AC oct 2011

O C T O B E R 2 0 1 1

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M E M B E R P O R T R A I T

Thomas Ackerman, ASC

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y dad worked at the TimesTheater in Cedar Rapids,Iowa, and I saw every

movie that came to town from theprojection booth. The smell ofmachine oil and a carbon arcwas part of it, but what really gotme was the magic on the screen.

“Then I landed a summerjob at the Collins Radio photolab. When things were slow, Iplowed through stacks ofAmerican Cinematographer. Itchanged my life.

“Technical methods areevolving much faster than theydid in the past, but the aestheticsof making pictures remain muchthe same. AC is far more than atrade journal; it’s the voice ofartists around the world. Nomatter how busy I am, it’s myway of keeping in touch.”

— Thomas Ackerman, ASC

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The International Journal of Motion Imaging

28 Road WarriorsNewton Thomas Sigel, ASC envisions a modern noir for Drive

44 Man of ActionRoberto Schaefer, ASC, AIC taps Super 16mm anamorphic for Machine Gun Preacher

52 Home InvasionAlik Sakharov, ASC re-imagines a 1970s classic with Straw Dogs

62 King of New YorkFilmmakers recall the heyday of General Camera Corp.

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— VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM TO ENJOY THESE WEB EXCLUSIVES —DVD Playback: Party Girl • Cul-de-Sac • Insignificance

On Our Cover: Driver (Ryan Gosling) is a stunt man by day and criminal accomplice by night in Drive, shot by Newton Thomas Sigel, ASC. (Photo by Richard Foreman Jr., SMPSP, courtesy of Film District.)

8 Editor’s Note10 President’s Desk12 Short Takes: Woolite “Torture”16 Production Slate: The Skin I Live In • Margin Call68 Post Focus: Restoring A Trip to the Moon74 Filmmakers’ Forum: Karl Walter Lindenlaub, ASC, BVK78 New Products & Services82 International Marketplace83 Classified Ads84 Ad Index86 In Memoriam: Takuo “Tak” Miyagishima87 Clubhouse News88 ASC Close-Up: Xavier Grobet

O C T O B E R 2 0 1 1 V O L . 9 2 N O . 1 0

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O c t o b e r 2 0 1 1 V o l . 9 2 , N o . 1 0T h e I n t e r n a t i o n a l J o u r n a l o f M o t i o n I m a g i n g

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John Calhoun, Michael Goldman, Simon Gray, Jim Hemphill, David Heuring, Jay Holben, Mark Hope-Jones, Noah Kadner, Jean Oppenheimer,

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————————————————————————————————————American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 91st year of publication, is published

monthly in Hollywood by ASC Holding Corp., 1782 N. Orange Dr., Hollywood, CA 90028, U.S.A., (800) 448-0145, (323) 969-4333, Fax (323) 876-4973, direct line for subscription inquiries (323) 969-4344.

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OFFICERS - 2011/2012

Michael GoiPresident

Richard CrudoVice President

Owen RoizmanVice President

John C. Flinn IIIVice President

Victor J. KemperTreasurer

Frederic GoodichSecretary

Stephen LighthillSergeant At Arms

MEMBERS OF THEBOARDJohn Bailey

Stephen H. BurumRichard Crudo

George Spiro DibieRichard Edlund

Fred ElmesMichael Goi

Victor J. KemperFrancis Kenny

Isidore MankofskyRobert Primes

Owen Roizman Kees Van Oostrum

Haskell WexlerVilmos Zsigmond

ALTERNATESMichael D. O’Shea

Rodney TaylorRon GarciaSol Negrin

Kenneth Zunder

MUSEUM CURATORSteve Gainer

American Society of Cine ma tog ra phersThe ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but

an educational, cultural and pro fes sion al or ga ni za tion. Membership is by invitation

to those who are actively en gaged as di rec tors of photography and have

dem on strated out stand ing ability. ASC membership has be come one of the highest

honors that can be bestowed upon a pro fes sional cin e ma tog ra pher — a mark

of prestige and excellence.

