he’s busy keeping
up with viewers’ demands for more,
creating puzzles to unlock new content
on the film’s Web site, www.whatsinthe
box.nl. As for the master’s degree in
nanoscience, he says, “The things I want
to do in the future are not related to
physics at all. The knowledge I’ve gained
at university helps me think about things
and understand them better, and that
definitely helps me as a director.”
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Production Slate
I
Hard Lessons
By Patricia Thomson
From the beginning of their professional collaboration, director Andrea Arnold put Robbie Ryan, BSC through his paces. “The
first shot I ever asked Robbie to do was the opening in Wasp,”
Arnold says, referring to her 26-minute drama about a single mother
who is unable to feed her children and makes some unwise choices.
“I asked if he could be on [actress] Natalie Press’ face as she ran
down a flight of stairs with four kids. He ran down backwards!”
Wasp (2005) went on to win the Academy Award for Best LiveAction Short, and since then, Arnold and Ryan have continued their
collaboration with Red Road, which won Cannes’ Prix du Jury in
2006 (AC April ’07), and Fish Tank, which made a splash at last year’s
Cannes and AFI film festivals.
For Fish Tank, which retains the raw naturalism of Arnold’s
prior films, Ryan was once again running down stairs and through
cramped quarters. The film focuses on 15-year-old Mia (Katie Jarvis),
a high-school dropout who lives with her party-girl mother (Kierston
Wareing) and prepubescent sister (Rebecca Griffiths). Mia’s solace is
hip-hop dancing, which she practices alone in an empty flat. One
18
February 2010
day, her mother brings home a new boyfriend, Connor (Michael
Fassbender), who soon moves in. Easygoing and attentive to both
daughters, Connor conquers Mia’s wariness with a mix of paternal
care and charm, and the inexperienced girl is soon grappling with
feelings for him that are not familial.
One of Arnold’s chief concerns was to foster viewer empathy
for her troubled protagonist. “I knew Mia might be hard to like, but
I believe if you can see the world from her perspective, you can find
some empathy for her, so I wanted the camera to stick close to her
and experience the world the way she does,” she says. “I hope Fish
Tank will help people fear teens like Mia less.”
Scenes were shot in chronological order. “I did that mainly
for Katie because she’d never acted before,” explains Arnold. “I
wanted her to feel she knew where she was day by day. We shot
the last scene on the last day, and I feel Katie had really changed and
grown — it showed in her face.” Sequential shooting was facilitated
by the proximity of key locations, most of which were in adjacent
apartment towers in Essex, England. Three side-by-side flats served
as Mia’s apartment, the production’s equipment room and the
green room.
Unfortunately, chronological shooting also meant most
Fish Tank photos by Holly Horner, courtesy of IFC Films.
In a scene
from Fish Tank,
shot by Robbie
Ryan, BSC,
Connor
(Michael
Fassbender)
tries to forge a
bond with his
girlfriend’s
daughter, Mia
(Katie Jarvis),
during a
family outing.
Mia’s escape
from family
pressure is
hip-hop
dancing,
which she
practices in an
empty
apartment in
her housing
project.
major scenes were saved for the end of the
shoot. “With a normal schedule, the
‘bigger’ or more technical scenes tend to be
jumbled around, but shooting sequentially,
you end up with a heavy section at the end
because of the dramatic arc,” notes Ryan.
“That dawned on me halfway through
prep! It was fine, but we were a bit
wrecked.”
Ryan shot Fish Tank in 35mm using
three Fuji film stocks, mainly Eterna Vivid
160 8543. Working with Hugh Whittaker
at Panavision’s U.K. office, the cinematographer chose a Panaflex Millennium XL as his
main camera because of its top-mounted
mag, and because he and Arnold wanted
to use Primo Close Focus lenses. “We used
the whole range, wide and tight,” he notes.
“There was a lot of ND filtering going on.”
20
February 2010
The film’s unusual 1.33:1 aspect ratio
had several inspirations. Arnold recalls that
when she supervised a 4x3 transfer of Red
Road for television, she grew to like the intimacy of the frame. Also, she was smitten by
Polaroid photos she’d seen in a recent exhibition at the Tate Modern (Street and
Studio: An Urban History of Photography),
and by Polaroids in Andrei Tarkovsky’s autobiographical collection and Barbara Hitchcock’s The Polaroid Book. When she and
Ryan tested 35mm, 16mm and high-definition video for Fish Tank, Ryan shot the
35mm full-aperture, and when they viewed
the tests at Soho Film Lab, “it looked lovely,
very home-movie,” says Ryan. Arnold
immediately decided 1.33:1 was
“absolutely right” for Fish Tank: “It suited
the small rooms; it was intimate and put
Mia very much in the center of the frame;
and it made things feel a little more claustrophobic, which underscored Mia’s frustrations.”
To achieve the 1.33:1 frame, the
filmmakers had to forego the photochemical finish they originally intended and create
the smaller frame digitally within the 1.85:1
frame. With colorist Rob Pizzey at Ascent
142 Features, Ryan strove to use the digitalintermediate process to create images that
“were as close to the photochemical
process as possible, warts and all,” he says.
“Our first few weeks of rushes were heavier
and more contrasty than what Rob was
doing in his initial grade, so they became his
reference.” Ultimately, Ryan was satisfied
with what he was able to achieve in the DI.
“I think the visuals are nice and honest, true
to what we shot.”
The cinematographer’s team on Fish
Tank was documentary-size: three camera
assistants, a gaffer and an electrician. He
recalls, “The sparks and gaffer weren’t used
that much; they were good, but they were
always waiting for some mission to go on!”
There was no grip. “Andrea bans tripods
from her set,” Ryan continues. “On a shoot
that’s completely handheld, you sort of
need a grip even more, because you need
someone to pass the camera to when you
finish the shot — the Millennium is quite
heavy! But they say if you don’t need a
tripod, you don’t need a grip. Poor John
Watters, my focus puller, often had to hold
the camera for me.” Ryan eventually
recruited a friend to be a grip trainee. “He
Ryan finds an angle on Jarvis as 1st AC John Watters stands by.
had no experience, but he could hold a
camera!”
Panavision also supplied the production with an Arri 2-C, which Ryan used for
landscapes and some atmospheric details.
“It’s very light, and any time there was a lull
in the shooting, I could run off and shoot
loads of cutaways,” he says. “That made
my day.”
The lighting package comprised
mostly small instruments. “To be honest,
the biggest light source [in Mia’s apartment]
was the tellie!” says Ryan. A Nine-light
Maxi-Brute was used to create or augment
sunlight, and the crew augmented practicals with a mix of Kino Flos, Mini-Flos and
Dedolights. “The Dedo is my favorite light
because it does everything — it’s the best
spotlight in the world; it can be a very
intense floodlight; you can dim it; and it’s
got a really long throw. Gaffers hate them
because they’re tiny — most gaffers have
very big hands — but they’re really versatile.” The largest movie light was a halfpanel Wendy Light on a 40' crane; this was
used to light a large, open field Mia crosses
at night.
Framing for Academy Aperture took
some getting used to. Portraiture worked
22
February 2010
beautifully, and Ryan appreciated the extra
headroom. “It didn’t make the handheld so
nauseous!” he notes. The challenge was
framing multiple actors. “We just pulled
back and made a wide two-shot, which is
unusual for Andrea — she tends to be overthe-shoulder,” says Ryan. “Luckily, it didn’t
occur too often.”
A subtle shift in framing could tease
out nuances in the main character, who is
poised between vulnerable child and sullen
teen. When Mia looks out the window and
watches Connor leave for the first time,
“we had a low angle, and it just didn’t feel
right,” recalls Arnold. “I wanted to feel her
interest and need, so I moved the camera
higher, above her, and the change was
incredible. She seemed younger, smaller,
more fragile and very needy.” Ryan adds,
“Katie had an innocent look from that
angle, and when we discovered that, we
tried to play on it throughout the film.”
The handheld camerawork underscores the energy in high-adrenaline scenes,
as when a panicked Mia runs after Connor
when he leaves for good. The scene is a
long, continuous shot that moves from
apartment to parking lot, down two separate staircases and through two doors, all at
top speed. “This was a really important
scene, and there was no way it would have
had the same effect if we’d done a static
wide,” says Ryan.
The unfettered camera enabled
quieter moments as well. In one erotically
charged scene, Connor finds a drunken
Mia passed out in her mother’s bed. He
carries her to her bedroom, removes her
shoes and pants and tucks her in while the
half-conscious teen watches stealthily. Ryan
positioned the camera behind Jarvis on the
bed, peering through the crook of her arm.
“I love that shot because you totally have
her point of view,” he says. On the soundtrack, her breath is heightened, and the
frame rate is slowed to 40 fps. “It draws
your attention to the sound, and sound
design is really important for Andrea,” says
Ryan.
Slow-motion recurs in a few other
key moments between Mia and Connor.
“They’re intimate, sensual moments,” says
Ryan. “We tried it at 48 fps and then came
down to 40. It’s noticeably slow but has a
subtlety that’s really quite good.” Arnold
and Ryan coined a word for this slowmotion effect: “slooge.”
After three collaborations with
Arnold, “we just have a shared language,”
says Ryan. They also have great respect for
each other. Arnold observes, “You can tell
so much about a photographer by the way
he looks at a person through a lens. Robbie
likes people, and that’s there in the way he
frames them. He’s a poet with the
camera.”
“I’m lucky to be in this kind of
working relationship,” says Ryan. “Sometimes you struggle to get what a director
wants, and sometimes directors don’t
know what they want. Andrea knows, and
she’s happy we can achieve it. Long may it
last!”
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.33:1
(1.85:1 original)
35mm
Panaflex Millennium XL; Arri 2-C
Primo Close Focus lenses
Fuji Eterna Vivid 160 8543,
Reala 500D 8592, Eterna 400T 8583
Digital Intermediate
➣
Right: Echo
(Eliza
Dushku)
finds an
outfit to
match her
newly
imprinted
persona in
the
Dollhouse
episode
“Belle
Chose.”
Below: Under
the
supervision
of Adelle
DeWitt
(Olivia
Williams,
left), Topher
Brink (Fran
Kranz,
second from
left), Boyd
Langton
(Harry
Lennix,
second from
right) and
Paul Ballard
(Tahmoh
Penikett),
Echo sits
down for a
“treatment,”
which will
erase her
imprinted
personality.
24
February 2010
Redesigning Dollhouse
By Michael Goldman
It had already been a high-stress
morning for cinematographer Lisa Wiegand
and the rest of the crew and cast of Fox’s
Dollhouse by the time Joss Whedon, the
show’s creator/producer, gathered them for
a sit-down on a soundstage in mid-November. The team was not yet even halfway
through another long filming day, with the
entire cast participating in the final scene of
the episode at hand, “The Attic.” Whedon
announced that 20th Century Fox had
decided to cancel the show. Production on
“The Attic” and the final three episodes
would continue, he added, and the entire
second season would air.
Dollhouse chronicles the story of a
mysterious organization that wipes the
minds of volunteers and reprograms them
to perform particular missions for paying
clients. The show quickly developed a cult
following in its first season, battling its way
to a second season despite borderline
ratings. In its second season, the show
switched from shooting 35mm to digital
capture, and Wiegand took over the cinematographer spot from Ross Berryman,
ASC, ACS. “Lisa was recommended by
Rodney Charters [ASC, CSC], who shot our
unaired 13th episode [‘Epitaph 1’] last
season and brought her on as his B-camera
operator — she had worked with him on
24,” Whedon explains. “We shot ‘Epitaph
1’ with digital cameras, but even before that
experience, we felt we’d have to switch to
digital if the show got renewed. Shooting
that episode digitally was the wake-up call
for me — I realized we could get more
dramatic footage with less light and shoot
real quickly, on a lower budget, and I
wanted that energy in the show.
“When Lisa interviewed for the job,
her competence and intensity for working
this way just sparked, and [producer] David
Solomon and I fought to get her onto the
show,” continues Whedon. “The network
was a little leery because it was her first
credit as a TV-series cinematographer, but
we prevailed, and after that our good feeling about her work only increased.”
Wiegand is eager to credit others for
making the gig work out so well, as she
demonstrates while picking at a salad
Dollhouse photos by Carin Baer, Richard Foreman, Greg Gayne and Adam Taylor, courtesy of Fox Broadcasting Co.
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•|•
Cassaday Imprints “The Attic”
The Dollhouse episode “The Attic,”
which finds Echo (Eliza Dushku) trapped in
a perpetual nightmare in which she faces a
mysterious villain named Arcane, marks
John Cassaday’s directing debut in the
episodic-television world. After directing
TV news in Texas, Cassaday moved to New
York and broke into the comic-book industry, illustrating such books as Desperadoes,
Captain America, Planetary and, with Dollhouse creator/comic-book writer Joss
Whedon, Astonishing X-Men.
When Whedon offered Cassaday a
turn behind the camera, Cassaday was
eager to oblige. He spoke to AC about the
experience, and here are some excerpts
from the conversation:
American Cinematographer:
What did you think of the premise of
‘The Attic’ when it was presented to
you?
John Cassaday: When I read Jed
Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen’s script,
I walked over to their office and said, ‘This
is a gift. Thank you.’ It was tremendous,
and I felt like it was tailor-made for me.
This episode is kind of a condensed version
of Planetary, which gave me a chance to
dive into all kinds of different genres from
one issue to the next. In ‘The Attic,’ we
jump from Alice in Wonderland to slick scifi to the war in Afghanistan to a horror
film. It’s been mind-boggling for me.
Did the fact that the Attic
hadn’t been seen onscreen before
enable you to contribute to its actual
design?
Cassaday: A lot of it was in the
script, but I was able to tinker with many
facets visual. I’d swing by [production
designer] Cameron Birnie’s office every day
during prep, and we’d sketch different
ideas. Among the pieces I helped design is
a large tree that rests in the center of the
Dollhouse set; it was something special to
see my drawings become reality. There’s
also an apocalyptic scene where we see
what the future will bring, and it involved
a big crane shot with a huge greenscreen;
[visual-effects supervisor] Mike Leone and I
26
February 2010
•|•
would go back-and-forth about what I
wanted to see [in the final image].
The episode’s nightmare landscape lends itself to visuals that are
quite unlike anything we’ve seen
before on Dollhouse. How did you
feel about taking the show into
uncharted waters?
Cassaday: It was daunting, but
there was also a comfort factor in that my
episode didn’t have to conform to everyone else’s. There are moments within the
Dollhouse where I had to maintain the
established look, but then there are all
these ‘dreams’ that allowed us to play in
some uncharted territory.
Your artwork shows a great
understanding of light and shadow
and an appreciation for their
emotional impact. What was it like
collaborating with a cinematographer
to realize those effects in a live-action
environment?
Cassaday: The visuals obviously
matter a lot to me, and more often than
not, [cinematographer] Lisa Wiegand and
her crew were making it look even better
than what I hoped for. There’s a scene in
Adelle’s [Olivia Williams] office where I
wanted to create a film-noir look with
heavy shadows and lights beaming
through the blinds. Lisa and her crew set it
up superbly. Adelle says something horrible and threatening to Topher [Fran Kranz].
She’s like a cat with a mouse, and when
she threatens him, he backs up into this
shadow that rests on his face, like he’s
putting on a mask. You can still see him,
but he’s trying to hide. It was a thrill to
shoot, and putting it together in the edit
was just as interesting — I felt a strong
correlation between the editing process
and breaking down panels on a comicbook page.
— Jon D. Witmer
To read our full interview with
Cassaday, visit www.theasc.com/magazine
in February.
A gnarled, snow-covered tree fills the center
of the Dollhouse in one of the nightmare
sequences in the episode “The Attic.”
during her lunch break. “This experience
has reinforced how important my team
members are, and I’ve had a great team on
this show,” she says. “I’ve relied quite a bit
on them. I’ve learned so much, and Joss has
been completely supportive.”
Once it became clear Dollhouse
would transition to digital capture, it was
Wiegand who made the choice to shoot
1080p high-definition video using Panasonic’s VariCam AJ-HPX3700, recording to
P2 cards in the 10-bit 4:2:2 format (using
the AVC-Intra compression scheme). She
also worked closely with Whedon to reconstitute the look of the show, a change motivated in part — but only in part — by the
switch to digital. “By the time we realized
our budget would be cut, I was already a
little frustrated with the pace [of production], and I thought we really needed a
visceral, visual intensity to carry it all
through,” says Whedon. “All these things
came together. I realized we could save
time and money and also rethink the visual
design of the show, which I wanted to do
anyway.
“The main change Lisa helped me
institute was to get more expressionistic —
lots of sparks and pin spots and more depth
and separation in the frame without actually putting up walls, and just letting things
be a little more traumatic,” he continues. “I
threw a little bit of my pedantic attachment
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VP Technical Services
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Built onstage at
Fox Studios in
Los Angeles, the
Dollhouse sets
include
(clockwise from
top left) the
primary twostory common
area, DeWitt’s
office and the
dining area.
to realism to the wind and said, ‘Let’s go for
it; let’s run more handheld with lighter
cameras and let the visuals work with us.’”
Wiegand offered the production a
few camera options, but she strongly
preferred the VariCam, which is seldom
seen in the episodic world. “We really liked
the mobility of the Sony PMW-EX3s we
used on the 13th episode last year, and we
wanted something that could bridge the
look of that episode and the look of the rest
of season one, which was shot on 35mm in
a different style,” Wiegand explains. “So I
chose an ENG-style camera, larger than the
EX3 but not too heavy. I knew we would do
a lot of handheld work and would want to
be really mobile, so ENG seemed the way to
go. I didn’t feel [Panavision’s] Genesis or
[Sony’s] F35 or F23 would lend themselves
to some of the smaller sets and all the
handheld work.”
Furthermore, she felt strongly that it
was more important to consider setup
speed and chip sensitivity over the advantages of a larger chip. She calls the VariCam’s 2⁄3" chip “a happy ENG medium. We
give up some of that nice falloff and depth28
February 2010
of-field you get with bigger chips, and a bit
of latitude, but we gain speed and lighting
advantages. The Red [One] would have
given us more latitude because it captures
more data, but we would have needed
more light; also, we shoot so much action
that we felt the VariCam was better suited
to being bumped around. It was sort of like
shooting with reversal film instead of negative: we had to nail our exposures right off.
But that was okay. We had our monitors
and waveforms.
