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American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 93rd year of publication, is published
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OFFICERS - 2012/2013
Stephen Lighthill
President
Daryn Okada
Vice President
Richard Crudo
Vice President
Kees Van Oostrum
Vice President
Victor J. Kemper
Treasurer
Frederic Goodich
Secretary
Steven Fierberg
Sergeant At Arms
MEMBERS OF THE
BOARD
John Bailey
Stephen H. Burum
Curtis Clark
Richard Crudo
Dean Cundey
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Matthew Leonetti
Stephen Lighthill
Michael O'Shea
Robert Primes
Owen Roizman
Kees Van Oostrum
ALTERNATES
Ron Garcia
Julio Macat
Kenneth Zunder
Steven Fierberg
Karl Walter Lindenlaub
MUSEUM CURATOR
Steve Gainer
American Society of Cine ma tog ra phers
The ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but
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This issue has a decidedly Australian flavor, spotlighting a
trio of cinematographers who hail from Down Under. First
and foremost is Dean Semler, ASC, ACS, who will receive
the Societys Lifetime Achievement Award on Feb. 10.
During a long and prosperous career, Semler has amassed
dozens of credits on a wide variety of popular movies. In
1991, he earned Academy and ASC awards for Dances
with Wolves, and he earned a second ASC nomination in
2007 for Apocalypto. A member of the Australian Cine-
matographers Societys Hall of Fame who has received the
Queens Medal (one of Australias highest honors), Semler
has also won an Australian Film Institute Award (for the
thriller Razorback) and earned five additional AFI nominations. Youd think every film
was his first film, camera operator Mark Goellnicht tells Jean Oppenheimer in her
entertaining profile of Semler (Vision and Verve, page 62). He still has that excite-
ment in him.
Zero Dark Thirty, a gritty procedural that dramatizes the CIAs hunt for Osama bin
Laden, was shot by another Australian with keen eyes and a hot hand: Greig Fraser,
ACS, who joined the project after lending his talents to the recent features Let Me In,
Snow White and the Huntsman and Killing Them Softly. In Michael Goldmans piece
about the production (The Worlds Most Wanted Man, page 32), director Kathryn
Bigelow says she wanted to work with a cinematographer who possessed enormous
confidence to go along with his skill. Mission accomplished, as the saying goes.
The period drama Gangster Squad benefits from cinematography by Dion Beebe,
ASC, ACS, who has also enjoyed big success in Hollywood. Beebes experience on
major productions served him well alongside director Ruben Fleischer, who was helm-
ing his third feature. Im a young filmmaker, Fleischer tells associate editor Jon
Witmer (War on Crime, page 42). Dion is such a maestro and so experienced, and
he taught me so much. I value his opinion and respect everything he did.
This months issue also covers the TV miniseries Parades End, which Mike Eley,
BSC shot at locations in England and Belgium. London correspondent Mark Hope-Jones
visited the production while the filmmakers were staging battlefield scenes in the latter
country (Crumbling Pillars, page 54). Eley notes that he and director Susanna White
were inspired by an exhibition of Vorticist paintings at the Tate Modern museum in
London: Parades End is thought of as one of the first modernist novels, and Vorticism
hit the world around 1914, slap-bang in the middle of our story. In particular, we were
struck by the vortographs, which are photographs taken through a fractured mirror,
and we decided to borrow that technique.
Rounding out this issue is a pictorial recap of the 2012 Plus Camerimage festival,
which lived up to its billing as a premiere showcase for the art of cinematography
(Postcards from Poland, page 72).
Stephen Pizzello
Executive Editor
Editors Note
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As you read this, know that you are probably one of many who will
become People Without A History. Why? Because almost everything you
write and every photo you save things that have traditionally informed
historians about previous generations exist only in the digital domain,
on hard drives or SSD devices. The half-life of a mechanical hard drive is
about five years. That means the magnetic particles on the surface of the
drive lose 50 percent of their strength in five years, and that makes your
magnetically stored data vulnerable to corruption.
There is also the question of digital medias obsolescence. What tech-
nology will your grandchildren use to access your letters and photos? In
50 years, a LaCie drive will probably be an unfamiliar object.
If you back up your hard drive with another, and maybe another, and
leave them all at your home, you have broken Rule 2 of archiving:
Geographically separate your master copies. Whats Rule 1? Your master
should last 100 years and be readable with the naked eye. Okay, they are
not rules, but they are among archivists 10 commandments, I guarantee
you. So, unless we all start saving our pictures and correspondence on
good old paper, we will pass nothing of our own history to our grand-
children, or possibly even to our children.
And what of our collective cultural heritage? As motion-picture labs
close, moving images are more and more likely to be preserved on
formats that cannot rival the universality of motion-picture film. There is
no universally agreed-upon or proven archival storage method for digital
media.
Hollywood studios have announced they will soon stop making 35mm release prints for new movies, and that they
intend to stop striking new prints of existing films. This is terrible news for revival houses, small film festivals, movie theaters
that cannot afford to buy or maintain digital projectors, and museums or archives that occasionally want to screen a movie
with a film projector, as it was originally intended to be shown. It is amazing to us that Hollywood has no plan to facilitate
the screening of films in their original formats.
It is also amazing that in the industrys transition to digital exhibition, little thought has been given to the sizable
educational market. At some colleges and universities, cinematography students mainly screen film prints, seldom Blu-rays
or DVDs. Cinematography students need to build a comprehensive mental library that includes the wondrous artifacts of
grain, gate weave, motion blur, and the other imaging glories of film.
Well, this is awards season, and the magazine you are reading recently won four Folio Awards for Editorial Excel-
lence, or Eddies. In the category of Business to Business: Media/Entertainment/Publishing, the magazines June 12 and
Dec. 11 editions won the Gold and Silver Eddies, respectively, for Best Full Issue. And AC associate editor Jon Witmer won
the Gold Eddie for Best Single Article for his piece on The Avengers (June 12), while contributing writer Benjamin Bergery
won the Silver Eddie for Best Single Article for his piece on The Tree of Life (Aug. 11). Congratulations to our publisher,
Martha Winterhalter, and executive editor, Stephen Pizzello, as well as their colleagues! Onward with paper!
Stephen Lighthill
ASC President
Presidents Desk
10 February 2013 American Cinematographer
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2012 Canon U.S.A., Inc. All rights reserved. Canon and EOS are registered trademarks of Canon Inc. in the United States and may also be registered trademarks or trademarks in other countries.
Pushing Boundaries with Marilyn Manson
By Jennifer Wolfe
The music video for Marilyn Mansons Slo-Mo-Tion,
directed by Manson and shot by Alan Lasky, utilizes motion effects
captured in-camera to create a dynamic look that pushes the bound-
aries of digital cinematography. Shot primarily on P+S Techniks PS-
Cam X35, the video is a literal realization of the songs refrain,
wherein Manson chants, This is my beautiful show, and everything
is shot in slo-mo-tion. Manson worked closely with Lasky, who also
served as the visual-effects supervisor, to create the complex motion
effects, many of which depended on sophisticated motion-vector
analysis and complex mathematical algorithms.
With an undergraduate degree in film from New York Univer-
sity and a masters in media technology from the Massachusetts Insti-
tute of Technology, Lasky has consulted for a number of camera
companies over the years, including P+S Technik and Dalsa. A veteran
of music-video cinematography, he first collaborated with Manson
on No Reflection, the first video from Born Villain. The great thing
about working with Manson is that he is not afraid to utilize all of a
cameras potential functionality, Lasky says. Whats more, hell
always say, I want to push it way, way, way, way further. Once we
decoupled ourselves from the standard model of rock-video produc-
tion, we were able to push the technology and get into an experi-
mental side of filmmaking that is fun and exciting and kind of
dangerous, too.
Whats really cool about the X35 is that not only does it allow
you to capture up to 500 fps with a full-frame sensor and global shut-
ter, but it also enables you to shoot time-lapse, alter frame rates, do
speed ramping, and change and manipulate the shutter in really
interesting ways, Lasky continues. He notes that Manson dislikes
using greenscreen and common compositing techniques. He loves
image processing and would much rather get it in-camera. Hes
about manipulating images, not assembling them.