6

A few years ago, I drifted into a screening of Bronson atthe Sundance Film Festival and was blown away by itsaudacious style. Caught off guard by the director’s chops,I did my homework and discovered that I had somehowoverlooked the early works of Danish filmmaker NicolasWinding Refn, known in Europe for his gritty Pusher tril-ogy, which brings viewers face to face with a rogue’sgallery of Copenhagen drug peddlers.

During an interview about Bronson, Refn and Ibonded over our fetish for avant-garde cinema, engagingin a truly monastic discussion of filmmakers like KennethAnger and Alejandro Jodorowsky. Echoes of their inspira-tion are evident in Refn’s latest film, Drive, for which he

won the Cannes Film Festival’s Best Director prize this year. Riding shotgun on Drive wasNewton Thomas Sigel, ASC, whose early work on Anger’s Lucifer Rising gave him extra credwith Refn.

In a fully loaded piece by associate editor Jon Witmer (“Road Warriors,” page 28),Sigel says Refn used his intellect and creativity to create exciting car chases on an indiebudget: “[He] wanted the film’s three main driving sequences to each have its own charac-ter and not be a traditional car chase. It wasn’t so much about being loud and noisy as it wasabout having a defined tonality.”

Life-or-death confrontations also amp up the drama in Machine Gun Preacher, shotby Roberto Schaefer, ASC, AIC, and a remake of Straw Dogs, which Rod Lurie modernizedwith the help of Alik Sakharov, ASC.

Schaefer and director Marc Forster had to balance scenes shot in the States withsequences staged in and around Johannesburg, South Africa (standing in for Sudan andUganda). Schaefer tells David Heuring (“Man of Action,” page 44) that the project “seemedto want an epic feel, but without gloss. We were after an immediate, down-and-dirty feelthat people could relate to, but we also wanted to do justice to the sequences in Africa,which have landscapes and a lot of big action sequences.”

As a cinematographer on the HBO series The Sopranos, Rome and Game of Thrones,Sakharov has shot his share of memorable showdowns, but on Straw Dogs he and Luriewere tangling with the ghost of the ultimate tough-guy auteur: Sam Peckinpah. As MichaelGoldman reveals (“Home Invasion,” page 52), the filmmakers opted for visual restraint whilestaging the story’s brutal violence. “We didn’t want the photography to feel like it was call-ing attention to itself,” says Sakharov. “We wanted it to feel like a camera just happened tobe there, quiet and subdued, while these events were taking place.”

The glory days of Manhattan’s General Camera Corp. are recalled in a piece by NewYork correspondent Iain Stasukevich (“King of New York,” page 62). The company thrived inthe 1960s and ’70s, when it was a second home for current and future ASC members,including Gordon Willis, Owen Roizman, Victor J. Kemper and Fred Schuler. “GeneralCamera was like a home,” says camera assistant Gary Muller. “There was truly no other placewhere you could get that kind of knowledge and honesty.”

Stephen PizzelloExecutive Editor

Editor’s Note

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Within the ASC there are two basic forms of membership: active and associate. Active membersare cinematographers, and everyone knows what we represent to the ASC, but there is somemystery about the role of the associate member.

According to the ASC’s constitution, an associate member is a person who is not a direc-tor of photography, but is engaged in work that contributes to cinematography through eithertechnical expertise or the rendering of services or products directly related to cinematography.That captures the gist of it, but in practice associates do much more. They come from all cornersof the industry; they include camera manufacturers, post supervisors, color timers, company exec-utives, lighting-equipment designers and many others. The contributions of one legendary EastCoast associate, General Camera co-founder Dick DiBona, are detailed in this issue.