“A lot of shows that go from film to
digital use the F35 or the Genesis largely
because they’re trying to preserve or create
a film look digitally,” she adds. “We weren’t
concerned with that. We were fine with
letting it feel different, letting it feel digital.
The show is sci-fi, it’s about technology, and
it didn’t need to feel like film.”
Wiegand and associate producer
Chris Cheramie worked out the tapeless
workflow, which comprised recording to P2
at 1080p AVC-Intra 100, with the VariCam
set to the Film-rec 600% setting for
increased latitude. (The show usually used
two cameras rigged with Panasonic AJAmerican Cinematographer
CVF100G color viewfinders. Other Panasonic models were incorporated for secondunit and specialty work periodically.) Robin
Charters, Rodney Charters’ son, was added
to the crew as digital-imaging technician
and built a plan to back data up to D5 tape
in post. But on set, they relied exclusively on
P2 cards and hard drives. “We shot straight
to P2 cards, and on set, Robin downloaded
the cards to drives, creating double backups,
and then sent the cards and one hard drive
to Level 3 [in Burbank], where they created
dailies from that data and backed up the
data to D5,” says Wiegand. “The 3700 only
goes to 30 fps progressive, so we couldn’t
overcrank as much with that model, but
whenever we did slo-mo shots, we used the
Panasonic 2700, which shoots up to 60 fps
but at 720p. We got a little less resolution,
but for those shots, we were willing to give
that up for the ability to shoot 60 fps.”
There were other adjustments to
consider, she adds. She opted almost exclusively for Zeiss DigiZoom lenses, and that
meant that “because the camera is an ENG
camera, we do have to back-focus every
time we change a lens, and sometimes after
a camera has warmed up a little bit.” But
she emphasizes that the adjustment was
merely a matter of developing a rhythm for
doing things a slightly different way. “Our
focus pullers worked in two different ways.
Our A-camera focus puller, because that
camera was mainly handheld and moving
quite a bit, liked to be near the camera and
pulled by distance, so he had to back-focus
a lot more than our B-camera focus puller,
who pulled off a monitor because he was
often on very long lenses and moving a lot
less.”
➣
Dollhouse
creator/
producer Joss
Whedon and
Dushku share
a moment
between
takes while
shooting the
episodes
“The Public
Eye” and
“The Left
Hand.”
Beyond altering the method of
acquisition, the biggest corresponding
change instituted by Wiegand was the
modification of how sets were lit. Whedon
says the lighting changes were about
“creating different moods for each set —
giving each set its own character and a
more sci-fi feel than what we had the first
season.” Wiegand accomplished that by reevaluating virtually everything. She explains,
“We took out a bunch of lights that were
on the set, searching for a contrastier look.
We added a lot of blue to Topher’s office,
making the main area of the Dollhouse
warmer so that his office and the imprint
room [where memories are erased and
reprogrammed] are a lot bluer, a lot cooler.
We changed many things, mainly trying to
achieve an image with more contrast and
color separation.
“There were a lot of space lights in
the main body of the Dollhouse last season,
and we removed about half of them and
brought in large Chimeras with tight grids
to focus the light and keep it moody,” she
continues. “Some of our smaller spaces had
a lot of high-tech equipment, like machinery and monitors, which we liked to make
glow. We purchased some Rosco LitePads,
which we used a lot on 24, and taped them
on monitors to throw a nice, cool glow on
people. They’re 5600°K, and since I mix
color temperatures a lot, they helped make
a nice contrast from the look of last season.
One of our favorite color combos was a
tungsten light with Half Blue and Half Plus
Green gels. Allowing the characters to
travel through different color temperatures
gave the image more depth than straight
white light.”
Whedon now says that he “can’t
imagine shooting film for television any
more.” In particular, he’s in love with being
able to judge imagery on set off a 17"
Panasonic monitor without having to wait
for dailies. That’s not to say the dailies color-
prime choice
15mm – 40mm
optimo cine lenses from 15mm to 290mm
There’s no doubt that Angenieux Optimo 35mm film lenses deliver
exceptional optical performance and value. They feature extremely
fast apertures with outstanding contrast and color reproduction
– and the most advanced zoom mechanics available. In fact, an
expansive 15 to 290mm range is provided by just four Optimo
correction phase, handled by colorist
Richard Flores at Level 3, and the final
online, also done at Level 3 by colorist Larry
Field, weren’t important. Each day’s dailies
normally went from Flores to Wiegand as
JPEG files and standard-def DVDs. She also
monitored Field’s work during the online
process via ProRes files sent to her on hard
drives by Level 3. Wiegand often distributed
notes about the footage to the post team
each day, but she notes that the rhythm she
developed with Flores and Field gave both
of them an intuitive understanding of how
her imagery typically needed to be tweaked
to fit the show’s visual schemes. That’s
because the production utilized a proprietary look-up table on set that allowed
Wiegand to “shoot less for the actual
contrast we will have in the end,” she says.
“The LUT expands our latitude somewhat
so that we get more rendition out of highlights and shadows. But we basically treat
the data more like a negative; we get more
information than we’ll need, and then we
can blow out highlights and crush blacks
when we go into post, if we need to.”
28mm – 76mm
Cinematographer
Lisa Wiegand
(left) supervises a
setup on location
in Malibu for
“The Left Hand”
while A-camera
operator Jay
Hunter and 1st
AC Reza Tabrizi
find the frame.
Wiegand never did finish her salad
— duty called. Even as Whedon wandered
off to ponder the best way to wind up his
show with a post-apocalyptic bang that
connects threads briefly visualized in
‘Epitaph 1,’ Wiegand’s focus remained
firmly on “The Attic.” As she packed up her
lunch, she conceded, “It’s been a totally
insane day.” And it wasn’t done yet.
17mm – 80mm
35mm lenses. That’s a lot less to purchase, rent and carry. Yet
still fills every need from hand-held and Stedicam to dolly and
crane applications. The perfect complement to your favorite fixed
lenses. Just some of the reasons pro cinematographers around
the world consider the Angenieux Optimo family of zoom lenses
a prime choice for 35mm film and large format digital production.
[email protected] • angenieux.com
TECHNICAL SPECS
16x9
High-Definition Video
Panasonic VariCam AJ-HPX3700,
AJ-HPX2700
Zeiss DigiZoom lenses
●
24mm – 290mm
Shelly Johnson,
ASC offers a
firsthand account
of his visual
strategies for
The Wolfman.
by
Shelly Johnson, ASC
•|•
Bad Moon
Rising
A
s I’m on my way to the airport to board a flight to
London, my phone rings. It’s Donna Langley at
Universal. “Shelly, I want you to know that this is a dark
picture,” she says. “The images need to have atmosphere
and texture, and we’re looking for a dark and moody look. I
want to make sure you’re up for it.” This was the first time I
recall a studio asking me to make a film dark — I’m usually
the one trying to sell them on the idea. I assured Donna that I
was indeed up to the task, and that I was excited about creating a uniquely dark world, a world in which the Wolfman
could exist.
The Wolfman is the story of an estranged man’s journey
home. Sent away to America as a child after witnessing his
mother’s murder, Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) returns
to his family’s English estate decades later, following his
brother’s violent death. There, he reconnects with his father
32
February 2010
(Anthony Hopkins) and learns the full breadth of the old
man’s manipulations and about the family’s mysterious secret:
the dark curse Lawrence will inherit through an attack by a
mysterious creature. He also discovers, for the first time since
his mother’s death, the true meaning of unconditional love,
shown to him by Gwen (Emily Blunt), the fiancée of his
departed brother.
Upon reading the script, I was taken by the presence of
conflicting elements sharing the same space in the storytelling:
sanity and insanity, love and hate, selfishness and generosity,
truth and lies. The story was constructed using these opposites
to convey the characters’ complex emotions, their inner struggle to find balance between their true feelings and desires and
those affected by the curse of the werewolf. I wanted my visual
plan to evoke these same complexities. My initial instinct was
to integrate opposing elements and have them share the same
Photos by Frank Connor. Photos and frame grabs
courtesy of Universal Pictures.
Opposite: A full
moon
transforms
Lawrence
Talbot into a
snarling beast.
This page, top:
Talbot (Benicio
Del Toro)
returns to
England to
investigate his
brother’s
mysterious
death. Middle
and bottom:
Shelly Johnson,
ASC adjusts a
remote head
while working
with a
Technocrane,
which he and
director Joe
Johnston favor
for its
verisimilitude.
“Joe prefers to
work from the
Technocrane
because it’s
flexible and fits
perfectly into
his directing
style,” Johnson
notes.
frame: light and dark, hard and soft,
warm and cool, symmetry and asymmetry.
The project had come to me only
a few days prior to my arrival in
London. Director Joe Johnston, with
whom I had previously collaborated on
Jurassic Park 3 and Hidalgo (AC April
’04), contacted me when he took over
for the previous director, who had left
the film. Joe was to have three weeks’
prep, and I was to have two — not a lot
for a $100-million-plus undertaking of
this scale.
Joe is a true author of his movies.
By that I mean he works in detail with
www.theasc.com
February 2010
33
◗
Bad Moon Rising
Top: After
Talbot is sent
to an asylum,
his father
(Anthony
Hopkins) pays
him a visit.
Middle: Even
in close
quarters, the
two men don’t
see eye to eye.
Bottom: Talbot
reflects on his
brother’s fate
while visiting
his corpse in
an ice-cooled
morgue.
34
February 2010
the production designer, cinematographer, actors, editor, composer and sound
editors to create a whole experience for
the audience. I think his greatest gift is
to keep the production team focused on
story so that all of our large-scale technical decisions have a clear reason to be;
they are incorporated into the movie in
the same manner story beats are represented in the script.
With so little prep time, I needed
to find a way to connect with the
production team, most of which had
already been assembled, and also with
the material. I began going through art
books to cull ideas for my visual plan. I
found my inspiration when I walked
into the art department at Pinewood
Studios on my first day: production
designer Rick Heinrichs had developed
an impressive amount of concept art
that had a most haunting presence. Rick
was also there to show me his plans and
concepts, which were quite complex and
meticulous. I appreciated his manner, as
he was instrumental in getting me fully
aligned with the vision he and Joe had
been developing during their short time
together.
In the concept art, Rick envisioned telling the story within a world of
shadows and evocative forms. He
intended for many of his dark mansion
sets to be lit by means of reflective light
sources, such as large bounce flats, to
give shape to the dark moldings as
opposed to enormous amounts of incident light. This was something I was
considering implementing, too, so I was
inspired by Rick’s take on the material.
A key decision production made
early on was to shoot a large portion of
the film on location, a different stylistic
approach than the one taken on the
earlier, stagebound Universal classic.
The idea was to ground the story in
reality and integrate our storytelling
elements into that setting. I liked this
idea, particularly for our night scenes,
which we wanted to shoot at a much
larger scale than is possible onstage.
In thinking about the night
photography, I knew the moon had to
have a haunting, enigmatic presence. I
chose to let the moonlight transform as
the story progressed. I didn’t want to
hang the same moon effect over each
night scene; rather, I wanted to let the
scene tell me what the moon should
look like.
At one point in the story,
Lawrence travels to a large gypsy camp
at the edge of the woods to meet
Maleva (Geraldine Chaplin), who
warns him about the curse of the werewolf. In the camp, moonlight appears in
different ways — as a soft source overhead, a 20'x20' soft box loaded with 30
space lights; as a silhouette source seen
through the distant trees, created with
rows of 20Ks backlighting ground fog;
and, finally, as a lit sky, achieved by positioning an array of Dinos low and backlighting a night skyscape created by
towering clouds of smoke. All of these
hard and soft sources were able to coexist within our world and create a
single overall texture for night, when
belief surrenders to superstition.
This type of idea extended to all
of our large location shoots, many of
which were planned for early in our
production schedule. Our gaffer was
John “Biggles” Higgins, who had come
aboard with the prior team. He is a
wonderful man, and he helped me
Top: Powerful shafts of light illuminate the interior of the Talbot family estate. Middle:
Candlelight predominates in a dining-room sequence. Bottom: Softboxes illuminate another
room in Talbot Hall, a set built by production designer Rick Heinrichs and his crew.
www.theasc.com
February 2010
35
◗
Bad Moon Rising
Top: Gwen (Emily
Blunt), the fiancée
of Talbot’s
deceased brother,
attempts to elude
the prowling
werewolf. Middle:
Large lighting units
provide backlight
ambience for a
climactic sequence
in which torchbearing men hunt
the menacing
creature in a forest.
Johnson went to
great lengths to
lend the final chase
a dramatic
ambience. “I
believed I could
underlight the
forest with 20Ks
placed [in a spot
where the forest
floor descended],”
he explains. “The
sequence could be
built upon images
of foreground
forms moving
before tangled,
dramatic
backgrounds. This
lighting scheme
allowed us to look
up without limits
and create a sense
of scale for our
characters within
their
surroundings.”
Bottom: Large,
crane-mounted
softboxes provide
an eerie
atmosphere.
36
February 2010
enormously when it came to preparing
efficiently. I talked to him a great deal
about my desire to approach the lighting with a fearless mindset; I wanted to
create an aggressive look that would
emerge from darkness and focus on
what the audience needed to see. It was
my desire to have the sets and locations
creep out of the shadows. I wanted to
see into depth but wanted that depth to
exist only in form, not detail, and I
wanted to bring the scenes into light
when it was appropriate.
To this end, I made detailed
lighting diagrams for Biggles and his
rigging crew. He was familiar with
working on this scale and always
allowed ample time to place large cranes
and pre-rig. This was invaluable because
our night locations were immense.
With Biggles’ help, we were able to
focus 50 or 60 light placements in
advance. When the production
company arrived, we only needed to
supplement the base lighting after Joe
had had a chance to rehearse the scene.
One of my favorite scenes takes
place on a hilltop amid a primitive
formation of standing stones. This is
where Lawrence inherits the curse of
the werewolf. It’s one of the few night
Top left: A fully
transformed
Talbot vents his
rage in the
forest. Top right:
A diagram
illustrates
Johnson’s setup
for a gypsy camp
and the
surrounding
woods. Bottom:
Talbot learns
about the
werewolf curse
after arriving at
the camp. In this
setting, Johnson
mixed a variety
of sources to
create a
believable
ambience: “All of
these hard and
soft sources
were able to coexist within our
world and create
a single overall
texture for
night, when
belief surrenders
to superstition
… I wanted to
see into depth
but wanted that
depth to exist
only in form, not
detail, and I
wanted to bring
the scenes into
light when
it was
appropriate.”
scenes we shot onstage, and we did so
because we needed to control fog effects
— in the scene, the creature pursues
Lawrence through a gray fog. A 360degree set was constructed on H-Stage
at Shepperton Studios; it featured a
360-degree painted backing and an
exquisitely detailed foreground summit
with Druid stones.
In keeping with my desire to have
opposing elements coexist, I created a
moonlight source to project through a
16'-wide cutout in the top portion of
the backing that was both hard and soft
from the same direction. I formed a
hard shadow using an open-face 18K
gelled with 3⁄4 CTO and created a soft
source from the same placement with
an array of diffused Maxi-Brutes gelled
with 1⁄4 CTB. The soft light gave us the
wrap we needed for the fog to carry the
light into some shadows, and the 18K
gave us the glint we needed to bring the
moonlight to the fever pitch required
for the content of the scene.
We shot most of the picture on
Kodak Vision3 500T 5219, using
Vision2 200T 5217 for day scenes. I was
impressed with 5219 because it transitioned neatly to a nice, tight black that
worked very well with the lighting style
for The Wolfman. It’s my new favorite
stock, and it reminds me of the first
160T 5293 stock that came out years
ago and was discontinued after a very
short run.
Many people might expect a film
like The Wolfman to have a widescreen
www.theasc.com
February 2010
37
◗
Bad Moon Rising
Doctors in an
operating
theater watch in
horror as Talbot
transforms into a
snarling manbeast. “The scene
is sourced with
gaslight, which
has a natural
falloff and an
oddly
discomforting
appearance,”
Johnson
explains, adding
that the look of
this scene was
inspired by the
Thomas Eakins
painting The
Agnew Clinic.
“The painting
has a central
subject under a
full light that
falls off quickly,
rendering the
audience
members part of
the glazed
shadows. I
emulated that
type of light
with two 8'x16'
light boxes fitted
with Light
Control Grid.”
aspect ratio, but we shot it in Super
1.85:1. To me, 1.85 was appropriate
because much of what is haunting
Lawrence comes from above — the
moon, the upper floors of Talbot Hall
— and Rick had designed many of the
sets with this vertical character. Framing
for 1.85 was a nod to the style of the
38
February 2010
classic The Wolf Man (1941), and it also
appeared to be the optimum choice for
our storytelling.
We worked with a crew of
wonderful English collaborators. Acamera operator Des Whelan is an old
friend who, fortunately, was available to
join us on the show. Pete Cavaciuti
operated the B camera, and Julian
Bucknall and Craig Bloor were on focus.
It’s not easy to go to a foreign country
and work with people who are new to
you, but this crew put a lot of themselves
into this project, and they will always
have my respect and gratitude.
Key grip Gary Hymns worked
proficiently with the 30' Technocrane,
from which we shot nearly everything.
Joe prefers to work from the
Technocrane because it’s flexible and fits
perfectly into his directing style. He and
I seem to understand that piece of
equipment and have a way of finding
expression while designing with it,
whether on location or in a tight set.
Panavision U.K. provided our
camera gear, two Panaflex Millennium
XLs and Primo prime and zoom lenses.
Joe prefers to use the 4:1 zoom whenever possible so he can make small
adjustments between takes as the scene
evolves. This is the third film I’ve done
with him, and I always try to give him
space to create; I’ll always lay a little extra
dance floor or make sure there is an extra
foot or two to adjust, or place the
Technocrane arm so he can move in
tighter or extend more laterally as he
sees fit. I’ll always make an effort to light
a bit deeper and wider than we discussed
as well, so that Joe can take the actors
further without feeling the burden of
waiting for technical adjustments. I
always want the set to be a creative place
◗
Bad Moon Rising
Top photos:
Talbot
explores his
ancestral
home with
natural
sources
lighting the
way — a
candle at night
and artificial
“sunlight” in
the daytime.
Johnson
reveals that
the film’s
many candlelit
scenes
required him
to come up
with a viable
way to boost
the
illumination.