Using a style known as glitch art, a technique related to data
moshing, Lasky and editor/visual-effects artist Richard Piedra applied
optical-flow analysis techniques to material captured with the PS-
Cam X35 in order to create artifacts within the footage. Basically,
you take an image-processing algorithm and destabilize it in order
for it to do something that it was never designed to do, says Lasky.
Once you knock the foundation out from under the fundamental
algorithm, the resulting imagery is the embodiment of what we call
the glitch. The visual artifacts that result from the destabilization of
the algorithm can be very interesting, and theyre something you
couldnt get any other way. We wanted to fundamentally destabilize
the optical-flow analysis and the timing interpolation in such a way
that we could get these artifacts that might look really cool.
Lasky shot the material at 6 fps with a 360-degree shutter,
capturing the footage to solid-state drives as uncompressed Quick-
Time 10-bit files using Blackmagic Designs Hyperdeck recorder. The
images began to blur, becoming jerky and strange looking, he
says. The camera was essentially allowing us to manipulate time.
We shot the material and then brought that footage in for some
fairly sophisticated motion-vector analysis. Then we took that
output, the underlying motion-vector map in other words, a
mathematically derived vector map of the motion of the pixels in the
Short Takes
Shot by Alan
Lasky, the music
video for
Marilyn
Mansons
Slo-Mo-Tion
features a
variety of
motion effects
that were
created
in-camera using
a P+S Technik
PS-Cam X35.
I
12 February 2013 American Cinematographer
P
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David Stump
ASC, DP/VFX Supervisor
frame and started experimenting.
When Manson saw the results, he
suggested shooting some of the images
using ultraviolet light. We had no idea if
that would work at all, Lasky recalls. We
didnt know the UV cutoff point of the
sensor or the phosphor levels, so we had to
go in and run some tests. The first thing we
did was shut off all the cameras internal
processing, but I wish we could have
removed the internal filters on the sensor as
well. If wed had enough time, I probably
would have removed the UV-cutoff filter.
We ended up having to boost the gain on
the back end, but it came out looking
great, like this strange, smeared, moving
painting.
Lasky had shot with ultraviolet light
before, but Slo-Mo-Tion marked his most
extensive use of it. The potential is there
for some very interesting imagery, both
ultraviolet and infrared, he observes. Ive
been researching how to shoot without the
infrared-cutoff filters and without the UV-
cutoff filters, and learning what it takes to
excite the photosites on sensors using those
kinds of light rather than the visible light
spectrum.
Lasky used Kino Flo Diva-Lites to light
the UV sequences. If we were to do it
again, I would probably look for a little bit
more brightness value so we could get a
little more depth-of-field. The Kinos gave us
the right amount of exposure, and we were
also able to get very good range using the
cameras extra-sized sensor. It took a bit of
tweaking in color correction because, of
course, the standard sensors are not
designed to work with UV light. Its an
entirely different spectrum.
Preparing the highly processed
images for editing was the next crucial step.
Its important to note that we did a huge
amount of image processing before moving
into the edit bay, says Lasky. Its also
important to remember that we did an
enormous amount of image processing
with the motion-analysis vector tool as
well.
A variety of de-noising tools were
applied to the 1920x1080-resolution
footage, which was then transcoded into
ProRes 4:4:4 and 4:2:2 formats using
Adobe After Effects and treated with color
look-up tables designed by Lasky, Manson
14 February 2013 American Cinematographer
Top and middle: A portion of the music video was shot using ultraviolet light,
resulting in images that looked like this strange, smeared, moving painting, says Lasky.
Bottom: Manson and Lasky frame up the X35.
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and Piedra. Depending upon the nature of
the shot, we would utilize completely differ-
ent de-noising applications, Lasky notes,
adding that five separate tools were
employed. Some of them are better at
fixed-pattern noise, and some are better at
high-gain noise, so it really depended on the
shot content.
Lasky and Piedra set up a robust post
pipeline at Sturmgruppe, creating fully
rendered and approved pre-comp elements
sorted into a detailed bin structure for edit-
ing within Adobe After Effects CS6. Mater-
ial from the PS-Cam X35 was intercut with
footage captured with Canon EOS 5D Mark
III and Mark II DSLRs; the Canon material
was acquired primarily in the native Canon
codec, although the new, higher quality IPB
codec available on the Mark III was also
used for certain elements shot vrit style on
the streets of Los Angeles.
For this type of experimental
project, with multiple levels of image
processing, its important to have a solid
background in visual effects, notes Lasky.
We needed to develop a complex post
pipeline with sophisticated process trees
that would allow us to get back to the orig-
inal footage and change something in it if
we needed to.
As is the case for so many cine-
matographers, image capture, visual effects
and post all blend into one for Lasky. Its a
difficult thing for some people to metabo-
lize, but the way Ive worked throughout my
career has led me in this direction for a long
time now, he says. I dont consider myself
a cinematographer, a visual-effects artist, an
editor or a post person, but I certainly
consider myself whatever the word is for all
of those things.
16 February 2013 American Cinematographer
Lasky worked with editor/visual-effects artist Richard Piedra to fundamentally
destabilize the optical-flow analysis and the timing interpolation in such a way that we
could get these artifacts, Lasky explains.
18 February 2013 American Cinematographer
Power Plays
By John Calhoun
The Netflix series House of Cards exists in the bubble of Wash-
ington, D.C., politics, but it isnt a seat of government that connects
with the populace at large its more like a viper pit with no views
in. Says director of photography Eigil Bryld, Most of the windows in
the show are either burned or black. The idea was that the outside
world doesnt really matter. What matters is whats in the room, not
whats beyond it.
Whats in the room connivers, manipulators and schemers
is not pretty. The master manipulator is Southern Congressman
Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey), the House of Representatives
Majority Whip, who vows to get revenge after he is passed over for
a cabinet post by the incoming president.
Spacey is an executive producer on the series, as is David
Fincher, who directed the first two episodes and largely created its
aesthetic. Bryld, a Danish cinematographer who is based in New
York, says Fincher and Spaceys involvement was among the factors
that attracted him to his first episodic TV drama. I dont watch a
lot of TV series, and Ive always had the rule that I would only do
projects that I would watch myself, explains the cinematographer,
whose credits include the features Not Fade Away and In Bruges (AC
April 08). But, he adds, Ive always sort of been a political animal,
and the combination of the source material (a novel by Michael
Dobbs), the script, and the participation of Fincher and Spacey led
him to sign on.
Shooting in a slightly cropped 2:1 aspect ratio with two Red
Epic cameras simultaneously was the cornerstone of the visual
approach. Fincher has worked with Red Digital Cinema since The
Social Network and has a strong relationship with the brand. He
loves the look and the cameras design, says Bryld. He works very
closely with the company to get what he needs. Hes very technically
clued up, much more than I am!
Images were shot at 6:1 compression and recorded to SSD
cards. One option on the Epic that proved especially useful on House
of Cards was the HDRx option, which we used to control the sky
and windows, and to reduce contrast if there was a harsh sun,
adds Bryld.
Fincher, Bryld and other key collaborators spent 10 weeks
prepping the series in Baltimore, where most of it was shot. Much
of this time was devoted to designing the camera package, which
Fincher continually pared down. David doesnt want a huge
camera truck, and he kept an eye on how much gear we were
using, says Bryld. We didnt carry a lot of big lights. We had a van
custom-built so we could roll out our dollies and cameras very
quickly. We didnt have a DIT [digital-imaging technician]. We basi-
cally shot everything around 4,000K and then adjusted our lighting
as opposed to tweaking the camera or building complicated looks.
The general idea was, keep it simple so we can stay open and add
layers upon layers of ideas, thereby creating something very complex
and dynamic.
Finchers ground rules included no Steadicam, no handheld
and no zoom lenses, the cinematographer continues. The first two
techniques were avoided for stylistic reasons. If people were walk-
ing down a corridor, we werent interested in using a Steadicam or
tracking in a close-up, says Bryld, who cites A-camera operator
Gary W. Jay as a major collaborator on the show. To a great extent,
Production Slate
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.
Rep. Frank
Underwood
(Kevin Spacey,
right) establishes
a secret
relationship with
an ambitious
reporter, Zoe
(Kate Mara), in
the Netflix series
House of Cards.
I
20 February 2013 American Cinematographer
moves are on the dolly or the boom. We
wanted to use the space more so people
would grow larger in the frame or move away
and get smaller. We went for a more
composed look; even though we had very
shallow focus, we tried to create deep compo-
sitions all the time to add a sense of drama and
power, and the 2:1 aspect ratio really helped
with that.
The rule about no zoom lenses had to
do not only with Finchers preference, but also
with the need to work at very low light levels,
and with concerns of time and efficiency. Bryld
explains, When we walked into a location, it
had to either be pre-lit or have an ambient
light level we could work with. A lot of the
design came from picking the right locations
and designing the sets in a specific way so we
had an ambience. Obviously, the difficult thing
with that was giving it character and atmos-
phere as well. Darkness is a very important
element in the story; Frank is often disappear-
ing into darkness or emerging from darkness.
The entire show was shot on Arri/Zeiss
Master Primes, mostly the 27mm and 35mm.
We used longer lenses at times for close-ups,
but we never wanted the sense of space to
disappear, says Bryld.
Standing sets built in a Baltimore ware-
house included the Underwood residence, a
shadowy townhouse where Frank and his
equally ambitious wife, Claire (Robin Wright),
often conspire over a shared cigarette late at
night; the considerably more modest apart-
ment of Zoe (Kate Mara), a young reporter
who uses Frank as an anonymous source; and
various settings in the corridors of power,
including the Oval Office. Locations included
the offices of The Baltimore Sun, which
provided a set for Zoes newspaper, The Wash-
ington Herald; and Baltimores War Memorial
Building, where the new presidents inaugural
ball was shot.
In general, mixed light sources give way
to a more uniform color temperature and
brighter sources the closer we get to power,
says Bryld. We worked with the art depart-
ment to design practicals, and to make sure
the wall color was right for the ambient light-
ing so we would always get separation. We
often used laptop screens and practical fixtures
as sources. We were on our toes all the time,
trying to find the light.
In Franks office, the Oval Office and on
other sets, bleached muslin was installed in the
Top: Underwood confers with his wife, Claire (Robin Wright). Middle: Zoe collates information
for a scoop that will land her in the national spotlight. Bottom: Rep. Patrick Russo (Corey Stoll)
gets a call he has been dreading.
22 February 2013 American Cinematographer
ceilings for soft ambience. Kino Flos wired to
dimmer boards were used in mixed color
temperatures. We tried to balance every-
thing as close to daylight as possible because
of Reds daylight-balanced sensor, notes
Bryld. We used the 1-stop polarizer, which
cools the image in a way that works well
with the Red. We would typically try to cool
off the practical bulbs with either CTB or
CTB. In the newspaper office, we changed
all the fluorescent tubes to drive the color
towards the cooler spectrum. Compact
fluorescents were used in many practicals,
and we werent too worried about the
green. The White House and other settings
closer to the source of power are less cont-
aminated with green; they have a warmer,
cleaner, more contrasty look.
In two sequences in the second
episode the inauguration and the inau-
gural ball power is very close indeed. The
inauguration was shot in a warehouse
doubling as an exterior. We wanted to use
real footage of crowds from Obamas 2009
inauguration, so we had to match that
light, says Bryld. We created the sun with
12-light Maxi-Brutes through 20-by-20
frames of Soft Frost, and we hung a 20-
by-20 of blue-tinted fabric in the ceiling and
bounced 10Ks into it to create ambient
skylight. In addition, we had to light a
number of greenscreens to allow for set
extensions and crowd replication in post.
For the inaugural ball, existing chan-
deliers in the War Memorial were used,
along with Kino Flos and China balls on
boomed-in Menace Arms. We were using a
lot of flags as well, basically taking away and
then adding a little bit of separation, Bryld
says. That scene is a really good example of
how we worked: we looked at what was
there and augmented it with either lighting
or the set design. We built a frosted-Plexi-
glas bar lit from inside by Kino tubes that
helped define that space, and we had prac-
tical lamps on the tables and greenscreens
around the stage that were replaced by
images of the American flag in post. This
sequence features a Technocrane shot of
Spacey crossing the floor, a move that was
typically methodical in its planning, with
measured-out, taped-down space, and as
soon as we were done with the shot, we
came off the Technocrane and moved on.
Whatever the setting in House of
Cards, darkness is never far away. We shot
at incredibly low light levels, says Bryld.
The Master Primes are very fast, and
Fincher is not afraid to shoot at T1.4, even
though thats challenging for the first assis-
tants. With the combination of Master
Primes and the Red, you can never say there
isnt enough light, because there pretty
much always is! But Fincher knows his craft
well, so he always fully understands what
hes asking the camera crew to do.
Because Fincher is so specific about
what he wants the image to contain, you
light specifically for that. Also, the A and B
cameras are usually kept very close, often
stacked one on top of the other. We typi-
cally had one camera doing a low-angle
wide over and the other doing a tight over,
says Bryld. Continuity is key. If you have
perfect continuity, I think it creates a
hypnotic universe, like youre almost experi-
encing something in real time. In Finchers
world, you have to respect space and time,
and two cameras help with that.
After the first two episodes, the
world of the show expanded to include
other directors, such as James Foley, Joel
Schumacher, Carl Franklin and Allen Coul-
ter. After shooting the first 11 episodes,
Bryld moved on, making way for Tim Ives to
shoot the last two. (Bryld returned toward
the end of the shoot to do some second-
unit work with Fincher.) I did 130 days
pretty much back-to-back, says Bryld. We
had 15 days per episode on the first two,
and then the rest of the episodes were 10
days each. I didnt have much time to
prepare with the incoming director other
than location scouting after a long days
work. This, he notes, was one reason the
10-week prep period was vital: We knew
we werent only prepping the first two
episodes.
However challenging it was for him
to shoot with one director on a Thursday
and another on a Friday, Bryld notes that
House of Cards presented some challenges
for the directors as well. We had to try to
accommodate the new directors ideas but
at the same time stick to the rules. A lot of
the directors were used to working with
Steadicam, and sometimes they would ask
for a shot that would be a natural
Steadicam shot, but wed go to great
lengths to track it or design it differently.
There also was very little time for
Bryld to be involved in post, which Fincher
supervised at A52 in Santa Monica, Calif.
During the shoot, David did a preliminary
grade using the Pix HD system, viewing
images in ProRes 4:4:4 on a Boland monitor
and sending his notes to [colorist] Paul
Yacono, says Bryld. I was sent the first
two episodes for comments, but David
followed through on every detail.
Netflix will make all 13 episodes of
House of Cards available for streaming on
Feb. 1. The company has committed to two
more seasons of the show, but Bryld says his
involvement will most likely be limited. In
order for me to take a project, it has to scare
me in some way, and having done 11
episodes of the show, Im not sure it scares
me enough anymore. But it is my baby, so
well see!
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.0:1
Digital Capture
Red Epic
Arri/Zeiss Master Prime
At the A and B
cameras are
(from left)
B-camera 1st AC
Kurt Parlow,
B-camera
operator
Peter Gulla,
cinematographer
Eigil Bryld, and
A-camera
operator Gary
Jay. The camera
at left is a prop.
motion footage. Stand Up Guys 2012 Lakeshore Entertainment. All rights reserved. Not for sale or duplication.
4PJOHLS.YHK`
32 February 2013 American Cinematographer
C
inematographer Greig Fraser, ACS emphasizes that
director Kathryn Bigelow really excels at the run-and-
gun method of filmmaking, and he experienced this
firsthand on Zero Dark Thirty, which documents the
decade-long manhunt for Osama bin Laden and the 2011
covert op in Pakistan that successfully ended it.
Bigelow says she knew early on that accurately re-creat-
ing the events, particularly the nighttime raid on bin Ladens
compound, would be no easy feat, and she wanted a cine-
matographer who possessed enormous confidence to go
along with his skill. She found that in Fraser, whose recent
credits include Killing Them Softly (AC Oct. 12), Snow White
and the Huntsman (AC June 12) and Let Me In (AC Oct. 10).
Greig was a real lifeline on a difficult production, says
Bigelow, adding that their collaboration had a spirited,
wonderful, giving and generous quality to it.