“We shot a
test and
achieved our
best look
using doublewicked
candles shot
wide open on
Primo prime
lenses at T1.9
on our pushed
5219 … I’m
fortunate that
I was in an
environment
that allowed
for creative
solutions to
emerge and
was
collaborating
with a crew
that could
back up these
ideas with a
mastery of
their craft.”
Bottom: The
werewolf
bares his
fangs.
40
February 2010
for him, never a technical toy store.
Although The Wolfman is set in
1891, at the beginning of the electricity
age, we decided that incandescent lighting would be present in the city, and
candlelight would predominate in the
countryside. Joe, Rick and I often
discussed how this would serve as a
visual representation of Lawrence’s
journey into the past.
I was in a quandary as to how to
shoot many of our candlelit scenes. We
had planned a number of shots in which
Benicio would walk the length of a
long, dark hallway with a solitary candle
illuminating the space. Because I’m not
fond of shooting at a T1.3, I decided to
look at options for believably electrifying some candles. I am not accustomed
to pushing film, but one day in our first
week, I found myself in a situation
where Joe needed one more setup at
magic hour and we were out of light.
We were losing the location the next
day, so I force-processed the 5219 by 1
stop and rated it at ASA 800. To my
surprise, the film pushed beautifully;
there was only a slight increase in grain
and no real contrast issues under our
lighting conditions. The printer lights
showed we were getting a true ASA800 rating from the process at Deluxe
Laboratories in London. With that, I
believed we had discovered how to
shoot our candlelit scenes.
We shot a test and achieved our
))Æ)-D8I:?)'('
nnn%èj`^_kflk$kiXèè^%e\k
<lifg\Ëjc\X[è^kiXèè^Zflij\fe[`^`kXcZè\dXXe[?;KM
N`k__Xe[j$fenfibj_fgj#ZXj\jkl[p8ek`Z_i`jk
Xe[c\Zkli\jjlZ_XjÙM=O]fi)'() È
An uneasy Gwen makes her way
through Talbot Hall with only candles to
light her path.
best look using double-wicked candles
shot wide open on Primo prime lenses
at T1.9 on our pushed 5219. It was such
a simple solution that I might not have
explored it so soon if I hadn’t had to
push that one, post-magic-hour shot.
I’m fortunate that I was in an environment that allowed for creative solutions
to emerge and was collaborating with a
crew that could back up these ideas with
a mastery of their craft.
A central scene in the film takes
place in an operating-room theater,
where doctors who are trying to
convince Lawrence that his afflictions
are delusional are suddenly proved
wrong when the full moon appears. The
scene is sourced with gaslight, which has
a natural falloff and an oddly discomforting appearance. To help establish an
eerie presence in our mental-institution
scenes, we referenced Thomas Eakins’
painting The Agnew Clinic, which
depicts a Victorian Era medical procedure using a lone, monochromatic
gaslight source. The painting has a
central subject under a full light that falls
off quickly, rendering the audience
members part of the glazed shadows. I
emulated that type of light with two
8'x16' light boxes fitted with Light
?===`cdK\c\m`j`feLe`m\ij`kpÈBfeiX[Nfc]É
Gfkj[Xd$9XY\cjY\i^#>\idXep
◗
Bad Moon Rising
Johnson frames
Del Toro on one
of the
cinematographer’s
favorite sets: a
primitive
formation of
standing stones
constructed as a
360-degree set on
H-Stage at
Shepperton
Studios. The set
featured a
painted backing
that completely
surrounded a faux
hilltop dressed
with Druid stones.
“In keeping with
my desire to have
opposing
elements co-exist,
I created a
moonlight source
to project through
a 16'-wide cutout
in the top portion
of the backing
that was both
hard and soft
from the same
direction. I formed
a hard shadow
using an openfaced 18K gelled
with ¾ CTO and
created a soft
source from the
same placement
with an array of
diffused MaxiBrutes gelled with
¼ CTB.”
42
February 2010
STANDING STONES
3-31-08
Ground Row of single tube Flos.
(216) Located under rostrum.
(DMX)
E)
Topper
34'
16'
Green Screen rigged to
pullies pulled snug to perms
to be lowered as needed for
effects shots
Vertical Support
Control Grid. We suspended them
from chain motors so we could remotely
adjust the light level and angle as the
scene unfolded. The set was built with a
vertical aesthetic, which aided in recreating the feel of the Eakins painting.
While scouting for a location for
our climactic night pursuit through the
woods, I found myself standing alone in
Bourne Wood on a Sunday afternoon.
Forests are always a bit of a challenge for
cinematographers, because it’s difficult
to light a thick forest without making it
look like you’re using an array of movie
lights. This particular forest had an
extraordinary sculptural appearance,
and I thought these forms could look
particularly haunting at night. I found a
spot of high ground where the forest
floor descended and formed a small hill.
I thought about using the low area as a
light well; I believed I could underlight
the entire forest with 20Ks placed there.
This would be a new, exciting way to
light night. The sequence could be built
upon images of foreground forms
moving before dramatic, tangled backgrounds. This lighting scheme allowed
us to look up without limits and create a
sense of scale for our characters within
their surroundings. The final look is
indeed an artificially lit forest, but I
believe this type of aggressive source
incorporated within the storytelling will
engage the audience in an exciting way.
With so many components
coming together to form an overall
look, I wanted to have one consistent
element that could be integrated
throughout the film and anchor all our
visual ideas. I wanted the highlights to
have a pearlescent, glowing look, and
the coexisting blacks to be rich, having
an ominous effect on values that
adjoined them in the frame. Using
sample images and Photoshop, I
devised a look called The Black Layer
Luminance technique. I showed my
technique to colorist Jill Bogdanowicz
at Technicolor along with the steps
needed to accomplish the effect in
Photoshop. Jill translated that into
something she could implement in the
digital-intermediate bay. She is quite a
Makeup expert Rick Baker demonstrates
some of the steps required to “animalize”
Del Toro.
genius. She takes a luminance key off
the lower blacks and subtly defocuses
them, and then she punches through
those areas with silvery highlights and
comes very close to what I did in my
samples. We are combining that with a
certain amount of desturation, and the
total look gives a sense of richness with
the heightened impression of anguish I
was hoping to achieve.
In discussing the cinematography
on a project of this size and scale, one
can spend hours discussing how many
20Ks were lined up in a given place, or
the technical intricacies of shooting a
complex sequence. A cinematographer
can also speak in artistic terms,
discussing the intensity a composition
might bring to a screen moment, or the
storytelling attributes found in the color
spectrum. Ultimately, though, the cinematographer is just one of the people
43
◗
Bad Moon Rising
Large arms were employed to light and shoot a city square.
involved in the creation of a film.
Certain moments in a script will evoke
different emotions in me than they
would in anybody else. Everyone
involved with a film brings to it his or
her own, unique history, and everyone’s
passion must coalesce into a finished
44
work. This, to me, is the great intangible of filmmaking: what happens when
specific people come together to tell a
specific story.
I believe that is one reason why
crewmembers such as those we had in
London can become emotionally
attached to a project. Filmmaking is an
interchange of creative ideas that either
hits upon a point of collaboration or
doesn’t. I believe that when minds come
together who are meant to be together,
that creatively charged atmosphere is
conveyed on the screen and directly to
the audience. That’s how truly great
films have affected me. When I think
back on the cinematography I’ve
admired over the years, it’s usually not
the prettiest film or the film with the
most dazzling action footage that
impresses me. Although I respect those
types of movies, the films that get inside
me with their emotional treatment of a
story are the ones that hit home.
It’s a delicate phenomenon,
because a cinematographer has to be
ready to give of himself to an audience.
Actually, I don’t think I was truly ready
to do that, to step well outside of my
safety zone in order to communicate an
idea with the director and the actors,
until just a few years ago. I had to learn
they could not claim cinematography to
be a solitary form, but rather an essential component of the art of film. I think
the collective spirit of the entire production team is what makes great things
happen on the screen. For me, The
Wolfman’s success will be measured by
the truth with which it reaches the
audience.
●
TECHNICAL SPECS
Super 1.85:1
For smaller setups, such as this funeral cortege, dolly tracks and a
pole-mounted fixture sufficed.
Super 35mm
Panaflex Millennium XL
how to take a risk without being 100percent assured of the outcome, to trust
the feeling that my concept was the
appropriate direction to take.
When I see or read interviews
with my favorite cinematographers,
such as ASC members Gregg Toland,
James Wong Howe, Conrad Hall and
Allen Daviau, I notice that when they
discuss their artistry, they almost always
pass the credit for their accomplishments to another person. They shot
some of the most incredible images in
movie history, and they understood that
Primo lenses
Kodak Vision3 500T 5219,
Vision2 200T 5217
Digital Intermediate
Printed on Kodak Vision 2383
45
Artistry
and Conscience
Chris Menges, ASC, BSC
receives the Society’s International
Award for creating a litany of
outstanding images.
by
Mark Hope-Jones
•|•
46
February 2010
ater this month, director of photography Chris
Menges, ASC, BSC will receive the ASC
International Award in recognition of a 50-year career
in film and television that has taken him to the far
corners of the earth. It is a career that shows no sign of
abating; he recently wrapped London Boulevard for firsttime director William Monahan and Route Irish for longtime collaborator Ken Loach. These latest two credits
illustrate a common thread that runs through Menges’
work: the knack of teaming up with interesting new directors, often shooting their first films, and also sustaining
relationships with directors across many years and many
projects. Loach is a classic example: Menges made such an
L
Photos courtesy of Chris Menges, AMPAS and the British Society of Cinematographers.
impression on the director while operating the camera on Poor Cow (1967),
Loach’s first feature, that Loach asked
him to photograph the next one, Kes
(1970), Menges’ first movie as cinematographer. Kes had a profound
impact on British cinema and marked
the beginning of a creative partnership that endures to this day.
Other acclaimed directors who
worked with Menges early in their
careers and sought him out again
include Stephen Frears, Bill Forsyth,
Neil Jordan and Roland Joffé. The
latter three established relationships
with Menges during a period of
intense creativity for the cinemataographer, when he abandoned documentaries and turned his full attention to
shooting features. He won Academy
Awards for two collaborations with
Joffé, The Killing Fields (1984; AC
Apr. ’85) and The Mission (1986; AC
Feb. ’87); the latter also brought
Menges his first ASC Award nomination.
After he spent a decade focusing
on directing, Menges returned to cinematography with Jordan’s Michael
Collins (1996; AC Oct. ’96), earning
another set of Academy and ASC
nominations. He was nominated by
the ASC and the Academy again last
year, along with Roger Deakins, ASC,
BSC, for Stephen Daldry’s The Reader
This page:
Menges
contributed
stunning
imagery to The
Mission (1986),
for which he
earned an
Academy Award
(near left) and an
ASC nomination
(below). “The
light in Colombia
and Argentina
was inspiring,
and the crew
was superb,”
says the
cinematographer,
who tends to
shun the
spotlight.
“[Producer]
David Puttnam
told me I should
attend the
Oscars because,
as he rightly
noted, the
nomination
belonged to the
entire shooting
crew.”
(2008), a film Menges took over when
production delays and previous
commitments forced Deakins from
the project. “When I started out, Chris
was kind of my idol — and always has
been, actually,” says Deakins. “I think
he’s probably the greatest cinematographer working today.”
Menges was born just over a
year into World War II in the rural
county of Herefordshire, England, a
short distance across the border from
where he now lives in Wales. Coming
from a family of musicians who
worked in the theater, he developed
an early interest in the arts. He had a
www.theasc.com
cousin with a job at the BBC, and it
wasn’t long before Menges’ interest
gravitated towards filmmaking. At the
age of 17, he was introduced to Alan
Forbes, who would become an early
mentor. “At that time, we were living in
North London, and I became an
apprentice to Alan,” recalls Menges.
“He was an American making documentary films for the cinema and television in London. He was really the
man who taught me the basics of cinematography, editing and sound. I was
his assistant, and he was a one-man
band, so I had a rich opportunity to
learn different genres and techniques.
February 2010
47
◗
Near right:
Menges (right)
deplanes with
journalist
Michael
Parkinson in
1964 while
covering the
Cyprus Civil
War and
Zanzibar
Revolution for
the British TV
program World
in Action. Far
right: Menges
gives young
actor David
Bradley a
“butcher’s
look” while
shooting Kes
(1970).
He was a great teacher.”
By the time Forbes returned to
the United States, at the end of the
1950s, Menges had cut his teeth on a
number of gritty social documentaries
and dramas. He had also built up some
useful industry contacts, and he quickly
found a job in the cutting room at
Derek Knight & Partners in Soho,
which in turn led to work as a cameraman for Alan King Associates. One
particularly influential person to whom
he was introduced by Forbes was cinematographer Brian Probyn, BSC.
Menges describes Probyn as “another
very good teacher” and worked sporadically as his assistant on short films,
including The Saturday Men (1962),
which came straight out of the naturalistic tradition of Free Cinema. In 1963,
Menges joined the World in Action team
at Granada Television and swiftly
became a highly experienced cameraman. Over the next few years, his working relationship with Probyn
continued; it was for Probyn that he
operated on Loach’s Poor Cow, Menges’
first taste of feature-film work.
World in Action was a hardhitting, investigative-journalism program that aired in Britain from 1963
to 1998. “They sent me all over the
place with really good journalists like
Alex Valentine, Stephen Peet and
Michael Parkinson,” says Menges.
48
February 2010
“We covered news stories such as the
fighting in Angola, the uprising in
Zanzibar, the civil war in Cyprus,
Spain under Franco, and, most importantly for me, we went to South
Africa during the time of apartheid.
“The things I go for
are good writing
and a good story,
and hopefully
something with
political energy.”
— Chris Menges, ASC, BSC
Armed with a Bolex and looking a bit
like a student, I went up to Bulawayo
in Matabeleland with Alex Valentine
to make a documentary about the
Ndebele’s support for the African
National Congress, which was a real
education. All of these things were
amazing — to be that age and to be
traveling, learning and seeing — but
South Africa was important because
when I was asked to direct A World
Apart [1988], I knew I could film it in
Bulawayo. I knew I’d have political
support from the ANC groups I’d met
and could give the city enough of a
feel of Johannesburg, because, obviously, we couldn’t actually shoot the
film in South Africa.”
Experiences such as these made
Menges an international filmmaker
from the earliest years of his career.
Many of the documentaries he shot
involved traveling to dangerous
regions and taking extraordinary risks,
especially the films he made with
director Adrian Cowell. Their first
collaboration was Raid Into Tibet
(1966), a 30-minute documentary
that followed a group of Khamba
guerrillas as they crossed the border
into Tibet and attacked a Chinese
military convoy. Menges, Cowell and
journalist George Patterson accompanied the Khambas on a grueling trek
across the mountains and filmed the
raid. Several Chinese soldiers were
killed during the attack, and the raiding party eventually fled when one of
the guerrillas was shot.
Menges and Cowell also
worked together on a series of films
about illicit opium production in the
Angola photo by Chris Wangler.
Top left: In 1964, Menges crossed into Tibet at an altitude of 19,000' with
the Khambas, who attacked a Chinese military convoy. “We were chased
back into Nepal by the Chinese army,” he says. Top right: Covering the civil
war in Angola. Bottom: In 1969, Menges (right) makes his way through
Vietnam with soundman Ivan Sharrock, “a friend and somebody to be with
when all hell breaks loose.”
Golden Triangle. The pair had visited
Burma during an earlier filmmaking
tour of Southeast Asia, but their
1972-73 expedition into the Burmese
mountains for The Opium Warlords
(1974) proved far more treacherous.
“We were with the Shan State Army,
a group fighting for independence
from Burma, and we had a lot of trouble,” Menges recalls. “Remnants of
the Kuomintang [who fled China
after losing a power struggle with the
Communists after World War II] had
come to Burma to run the opium
trade, and they declared war on the
Shan State Army. For a year-and-ahalf, they chased us from mountain to
mountain, ambushing us and trying
to blow us up. During the long march
from northern Shan State to the Thai
border, we carried our shot rushes in
polystyrene boxes on mules — much
of the footage remained exposed and
undeveloped for over a year. The five
mules with our rushes had big crosses
on them, and our instruction to the
army was that they were the only ones
to save when we were ambushed.”
The 1960s and 1970s were
dominated by documentary work for
Menges, though he grabbed opportunities to build on his fiction-film
experience between projects. “Having
just come out of the Amazon with
Adrian Cowell on The Tribe That
Hides From Man [1970], where we
were searching for the Kreen-Akrore
[tribe] with the Txukahamae, I caught
the train to Cheltenham the day after
arriving back in London to operate on
If… [1968]. That film was a learning
www.theasc.com
curve for me and an important project
for two reasons: one was working with
[director] Lindsay Anderson, and the
other was working with [cinematographer] Miroslav Ondrícek [ASC,
ACK], who had shot A Blonde in Love
[1965].”
An appreciation for Czech
cinema was one of the things that
drew Menges and Loach together
when they met on Poor Cow. “I
February 2010
49
◗
Clockwise from top left: Menges (right) confers with cinematographer Miroslav Ondrícek
(center) and Czech interpreter Jirina Tvarochova while serving as camera operator on If… (1968);
finding a frame with director Neil Jordan (center) and operator Mike Roberts on Michael Collins
(1996); learning “the ways of the cowboys” and “what makes Tommy tick” while filming The
Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005) with director Tommy Lee Jones; experiencing
“harmony” with director Jim Sheridan (at camera) on The Boxer (1997).
suspect we were both profoundly
affected by films coming from
Czechoslovakia, such as Peter and
Pavla [1964] and A Blonde in Love —
Milos Forman’s early films,” says
Menges. “Those films had a real sense
of irony, of sensitivity, of catching the
moment and of natural light. They
were moving and also funny.” Loach
recognized that Menges’ skills as a
documentary cameraman could help
give Kes a similar style. “Doing documentaries, you learn to catch everything that comes at you,” says
Menges. “I’m sure that must have
been partly what appealed to Ken
50
February 2010
about my work.”
Though his documentary experience
undoubtedly
informed
Menges’ approach to drama, the
cameras generally used for the two
genres differed far more at the start of
his career than they do today. In 1963,
when Menges joined World in Action,
Éclair released the NPR, the first
silent, portable 16mm camera with a
coaxial magazine. “It was a revolution
because you could pick it up and walk
with it,” says Menges. “You had a
reflex viewfinder that swiveled with
your eye, so you could boom the
camera up and down and your eye
would stay with the eyepiece.” By
contrast, “on Kes, the camera was in a
huge, lead-lined blimp that took two
people to lift it off the ground.”