Bigelows last film, The Hurt Locker, was shot documen-
tary style, mostly on Super 16mm, by Barry Ackroyd, BSC
(AC July 09). When she and Fraser began discussing Zero
Dark Thirty, the director said she once again wanted a hand-
held, guerrilla-filmmaking feel to the production, and she was
open to whatever format would work best. I think the only
format we didnt talk about was Super 8, recalls Fraser. We
even discussed prosumer cameras. I had tested various digital
formats for Snow White and had a good idea about the pros
and cons of each for a show like this one. Production was not
going to be a linear affair; we would be shooting in India and
Jordan largely without local support staff or a studio system
The Worlds
Most
WantedMan
Zero Dark Thirty, directed by
Kathryn Bigelow and shot by
Greig Fraser, ACS, dramatizes the
hunt for Osama bin Laden with a
run-and-gun style.
By Michael Goldman
|
www.theasc.com February 2013 33
was neither feasible nor conducive to
the cracking pace the production
required. He therefore asked Codex,
Digilab Services of London, and video-
assist company Video Hawks of Los
Angeles to help devise a methodology
that would allow Bigelow to view what
was being shot in the least invasive way
possible.
Video Hawks had just come off
World War Z (shot by Robert
Richardson, ASC), another Alexa show
that also needed to work light and tight
and fast, says Video Hawks co-owner
Glenn Derry, and the company sent one
of the custom backpacks developed for
World War Z to Frasers camera crew in
the U.K. so they could try it out. The
pack was attached to a diving vest and
held a Codex recorder, camera batteries,
video transmitters and other accessories,
with only one lightweight cable running
to the camera head. We decided that
backpack was too heavy for our film, as
it was going to be mainly handheld, so
we had to come up with a lighter
version, recalls 1st AC Jake Marcuson.
After trying quite a few different packs,
we decided on lightweight running
packs. Each held a small plywood frame
on which we mounted the Codex, two
Gold Mount batteries and the trans-
mitter. The transmitter was either a
short-range wireless unit or a longer-
range Cobham Technical Services unit
that could transmit the camera image to
handheld Sound Devices Pix 240
monitors.
The running packs made it possi-
ble for the production to record
U
n
i
t
p
h
o
t
o
g
r
a
p
h
y
b
y
J
o
n
a
t
h
a
n
O
l
l
e
y
.
P
h
o
t
o
s
a
n
d
f
r
a
m
e
g
r
a
b
s
c
o
u
r
t
e
s
y
o
f
C
o
l
u
m
b
i
a
P
i
c
t
u
r
e
s
/
S
o
n
y
P
i
c
t
u
r
e
s
E
n
t
e
r
t
a
i
n
m
e
n
t
.
In these frames from Zero Dark Thirty, Navy SEALs fly into action and land
at a walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that is believed to house
Osama bin Laden. Low-light and no-light/night-vision looks differentiate
objective and subjective perspectives during the raid. Far right: Director of
photography Greig Fraser, ACS.
harsh light of the Middle East for many
scenes that are set in Afghanistan and
Pakistan, so we had to be sure our
format would work suitably well with
highlights, he adds. The Alexa just
made the most sense for this show
because it works so well in both
extremes.
In choosing a format, Fraser had
another important requirement: an
idiot-proof workflow that would not
impede the filmmakers during the
shoot. He planned to run four handheld
cameras for many scenes, and he
believed a sophisticated video village
Greig was a real
lifeline on a difficult
production.
nearby in fact, we would be as far
from technical support as we could get!
So I wanted a tried and tested system
that would be simple to use on location
in a run-and-gun situation. Film is
tried and tested, of course, but we were
going to be in heat and dust and far
from labs, often shooting in locations
we hadnt been able to scout, and often
in very low light.
These considerations led the
filmmakers to opt for digital capture
with Arri Alexa Plus and M cameras,
which they rented from Panavision
U.K. In testing, we found the low-light
capabilities of the Alexa to be quite
amazing, Fraser says. The camera has
a reach into shadows that film does not
have, and a key portion of this movie
takes place in the dead of night, with no
motivation for light whatsoever. The
raid on the bin Laden compound actu-
ally took place on a moonless night.
We also had to deal with the
34 February 2013 American Cinematographer
ArriRaw while providing a wireless
image for Bigelow and Fraser to view on
handheld monitors. On World War Z,
we learned we could remove our camera
operators from the video assist and do
without an engineering village, and Zero
Dark Thirty just took the idea to the
next level, says Derry. They had four
and sometimes five or six cameras going
at a time, and Kathryn was able to have
a wireless image in front of her at all
times without worrying about the tradi-
tional video village. She didnt need a
video-assist operator; she could use the
monitor in her hand to view [footage
from] any of the cameras while she was
running around with Greig.
Marcuson says the running
packs, which were worn by the grips
and the first assistants, and sometimes
by the camera operators, facilitated an
impressive degree of mobility. It was a
pretty easy arrangement, he says.
Keeping the cameras as light as possi-
ble was the main thing because the
operators had them on their shoulders
all day long, often for very long takes.
War onCrime
Top and middle: A
Phantom Flex high-
speed camera was
used to capture an
early scene of Cohen
battering a punching
bag. Bottom: Director
Ruben Fleischer works
through a scene with
Nick Nolte, who plays
Police Chief Bill
Parker, in Los
Angeles City Hall; the
office was primarily
lit by 18K HMIs
through the
windows,
supplemented by
covered wagons
gelled with
1
2 Blue.
www.theasc.com February 2013 45
Bellflower, Calif. Because of scheduling
constraints, Beebe recounts, We had to
fit this inside an existing location, so we
found an area in an old department
store that we were using [for other
scenes]. The art department built the
window and layered on paper and paint
to create a patina on the window and
the existing walls. We had an 18K
streaming in through the window, and
we had a 4K bouncing off unbleached
muslin on the floor.
Much of Gangster Squad takes
place in night exteriors. When working
away from city lights, Beebe typically
created a moonlight source with HMI
fixtures. I take some of the blue out of
them, usually with or CTO, and
add a little Plus Green. We used 18Ks
display at the color station, he says. It
can be frustrating because it often takes
me off the set, but Ive also tried to train
myself to make decisions off the
camera-mounted monitor so that Im
not completely tied to the DIT tent.
[The Alexa presents] a different latitude
than film, but the more you use it, the
more you understand it, and the more
you can respond intuitively to what
youre shooting, just as cinematogra-
phers have always done while shooting
on film.
Beebe adds that he and DIT
Gregson Gabrio worked with
Technicolors DP Lights to set our
look-up tables in prep, and we kept the
DP Lights system with us through
production. When shooting digital, and
particularly when shooting raw, the time
spent defining your look in prep is criti-
cal. The LUTs you create determine the
color palette and affect the dynamic
range youre going to be working in, and
that, in turn, affects your lighting ratios
and whole approach to the project.
The Alexas ArriRaw footage was
captured to Codex Onboard S
recorders. It was standard throughout
the shoot to run two cameras simulta-
neously, with Peter Rosenfeld serving as
the A-camera/Steadicam operator and
John Skotchdopole operating the B
camera. Coming from comedy, Im a
huge fan of using two cameras, says
Fleischer. Most of the time, both
would shoot in the same direction, like a
wide and a tight or a three-quarter and
a straight-on, but occasionally, wed do
opposing angles. I dont know if its
necessarily any cinematographers pref-
erence, but Dion accommodated that
having worked with Michael Mann,
I think hes used to it!
The filmmakers occasionally ran
the Alexas above 24 fps, but for certain
sequences that required especially high
frame rates, a Vision Research Phantom
Flex was brought in for the day, accom-
panied by Phantom technician Jamie
Alac. Gangster Squad opens with some
Phantom footage that shows Cohen
battering a punching bag in super-slow
motion as daylight filters in through a
nearby window. The scene was shot at
1,000 fps in a set built on location in
Top: The squad
takes aim in an
impromptu firing
range beneath the
California sun.
Bottom: Conwell
Keeler (Giovanni
Ribisi, far right)
and the squad
discuss what
theyve learned
from a wiretap;
this garage interior
was lit with 1,200-
watt Pars through
the windows, with
Kinos, Dedos and
covered wagons
supplementing the
practicals inside.
46 February 2013 American Cinematographer
in Condors, and we also had a couple of
nights with Bebee Night Lights.