Interestingly, the freedoms and
limitations of different formats and
genres led Menges to the same
conclusion: what the camera does is
always subordinate to what is
happening in front of it. Shooting
handheld with the NPR, “you
suddenly realized it’s no good getting
great pictures if you can’t hear what
people are saying,” he explains. “In a
way, the real test when you’re on a
film set is to shut your eyes and listen
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◗
Capturing a contemplative moment on The Reader (2008). Menges shared the film’s cinematography
credit with his good friend Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC; the duo earned Academy, ASC and BAFTA award
nominations for their work.
to the dialogue.” On Kes, the equipment was cumbersome and the work
rate slow, but for Menges, it was a
fascinating experience because he
learned so much about what makes a
fiction film succeed. “The first thing
about Kes is that it’s beautifully written,” he says. “The next thing is the
sensitive direction and great acting,
and then, almost down at the bottom
of the list, are the framing and
photography.”
The catalyst for Menges’ eventual renunciation of documentary
work was a British film he made in
Spanish Harlem called East 103rd
Street (1981). He explains, “It wasn’t
until then that I realized I’m scared of
documentaries, because I recognized
that however hard you try not to
exploit people, you can end up in a
situation where you do. That film was
put out in America, and I wasn’t
consulted; it was about a family with a
drug history, and I think I should have
been allowed to discuss it with the
family before it was broadcast in New
York. Also, ATV got about $30,000
for the transmission, and I think that
52
February 2010
money should have been put towards
something that helped the family and
helped with addiction in New York.
What they did was rotten, and that’s
“I think Chris
is probably
the greatest
cinematographer
working today.”
— Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC
why I stopped.”
Following this disquieting experience, Menges made a decisive transition into feature films. After shooting
Looks and Smiles (1981) for Loach, he
was asked to work on Angel, Jordan’s
first film. “Neil is a writer from a totally
different tradition,” says the cinematographer. “It was exciting because
he didn’t know much about movies,
and I was learning about Irish politics.
For Neil, it was a true baptism of fire,
and in a way, it was also that for me.”
Another director to make a
strong impression on Menges at that
time was Alan Clarke, for whom he
shot Made in Britain (1982). Menges
describes Clarke as “probably the best
director I’ve worked with other than
Ken Loach. He was a complete inspiration because everything was
Steadicam or handheld; every time we
did a shot, he would harden it up and
give it real energy. Alan was a champion of catching the moment. It was
totally different from what Ken does,
and yet they both have enormous
energy and a kind of logic that serves
the writing.”
While working on A Sense of
Freedom (1979) with director John
Mackenzie, Menges met Forsyth,
who later asked him to shoot Local
Hero (1983). Set in a small fishing
village on the west coast of Scotland,
the film charmed critics and audiences alike; its exquisite location
photography won universal praise and
brought Menges his first BAFTA
nomination. “Bill is a smashing bloke
and a really good director,” says
Menges. “I don’t know why the hell
he doesn’t make more films. It was
just a fabulous experience. One day,
Burt Lancaster was sitting in his chair
on the office set, and I was looking at
his desk while we were waiting. I
moved two of the pens on the desk,
and this voice growled, ‘Don’t touch
my props. They’re my memory.’ Even
that was an education: actors’ props
are important to them!”
The accolades garnered by
almost every film Menges worked on
during that period led to one opportunity after another. “It probably
helped that Kes was a well-liked film,
and when Angel came out, [producer]
David Puttnam agreed to have me on
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Above: Menges (in
background, far
right, with white
sweater) won his first
Academy Award for
The Killing Fields
(1984), directed by
Roland Joffé (center,
in dark shirt).
Right: Examining
storyboards for The
Reader with director
Stephen Daldry and
script supervisor
Susanna Lenton. “We
had a few days to
shoot a very complex
set of ideas,”
Menges recalls.
Local Hero,” says Menges. “Then,
when Local Hero came out, Roland
[ Joffé] asked me to do The Killing
Fields, and Puttnam agreed to that as
well.” Joffé was determined to give
The Killing Fields, which is set amid
the horrors of the Khmer Rouge
regime in Cambodia, an authentic
feel. “Roland wanted someone who’d
been in a few bloody conflicts,” says
Menges. “In addition to what
happened in Burma, I’d done several
films for the BBC in Vietnam.
During prep, we went to Thailand
and talked endlessly about how to
give it the quality of the documentaries I’d shot in Saigon. The Killing
Fields was an extraordinary film, and
it was entirely Roland’s vision. A lot of
talented people gave their hearts to it,
but he made that film, and as far as
I’m concerned, it was Roland who
won the Oscar for cinematography.”
Before taking a break to try his
hand at directing, Menges shot The
Mission for Joffé, an experience he
does not look back on as fondly as The
Killing Fields, despite the fact that it
earned him another Oscar. He is
dismissive of his directorial efforts
during the years that followed, though
A World Apart won awards at Cannes
and from the New York Film Critics.
“At least two of the films I made were
complete disasters, ill-conceived and
badly made,” he says. “So to be invited
back to shoot Michael Collins and to
work with Neil [ Jordan] and [opera-
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53
◗
In 1988, Menges
directed his first
feature, A World
Apart, which he
describes as his
“best experience”
on a set. He
enlisted fellow
BSC member
Peter Biziou as
cinematographer.
tor] Mike Roberts and all those actors
was very, very important. It’s a film I
warm to myself, and it was lucky that
he asked me, because I was in a bit of
a grump at that stage.”
Since then, Menges has worked
54
on a steady stream of interesting
projects, including Jim Sheridan’s The
Boxer (1997), for which he earned an
ASC nomination (AC June ’98); Sean
Penn’s The Pledge (2001); Jordan’s The
Good Thief (2002); Frears’ Dirty Pretty
Things (2002); Tommy Lee Jones’ The
Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
(2005); and Richard Eyre’s Notes on a
Scandal (2006). “I think the things I
go for are good writing and a good
story, and hopefully something with
political energy,” he says. “The problem is that what you read on paper
may not necessarily turn out to be a
good film. You can only give it your
best and pray.” Menges continues to
operate the camera on his films. “For
me, looking through the finder during
rehearsals and during a take helps me
discipline my sense of framing, of how
to catch a character, of light, and of
how to tell the story. I believe that if
you don’t operate, you lose a lot of
those skills because you’re probably
looking at a video monitor that gives
you no real sense of the performance
or the light.”
When Deakins left film school
in the mid-1970s, he sought Menges
out to ask his advice about how to
become a documentary cameraman.
“One of the first television documentaries I did was about a ’round-theworld yacht race,” says Deakins.
“Chris and I were working for the
same TV company at the time, and
I’m sure he’d already turned the job
down.” Menges recalls it distinctly:
“Oh, God, I just couldn’t do it — be
on a yacht going around the world
and be sick every day!” Deakins took
the project on and was excited to be
using one of the cameras Menges had
recently brought back from Burma.
Two decades later, Deakins was
equally excited to share cinematographer duties with Menges on The
Reader. “I’m flattered to be on the
same [title] card as him, really,”
reflects Deakins.
Since becoming an ASC member
in October 2003, Menges has visited
the Clubhouse and met with fellow
members, but, he notes, “it’s a long way
away from the Radnorshire hillside
Menges
spends some
quality time
with an animal
friend in
Wales, where
he has a home
in a steep
valley
surrounded by
moorland,
trees and
wildlife. “The
farm pulls me
back to earth,”
he says.
where we live, surrounded by sheep! But
I get American Cinematographer every
month. I’ve been reading it since I was
17, and I find the combination of
information and ideas totally exhilarating; without it, one could feel really
isolated and miss out on learning new
ideas and new tricks.” As for the ASC
International Award, he says, “I don’t
know quite why I’ve been chosen, but
I’m really thrilled.”
●
55
Working S
Withthe
Red
AC’s technical editor shares
some tips and observations about
shooting with the Red One
digital camera.
by
Christopher Probst
•|•
56
February 2010
ince the birth of cinema, it has been the cinematographer’s charge, if not calling, to wrangle the technical to
serve an artistic goal, and the recent, rapid evolution of
digital technologies has added layers of complexity to
this challenge. Forging into new territories, experimenting
with new media and pushing the boundaries of possibilities
have always been check-boxes in our mad-scientist job
description, and over the past decade I’ve had opportunities
to explore the pros and cons of several digital motion-picture
cameras, including Panasonic’s VariCam; Sony’s CineAlta
family, which includes the F900, F950, F23 and F35
cameras; Panavision’s Genesis; Vision Research’s Phantom
HD; and Red Digital Cinema’s Red One. Naturally, each of
these platforms presented its own learning curve in terms of
both practical handling and image control.
AC ’s recent reader survey revealed significant interest
in the subject of shooting with the Red, so my goal with this
article is to discuss some aspects of that camera’s particular
usage. I have shot some of my favorite projects with the Red,
and I’m extremely proud of the imagery I have created with
it, but the Red, like any other camera platform, is not perfect.
I have so far used the Red to photograph more than 50
music videos and commercials. The first was the music video
for Chris Brown’s “Forever,” which I shot in early 2008,
when the camera was still fairly new in the marketplace. At
that time, few rental houses had them, and even fewer rental
houses or post facilities knew how to handle them. As with
any new technology — and certainly with any new model of
workflow — there were some growing pains. I’d shot loads of
digital imagery with other platforms, but I quickly found
that many aspects of working with the Red were unique to
Frame grabs and photos courtesy of Christopher Probst.
the camera. For example, early on, you
could quickly get bogged down just
trying to define the best codec to use so
you could edit your files on an Avid;
the Red was launched with a post
protocol geared primarily toward using
Final Cut Pro, leaving post facilities
initially at a loss as to how to edit and
online footage in other systems.
There are several things you
should take into consideration before
selecting the Red for a job. It should
first be noted that, in my opinion, the
camera is presently not well suited for
low-light, warm-colored scenes; its
native color temperature is around
5,000°K, and the manufacturer recommends the camera be rated at 320
ASA. The camera designers’ decision
to balance what I would regard as a
medium-sensitivity sensor toward
daylight was a little shortsighted. The
permanent color-temperature bias of
the Red is “locked in” at polar opposites of the real-world shooting conditions cinematographers typically face:
we mainly need less sensitivity in
daylight and more sensitivity in artificial lighting situations.
Let me explain: If you’re planning to shoot an intimate, candlelit
interior, you will likely be shooting in
very low light levels in color temperatures near 2,000°K. No matter how you
set the Red’s “viewing” settings — you
can adjust the monitoring look-up
table to display any color-temperature
setting you desire — you will not be
affecting how the “raw” image is
recorded. This means you might be
dramatically reducing the blue-channel
information that the “blue-hungry”
sensor receives. The result, depending
also on your lighting and exposure,
might be an objectionable amount of
noise in the image.
The “remedy” isn’t much of one:
If you place a color-correction filter on
the camera to compensate for using the
daylight-balanced technology in a
tungsten-or-lower color-temperature
environment, you will need to use at
least an 80C blue filter. An 80C
absorbs more than a full stop of light,
Opposite and this page: The music video for Katy Perry’s “Waking Up in Vegas” was shot entirely on
location in Las Vegas by cinematographer Christopher Probst (shown operating the camera in the
middle photo on this page), who used Red One cameras (Build 20 of the firmware) and Arri Master
Prime lenses.
www.theasc.com
February 2010
57
◗
so if you apply it, your 320-ASA digital camera will be rated below 160
ASA. Most cinematographers would
not select a 100-ASA or even 200ASA negative in a low-light circumstance. We would, in fact, probably use
a 500-ASA tungsten stock and push it
as much as one stop, yielding an ASA
of 640-1,000, depending on how we
rate the film and force-processing on
our meter. The difference between
shooting low-light scenes with 100-to160-ASA sensitivity vs. 500-to-1,000ASA sensitivity speaks for itself.
Over the course of my experiences with the Red, I’ve grappled with
how to best address this low-light
problem. I almost always choose the
fastest lenses possible, Zeiss Superspeed T1.3 primes or the newer Arri
Master Primes, which are also T1.3.
The Red is often selected based on
budgetary limitations, and if that’s the
case on your project, obtaining the
costlier Master Primes will be tricky.
On the music video for Katy Perry’s
“Waking Up in Vegas,” however, we
were able to obtain Master Primes. Las
Vegas casino interiors, though adorned
with a dizzying array of blinking,
glowing and flashing lights, are actually quite dark. Shooting wide-open on
Master Primes and balancing my
supplemental lighting to the existing
ambience allowed me to capture some
of my favorite Red footage to date.
As of this writing, Red Digital
Cinema has said that when it releases
its next camera, the Epic, later this
year, One owners will have the option
of upgrading the One’s sensor to the
new Mysterium-X chip, which will
reportedly offer increased sensitivity
and reduced noise. The company’s
literature does not provide an ASA
rating for the new imager but suggests
that the sensor performs comparably at
around 800 ASA. This will be a great
step toward solving the low-light problem, and I look forward to testing the
upgrade when it becomes available.
The Red One’s CMOS
Mysterium sensor utilizes what is
called a “rolling” shutter to achieve its
Above: Frame
grabs from Chris
Brown’s “Crawl,”
which Probst
shot in
downtown Los
Angeles using
Red’s beta-only
firmware update,
Build 21, in 4K
Anamorphic
mode. Right:
Probst at work
on another
project.
58
February 2010
Eminem pays
the ultimate
price for his
transgressions
in the music
video for “We
Made You,”
directed by
Joseph Kahn
and shot by
Probst with
Red cameras
(Build 20). The
video won the
2009 MTV
Video Music
Award for Best
Hip-Hop Video.
image capture. Unlike Arri’s D-21
camera, the Red has no physical rotating reflex mirror; like many digital
cameras on the market, it uses an electronic-shutter scheme to create an
effective scan-rate at which a frame is
looked at on the sensor. Problems arise
with all electronic rolling shutters
when the camera is moved very
quickly, like with a whip-pan; or when
the camera travels at a fast rate perpendicular to a stationary object; or if there
is a very rapid momentary change in
the exposure condition. In these
instances, strobing, partial exposure or
a skewing of the geometric lines in the
frame can occur.
Strobing caused by camera
panning has been a consideration with
film cameras for decades, but a rolling
shutter can also create split frames of
exposure with very fast changes in the
frame. For example, I recently shot the
video for Chris Brown’s “Crawl” in
downtown Los Angeles using a Red
and anamorphic lenses. In one scene,
we had several paparazzi flashbulbs
going off in-shot. Because still-photo
flashes are very brief in duration, many
of the subsequent exposed “frames” on
the Red recorded half of the flash in
one frame, and the other “half ” in the
subsequent frame. I found this effect to
be very distracting but was unable to
deal with it on set.
The Red has also exhibited
sensitivity to heat, which can affect the
image and camera in peculiar ways.
The camera does have settings that
allow you to control its fan functions,
but even with the camera set to run the
cooling fan continuously — which you
cannot do if you’re also recording on-
“I’d shot loads of
digital imagery with
other platforms, but
I quickly found that
many aspects of
working with the Red
were unique to
the camera.”
set sound — the Red has exhibited
several problems in hot environments.
This is due in part to the camera’s
design: the heat-sink ventilation is
www.theasc.com
located on the bottom of the body. As
we all know, heat rises. The main chassis of the Red is basically an
aluminum-alloy cylinder, and when
the camera gets hot, the heat rises
inside this tubular body and literally
cooks the electronics inside from the
top down. As the sensor overheats,
several hairline vertical “scratches”
begin to appear in the image; these
defects appear on the viewing output
to the monitor and are also recorded to
the “raw” .r3d files. I have witnessed
this on many occasions with many
different Red bodies. The only way to
solve this problem is to take the camera
into a colder environment and allow it
to cool down. Once it cools, the streaks
in the image will go away. So if you’re
planning to shoot a big Western in
Death Valley in the middle of summer,
you should carefully consider whether
to use the Red — or at least bring lots
of ice packs to place around the body.
I have also found the Red’s
onboard-battery harness to be very
temperamental. I’ve had dozens of Red
cameras power themselves off after the
slightest jostling of the onboard
battery. The contact pins that engage
the batteries are prone to intermittent
failure, and when that happens, the
camera shuts down. This is, of course,
also a service issue for the camerarental house, but I have experienced
February 2010
59
◗
Lady Gaga bares
all in her video
for “Love Game,”
which Probst
shot with Red
One cameras,
using Build 20
and a great many
star filters in
front of Arri
Ultra Prime
lenses.
this problem with Red cameras
provided by rental houses in all parts of
the world. Potential Red users should
be aware of this, because no one can
guarantee the particular hardware
option/upgrade being used on individual Red cameras in the field.
This spontaneous poweringdown problem is compounded by the
60
February 2010
fact that the Red One has a slow bootup time, which I affectionately call “the
longest 90 seconds of your life.” I have
been in situations where we were
getting ready to roll, the set was locked
up, all cuing was at the ready, and as the
slate was placed in front of the camera,
the battery connection failed, and we
had to release everything because it
would then take approximately two
minutes for the Red to return to a rollready state.
There are several workarounds
for this problem. One is that you can
run the camera off a tethered block
battery that is not physically mounted
on the camera. However, the camera
will not indicate when these block
batteries are running low, so power
interruptions can occur in this scenario.
There have been improvements to the
onboard-battery mounts, and more
than one configuration is available
from third-party manufacturers. Still,
this is an ongoing problem, and as Red
cameras age in the rental market, their
connection ports will need to be properly serviced in order to help prevent
this dreaded occurrence. Additionally,
to avoid reboot delays when changing
batteries, most rental houses now carry
“hot-swap” options so that the camera
will never lose power as batteries or
power-supply sources are changed.
Certain kinds of vibrations can
also create problems with the recording
devices used with the Red One. When
choosing which recording medium to
use, you should take vibration — physical as well as the kind caused by loud
noise levels — into consideration. The
three most prevalent data-capture
options currently being used with Red
cameras are: 1) recording to Compact
Flash cards that insert directly into the
body; 2) saving the files to an onboard
Red Drive; and 3) using onboard
RedRAM drives.