One of the challenges we had in
the more urban settings was that all of
L.A.s street lighting is now mercury
vapor or sodium vapor, which were not
used in the 1940s, Beebe continues. I
wanted to avoid the modern mixed-
lighting scenario, so we had to disable
the existing streetlights that were in our
shots and then attach our own heads to
those lamps. Inevitably, we arrived at
some locations and the streetlights were
still on; in those cases, it was a matter of
black-wrapping certain heads and trying
to avoid others This sounds simple
enough, but when you have 10 street-
lights down half a mile of street, its a big
task. My key grip, Don Reynolds, and
his team always got it done. The
productions streetlights were goose-
neck fixtures with incandescent heads
that were fitted with 1K Pars or 2K
Nooks; all of these were run off a
dimmer board.
Bryan Booth was the dimmer-
board operator, and all fixtures, interior
and exterior, were run through his
system, which included a High End
Systems Hog 3PC connected via Wi-
Fi to a tablet. With the tablet, Buckley
says, Bryan could stand right by me
and Dion, and we could control every
light. It was awesome!
Once OMara assembles his
Gangster Squad, the team gathers at
War onCrime
This lighting plot illustrates the filmmakers approach to the interior of Slapsy Maxies nightclub.
www.theasc.com February 2013 47
what Beebe describes as an impromptu
firing range. They were literally standing
in an open field in the blazing sun!
My general approach to day
exteriors is to keep the sun on the actors
backs, he continues. When you do
that, you can utilize a lot of grip lighting,
like big UltraBounces. But the challenge
is planning out the day, because youve
got to try to follow the sun without
interfering with the way the scene is
playing out. Thankfully, everyone
understood what we were doing, and we
were able to shift as the sun moved and
cheat backgrounds and actors positions.
If you look closely, youll notice that the
sun, despite any logic, is behind every-
body an old trick!
For its first mission, the squad
tries to take down one of Cohens illegal
casinos in Burbank. Things go awry
when OMaras force bursts in and finds
a group of Burbank police who frequent
the establishment and arent keen to see
it closed. To light the interior of the
casino, Buckley details, we used 200-
watt globes in the practicals on the
tables, and we augmented those with
Dedos [rigged overhead]. There were
also covered wagons fitted with 100-
or 200-watt tungsten bulbs on batten
strips all over the place.
Trying to evade the Burbank
police, the squad members run back
outside toward their car. This is all
meant to be out in an undeveloped part
of Burbank, so it was very dark, and we
primarily utilized a moonlight [source],
says Beebe. Buckley elaborates, We
used two Bebee lights. One was placed
almost a quarter-mile away and backlit
the officers as they reached their car, and
the other was a sidelight when we were
looking toward the casino. We also used
some 18Ks through double-diffused
Full and Light Grid 12-by-12s with egg
crate.
Despite its ignominious start, the
Gangster Squad soon finds success in its
operations, which include placing a
wiretap in Cohens home. Having a
limited range, the tap has to be moni-
tored from a nearby garage that doubles
as a sort of headquarters for the team.
That was a real garage in Sylmar, says
Fleischer. It was cramped, crummy,
smoky and less than ideal for lighting
and shooting, but it had a real quality we
couldnt get on a stage.
To light the garage interior,
Buckley explains, We used 1,200-watt
Pars through the windows and covered
wagons. We also used a couple of 2-foot
Kinos we couldnt really fit anything
bigger and we bounced some Dedos
into pieces of white paper so they looked
like they were practicals bouncing off a
table.
Coming off projects like Land of
the Lost and Green Lantern (ACJuly 11),
Beebe says, it was refreshing to do so
much of the movie on location. It was
really interesting going around and
identifying the parts of Los Angeles that
still have those period elements we could
utilize. When we couldnt simply avoid
parts of the surrounding views, we used
visual effects [supervised by Ariel
48 February 2013 American Cinematographer
Velasco-Shaw] to clean things up.
Fleisher adds, We were lucky to
benefit from the California tax incen-
tive, which allowed us to keep the whole
production in Los Angeles. One of the
things Im proudest of is that we only
built a few sets in the whole movie.
Almost everything was practical or built
on location.
The biggest location build was in
Bellflower: Slapsy Maxies, the night-
club that serves as the center of Cohens
criminal operations. That was built in
an existing location, a big shopping
complex from the 1930s or 40s, says
Beebe. Almost the whole street is still
period and intact, so we were able to use
that great exterior, and then Maher
created the interior of the nightclub.
For the scene that introduces the
club, the filmmakers sought to under-
score the locations importance with a
long, fluid take. From a high angle
looking down at the street, the camera
cranes down and finds Wooters, and
proceeds to follow him through the
crowd outside the club and into the
lobby. Then, in the main room of the
club, Wooters steps out of frame while
the camera continues forward toward
the stage, wending through the revelers
before finding Wooters once again.
When Wooters takes a seat at a table
with his friend, Jack (Sullivan
Stapleton), the camera finally cuts.
Getting the introductory shot
required Rosenfeld to ride the crane
with his Steadicam rig. When the crane
reached the ground, he was unhooked
and stepped off to follow Gosling. Its a
fantastic shot, Buckley enthuses, but
the amount of work that went into it
was enormous. It took about a week and
a half to get all the rigging done. Eddie
Cox, the rigging gaffer, did a fantastic
job, as did Bryan Booth.
Having decided on this approach
to introducing the club in preproduc-
tion, we devised a scheme where we
could integrate practical lighting, know-
ing that wed be walking into the club
with the camera looking 360 degrees
from the get-go, says Beebe. Maher
built large, deco-type chandeliers that
were hung around the room, and we
used a lot of neon inside and on the
faade of the building. There were 30 or
so tables spread out around the room,
each with a Perspex top and a linen
tablecloth, and we underlit each of the
tables [with 40-watt globes in cleat
sockets] so they would glow.
Because it wasnt on a stage, Don
Reynolds and his crew had to devise
systems to rig our light sources to pillars
and existing structures in the room, the
cinematographer continues. That loca-
tion presented a big challenge to every-
one. Fortunately, we had a great team
and it was scheduled toward the end of
production, so we had some time to
figure things out.
As the introduction of Slapsy
Maxies illustrates, the filmmakers
sought to give a fluidity to the action
and to the drama, says Beebe. We
wanted to keep up the energy of the
camera and utilize camera movement to
War onCrime
Top: The crew shoots a scene in which Wooters offers to help Faraday get out of town. Bottom: After
Faraday agrees to testify, Wooters and OMara procure an arrest warrant for Cohen.
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50 February 2013 American Cinematographer
tell the story. We used Technocrane,
Steadicam, handheld and a lot of tradi-
tional dolly moves. We had one of the
best dolly grips, if not the best Brad
Rea and great operators. We often
put down dance floor so we were able to
do complex, multi-axis dolly moves
amongst the actors without track.
In planning the action pieces,
Fleischer and Beebe worked with story-
board artist Gary Thomas, but one
sequence a nighttime car chase across
a massive, dusty field also required
some previsualization. The sequence
finds the squad in hot pursuit of a cara-
van of cars that is transporting Cohens
drugs. Naturally, gunfire and explosions
ensue. The location work with all of the
stunt driving was tackled by the second
unit, headed by director Terry Leonard
and cinematographer Paul Hughen,
while the main unit shot close-ups of
the principal cast against greenscreen
onstage at Sony Studios in Culver City.
Paul and I went out to the loca-
tion together and talked through a light-
ing plan, says Beebe. He did a great
job capturing the main elements of the
action. We then went onto the stage to
fill in some of the dialogue and connect-
ing pieces. We utilized camera moves to
keep it alive, and we also had guys with
2-by-4s shaking the cars. Low tech!
Because second unit had shot the
action footage first, matching the close-
ups onstage came down to trying to
figure out which side they had keyed
from, and then trying to augment that
with passing lights, says Buckley. We
used Dedos and Kino Flos on wands
and moved them around as if they were
headlights bouncing around. It worked
well simple is easy.
When the squad finally moves to
take down Cohen himself, they confront
him and his thugs at the Park Plaza
Hotel. Despite the action and pyrotech-
nics of the climactic gunfight, the actual
hotel lobby was used. It was prohibited
to rig anything to the building, says
Beebe, so we used a large hybrid
balloon as fill, and for part of the scene
had a small Genie boom parked in the
lobby, covered with set dressing. The rest
War onCrime
Top: The squad arrives at the Park Plaza Hotel to arrest Cohen. Middle: Cohen shoots his way through
the lobby. Bottom: Cohen and OMara go their final round in the nearby MacArthur Park, where Beebe
had his crew position 18Ks in Condors for broad strokes and Par cans for specific accents.
of the lighting was achieved from the
floor, using MR16 strip lights, covered
wagons and, when we had to get up to
500 to 1,000 fps for some high-speed
Phantom work, 10Ks through 12-by-
12 frames. Additionally, Buckley notes,
there were some beams up in the ceil-
ing, and we put 2-foot Kino Flos
behind them to give a bit of fill. Of
course, that didnt work too well because
[the actors] were all wearing fedoras!