The Compact Flash card, the
least expensive option, offers the shortest recording time but is a fairly stable
and proven recording medium.
Occasionally you might encounter a
bad card — I have lost takes to a card
stating a failure after a whole take was
executed — but, for the most part, this
is the most dependable way to save
data on the camera. However, with
most CF cards offering full-resolution
4K recording times comparable to a
1,000' magazine of 35mm film, the
reported time savings of shooting digital and not having to constantly reload
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◗
Probst also
used the Red
One on a pair
of commercials
for Honda
(right) and HP
(below). Both
spots were
shot using
Build 20.
film is moot. Also, CF cards do place
limits
on
the
recording
speed/resolution that can be used; a
16GB CF card will not allow shooting
2K 120 fps using Redcode 36, whereas
Red Drives and RedRAM drives
support that.
Red Drives offer substantially
longer recording times; you can definitely outrun even the longest filmload scenario, with more than 120
minutes of capture time available at
4K. But there is a catch: If you are in a
very jarring environment, or even if
you’re just around loud sounds, you
might experience a number of dropped
62
February 2010
frames while recording your data to a
Red Drive. On one of my Red projects,
a commercial, the sound of the talent
yelling in a room created hundreds of
dropped frames. The incident could
have gone unnoticed if the assistant
hadn’t been keeping an eye on the
onboard monitor while the monitor
was not “zoomed in.” (When “zoomed
in,” you lose the data-display information on the onboard monitor that
shows dropped frames have occurred
during a take.) It’s ironic that the Red
is so often used to shoot music videos,
where loud playback is the norm. It is
somewhat frustrating that if we don’t
want to risk dropped frames with the
Red Drive, we must either switch to
the shorter-record-length CF cards or
acquire RedRAM drives, the most
expensive recording option.
The RedRAM drive utilizes the
same solid-state technology as CF
cards, internally arraying a number of
laptop flash drives together to allow up
to 40 minutes of 4K Redcode Raw
information. The catch is that the
RedRAM drive is approximately five
times more expensive than a standard
Red Drive and roughly nine times
more expensive than a 16GB Red CF
card. However, many filmmakers find
that the long recording time and
comparative stability around vibrations
make this the best recording option of
the three.
A discussion of the Red One’s
qualities would be incomplete if it
didn’t touch upon the resolution/
compression options the system offers.
It is remarkable that Jim Jannard was
able to bring a 4K camera to the market
at a price point accessible to almost
everyone, but the adage, “If it sounds
too good to be true, it probably is,”
comes to mind. In order to discuss the
Red One’s resolution, it is first necessary to discuss the system’s Mysterium
Bayer-pattern CMOS sensor.
This illustration
details a small
section of a Bayer
pattern, which the
Red One’s
Mysterium sensor
utilizes to derive
its color
information. Note
that for every
square fourphotosite cluster
within this scheme,
there are two
green photosites
for every single red
and blue photosite.
De-Bayer
processing is
therefore required
to derive RGB data
values.
Bayer-pattern imagers incorporate a unique system to derive RGB
color information in order to form an
image. In this chip architecture, the
sensor is laid out with groups of four
adjacent color receptors: two green
photosites are arranged diagonally and
are flanked by individual red and blue
photosites. This sort of checkerboard
pattern is repeated across the entire
sensor. (See illustration above.) Color
information for a specific region of the
image must therefore be interpreted by
de-Bayer-processing the green “pixel”
photosites group with their adjacent red
and blue photosites to calculate a cumulative RGB value. Put more plainly,
with a Bayer pattern, each photosite on
the sensor does not represent an individual RGB value of color information.
Just how this color-receptor scheme
translates into effective resolution can
lead to confusion when comparing it to
other sensor technologies with different
resolution designations.
For this reason, it is difficult to
compare resolution properties of a 4K
Bayer-pattern camera to a camera that
derives data from oversampled pixels or
from a sensor that utilizes co-sited
photosites, individual photosites that
feature separate RGB “co-sites” to
yield a true one-to-one pixel-to-RGB
value. It’s true that the Bayer-pattern
“In the real world,
the only way the
Mysterium could
deliver true 4K
resolution would
be if the sensor
were used as a
monochrome chip.”
information that comes from the Red
One’s sensor is technically 4K data, but
in the real world, the only way the
Mysterium could deliver true 4K resolution would be if the sensor were used
www.theasc.com
as a monochrome chip, delivering a
black-and-white picture. In that
scenario, each photosite sample would
be discrete and would not be averaged
with any adjacent photosite data; every
photosite would contribute discretely
to the overall resolution. Unfortunately,
with a Bayer-pattern imager, each
photosite on the sensor does not generate an RGB value. And because a
Bayer-pattern sensor must use color
information from at least four adjacent
photosites to derive a single RGB
value, it is necessarily true that the effective resolution derived from the 4K
Bayer data is less than 4K.
The cinematographer’s goal with
any format is to use it to the best of its
capabilities and capture as much information and latitude as possible. With
that in mind, I state that the Red One
should only be used in the highestresolution setting possible for a given
shooting scenario. The system does
allow you to record in a number of
lower resolutions, and with different
degrees of compression, but to do so is
to step onto a very slippery slope.
Let’s suppose for a moment that
you’re hired to shoot a job whose end
result is standard high-definition
February 2010
63
◗
1920x1080 24p imagery. You might
think it would make sense to simply
shoot the project at that resolution,
thereby avoiding all the down-rezzing
hassles in post. But whenever I have
shot the Red at any resolution setting
other than 4K, there has been a marked
difference in image quality. I’ve had the
opportunity to do direct frame comparisons of a scene that was shot at full 4K
16x9 resolution using Redcode 36, and
then, in the same lighting and composition, at 2K resolution for slowmotion. The difference from 4K to 2K
was startling. I was viewing the footage
in its purest form, straight from the deBayered .r3d files on a properly calibrated system capable of displaying
high resolutions, so I was able to truly
inspect my digital “negative.”
The Red camera alters its resolution and speed settings by physically
changing the way it “looks” at its sensor
to gather its image data. (See illustration on p. 65.) In basic terms, as you
lower your resolution settings on the
camera, the camera physically looks at
less and less of the sensor. So when you
switch from 4K to 2K, you effectively
switch from looking at the full Super
Another of
Probst’s Red
projects, a kooky
U.K. ad for the
flavored drink
Oasis, was shot in
Thailand but set in
Tokyo. In the spot,
a giant comic-book
rubber duck that
“hates” ordinary
water wreaks
havoc on those
foolish enough not
to enjoy Oasis.
64
February 2010
This is a simple illustration demonstrating the various scanning sizes the Red One uses in its different resolution settings. Note that as the
resolution goes down, so does the physical size of the sensor used.
35mm-sized sensor to looking at an
area half that size, comparable to Super
16mm.
This characteristic comes to the
fore when capturing material at higher
frame rates. Suppose you want to
capture a shot at 24 fps and then, with
the same composition, do a take in
slow-motion at 72 fps. Currently, with
Build 20 of Red One firmware, you
must switch the camera to 2K resolution in order to shoot 72 fps. And
because the camera is now scanning
half the sensor size it was scanning in
the 4K take, you must change lenses on
the camera to compensate. This
becomes increasingly problematic if the
shot in question is a wide shot. If you
originally rolled with a 14mm Ultra
Prime on the camera, you need a 7mm
prime lens to achieve the same field-ofview when you switch to 2K 72 fps.
Certainly, extreme-wide-angle 35mmformat lenses exist, but they often
exhibit certain distortion characteristics
and are usually slower than their standard-focal-length counterparts. The
need to switch the lenses at all is
nuisance enough, but if you want to
accomplish wide slow-motion shots,
you must therefore carry a separate set
of wide 16mm-format lenses to cover
the 2K Super 16mm scan size.
Red Digital Cinema has
corrected much of this problem in its
next camera system, the Epic S35,
which will offer up to 100 fps in 5K
resolution and 125 fps in 4K resolution.
Additionally, the Epic line will feature
several different “brain” modules with
different sensor options, including
Super 35-sized Mysterium-X chips,
full-frame 35mm still photo, 645
format, and even 617 format-sized
Monstro sensors. These cameras will
also feature improvements in the
Redcode compression-setting options.
This brings me to one of
the most important considerations for
those considering the Red platform:
compression. One of the miracles
of the Red One is also one of its
Achilles’ heels. Taking what should be a
massive file of RAW 4K image data and
recording it to a small CF card would
seem to require some form of internal
computational alchemy that Red isn’t
keen to publicize. (It is based on the
JPEG 2000 compression algorithm).
However, in general terms, if you break
a 12-bit 4K Bayer-pattern movingimage file down to its mathematical
components, it would add up to something like the theoretical data boxed
below.
Currently,
Red’s
highest
Theoretical uncompressed 4K image data:
4K 16x9 image (4096 x 2304 pixels) = 9,368,064 pixels per frame
12 bits per pixel = 12 x 9,368,064 = 112,416,768 bits per Bayer-pattern frame
112,416,768 bits /8 = 14,052,096 Bytes
14,052,096 Bytes /1024 = 13,722 KB
13,772.75 KB /1024 = 13.401 MB per frame
13.401 MB x 24fps = 321.627 MB per second or 2573 Mb/s
www.theasc.com
February 2010
65
◗
compression standard — Redcode 36
at 23.98 fps — records approximately
1.8 GB per minute, or .03 GB per
second, which calculates to roughly
240 Mb per second. When you
compare that to an uncompressed data
rate of 2573 Mb/s, you can see that
Redcode 36 offers a compression ratio
in the neighborhood of approximately
10:1. What this means in terms of
image-making is that there are some
definite trade-offs in terms of dynamic
range and subtleties in the range of
tones.
I have seen this in practical tests
with the camera. In one instance, a
Phantom HD camera was set up sideby-side with a Red One on the camera
prep floor to shoot the same “scene.”
The file that the Phantom HD generated at 2K resolution was, on average,
approximately 8 times larger than the
Red’s 4K file. Given that significant
amount of compression, coupled with
the
Bayer-pattern
sensor’s
color/resolution considerations, I have
a hard time calling the Red’s .r3d files
true RAW data.
“The Red has a
slow boot-up time,
which I affectionately
call ‘the longest
90 seconds of
your life.’”
One final aspect to touch upon
is post. Just as with film cameras, how
you handle the post process for the
Red is as important to the camera’s
performance as how you light and
capture your imagery. With the Red,
“post” really begins the moment the
data is removed from the camera on
set. Careful handling of unprotected
data — footage that has not been
backed up to multiple duplicate drives
— is paramount. The importance of
having properly trained individuals
performing this task cannot be overstated. Once the Red’s data exists on
drives as master .r3d files, a whole
range of various image-handling —
and quality-affecting — options open
up.
Without detailing every pipeline
possible for processing and manipulating Red material, I would point out
that there are several different methods
to de-Bayer, down-rez and online the
raw data to enable color correction and
assembly of an edited project.
Different color-correction platforms
— DaVinci, Luster, Pablo and your
WE WANT YOUR OPINION!
The 10 Best-Shot
Films of 1998-2008
Our 80th anniversary readers’ poll covered the years
1894-1997, and it’s time to bring it up to date.
Films from every nation are eligible, provided they
were theatrically released between 1998 and 2008.
Submit your picks online* by March 31st at www.theasc.com.
The nomination form will include room for comments,
which might be included in our coverage of the results.
*Subscriber login required
66
own Apple computer — offer different
ways to ingest Red material: files
converted to DPX; platforms that can
internally work from the raw .r3d code;
or converting the raw footage to tape,
such as laying the material down to
HDCam-SR. Each of these options
presents its own plusses and minuses in
terms of the ease of post and will have
a different impact on the look of the
image.
Digital cinematography is evolving daily, and as the specifics of the
tools we use change, the need for cinematographers to embrace that change
and maintain our role as the author of
the image is critical. Digital motionpicture cameras have altered the filmproduction paradigm, but their
presence need not be a death knell for
artistry or quality. Just as film has
evolved and matured over the last
century, so, too, will digital capture, and
that is something I’m very excited to
witness and embrace.
●
The author,
shown here
taking a break
on the set, has
used the Red
One on more
than 50
projects.
67
Luciano Tovoli,
ASC, AIC
recalls the details
of his approach
to Dario
Argento’s
legendary horror
film Suspiria.
by Stanley Manders
•|•
Terror in
Technicolor
T
he horror film is stylistically rooted in German
Expressionism of the 1920s, but the 1970s found the
genre in transition. Smash Hollywood hits such as The
Exorcist (1973), Jaws (1975), Carrie (1976) and The Omen
(1976) not only offered graphic shocks, but also transformed or
completely shed the genre’s traditional trappings of ghouls,
ghosts and goblins. Instead, the characters and situations
became somewhat familiar, the settings were contemporary
and even homey, and the films’ largely naturalistic cinematography firmly grounded the fantastic in reality.
A world away, in Italy, filmmaker Dario Argento had
carved out a unique niche in the fright-film business with such
thrillers as The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970) and Deep
Red (1975). These atmospheric stories, populated with
demented killers and boasting grotesque set pieces, drip with
equal parts gore and suspense — pop-culture products of the
changing times. Flush with success, yet seeking a new creative
direction, Argento then decided to envelop himself in the
macabre lore of Old Europe. Working with fellow screenwriter
Daria Nicolodi, he concocted a heady tale of witchcraft and the
occult set in a ballet academy poised on the edge of Germany’s
Black Forest. There, a young American student, Suzy ( Jessica
68
February 2010
Harper), becomes the target of Mater Suspirium, the Mother
of Sighs, a demonic headmistress whose murderous minions
dispatch those around Suzy with operatic aplomb. Their elaborate, Grand Guignol-style deaths unfold in a series of bloodchilling sequences.
The evocatively titled Suspiria (1977), photographed by
Luciano Tovoli, ASC, AIC, is a feast of intensely expressive
images and sound. A creative touchstone among horror
aficionados, the picture stands as an example to all filmmakers
seeking to create tangible onscreen synergy between story,
design, direction and cinematography.
Inspired in part by the Technicolor grandeur of Walt
Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Argento
wanted to achieve a palette rich with primary hues and deep
blacks. Tovoli notes that when Argento approached him about
the project, “I had not seen any of his films, but, of course, I
knew him as a very successful director.” At the time, Tovoli
was perhaps best known for his work in Michelangelo
Antonioni’s The Passenger (1975). “Horror films did not interest me at that moment of my professional life — I was a very
impressionable guy, you see,” he continues. “But I do remember one summer afternoon in my apartment, when I heard a
Photos courtesy of Luciano Tovoli. Frame grabs courtesy of Anchor Bay Entertainment.
loud noise coming from the street. I
looked out and saw a huge crowd
sprinting from one movie theater to
another. I later discovered that both
theaters were showing Argento’s The
Cat O’ Nine Tails [1971], and they were
hoping to find a free seat! I said to
myself, ‘A director who provokes such
brisk movement in a crowd should be a
very good one!’ After that I searched to
see all of his movies. Ignorance is a
curable sickness!”
Tovoli was intrigued by Argento’s
ideas for Suspiria. “I think describing it
as a Gothic fairytale is correct, but
normally, the director and cinematographer do not sit down the first day we
meet and say, ‘This time we will do a
Gothic fairytale.’ Instead, we start
speaking about many subjects relating
to — or sometimes not relating to —
the film we have to do. A good director,
or in this case a great one, does not give
precise recipes or strict commands, but
instead searches to influence his collaborators with the originality of his
dream.”
For Tovoli, one fundamental issue
on Suspiria was “the choice of colors and
the way I utilized them in accordance
with [production designer] Giuseppe
Bassan, who was working under
Argento’s inspired guidance. We were
often making our decisions in the flow
of the shooting, without too many elaborate consultations or directions, but
just in a kind of magic comprehension.
“I decided to intensively utilize
primary colors — blue, green and red —
to identify the normal flow of life, and
then apply a complementary color,
mainly yellow, to contaminate them,”
continues Tovoli. “A [horror] film brings
to the surface some of the ancestral fears
that we hide deep inside us, and Suspiria
would not have had the same cathartic
function if I had utilized the fullness
and consolatory sweetness of the full
color spectrum. To immediately make
Suspiria a total abstraction from what
we call ‘everyday reality,’ I used the
usually reassuring primary colors only in
their purest essence, making them
immediately, surprisingly violent and
In Suspiria, Suzy (Jessica Harper) arrives at a mysterious ballet academy and is immediately thrust into a
multi-hued realm with increasingly surreal settings.
www.theasc.com
February 2010
69
◗
Suzy is
“welcomed”
by the strict
Miss Tanner
(Alida Valli),
who rules the
academy
through fear
and
intimidation.
Throughout
the film,
Tovoli’s
widescreen
compositions
highlight the
dramatic
production
design.
70
February 2010
provocative. This brings the audience
into the world of Suspiria.” But the
brightly hued artifice also has a certain
distancing effect on the viewer. “You say
to yourself, ‘This will never happen to
me because I have never seen such
intense colors in my life,’” says Tovoli.
“This makes you feel reassured and, at
the same time, strangely attracted to
proceed deeper and deeper into this
colorful journey.”
The film’s opening shots quickly
transport the audience, as Suzy makes
her way through the Munich airport on
her way to the ballet academy. “With
colors forbidden in reality, the Munich
airport becomes Suspiria airport,” says
Tovoli. “Then, the first close-ups of her
in a cab, as it’s raining furiously outside,
express perfectly the dynamics of the full
color palette I sought for the rest of the
film — the pulsating, mixing and alternating primary and complementary
colors.” Like Disney’s Snow White, to
whom Harper bears more than a passing resemblance, Suzy is soon lost in a
strange world of magic and witchcraft.
“I was deeply inspired by Jessica’s
interesting face, by its volumes and
proportions, and her beautifully expressive eyes,” Tovoli says of his star. “After I
prepared the light and she arrived on the
set, she was immediately shining so brilliantly that I was astonished every time,
as was Argento. Of course, I tried to
light her laterally as much as possible,
with almost no light in the axis of the
Top, far left:
Director Dario
Argento (left)
and Tovoli
prepare a shot
of actress Joan
Bennett, who
plays Madame
Blanc, the
stern
headmistress
and leader of
the secret
coven that
plots against
Suzy.
camera, to add a sense of perspective to
her face. On other films, I had registered the fact that the lens loves some
faces, but in Jessica’s case, the relationship was really phenomenal.”
The theatrical, expressionistic
approach Argento and Tovoli sought
for Suspiria was unusual for the time,
especially for a contemporary film. “It
was surprising for a great part of our
crew, who had never met a cinematographer who wanted to put the strongest
possible lights so close to the actors
through colored-velvet screens,” says
Tovoli. “But it was very new for me as
well. I had never lit a film like this
before. For many years at the beginning
of my career, I prayed only for the most
natural light possible.”
Tovoli recalls a pledge that he
and future ASC member Nestor
Alméndros made while they were
attending the Centro Sperimentale di
Cinematografia in Rome. “We
promised over two glasses of good
Tuscan red wine to never abandon the
marvelous religion of real light,” he says.
“I respected that oath for maybe a
decade, but then I started to be quite
bored. Alméndros, who was much more
serious about this kind of thing than I,
continued in the same direction with
the most enviable success. Meanwhile, I
started to study the work of the blackand-white cinematographers working
at Cinecittà in Rome, in Hollywood
and elsewhere. I searched to reconstruct
their unbelievable lighting and complex
technique; I watched the films over and
over to learn how they achieved such
great artistic results.” Among his
favorites were Italian cinematographers
Anchise Brizzi, Arturo Gallea, Ubaldo
Arata, Carlo Montuori, Massimo
Terzano, Otello Martelli, Aldo Tonti
and, later, Aldo Graziati and Gianni Di
Venanzo. “Working in black-and-white
with Antonioni, Di Venanzo brought a
substantial change to the technique,
utilizing many small diffused lights for
www.theasc.com
interiors instead of bigger Fresnel units,”
Tovoli notes.
The cinematographer was initially reluctant to sign onto Suspiria
“because I was conscious of my lack of
experience and, more importantly, my
lack of real passion for that kind of film,”
he explains. “I’ve never accepted a job
just to take a job. Also, even in the most
insignificant film, I always searched to
find some significance. That, of course,
was not at all the case with Suspiria. But
fortunately, Argento insisted I join him,
February 2010
71
◗
After a
mysterious
infestation is
discovered in
the girls’
dorm, the
students are
moved to
makeshift
quarters in a
dance studio,
which takes
on a sinister
look as Suzy
and Sara
(Stefania
Casini) share
their fears. To
heighten such
dramatic
contrasts in
color, Tovoli
(bottom
photo, lighting
the scene)
employed
Technicolor IB
printing to
control his
hues.
and I still do not know why.
“I chose my camera crew very
carefully,” he continues. “I brought in
Idelmo Simonelli, one of the best
camera operators, a true star. When he
said, ‘This is by far the best take,’ it was
by far the best take! I also brought the
72
February 2010
best first camera assistant, Peppino
Tinelli; the best grip, Mario
Moreschini; and the best gaffer, Alberto
Altibrandi, whose nickname was
‘Gnaccheretta’ [Castanet].”
With only a few weeks of prep,
Tovoli began camera and lighting tests
in earnest. “After my first conversation
with Argento, I vaguely imagined how
to technically achieve this radical departure from my previous lighting style, but
also, I needed to know if I had truly
abandoned naturalism,” he says. “On
The Passenger, I searched to force the
strength of the real light, often overexposing, bringing the negative near the
shoulder of the sensitometric curve to
burn up some of the detail. In a way, this
is what I did on Suspiria as well, but at a
much higher level, ‘overexposing’
through the intensity of a specific color
in a specific shot, with the negative
[Eastman 5254] carefully exposed at the
center of the curve. I utilized this technique on every shot in the film. I was
always telling the production designer
and scenic painter, ‘More red! More
blue!’ I made the same recommendation
to my very patient gaffer, Alberto, and,
like a good friend, he asked me, ‘Are you
sure? There is already a lot of green. It’s
becoming quite disturbing!’ And to my
inalterably happy face he asked, ‘Are you
searching to be fired?’”
Part of Tovoli’s approach was to
make extensive use of frames of brightly
colored velour and tissue paper set in
front of Arcs positioned very close to
the performers. “I wanted to create light
that would simulate the color coming
from pots of paint thrown very respectfully on the actors’ faces, recalling
Jackson Pollock’s fundamental gesture
of splashing pure color on the canvas. In
my imagination, our canvas was our
actors’ faces. Soon, someone calmly
explained to me that this was not possible for multiple reasons, and I was
forced to find an alternative method of
lighting the actors’ faces and, to an
extent, the backgrounds, with the
strongest possible light as close to the
subject as possible. While shooting, our
actors were very often reasonably
worried they might be burned!”
Tovoli also employed mirrors to
change the quality of the light. “The
stratagem of the mirrors could double
the distance between our light sources
and the scene,” he explains, noting that
he was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s
use of mirrors in his work. “If I have to
choose one impressive reference, why
not go directly to the best? It’s always
better to tap in at the highest level! I
utilized mirrors not to destroy enemy
ships, as Archimedes did in the war
between Siracusa and Rome, but to
destroy with a violent shaft of hypercolored light a universally ‘elegant’ or
‘refined’ image. This was driven by my
desire to always go beyond what would
be conventionally accepted. The
aesthetic concept on Suspiria — and
Argento will forgive me if I pretend to
speak for him — was never to subtract,
but to add.”
Bassan’s extensive use of wildly
textured backgrounds, geometric shapes
and colored surfaces add greatly to the
picture’s crazy-quilt visual quality, and
Tovoli sought to keep such elements in
crisp focus. “Sharpness has always been
another of my profound beliefs, in part
as a form of respect for the optics
specialists who work hard every day to
improve the rendering of the lenses,” he
says. “I do not use, or very scarcely use in
lighter values, diffusers or colored filters.
And I absolutely never used them on
Suspiria. In general, I am not interested
in ‘pictorial’ images. Watching a film, I
get bored and lose interest when I see
diffused smoke where there is not any
justification for it apart from the desire
to create a nice atmosphere. I’m
tempted to call the fire brigade!
“When I first started to do
photography, Ansel Adams, Edward
Weston and Henri Cartier-Bresson,
among many others, opened my eyes to
the vast territory of sharpness and
contrast as primordial values in photography — and cinematography, of
course. On Suspiria, I lived with the illusion that I could make sharp the simple,
flat volume of a monochromatic wall by
using the pure intensity and pulsating
vibrations of the color itself.”
Using Mitchell BNC and Arri
2-C cameras, Tovoli shot Suspiria in
2.35:1 Technovision anamorphic, a
format he loves deeply. “The glorious
Technovision anamorphic lens!” he
exclaims. “The incredibly passionate
Enrico Chroscicki believed so strongly
in great panoramic images that he went
to Paris in the early 1950s to search for
the survivors of Henri Chrétien, the
French astronomer who designed the
Hypergonar lens, from which the first
anamorphic lens was later derived.
Chroscicki told me he also met with a
very old collaborator of Chrétien’s in
Nice, and found in a dusty drawer not
only the original drawings of two lenses
but also a single optical anamorphic
element to be put in front of a normal
primary lens. Thanks to this almost
archaeological discovery — I baptized
him the Winkelmann of lenses —
Suzy
encounters a
mysterious
witch who
casts a spell
upon her. The
simple effect
was created
with a piece of
mirror
reflecting back
into the lens;
dust was
added to the
air to help
carry the light.
www.theasc.com
February 2010
73
◗
Chroscicki, in his little workshop in
Rome, made just one lens! It was a
50mm, and he rented this single lens for
years before he had the money to build
a full series of anamorphic lenses. How
could I not shoot Suspiria with Enrico’s
anamorphic Technovision lenses?
Vittorio Storaro [ASC, AIC] has shot
all his films with Technovision lenses!”
Eastman 5254, a 100-ASA negative, “had beautiful contrast values and
colors, which I admired, and that was so
important for the Technicolor process
separations we were to make from our
negative, because we planned to force,
violate and deteriorate the image’s
normal color range,” he adds. From the
outset, the filmmakers intended to use
Technicolor’s legendary dye-transfer
printing process as the final step in
creating the haunted realm of Suspiria.
Technicolor Rome shut down its IB
printing in 1978, making Argento’s film
one of its last dye-transfer projects.
Tovoli recalls, “Technicolor Rome
applied the negative-developing and
positive-printing system with extreme
accuracy, and they agreed, maybe for the
first time in their history, to make a
minor but important modification for
us. They agreed to lose a diffuser that
was typically used to slightly flash the
yellow-cyan-magenta imbibed matrix,
thus preventing any possible bleeding of
the colors outside the physical contours
of each image. The possible bleeding of
colors was exactly what I was searching
for with Argento — we wanted more
contrast, more vibrating colors — so I
proposed to Carlo Labella, the nicest
man and a very talented color timer, that
we lose this little attenuation of the
color contrast. I am not ready to forget
his friendly smile as he listened to my
apparently absurd proposal!” Also, for
the matrix printing of the cyan layer, lab
technicians used a special filter that was
more selective for the color red, which
was particularly complicated to render
in the dye-transfer process but also a key
component of Suspiria’s palette. The
filter enabled the post team to faithfully
reproduce all the information present on
the original negative.
This page and
opposite: Sara
is stalked
through the
academy
grounds in
one of the
film’s most
expressive and
frightening
sequences.
Seeking
refuge, she is
trapped in a
room filled
with barbed
wire.
74
February 2010
Tovoli recently revisited Suspiria
at Technicolor Rome to supervise a new
HD transfer, which will result in a Bluray release this spring. “I worked with a
very talented colorist, Fabrizio Conti,
and we tried to stay as close as possible
to the look of the original,” he says. “I
think we did an extremely good job, but
it is impossible to compare even the best
digital master to a film printed with
Technicolor’s dye-transfer process,
especially for a film as extreme as
Suspiria!”
The cinematographer’s bold use
of color is showcased in one of Suspiria’s
most bravura sequences, in which
Suzy’s friend Sara (Stefania Casini) is
relentlessly pursued by an unseen
assailant. Terrified, she runs through a
labyrinth of colorfully hued corridors in
the boarding school, finally slamming
shut a heavy door behind her. Leaning
against it, she sees a straight razor
slowly slide between the door and the
jam as her attacker tries to flip open the
simple lock. In a panic, Sara spots a tiny
window that offers possible escape.
Climbing through it, she cannot clearly
see the room she is entering. She jumps
to the floor, only to find the chamber
filled with coils of barbed wire. Trapped
and helpless, she struggles in this bluetinged nightmare until the killer reaches
her. “That is one of my favorite scenes
because Argento left me free to create a
color symphony following only my
emotion and taste,” says Tovoli. “That is
very rare in the relationship between the
director and the cinematographer.
Looking at that sequence today, I realize I made it in a state of total pleasure,
going on shot after shot with my collaborators, almost blindly utilizing the new
alphabet of colors that had become our
instinctive color language. The red, of
course, is the aggression and danger, the
blood that the unknown pursuer will
soon force out of your body with his
knife. The blue is the terrifying death
sentence already pronounced and a
color that accompanies you into the
sinister world of death. The delicate
orange coloration of the little window
high in the wall of the room is the
www.theasc.com
February 2010
75
◗
Left: Tovoli extends his meter down to water level for a suspenseful swimming sequence as
his camera is set up. Above: The cinematographer enjoys a rare calm moment during the shoot.
momentary illusion of safety, a painting
done with colored lights. Then there is
the shining metallic blue of the barbed
wire, like a carnivorous plant that will
capture and almost digest you forever.
Such a very rich bouquet of gifts for a
cinematographer! Thanks, Maestro
Argento! The sequence of colors in the
frantic pursuit was not planned at all. I
made it absolutely on the inspiration of
the moment.”
Conversely, another key set piece
finds Argento and Tovoli bleeding off
their elaborate color scheme to render an
almost monochromatic milieu of
nocturnal mayhem. In the sequence,
blind pianist Daniel (Flavio Bucci) and
his guide dog enter the vast Konigsplatz
Square at night, the pale gray stone of
the surrounding buildings starkly set
against the darkness. Atop one roof, an
imposing statue of a huge bird of prey
peers down on the frightened man.
Daniel cannot see that the creature
disappears, but hears the flapping of
great wings as something swoops down
over the square at him as his dog barks
incessantly. Then, in one of the great
twists in horror cinema, Daniel is
murdered, with his shockingly red blood
punctuating the moment.
For Tovoli, the Konigsplatz
76
February 2010
Square offered a tremendous lighting
challenge. “What kept me up at night
was the dimension of the location,” the
cinematographer says. “Since then, I
have lit bigger spaces, including the
huge Pula Arena in Croatia for Julie
Taymor’s Titus [1999; AC Feb. ’00].
Knowing that Hitler utilized the
“The aesthetic
concept on
Suspiria was
never to subtract,
but to add.”
Konigsplatz Square for his parades and
speeches did not reassure me at all! We
decided to not use color in the scene to
enhance the loneliness of the empty
space and make the sudden explosion of
bloody red [more dramatic].
“The bird’s [point-of-view shot]
was a very clear idea of Argento’s that
we realized quite easily by running a
thin steel cable from the top of one
temple to the ground by a hand-released
hook. When the ground hook was
released, the elastic part of the cable
brought our Arriflex camera off the
solid ground and into the air to soar over
the square. Of course, we got quite
excited about the shot and pushed the
special mechanical effect responsible to
delay the release of the hook at the very
last possible second.” The resulting
POV effect adds an ingenious sense of
menace to the already flamboyant scene.
“Discussing the film this way
brings back the feeling of total happiness, a fabulous shooting time in which
a young cinematographer not at all
intimidated by the task before him took
the opportunity to collaborate with a
great director and sweet man named
Dario Argento,” muses Tovoli, who
would later shoot such Hollywood
suspense films as Reversal of Fortune
(1990) and Single White Female
(1992). “I believe it is this human secret,
not a technical one, that is behind the
lasting long life of Suspiria.”
The author thanks D’Arienzo
Antonio, Robert Hoffman, Bruce Heller
and Rob Hummel for their assistance with
this article.
●
Post Focus
Colorist Milan
Boncich (top)
finesses a
project in
Offhollywood’s
new SoHo
facility, which
boasts a prep
floor, office
spaces and a
35-seat theater
capable of
screening 2-D
and 3-D DCPs
(bottom).
Offhollywood’s Digital Perspective
By Claire Walla
In 2003, after years of producing low-budget independent
features, building relationships, solving other people’s problems and
not making much money in the process, Mark Pederson and Aldey
Sanchez started their own company, Offhollywood, with a mandate
to do “guerrilla digital intermediates.” Armed with one Apple
computer and a copy of Final Cut Pro, they posted ultra-low-budget
productions while keeping a close watch on new industry trends.
Among the developers with whom they forged a relationship was
Red Digital Cinema, which was on the brink of introducing the Red
One camera.
Just before the One was officially unveiled, Offhollywood
agreed to purchase the first two bodies that would be released to the
public, #0006 and #0007. (The first five cameras went to Red
founder Jim Jannard.) The investment was a shot in the dark: Pederson had no way of knowing that Red would quickly develop a significant industry presence, or that the cameras would eventually
revamp Offhollywood’s business model, transforming it into the
front-to-back production facility it is today.
With their keen interest in new technology, Pederson and
Sanchez took to Red with a great deal of enthusiasm. “Red is a very
atypical company,” says Pederson. “It’s like a bunch of mad scientists
breaking the rules, and I think they like the fact that we have some
of the same rebel sensibilities.” When Offhollywood received its Red
78
February 2010
Photos by Patrick Cecilian, courtesy of Offhollywood.
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An early investment in Red One cameras transformed Offhollywood from a “guerrilla” post
house to the front-to-back production facility it is today.
cameras, in 2007, Pederson and Sanchez
tested and posted footage every day,
untangling the kinks while consulting with
productions and teaching the mechanics to
other rental houses.
Eventually, Offhollywood landed a
project called Asylum Seekers, an experimental feature by a young director named
Ronia Ajami; it was one of the first features
to shoot fully with Red cameras. Soon
thereafter, director/cinematographer Doug
Liman used Offhollywood’s Red cameras for
additional photography on his 2008 feature
Jumper. At press time, Liman was finishing
post at Offhollywood on the feature Fair
Game, which was shot entirely with the
company’s Reds.
Pederson says Offhollywood’s early
work with the Red helped the company
define its own workflow for the camera. “It
was very much a moving target because the
camera was such a moving target — there
were always new firmware builds,” he
notes, adding that both Reds received six
firmware updates while Asylum Seekers
was in production. “A lot of people say the
Red workflow is a problem, and that frustrates me so much because there is no such
thing as ‘a Red workflow.’ There are a
bunch of workflows.”
The camera captures compressed
information in Redcode RAW, with
unprocessed proxies viewable as 2K Quick-
Time files for immediate review of “dailies.”
Once the QuickTime proxies are logged and
captured in 2K, 3K or 4K, Offhollywood
typically edits footage in Final Cut Pro, does
color-grading using Assimilate Scratch, and
uses a Digital Video Systems Clipster 3 for
both 2-D and 3-D DCP creation. The
company still uses the same AJA Kona 3
Video System it initially purchased, which
Pederson notes is a highly efficient solution
for image capture and HD conversion. He
emphasizes, though, that each production’s
workflow depends on the importance of
the dailies and the needs of the filmmakers.
John “Pliny” Eremic, chief operating
officer and director of postproduction,
notes that although Offhollywood is the
only authorized Red service center on the
East Coast, “we don’t just cater to Red.”
The company also offers post services for
projects originating on other digital platforms, as well as 35mm and 16mm film.
(The company has a partnership with
FotoKem in Burbank whereby Offhollywood sends film to FotoKem for digital
transfer.) To date, Offhollywood has
provided cameras and technical support for
14 features and has done second-unit and
post work for 23 others.
Pederson and Sanchez have
welcomed colorists Robbie Renfrow and
Milan Boncich and senior DI/visual-effects
artist Jim Geduldick to the team, and the
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company recently opened the doors of its
new, larger facility in SoHo, featuring a
brand-new prep floor, new office spaces
and a 35-seat theater capable of screening
2-D and 3-D DCPs. Offhollywood continues
to test new software and hardware solutions, and in addition to the growing cache
of Red Ones it owns and sub-leases from
individual owners, the company will soon
obtain Red’s new Epic camera system.