The wonderful things of the
1940s gangster movies are the trench
coats, Tommy guns and fedoras, but all
those hats at night were a bane to us
throughout the shoot, Beebe notes
wryly. We used a lot of different things
to try to send light into peoples faces,
like walking alongside them with low
bounces or small Kino Flos, a lot of skip
lighting, and covered wagons placed on
the floor.
After OMara and Wooters elim-
inate Cohens gunmen, Cohen steps
into the lobby with his Tommy gun
blazing. As Cohen and OMara shoot
their way across the room, a Christmas
tree and other holiday decorations get
caught in the crossfire and blow apart in
slow motion. Fleischer recalls, Id seen a
YouTube video of a Tommy gun firing
in slow motion and thought it was the
coolest thing ever. That was the seed for
this scene. Then, I thought that if there
was a ton of stuff for them to blow up,
too, that would look awesome!
Gangster Squad originally
included a gunfight in Graumans
historic Chinese Theatre, but after the
July 2012 shooting inside a movie
theater in Aurora, Colo., Warner Bros.
and the filmmakers decided to replace
the sequence, requiring the cast and
crew be brought back months after prin-
cipal photography had wrapped. By that
War onCrime
52
Neon
practicals and
Chinese
lanterns
provide a base
ambience
around
Gosling and
Brolin on
location in
Chinatown.
time, Beebe was busy shooting All You
Need is Kill. Our line producer, Mike
Tadross, was prepping a movie with
Caleb Deschanel [ASC], says
Fleischer, so we asked Caleb to watch
our movie, and then Caleb and Dion
talked a lot about the look. We were also
able to bring back John Buckley and
Don Reynolds, who made it really easy
to maintain continuity.
Seeking an iconic Los Angeles
backdrop for the new scene, the film-
makers chose Chinatown. In the scene,
the squad walks into an ambush orches-
trated by Cohen, whose goons explode a
truck and open fire in a large public
square. The location was rigged with
neon practicals and hundreds of multi-
colored Chinese lanterns fitted with 40-
watt globes. The lanterns provided the
base exposure, which Buckleys crew
augmented with 20Ks through
Chimeras.
Reflecting on the scene, Fleischer
offers, At the time, it seemed insur-
mountable, but Im really proud of the
way everyone rallied together to figure it
out. The new scene seamlessly inte-
grates with the rest of the material. I was
also incredibly excited and grateful to
get to work with Caleb; he was a great
collaborator and a real team player.
When Fleischer spoke with AC,
he had just completed the final digital
grade with colorist/ASC associate
member Michael Hatzer at Technicolor
in Hollywood. As Beebe was shooting
in London during the grade,
Technicolor coordinated a Tech-2-Tech
live grade between the companys
London and Hollywood facilities.
While I was in London, we managed
to run four separate grading sessions
with all of us in the room, Beebe
notes. The system worked incredibly
well.
Sounding relaxed as the release
date approached, Fleischer enthused,
Dion and I were always on the same
page, and we shared a common passion
and commitment to making the
absolute best movie we could. Im a
young filmmaker, and Dion is such
a maestro and so experienced, and
he taught me so much. I value his
opinion and respect everything he did. I
also love the crew he brought to the
table. Everyone put so much into each
shot, and they were always hustling to
make things better. The film is a testa-
ment to their hard work, talent and
perfectionism.
53
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa,
Vision Research Phantom Flex
Panavision G-series,
C-series, E-series, AWZ,
Primo (spherical)
54 February 2013 American Cinematographer
Mike Eley, BSC captures
World War Is impact on
Englands aristocracy for the
television miniseries Parades End.
By Mark Hope-Jones
|
P
arades End, by Ford Madox Ford, is not one novel but
four, a tetralogy published sequentially in the 1920s and
only brought together in a single volume after the
authors death. It chronicles the disintegration of
English society around the time of the First World War and
centers on the character of Christopher Tietjens, an intel-
lectual aristocrat whose outdated Tory values leave him ill
equipped to deal with the modern world.
Tasked with adapting the story for a five-part
BBC/HBO miniseries, screenwriter Tom Stoppard focused
on the triangle of relationships between Tietjens (Benedict
Cumberbatch); his adulterous, cruel wife, Sylvia (Rebecca
Hall); and a young suffragette with whom he falls in love,
Valentine Wannop (Adelaide Clemens). To bring the
project to the screen, director Susanna White tapped cine-
matographer Mike Eley, BSC, her collaborator of some 20
years. Together they have worked on TV shows such as Jane
Eyre (2006) and Generation Kill (2008), as well as the
feature film Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010).
White began researching Ford and the period in
which Parades End is set, a time that saw cataclysmic
change to almost every facet of society and culture. I
thought a way to be really true to the spirit of Ford as a
Crumbling
Pillars
www.theasc.com February 2013 55
U
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writer was to draw on the modernist
movement that was going on in the
visual arts, she notes. He was very
close to painters like Picasso, Juan Gris
and the Cubists, and the Vorticist
movement.
Early in prep, White and Eley
visited an exhibition of Vorticism at the
Tate Modern. It was quite inspiring,
says Eley. Parades End is thought of as
one of the first modernist novels, and
Vorticism hit the world around 1914,
slap-bang in the middle of our story.
In particular, we were struck by the
vortographs, which are photographs
taken through a fractured mirror, and
we decided to borrow that technique.
We wanted to create it in-camera, so
we experimented and decided to use
three lengths of mirror, each about 6-
by-4 inches, taped together to create a
triangular tube that we simply placed
in front of the lens and adjusted by eye
through the viewfinder.
The mirror rig split the image
into triangular shards and was put to
use for flashbacks, memories and time
transitions. White explains, I didnt
want to get too tricksy in my overall
visual approach, but this device added
another layer without any kind of
confusion. The use of three mirrors
also seemed so appropriate for this
story of a love triangle.
Parades End was shot with Arri
Alexa cameras and Cooke S4 lenses,
Opposite page (from
left): Christopher
Tietjens (Benedict
Cumberbatch),
Valentine Wannop
(Adelaide Clemens)
and Sylvia Tietjens
(Rebecca Hall) form
an unhappy
romantic triangle in
Parades End.
This page: At
MacMasters parties
for artists and
writers, Sylvia turns
on the charm (top)
and flirts with other
men (bottom right).
Bottom left:
Christopher is
smitten with
Valentine, a young
suffragette.
56 February 2013 American Cinematographer
Crumbling Pillars
with the majority of the shoot taking
place at locations in England and
Belgium. Neither Eley nor his gaffer,
Paul Murphy, had worked with the
Alexa before, and with about 150
different sets to squeeze into a tight
schedule, they had very few pre-light
days. Our producer, Selwyn Roberts,
gave us four full days of camera tests at
the start of prep, Murphy recalls. On
a stage, we played with smoke effects,
practical bulbs and various types of
candles supplemented with minimal
lighting, exploring what the Alexa
could do. It was double the time we
might normally have [to test], which
was really beneficial; we knew the
extremities we could go to before we
went out to shoot properly.
Eley decided to hand over
camera-operating duties to Ian Adrian
so he could give his full attention to
the lighting and spend time at the
monitor with White. It was an inter-
esting experience to be at the monitor
through the shoot and see something
that pretty much represented the final
image, says Eley. Prior to shooting, I
worked with our colorist, Peter
Bernaers, to establish about six differ-
ent look-up tables, which I had on an
SD card. I ended up using just two,
and, like all LUTs, they were just a
working model, but it was good for us
to see them on the monitor and have
something to stay true to.
It is extraordinary to see that
level of precision in what youre
getting, and I completely loved it,
says White. The images had so much
more latitude than I expected. I had
been nervous about whether it would
hold the skies, which were very impor-
tant to me. Having the monitor
certainly eased communication,
although we couldnt spend a huge
amount of time looking at it we
had to shoot five hours in 15 weeks at
multiple locations!