Most recently, Offhollywood has
ventured into 3-D technology. Its first 3-D
feature, The Mortician, is currently in
production in New Orleans; cinematographer Michael McDonough is using Red
Ones with Element Technica Quasar 3-D
rigs. Offhollywood has also invested in The
Foundry’s Nuke compositing software and
Ocula 3-D for 3-D post, and the company’s
new theater is equipped with 3-D glasses
and a Dolby Cinema Server capable of
showing 2-D and 3-D footage. (The theater
also has a Barco DP2000 2K projector for DI
work.)
Noting that Offhollywood’s front-toback business model makes the company
especially well suited to 3-D workflows,
Pederson muses, “I don’t know how long it
will last, but there’s going to be a moment
in time when you’ll have a significantly
better chance of selling your movie, finding
theatrical distribution and making your
money back if your movie’s in 3-D.”
“Technology democratizes services,”
says Sanchez. “When Mark and I started
Offhollywood, we talked about how technology would merge the production and
postproduction worlds. To compete, you
need to offer more added value, and I think
one of our core strengths is our expertise on
the very bleeding edge.”
●
80
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New Products & Services
Osram, Mole Introduce MoleLED
Mole Richardson and Osram have launched the MoleLED filmfriendly LED lighting solution. The MoleLED system unites a sophisticated fixture designed by Mole Richardson with Osram’s advanced
remote-phosphor LED technology.
Touting 3200°K and 5600°K color, the 50-watt MoleLED
fixture offers an alternative solution for fluorescent fixtures up to 110
watts or tungsten solutions up to 300 watts. MoleLED fixtures have a
rated life of over 25,000 hours
and will operate on everything
from a 12-volt car battery or
14.4-volt Anton/Bauer or IDX Vmount battery to a 24-volt
camera battery or any DC source
up to 50 volts. The MoleLED was
designed with both local and
remote DMX dimming, and the
fixtures can be dimmed down to
10 percent without any shift in
color temperature.
Each MoleLED fixture consists of 12 Osram Kreios LED metal
core circuit boards; the 12 boards each contain 20 high-output blue
LEDs topped with a remote-phosphor dome, for a total of 240 individual sources. The phosphor domes, an Osram proprietary design, are
blue-light activated to produce light in two exact color temperatures,
tungsten and daylight. Osram’s remote-phosphor technology offers a
single semiconductor system leading to consistent temperature behavior, allowing the module to easily achieve a CRI greater than 90. Spectral characteristics are simple to adjust with remote phosphors, and the
technology further ensures light and color output stability over time.
“Remote-phosphor technology allows the MoleLED fixture to
provide tungsten and daylight white light that parallels both the spectral sensitivity curves of film and the visible spectrum, or what the eye
sees,” says Leslie Trudeau, Osram Sylvania NAFTA business unit
manager for entertainment. “This is one of the many benefits over
LED mixing.” Mike Parker, CEO of Mole Richardson and an ASC associate member, adds, “Unlike existing LED fixtures, the MoleLED blends
these multiple sources into one soft light source. This single-source
approach renders the light more attractive to the talent and more
familiar to the technicians.”
Built rugged and with a low profile and mobile features,
MoleLEDs are ideally suited for all set-lighting needs. The fixtures also
feature multiple rigging points and mounting options, and Mole
Richardson offers a wide range of standard accessories, including barn
doors, louvers and gel frames.
For more information, visit www.sylvania.com and
www.mole.com.
82
February 2010
• SUBMISSION INFORMATION •
Please e-mail New Products/Services releases to:
[email protected] and include full contact
information and product images. Photos must be
TIFF or JPEG files of at least 300dpi.
Sony Updates HDCam-SR
Sony Electronics has unveiled the next generation of its
HDCam-SR production technology, including the SRW-9000
HDCam-SR camcorder, which features a “future-proof” upgrade
path to 35mm imaging and file-based production. Sony has also
announced SR memory solid-state media and more cost-effective
BCT-SR series tape pricing.
“HDCam-SR technology now meets the current and future
needs of high-end cinematic and TV broadcast production,” says
Rob Willox, director of Sony Electronics’ content-creation group.
“SR is already file based and can support data recording in resolutions up to 4K as DPX today. The benefits of non-linear acquisition
are now a production requirement. The addition of solid-state
media enhances the format’s inherent file-based design and brings
SR’s proven quality to an even wider audience.”
The SRW-9000 camcorder combines the SR format’s image
quality with the versatility of a one-piece camcorder. The full HD
(1920x1080) resolution camcorder uses 2⁄3" CCDs with a 14-bit A/D
converter and digital signal processing to capture up to 1080/60p
images with a high level of detail. Furthermore, recognizing the
market’s requirement for a 35mm “B” camera complement to its
high-end F35, Sony has unveiled an optional upgrade path for the
SRW-9000 to a 35mm imager and PL mount to increase the
camcorder’s flexibility and protect a user’s investment.
The latest HDCam-SR compression is SR Lite, a 220 Mb/s
data rate codec based on the open MPEG-4 SStP (Simple Studio
Profile); SR Lite will be supported as an MXF-wrapped file to help
ensure high picture quality while enabling almost real-time
exchange over a GB Ethernet connection. SR Lite is designed to
provide more efficiency and flexibility for SStP file-based production,
using an open codec that is ideal for high-end cinematic and broadcast production. Because the system is backwards compatible,
content recorded on HDCam tape can also be integrated into the
MXF SStP file-based operation.
Sony has also announced the next version of its popular
SRW recorder, the SRW-5800/2. The updated deck will support
MXF file transfer and the 220 Mb/s data rate as well as the ability
IDX Redefines
Red Camera Power
IDX System Technology Inc. has
unveiled the Redefined Elite battery system
for powering the Red One camera. The
Redefined solution consists of two power
packages centered on Elite batteries along
with the sleek EL-BAPIDXA mounting plate,
which is customized with V-mount and
Lemo technology.
Redefined Elite is a
136 watt-hour highcapacity V-mount battery
system with the unique
IDX twin power-cartridge
construction as well as
multiple safety and
protection features. In
addition to awardwinning architecture, the
Redefined solution offers the exclusive Elite
Smart Battery mode, which quickly and
easily activates the protocol data for tighter
integration with the Red One system. Vmount battery plate EL-BAPIDXA — which
was crafted by Element Technica in partnership with IDX — enables operators to view
live battery-life data by percentage in the
Red One viewfinder. When the batteries are
drained, new power-cartridge pairs can be
inserted into the original housing in less than
30 seconds.
IDX Elite batteries are in full compliance with the 2009 DOT and IATA Dangerous Goods Regulations,
meaning they can be
carried aboard all national
and international flights.
Professionals also have
the option of either using
the high-performance
quad charger VL-4S or
dual charger/AC adapter
VL-2SPLUS. Additional
variations of the mounting plate are available and can be purchased
separately from Element Technica.
For more information, visit
www.elementtechnica.com and www.id
xtek.com.
to record and play back 4:4:4 content at 2X
real time. These capabilities will also be
available to existing SRW-5800 owners
through optional hardware upgrades.
The SR solid-state memory cards will
deliver rapid transfer rates of more than 5
Gb/s and storage capacity of up to 1TB.
This new SR memory technology is
designed to be the ideal media for future
high-end production, with native acquisition capabilities for applications such as 3-D
1080p and higher resolutions up to 4K.
Sony also plans to deliver an upgrade to SR
memory on the existing SRW-9000
camcorder, along with a memory adapter
for the F35 and F23.
“Our enhancements to the SR technology extend far beyond product
announcements,” Willox stresses. “We’re
reassuring customers that what they buy
not only works now, but also supports
future needs and delivers a return on their
investment.”
The SRW-9000 camcorder is
currently available through Band Pro Film &
Digital. For more information, visit
www.bandpro.com and http://pro.
sony.com.
Element Technica Goes 3-D
with Quasar
Element Technica, whose series of
Technica 3D Rigs are designed to precisely
position a pair of cameras to achieve realistic stereoscopic digital video for broadcast
and cinema applications, has begun delivering its Quasar 3D Rigs to owner/operators
and rental houses.
The Quasar is designed to accommodate full-size digital-cinema cameras like
the Sony F23 and F35, Red One, and Panavision Genesis, as well as full-body box-type
digital broadcast cameras like the Sony
F950 and 1500, Philips LDK and more.
Regardless of the cameras utilized, the
Quasar’s precision and refinement make it
an ideal platform for matching zoom or
prime lenses to accommodate any shooting
style or format.
The Technica 3D Series provides
smartly engineered 3-D systems that are
lighter weight and less costly than previous
3-D rigs, making 3-D acquisition easy for
traditional 2-D production crews. Complete
camera/lens installation and alignment can
be completed in less than 15 minutes with
nothing more than a set of Allen wrenches
and a mirror gauge. Wayne Miller, president
UNDERWATER
HOUSINGS
for
RED ONE
and
PHANTOM HD
NOW AVAILABLE
31 0/301-81 87
www.hydroflex.com
83
requiring complex interocular and convergence calculation techniques. Interocular,
convergence, zoom, focus and iris control
can all be coordinated through Element
Technica’s Stereo Assist feature; Technica
3D Rig users can also choose to integrate
Preston motors with the system via ports
and adapters.
Element Technica is coordinating
one-day operator training classes geared
toward camera assistants through Keslow
Camera and Offhollywood. For more information, visit www.elementtechnica.com
and www.technica3d.com.
of Action 3D Productions, chose the Quasar
3D Rigs to capture the Dave Matthews Band
concert at the Austin City Limits Festival,
Ben Harper at the Mile High Music Festival,
and Gogo Bordello at the All Points West
Music Festival. “The functionality of the
Technica 3D Rigs is such that when you’re
out on location shooting, they are quick to
set up and calibrate,” he says. “Once
aligned, they hold that alignment very
well.”
“Now, for the first time, the very best
3-D acquisition equipment can be rented
much like a traditional camera package,”
says Stephen Pizzo, co-founder of Element
Technica. “Combine that with the ability to
choose your own crew as well as your
favorite post facility, and you gain greater
creative control over the entire 3-D
process.”
Technica 3D systems will soon be
available in three different sizes to accommodate a variety of cameras. In addition to
the largest system, Quasar, the mid-sized
Pulsar mounts box-style digital-cinema
cameras such as the Red Scarlet, Red Epic
and Silicon Imaging SI-2K. The ultra-small
Neutron is designed for tiny 2⁄3"- or 1⁄3"imager cameras supporting C-mount
lenses, such as the SI-2K Mini and the Iconix
HD-RH1. All three Technica 3D Rig systems
can convert from parallel to beamsplitter
configuration and back.
Element Technica has also developed
a series of intuitive hardware/software tools
to automate stereo calculation. These tools
will be available as add-on modules for the
core 3D Rig systems to enable users to intuitively control how much or how little the
subject comes off of the screen without
84
February 2010
tial accessories. Rugged nylon handgrips on
either side of the tray allow for easy removal
and carrying. Underneath, the Red One fits
comfortably in the bag’s lower padded
compartment. When a panel is removed
from the upper accessory tray, the camera
can be stored without disturbing the
viewfinder. An adjustable nylon strap holds
Petrol Bags Red One
Petrol, a Vitec Group brand, has
introduced the Petrol Red Bag (PRB-15), an
innovative camera carrier specifically
designed to transport and protect the Red
One digital camera.
The Red Bag’s dual-directional
upside-down zippers open smoothly for
quick and easy access to the smartly
designed interior, where a removable upper
tray with detachable dividers provides the
perfect place to stash the Red One’s essen-
the camera firmly and safely in place, and
four detachable padded dividers help
secure the compartment’s contents and
form pockets for additional storage.
The PRB-15 comes equipped with a
separate fabric sleeve to hold the Red One’s
steel support rods. With the rods inside, the
Fast Forward Video Launches
Micron Recorder
Fast Forward Video (FFV) has
announced the release of its Micron HD digital video recorder (DVR), a powerful, costeffective solution for recording and playingout broadcast-quality digital SD and HD
video. The Micron HD offers many of the
features of FFV’s Omega HD DVR in a single
rack unit and at a price point specifically
targeted to today’s most budget-conscious
broadcast-grade operations.
“The Micron HD is a direct response
to many of our customers who requested an
inexpensive entry-level HD DVR that could
still measure up to the superb picture quality
of the Omega HD,” says Harry Glass, vice
president of sales for FFV. “The single-channel Micron HD is an ideal solution for broad-
casters seeking to migrate to HD operations
at a low cost per channel while maintaining
SD capabilities.”
The Micron HD utilizes high-quality
JPEG2000 compression at speeds up to
100 Mb/s, making it an excellent replacement for SD-only DVRs and analog tape
decks. It offers up to five hours of record
time, and its removable non-proprietary
2.5" SATA drive is fully compatible with
FFV’s Elite HD camera-mounted DVR. Users
can record, play and store multiple SD and
HD video files, and with a simple machine
controller, users can access a larger set of
functions and command multiple units with
one keystroke.
The suggested retail price of the
Micron HD DVR is $4,995. For more information, visit www.ffv.com.
sleeve stores neatly against the lower chamber’s middle divider. An external envelopestyle pocket keeps important documents
close at hand. Additional features include an
internal envelope-style pocket of clear plastic mesh, Petrol’s built-in smooth-gliding
wheel-and-tote assembly, Griplock interlocking top carrying handle and a padded
shoulder strap. Petrol’s exclusive thermoformed panels of cold-molded laminate and
injection-molded polypropylene legs safeguard the bottom of the bag from dirt or
water. The exterior is constructed of black
ballistic nylon and Cordura.
The PRB-15 has a recommended
price of $499. For more information, visit
www.petrolbags.com.
Chrosziel Accessorizes Red
Chrosziel now offers three matteboxes specially designed for the Red One
camera, as well as a support system with a
bridge plate and 19mm rods.
Of the three matteboxes, MB 840 R2
offers the most versatility, with its doublerotating filter stage and two identical multi-
Specialty Products
for Film, Video, & HD
format filter holders for 4"x5.65" horizontal
and 5"x5". Both rotate independently and
boast independent height adjustment. The
MB 840 R2 also features a convenient
swing-away design for easy lens changes,
and the mattebox mounts directly to the
19mm rods without the need for an
adapter. (If necessary, a tools-free clamp
adapter can be attached for mounting the
mattebox directly to the lens.) The maximum lens diameter compatible with the
mattebox is 142.5mm; smaller diameters
use rubber bellows and retaining rings.
The MB 805 Red is a variation on the
standard MB 805 mattebox. Like MB 840
R2, MB 805 Red fits directly onto the 19mm
Oppenheimer Camera Products’
current offerings include the OppCam
Panhandle System, LCD Monitor Yoke Mounts,
Arriflex 235 On-Board System, Handheld
GripSets, Macro & Ultra Wide Lenses and our
Angenieux & Fujinon Carry Handle Systems.
We are currently developing a series of on-camera
LCD Viewfinder Brackets, Support & Shoulder
Mount Systems for Canon DSLR cameras, and
Universal Monitor Yokes. We also create custom
products for our clients.
Oppenheimer Camera Products has been an innovator of elegant, practical, reliable camera accessories
since 1992. Our products are used by rental houses,
production companies and cameramen around the
globe. We welcome your suggestions and input!
PDUW\#RSSFDPFRP 6HDWWOH support rods. The fixed stage is equipped
with multi-format filter holders for 4"x4"
and 4"x5.65" horizontal; a second stage
features multi-format filter holders for
5"x5" and 4"x5.65" horizontal. Both the
MB 840 R2 and MB 805 Red can be
upgraded with further filter stages.
The MB 456 R2 boasts a compact
and lightweight (approximately 1.3 pounds)
design. It can be used with 15mm support
rods or it can attach directly to the lens as a
sunshade. The two rotating filter stages are
equipped with identical 4"x5.65"/4"x4"
filter holders. The maximum front-element
diameter is 130mm, covering most lenses
commonly used with the Red One.
Chrosziel products are distributed in
the United States by 16x9 Inc. For more
information, visit www.chrosziel.com and
www.16x9inc.com.
AJA Releases Free iPhone App
AJA Video Systems has released the
AJA DataCalc iPhone application, a fast and
simple storage-requirement calculator for
video and audio professionals. DataCalc can
be used in the field during acquisition or in
the edit bay during post, allowing the user
to effortlessly calculate their storage
consumption and data-capturing requirements. The application supports a wide
array of video-compression formats, including Apple ProRes, DVCProHD, HDV,
XDCam, DV, RGB and YUV uncompressed,
and more. Supported video standards
include NTSC, PAL, 1080i, 1080p, 720p, 2K
and 4K.
“We’re all big fans of the iPhone and
wanted to create an application that would
be useful to our customers in professional
digital content creation,” says Nick Rashby,
president of AJA Video Systems. “DataCalc
is right in line with AJA’s product philosophy,
which aims to deliver products that simplify
and streamline the often complex workflows of video professionals. It’s a simple
little application that has already proven to
be very handy in the field!”
The application features an intuitive
user interface where most settings can be
entered with a simple finger scroll through
lists of the most common file-format configurations. Durations can be entered in units
of days, hours or seconds, or in a precise
time code frame count. A “More” button
86
February 2010
allows users to further select and specify
frame rates, frame sizes and compression
type, as well as audio sample rates and bits
per sample. Pressing the “Information” icon
on the “More” page takes users to a
“Summary” page where they can review
results and have the option to deliver the
data via email.
DataCalc is available as a free download from the Apple iTunes Store. For more
information, visit www.aja.com.
Filmworkers Adds
Digigog Services
Filmworkers has launched the Digigog digital-media processing service at its
Chicago and Dallas locations. The service is
aimed at facilitating the growing number
of feature film, television and commercial
productions that are choosing to capture
and post their projects as data.
The Digigog offers a seamless, onestop solution for servicing commercials,
films and other projects from dailies
through delivery, especially those shot with
digital cameras such as the Red One and
Vision Research Phantom HD. Services
include dailies processing for digitally
acquired media, real-time non-linear color
grading at resolutions up to 2K, and final
assembly and deliverables production. The
Digigog’s services can also be packaged
with other services offered by Filmworkers,
including visual-effects production, CG
and motion-graphics design.
“Projects that originate on data
have special technical and creative requirements,” says Reid Brody, president of Filmworkers. “The Digigog has the resources
needed to process Red camera and other
data files with maximum quality and effi-
JMR Stores Red Data
JMR Electronics, Inc. has launched
the BlueStor Red Video Storage Server,
which boasts a transfer rate of over 1.4 GB/s
and is ideal for recording and streaming digital video imagery captured on a Red One
digital camera or used in complex SD, HD,
2K and 4K postproduction workflows.
The 4U rack-mount 16-bay RAID
system offers extremely high performance,
robust reliability and a wide variety of ingest
and output features, making it ideal for both
postproduction, streaming and DVR/DVTR
replacement editing applications. The
BlueStor Red also features dual quad-core
processors; dual 3 Gb/s internal SAS
expanders; dual PCIe RAID controllers;
redundant hot-swap power supplies and
fans; a 19-in-1 card reader; Blu-ray writer; an
Nvidia Quadro FX5600 SDI graphics card;
24 GB of DDR3 ECC memory; and USB,
FireWire, dual GigE and an E-SATA storage
port. The system can scale up to 32 TB using
the latest generation 2 TB disk drives.
JMR’s affordable and fault-tolerant
storage solutions are based on the
company’s PeSAN (PCIe Storage Attached
Network) technology. The company’s 16bay BlueStor PeSAN RAID systems were
developed to be the ultimate in high-performance Direct Attached Storage or Network
Attached Storage for a wide range of video
applications, including content creation,
video editing and 2K/4K digital-intermediate
applications requiring extremely high
sustained throughput and reliability. For
collaborative or multi-stream SD/HD and
2K/4K
DI
workflows
requiring even
higher performance and
scalable storage, BlueStor PeSAN RAIDs can
achieve up to 4,000 MB/s and be expanded
to over 4,000 TB using the current JMR
PeSAN technology.
www.jmr.com.
ciency. Our staff understands the nuances
of working with data. They can help clients
reap the benefits of a data-centric mode of
production while avoiding the pitfalls.”
The Digigog offers overnight dailies
processing for data files from virtually any
source. The system generates dailies in the
format required by the project’s editorial
team, including Avid DNX-HD and Apple
ProRes 422, as well as uncompressed files
for final color-correction and assembly.
Deliverables for review purposes are available in a variety of popular formats, including QuickTime.
The Digigog also offers real-time
non-linear color-grading services for both
film-based and digitally acquired projects
through the use of DaVinci’s Splice technology, which allows the company’s
DaVinci 2K Plus color correctors to grade
scanned imagery directly on a SAN.
Commercials and features can be graded
in context, saving time and enhancing the
creative process. Repositioning, grain
reduction and other image-processing
functions can be applied in real time.
Colorist Lynette Duensing notes, “Splice
allows us to directly access Red camera
DPX conversions. It’s a seamless process
from end to end.”
The Digigog’s proprietary software
facilitates importing EDLs and automates
most aspects of the final assembly process.
As color grading occurs at 2K, the workflow results in a high-resolution master
that can be used to produce deliverables
for all distribution channels, including HD,
SD and Internet media. Because all
elements are stored in a randomly accessible shared-storage environment, multiple
versions of a project can be produced
quickly and with ease.
www.filmworkers.com.
●
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February 2010
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89
Classifieds
EQUIPMENT FOR SALE
USED EQUIPMENT. PRO VIDEO & FILM EQUIPMENT
COMPANY. (972) 869-9990.
THE POWER BROKER 22 years selling used motion picture
equipment in California. Arriflex to Zeiss. 2.35 Anamorphic
lenses. www.cineused.com
[email protected]
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USED EQUIPMENT. PRO VIDEO & FILM EQUIPMENT
COMPANY. (888) 869-9998, [email protected].
www.UsedEquipmentNewsletter.com.
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Advertiser’s Index
16x9, Inc. 88
Eastman Kodak 9, C4
Abel Cine Tech 17
AC 1, 4, 66, 89
Aja Video Systems, Inc. 11
Alan Gordon Enterprises
89
Arri 51
AZGrip 88
Film Gear 41
Filmtools 6
Filter Gallery, The 88
Five Towns College 87
FTC West 88
Fuji Motion Picture 39
Backstage Equipment, Inc.
87
Band Pro Film & Digital 5
Burrell Enterprises 88
Hollywood Rentals 45
Hochschule 41
Hydroflex 83
Cavision Enterprises 29
Chapman/Leonard Studio
Equipment Inc. 21
Chapman University 61
Cinematographer Style 80
Cinematography
Electronics 87
Cinekinetic 88
Cinerover 88
Clairmont Film & Digital 27
Convergent Design 44
Cooke Optics 13
Deluxe C2
Denecke 88
BUY-SELL-CONSIGN-TRADE. 47 YEARS EXPERIENCE.
CALL BILL REITER. PRO VIDEO & FILM EQUIPMENT
COMPANY. (972) 869-9990.
STEADICAM ARM QUALITY SERVICE OVERHAUL AND
UPDATES. QUICK TURNAROUND. ROBERT LUNA (323)
938-5659.
February 2010
J.L. Fisher 23
Schneider Optics 2
Shelton Communications 88
Showbiz Expo 91
Stanton Video Services 85
Super16 Inc. 88
K 5600, Inc. 67
Kino Flo 54
Telescopic 89
Thales Angenieux 30-31
Transvideo International 55
Laffoux Solutions, Inc. 88
Lights! Action! Co. 89
VF Gadgets, Inc. 89
Visual Products 6
Mac Group C3
Matthews Studio Equipment
89
Movie Tech AG 89
MP&E Mayo Productions 89
MSM Design 6
Welch Integratead 93
Willy’s Widgets 88
www.theasc.com 77,
80, 83, 95
NAB 81
Nalpak Inc. 89
New York Film Academy 15
Oppenheimer Camera Prod.
85, 88
SERVICES AVAILABLE
90
Glidecam Industries 19
P+S Technik 25,
Panasonic Broadcast 7
PED Denz 53
Photon Beard 89
Pille Film Gmbh 88
Powermills 79
Pro8mm 88
Zacuto Films 89
ZGC, Inc. 13, 25
Zipcam Systems 43
In Memoriam
ASC member Marc E. Reshovsky, an award-winning cinematographer and still photographer, died on Nov. 20 at the age of
53. The cause of death was complications resulting from influenza.
Reshovsky was born on Nov. 6, 1957, in Los Angeles, Calif.
His mother, Zora, was a magazine writer, and his father, Ernest, was
a freelance photojournalist. Young Reshovsky would often accompany his father on assignments. When Reshovsky was in his early
teens, a local arts program introduced him to filmmaking, and one
of his Super 8mm films went on to earn accolades in National Educational Television’s 1971 National Young Filmmakers’ Competition,
airing nationwide on public television.
In 1975, with an eye on law school, Reshovsky began studying political science at the University of California-Los Angeles. Before
long, though, his passion for crafting images led him to transfer into
the university’s film department, where he concentrated on cinematography. After graduating with a B.A. in 1980, Reshovsky was
accepted into UCLA’s graduate film program, but he chose instead
to begin his professional career. His first jobs were as an assistant, but
he soon found work as a cinematographer on travel and adventure
documentaries, shooting in Europe, New Zealand, Indonesia and
Alaska.
From 1982-1984, Reshovsky lived and worked in New
Zealand, where he worked first as a still photographer and printer,
and then as a staff cinematographer for a small production company
that created commercials, industrials and documentaries. He
returned to Los Angeles in 1984 and quickly carved a niche in the
emerging field of music videos. By 1990, he had shot some 300
music videos, plus numerous long-form concerts for such acts as
Fleetwood Mac, Bon Jovi and Pink Floyd.
During this time, Reshovsky also took his first steps into
feature films, shooting low-budget features such as Sorority House
Massacre (1986) and Teen Witch (1989) and doing second-unit cinematography for Robert Richardson, ASC on Eight Men Out (1988)
92
February 2010
Marc Reshovsky, ASC, 1957-2009
and Oliver Stapleton, BSC on The Grifters (1990).
In 1992, Reshovsky was nominated for a CableACE award
for his cinematography in the pilot for Red Shoe Diaries. That same
year, he shot the music video for En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind,”
which brought him the Music Video Production Association Award
for Best Cinematography and an MTV Award nomination. He also
shot the short films Trevor (1994) and Lieberman in Love (1995),
which won Academy Awards for Best Live-Action Short Subject in
their respective years.
Reshovsky won an ASC Award in the Regular Series category
for his work on the 3rd Rock From the Sun episode “Nightmare on
Dick Street.” Three years later, in 2000, he joined the ASC; Russell
Carpenter, Steven Poster and John Schwartzman recommended
him for membership. That same year, Reshovsky was presented with
the Kodak Vision Lifetime Achievement Award for music-video cinematography.
In 1986, Reshovsky married Sandra Matsumoto. They had
two sons, Zachary and Rory, and settled in Pasadena, Calif.
Matsumoto died in 2004, and Reshovsky relocated to Lopez Island,
Wash. In 2007, he collaborated with viola da gamba player Vittorio
Ghielmi on the concert piece The Spectacle, based on Dieterich
Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostri cantatas.
A decade ago, while participating in a seminar on music
videos’ impact on feature filmmaking, Reshovsky was asked about
the effects of then-new digital technologies, and his answer still
rings true: “We are not going to devolve because of technology.
Cinematography is a language and a form of artistic expression
which comes from the soul.”
Reshovsky is survived by his sons; his partner, Taylor Bruce;
and his faithful dog, Mochi.
— Jon D. Witmer
●
Clubhouse News
94
February 2010
freelance world as a first camera assistant.
He later earned operating credits on such
features as My Fellow Americans and Ace
Ventura: Pet Detective, and such series as
Twin Peaks and Picket Fences. While operating on NYPD Blue, du Pont was promoted
to director of photography, and he has since
photographed episodes of Lincoln Heights,
Saving Grace and Private Practice. He has
also shot the features Confessions of a
Sexist Pig and Saving Shiloh.
Deakins Nominated for Spirit
Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC recently
notched his third Independent Spirit Award
nomination, this time for A Serious Man. He
was previously nominated for Homicide and
Fargo, winning for the latter.
The other nominees in the cinematography category this year are Adriano
Goldman, for Sin Nombre (AC April ’09);
Anne Misawa, for Treeless Mountain; Andrij
Parekh, for Cold Souls; and Peter Zeitlinger,
for Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New
Orleans.
Barber Elected to
2010 PERA Council
ASC associate Carly M. Barber of
Illumination Dynamics was recently elected
to the 2010 PERA Council, which serves the
needs of the equipment-rental market for
motion-picture, TV and commercial production. Other newly elected members are
Daniel Gurzi of Abel Cine Tech, Greg
Meyers of Cinequipt, J.R. Reid of JR Lighting, John Rule of Rule/Boston Camera
Rental, Mark Tye of Citation Support and
Mark Wofford of Production Consultants &
Equipment. They join sitting council
members Leigh Blicher of Videofax, Marc
Stephens of MPS Studios, and ASC associate Thomas Fletcher of Fletcher Camera &
Lenses.
●
Houghton photo by Ken Ortiz. Klein photo by Douglas Kirkland. Du Pont photo by James Zucal.
Top to bottom: Tom Houghton, ASC; David
Klein, ASC; Lex du Pont, ASC.
Houghton, Klein, du Pont
Join Society
A native of San Rafael, Calif., Tom
Houghton, ASC began working at a
Redding television station when he was 15.
He shot, developed and edited film for the
news and gained experience in the control
room. In high school, he earned a Honeywell scholarship for his photography, and he
pursued his passion for still and moving
images at New York University, where he
earned a Master of Fine Arts in film.
Houghton’s professional career took
him through the ranks of the electrical
department, and once he moved up to cinematographer, he shot commercials and such
features as Fire Down Below and Finding
Amanda. His director-of-photography credits include the series 30 Rock, Love Monkey,
Canterbury’s Law and Rescue Me. He
earned an Emmy nomination for the latter.
David Klein, ASC was born in St.
Louis, Mo., and raised near Boise, Idaho. His
father and grandfather were photography
and cinematography hobbyists, and when
Klein graduated from high school, his
grandfather gave him a 16mm Bolex.
While attending a filmmaking
program at the Vancouver Film School, Klein
met director Kevin Smith, with whom he
later collaborated on the features Clerks,
Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Clerks II and Zack
and Miri Make a Porno. Klein also shot
Smith’s forthcoming film Cop Out. The cinematographer’s credits include the features
Fool’s Gold, The Ape and Good Time Max,
and episodes of State of Grace, Gemini Division and Pushing Daisies.
Born in Wilmington, Del., Lex du
Pont, ASC developed an interest in photography through working on his high school’s
newspaper and yearbook. After earning a
Bachelor of Arts degree at Brown University,
he found work producing commercial
animatics in New York City. He went on to
become a television-commercial producer
before changing tacks and relocating to Los
Angeles.
On the West Coast, du Pont worked
for two years at Aramac Camera, a division
of Leonetti Cine Rentals, before entering the
Paul Cameron, ASC
When you were a child, what film made the strongest
impression on you?
Gone with the Wind (1939). I was 6 or 7, and my parents took me
to see it at an old theater in Montclair, N.J. I remember thinking the
screen was the size of the sky. I was mesmerized as the film played.
Which cinematographers, past or present, do you most
admire, and why?
I’m watching a lot of films shot by Gordon Willis, ASC, as he
recently got an honorary Oscar. Stunning artistry, powerful choices,
and a consummate professional with one of the best
eyes/sensibilities ever. He ruled the 1970s. Robbie Müller, NSC, BVK
had a huge effect on me when I was in university, and he still does.
How did you get your first break in the business?
I bought two cases of beer, went to Ferco and then to Panavision
New York. I made a couple friends, learned to use some cameras
and kept my eye on the ball. I knew I had to get into the union. I
failed my camera-assistant test at NABET. A month later, I screened
my reel at NABET and got in as a director of photography — different group of guys that day! After bouncing between Los Angeles
and New York, I went back to New York, walked into the Gersh
Agency and screened my reel for Tom Turley. He called me two
weeks later and had me working with Jeff Lovinger and Bob Giraldi
within a week.
What has been your most satisfying moment on a project?
Looking at the check print for Man on Fire.
What sparked your interest in photography?
The Polaroid Land Camera. I didn’t grow up with
a lot of family pictures or exposure to photography. When I was about 15, my brother bought
that camera, and I started taking a lot of
Polaroids. I still do, and I’ll continue to do so until
there is no more Polaroid film left on the planet.
Where did you train and/or study?
I ended up at the State University of New YorkPurchase by default; I couldn’t afford New York
University or Columbia University. At the time,
there were less than a half-dozen film programs
in the country. It turned out great because SUNYPurchase attracted artists from the New York
metropolitan area and a very eclectic group of professors. There was
no cinematography major per se. I started shooting everyone’s films
in my class because I couldn’t afford to make many on my own. I
was motivated, and I got into NABET 15 as a director of photography before I left school. I was kicked out of SUNY for filming a band
called the B-52s. At the time, I was working at the school’s equipment room, and my friend Charlie Libin and I had this crazy idea to
shoot this band from Georgia at a club in NYC where we
bartended. We brought a bunch of film students and gear into the
city and had a great night shooting. For most students, that was
their first real experience with shooting. A couple of months later,
Charlie and I were editing at the school, and we were asked to leave
because we never got the proper permissions. Oh, well. No degree.
Who were your early teachers or mentors?
Deszu Magyar, who taught directing at SUNY for a couple of years
and went on to run the American Film Institute. He influenced me
as an artist and as a man. He didn’t care about Hollywood or
success. He always said, ‘Work hard and don’t look back. Be
authentic.’ Apart from a short stint with Ron Fortunato, ASC, I was
never mentored by another cinematographer. I’m trying to do it
now for others.
What are some of your key artistic influences?
The Futurists, the Cubists and all of those outside the box, advancing guard.
96
February 2010
Have you made any memorable blunders?
One of the first student projects I did was a film
requiring multiple exposures. I shot it on regular
16mm, and I didn’t compensate for the total
number of exposures. In fact, I didn’t compensate at all. The footage was so overexposed it
was unusable — reversal film! I think I have that
one down now.
What is the best professional advice you’ve
ever received?
Invest in yourself, and if you’re not willing to risk
everything, then don’t bother doing anything.
What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you?
Book: The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb. Films: The Conversation, Klute and Dog Day Afternoon. Artwork: Cloud Gate, the
bean sculpture by Anish Kapoor in Chicago’s Millennium Park.
Music: Lou Reed’s Street Hassle.
Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like
to try?
I’m about to shoot a small film with director Malcolm Venville. It’s
a very different project for me. I’ve been shying away from bigger
action films and trying to move into more dramatic material.
If you weren’t a cinematographer, what might you be doing
instead?
Cutting wood and living in the wilderness. Into the Wild with good
food and wine.
Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for
membership?
Tom Sigel, Daniel Pearl and Jeff Cronenweth.
How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?
I’ve always felt pressure to shoot good films, and now I feel it more
than ever.
●
Photo by Fernando Fespiritusanto.
Close-up
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ONFILM
C H R I S M A N L E Y, A S C
“My early experience working for Roger Corman
taught me how to work quickly without
compromising. At its best, cinematography
reinforces the emotion or mood of a scene
the same way that the music in the score
does. It’s almost intangible–the audience is
only marginally aware of it on a subconscious
level. I believe that shooting on film is part of
the equation. There’s an emotional quotient
that you can’t measure, but the audience can
feel it. There have been experiments where
audiences looked at the same scene recorded in
both film and digital formats. They thought the
performances were better on film, even though
it was the same exact scene. … I trust my eyes.
If I see it on set, I know the audience will see
it on film in cinemas and on HD television sets.
As filmmakers, every film or still image we see
informs the images we choose to make in the
future. We are all standing on the backs of the
great cinematographers who came before us.”
Chris Manley, ASC began his career shooting
low-budget films for Roger Corman, including
The Phantom Eye which won a daytime Emmy®
Award for cinematography. His credits include
the television series Threat Matrix, CSI: NY,
Prison Break and Mad Men, which earned a
2009 Emmy® nomination for cinematography.
[All these programs were shot on Kodak motion picture film.]
For an extended interview with Chris Manley,
visit www.kodak.com/go/onfilm.
To order Kodak motion picture film,
call (800) 621-film.
www.motion.kodak.com
© Eastman Kodak Company, 2009.
Photography: © 2009 Douglas Kirkland

grandeur

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