For the early section of the story,
portraying the dying days of the
Edwardian era, the filmmakers agreed
on a saturated look inspired by Pre-
Raphaelite art. White recalls, I talked
with our production designer, Martin
Childs, about achieving a general feel-
ing of richness for this privileged
world, with crystal and gilt and a
jewel-like palette of blues and greens.
Later, we see things blown apart by
the war, and those jewel colors give
way to the mud of the trenches.
Color was important through-
out the narrative, which spans a
decade. It was central to a pivotal
scene, frequently revisited through
flashbacks, in which Christopher and
Valentine realize they are in love
during an all-night journey down
country lanes by horse and cart.
Starting in total darkness, the scene
progresses to pre-dawn and dawn,
with the characters increasingly
engulfed by a silvery mist that rises
until they can barely see each other.
That scene was a huge opportunity to
A carriage ride that begins in the evening and lasts through the next morning marks a pivotal moment
in Christopher and Valentines relationship. In the top photo, the actors prepare to shoot the beginning
of the scene in a studio in Brussels.
www.theasc.com February 2013 57
where the sensitivity of the Alexa
revealed itself, especially when
Tietjens lamp fails and we were down
to just one. I was looking down the
length of this huge studio, and I liter-
ally couldnt see the horse and cart.
Every instinct in my body told me it
was wrong, but it looked perfect on the
monitor.
For the sunrise, Eley used a 24K
Maxi-Brute gelled with Full CTO on
do something special, and it really
excited me when I read it, says
White. I wanted to use shades of
white and silver to contrast Valentines
freshness with Sylvia and the jewel-
like palette of Edwardian England. I
was inspired by a picture I found of
Emmeline Pankhurst in which shes
wearing a white lace dress and a hat
trimmed with white flowers, so I made
sure we got a dapple-gray horse and all
the costumes were whites and grays.
We even put white flowers into the
hedgerows.
Eley says this scene was, for
me, the most challenging of the whole
production. It had to be supremely
romantic and iconic, and it soon
became clear that doing it as a real
night exterior wasnt going to work.
Its seven or eight pages of dialogue, so
we needed to find a studio in which
we could ride a horse and cart far
enough to do at least a page of
dialogue before we had to stop and
reset. We eventually found a space a
few miles outside Brussels that was
part of a TV studio and more than 200
feet long. I walked the length of it,
holding the script and reading the
dialogue as slowly as I could, and
decided we could get a least a page in
before we had to turn around.
Though long enough, the studio
had no overhead grid for the required
lights. We hired a Belgian firm that
does a lot of rock concerts to do the
truss work for the 108 space lights we
used, says Murphy. They put them
on one main three-phase hoist so
everything was lifted together, and we
could pick the height that suited us.
We had to transition from moonlight
to dawn, so every third light had a bit
of CTB for moonlight, and in
between we had one clean space light
and one with a bit of CTO for dawn.
That gave us a lot of options on the
dimmer board, and we did many
different variations as the journey
went on, slowly bringing up the over-
all level.
During the initial part of the
journey, the couple is ostensibly lit by
nothing more than faint moonlight
and two carriage lamps mounted to
the cart. We had the lamps in shot,
but we supplemented them with a 19-
inch Spring Ball on a boom pole, says
Eley. One of the electricians tried it in
various positions, tracking back with
the cart, but it always looked too
much. Eventually, he just let it drop to
the floor, and that looked perfect on
the monitor! That was a situation
A misty dawn turns to morning toward the end of the sequence, which Mike Eley, BSC calls the most
challenging of the whole production, noting that it called for several pages of dialogue and had to be
supremely romantic and iconic.
58 February 2013 American Cinematographer
an Easylift stand that could be pushed
behind the horse and cart. He
explains, We gradually brought it up
on a dimmer for the light to pierce
through the fog as a glow that grows
on their faces. Valentine turns around
and says, Look, the sun, which was
helpful characters should do that
more often! Having used that warm
light in the studio, I was praying for
some sunlight when we shot the last
bit of that sequence on location some
time later.
In this final part of the journey,
the horse collides with a car and bolts
out of the mist, bringing the two char-
acters back into the real world with a
jolt. White notes, The magic is shat-
tered, and were back to our old
palette, with the addition of bright red
in the uniform of General Campion
[the owner of the car] and the blood of
the horses wound, representing the
blood that will come later in the
trenches.
AC visited the set in Belgium to
see some of the battlefield action being
filmed. A small system of trenches was
dug into low-lying farmland, and
Cumberbatch was rolling around in
the mud in order to appear sufficiently
disheveled for a scene in which
Tietjens witnesses his drunk, shell-
shocked commanding officer throw-
ing whiskey bottles and strolling
brazenly across No Mans Land. Three
cameras were set up to cover the
action, including one on a
Technocrane that could be armed
down into the relatively shallow
trenches. Using the crane was a very
quick way of working for that whole
[sequence], says White. It was a
blessing that we made that decision,
especially with all the mud. It also gave
the scene movement and a different
quality from the earlier scenes, where
we wanted to give the feeling that the
characters are prisoners of their class
and environment.
Despite the late hour, not a
single light was used on the set during
ACs visit. We knew we wanted extras
and other actors coming down the
Crumbling Pillars
Top (foreground,
from left):
A-camera operator
Ian Adrian,
A-camera 1st AC
Ian Coffey,
A-camera 2nd AC
Adam Dorney and
an unidentified
crewmember
prepare to shoot
on location in
North Yorkshire.
Middle and
bottom: The
trench warfare of
World War I adds
another dimension
to the pictures
palette.
trench, so I thought it would be freer
and quicker to keep it clear of lighting
equipment, says Eley. All we used
were some 12-by-12 UltraBounces
and large blacks to shape the light.
That scene was done half-an-hour
after sunset with no lights! When we
got to the DI, we could see that it was
on the edge of what we could do, but I
think we got away with it.
For night scenes in the trenches,
when lights had to be used, Eley used
Lee 728 Steel Green filters to give the
images a distinct hue. Murphy notes,
We had time to test various filters in
prep, and we decided Steel Green
coming through a tungsten source
looked fantastic. The Belgian lighting
company we were working with made
me a Wendy Light, which they dont
have in Belgium they tend to light
their nights with Maxi-Brutes. It was
such a large area that getting a Wendy
up on a crane or cherry picker was a
Crumbling Pillars
The crew prepares to capture one of Christophers visits home from the front.
60
cost-effective way of lighting it.
We basically lit the night
scenes with that Wendy Light and a
couple of 12K Maxi-Brutes for fill,
because there were some quite wide
shots, continues the gaffer. When we
got in a bit tighter, we had the Maxi-
Brutes on little Genie booms with
tank track that could traverse the
battlefield really well. If the Wendy
was dropping off, wed use one just to
continue that look, or, if the camera
was looking down a trench, we could
have one at the end to get some light
going through the trench. We had
Steel Green on all the lamps.
In the final grade, Eley worked
with Bernaers to fine-tune the color
decisions made on set, as well as the
LUTs that had been applied to moni-
tors and dailies. Thanks to the time I
had with Peter during prep to test how
far we could push and pull the mater-
ial, I was pretty confident in situations
where I might otherwise have been
concerned, says the cinematographer.
We were mainly balancing material
out and refining the looks in the final
grade. We had a very long discussion
about the look of the trenches; I
wanted there to be humanity to it. It
was quite an interesting process to
arrive at a look that feels dirty and
grim, yet still has color. Although the
trenches feel like a colorless world,
there is actually a lot of color there.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.78:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa
Cooke S4, Angenieux Optimo
61
62 February 2013 American Cinematographer
Vision
and
Verve
Dean Semler, ASC, ACS adds
the ASC Lifetime Achievement Award
to his crowded mantel of
career triumphs.
By Jean Oppenheimer
|
www.theasc.com February 2013 63
H
es a directors secret weapon,
says Angelina Jolie of Dean
Semler, ASC, ACS, who will
receive the ASC Lifetime
Achievement Award this month. With
some 60 films under his belt, Semler has
a special affinity for working with first-
time directors like Jolie, for whom he
shot In the Land of Blood and Honey
(2011).
Another such collaboration that
won Semler considerable acclaim was
Kevin Costners Dances with Wolves (AC
May 91), whose seven Academy
Awards included statuettes for best
picture, directing and cinematography. I
knew it was going to be tough out there,
and I knew I would make some
mistakes, says Costner, explaining his
decision to hire Semler for his directing
debut. I wanted somebody who could
roll with the punches and not be afraid
of the dirt. I didnt know what my own
learning curve was going to be, and I
needed somebody who was going to
help me. Plus, Deans got that great
Australian mentality.
Semler is an Aussie through and
through. He was born in 1943 in the
small town of Renmark, on the Mighty
River Murray in South Australia. It
was semi-arid but on a beautiful river,
he says. I used to love getting on my
bike and just going, feeling the space,
feeling infinity. His parents were strict
Lutherans and had no car, no telephone
and no television set. Every Sunday, the
family would don their best clothes and
bicycle to church. P
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Opposite: Dean Semler,
ASC, ACS points the way
on location for
Apocalypto. This page,
top: At work on Dances
with Wolves, Semler and
1st AC Lee Blasingame
line up an over-the-
shoulder involving Lt.
Dunbar (Kevin Costner,
third from left), Kicking
Bird (Graham Greene,
fourth from left) and
other members of the
tribe. Bottom: One of
Semlers adventures as a
young TV-news
cameraman in Australia
in 1964. I was on my
way to cover a bush fire
for the TV news, and a
fire engine came
screaming over the hill. I
swerved to avoid it and
flipped over. The
firemen all got out. I
was fine, and between
the six of us, we righted
the vehicle, and I got
the footage and made it
back in time to get it on
the 6 oclock news.
on all aspects of sound, picture, animation and effects. Its a Marketplace
Energizedshowcasing technologies designed to streamline the production process, and keep
content fresh and protable. Give yourself something to smile about. Register today!
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Society Welcomes Chomyn
New active member Christopher
Chomyn, ASC was first entranced by the
filmmaking process when he visited the
Edison Museum in East Orange, N.J., on his
7th birthday. He later joined a photography
club at school. After graduating from Fairfield
University with a degree in history, Chomyn
took a trip to California. While visiting Carmel
Valley, he landed a job as a production assis-
tant on the series Doris Days Best Friends, and
when the series wrapped, he stayed in
Carmel and worked as an electrician and grip.
Two years later, he moved to Los Angeles and
earned an MFA with honors from UCLAs
School of Theater, Film and Television.
Chomyn is currently an associate
professor of practice on the cinematography
faculty at the University of Southern Califor-
nias School of Cinematic Arts, where he has
taught for 15 years. While teaching, he has
continued to shoot features, documentaries
and commercials. At the 2010 Cine Gear
Expo, he was awarded the Best Cinematog-
raphy prize for his work on Wild About Harry.
Chomyn has also led cinematography work-
shops and seminars for Walt Disney Feature
Animation, Eastman Kodak and the Interna-
tional Film and Video Workshops, among
others, and in 2010, he redesigned the cine-
matography curriculum for the Vancouver
Film School. He is a Film Independent Project
Involve mentor and an alternate on the
national executive board of the International
Cinematographers Guild.
Reisner Becomes
Associate Member
New associate member David Reis-
ner, the owner of D-Cinema Consulting, has
served as secretary of the ASC Technology
Committee since its founding, and he
performs the same function for three of its
subcommittees: DI, Workflow and Advanced
Imaging. He helped to design and create the
ASC CDL, the ASC-PGA Camera Assessment
Series and Image Control Assessment Series,
the ASC-DCI Stem test, the InterSociety Digi-
tal Cinema Forum 3-D projection-luminance
demonstration, the ACES Look Management
Transform, and the log ACES definition. For
the forthcoming 10th edition of the Ameri-
can Cinematographer Manual, he co-
authored the chapter about the ASC CDL
and contributed to the chapter about ACES.
Reisner was the vice chairman of the
SMPTE groups that drafted the standards for
digital-cinema imaging. His work in other
industries has included still photography for
magazines and book jackets, early technical
and business plans for Web-based music and
movie distribution, and computer hardware
and software architecture.
Band Pro Honors Zsigmond
Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC was the
guest of honor during the recent Band Pro
One World Open House, which was held in
the companys Burbank facility. For the event,
Band Pro created an interactive workflow
environment to showcase the latest technol-
ogy from 16x9, 1Beyond, 3ality Technica,
AJA, Angenieux, Atomos, Bertone Visuals,
Canare, Canon, Cinoflex, Codex, Colorfront,
Convergent Design, DeepX, Focus Optics,
For-A, Fujinon, IDX, K5600, Leader, Leica,
Manios Digital, Marshall, NextoDI, Nila,
Oppenheimer, Red, Sony, Tiffen, TruColor-
PRG, TrueND, Vitec and Zeiss.
Nicholson, Okada Share
Sony Footage
Sony recently hosted The Future:
Ahead of Schedule, a screening of footage
captured with the companys F5, F55 and F65
CineAlta 4K digital cameras. ASC associate
members Peter Crithary and Alec Shapiro
joined Phil Molyneux, president and COO of
Sony Electronics, in representing Sony, and
Jon Fauer, ASC moderated the discussions
with the filmmakers. Sam Nicholson, ASC
screened the short Mahout, which he
directed and co-shot with Dana Christiaansen
using the F55; and Daryn Okada, ASC
shared scenes from the series Made in Jersey,
which he shot with the F65.
Clubhouse News
86 February 2013 American Cinematographer
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From top: Christopher Chomyn, ASC;
associate member David Reisner;
Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC.
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+'
88 February 2013 American Cinematographer
When you were a child, what film made the strongest impres-
sion on you?
As a boy in London, the Bond films were a thrill. The Magnificent
Seven (1960) also made a big impression on me. Then came French
film, Truffaut and Godard particularly.
Which cinematographers,
past or present, do you most
admire?
Geoffrey Unsworth [BSC] came
from very conventional black-
and-white movies yet somehow
evolved into a magnificent color
cinematographer; Cabaret and
Tess are extraordinary. I can
watch [BSC member] Guy
Greens work in Oliver Twist
again and again, as well as Bob
Kraskers unforgettable work in
the The Third Man. Recently, I
watched an original print of Max
Ophls La Ronde, with magnificent cinematography by Christian
Matras. So many films, so little time.
What sparked your interest in photography?
I seem to have been born with it. I remember, as a child of maybe 5,
watching in dismay as my father tried to load an 8mm camera.
Where did you train and/or study?
Guildford School of Photography, but I dropped out to work as a
photographer on Fleet Street. Later, I studied film at the Royal
College of Art London.
Who were your early teachers or mentors?
Karel Reisz gave me wonderful advice in which he enjoined me to
spend more time lighting the actors than the sets.
What are some of your key artistic influences?
The photography of Irving Penn, Robert Capa and Edward Steichen;
the reportage photography of Life Magazine and Paris Match from
1935 to 1975; the landscapes of Joseph Turner; and, of course, the
Post-Impressionists. douard Manets A Bar at the Folies-Bergre is
the painting Id most like to steal.
How did you get your first break in the business?
I was smuggled into an animation company in London by a friend
who got me into the British union as a Rostrum cameraman.
What has been your most satisfying moment on a project?
Being kissed on both cheeks by Mike Nichols after rather good
dailies on Angels in America.
Have you made any memo-
rable blunders?
Many. They never seem to stop.
What is the best profes-
sional advice youve ever
received?
My gaffer in England, Martin
Evans, advised me to say noth-
ing during the first three weeks
of production, to just watch
and listen. I wish I had followed
his advice more closely.
What recent books, films or
artworks have inspired you?
Book: Matterhorn by Karl
Malantes. Film: Although not recent, Casque dOr (1952) by Jacques
Becker, which I saw for the first time two weeks ago at the Pacific
Film Archive. Artwork: Man Ray and Lee Miller: Partners in Surreal-
ism, an exhibition in San Francisco.
Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like to
try?
I would like to shoot a documentary again. I havent shot one in
decades.
If you werent a cinematographer, what might you be doing
instead?
I would be an emergency-room physician.
Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for
membership?
Howard Schwartz, Jordan Cronenweth and Vilmos Zsigmond.
How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?
I have always been something of a loner, and ASC membership has
brought me into the company of many fine cinematographers
whom I greatly admire.
Stephen Goldblatt, ASC, BSC Close-up
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