Regardless of their business affiliations, ASC associates leave those agendas at the doorwhen they enter the Clubhouse. They participate selflessly on committees and contribute a life-time of knowledge and expertise toward the common goal of making our craft the best it canbe. They are a vital part of the Society.

Associate members understand what motivates us to do what we do, and they supportthat vision in ways that go beyond mere tech advice or equipment discounts. They are collabo-rators for the ASC the way our crews are on set. They are an integral part of our major functions,such as the ASC Awards, and major contributors to publications such as the American Cine-

matographer Manual. They challenge the Technology Committee to forge the way toward new frontiers, and join in the preserva-tion push to guarantee that our work will be seen for generations to come.

Three associates, Bob Fisher, Larry Parker and Brian Spruill, have proven so valuable and committed to the ASC that we madethem honorary members, a distinction we bestow upon a very select few.

The ASC is a small family, so the loss of any member, active or associate, is felt by us all. We recently lost Tak Miyagishima,who epitomized the character and importance of an associate member. The innovations he brought to motion-picture camera tech-nology became an indelible part of our craft. He was present at our events and contributed ideas toward our goals. He used hisconsiderable influence to open doors for our members when it mattered most. And he did all this with the grace and easy famil-iarity of a friend.

The ASC would not exist were it not for the dedication and commitment of our associates. You know the names of our activemembers — they’ve shot some of your favorite films. The next time you glance at the membership roster in this magazine or on ourwebsite, take note of the names of our associates. They are our unsung heroes. If we are able to reach for the stars, it’s beca usethey build the platform that enables us to get there.

Michael Goi, ASCPresident

President’s Desk

10 October 2011 American Cinematographer

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ft v.chapman.edu

Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts is proud to announce that Johnny E. Jensen, ASC (Lost in Yonkers, Rambling Rose), has joined our world-class faculty in our distinguished cinematography department which includes Jürg Walther (Carol King and James Taylor: Live at the Troubador), headed by Bill Dill, ASC (Sidewalk Stories).

Jensen, Dill and Walther lead the cinematographers of tomorrow through a curriculum that emphasizes hands-on practical application in our state of the art facilities with industry-standard equipment.

Robert Bassett, Dean

Jensen’s photograph courtesy of Owen Roizman, ASCL-R: Walther, Jensen, Dill


On-the-Rack FashionBy Iain Stasukevich

Rob Zombie might seem an unlikely choice to direct a Woolitecommercial, but ad agency Euro RSCG Worldwide actually tailored aspot to him. It’s called “Torture.”

“The concept is that there’s a mysterious figure out in thewoods called The Torturer, and he’s torturing clothes,” says Zombie.

At first Zombie had to turn the project down because of tour-ing commitments, but the agency kept changing the dates and loca-tions to fit his schedule. When they finally locked a date in Vancou-ver, Zombie called in cinematographer Brandon Trost.

The Woolite gig marks the third collaboration between Trostand Zombie, after Halloween II (2009) and music videos for theZombie tracks “Sick Bubblegum” and “Mars Needs Women.”

“I really like working with Rob, and we work really welltogether,” says Trost. “The key is that we both know what we want,but we’re not so committed [to those ideas] that it’s at the expenseof doing what’s best for the project.”

“Brandon is open-minded,” Zombie remarks. “I’m never at aloss for what I want on set, but I’m always hoping that he’ll have anidea of how to take things a step further. Sometimes he’ll makesuggestions and I’ll stick to the original plan, but that’s okay becausethere’s no ego between us.”

Filming took place over two days in and around Vancouver,with the first day set on a derelict farmland just south of the city. TheTorturer does his worst — stretching out a cardigan on a medievalrack, shrinking a pretty top before using it to strangle a mannequin,and fading a pair of jeans under the brutal heat of electric lamps.

The agency only produced six panels of storyboards, but “we

shot it like we would a movie,” says Trost.Zombie says the style he and Trost have

worked out is predicated on speed and variety.“When we’re doing coverage of a scene, unlessthere’s a problem, I don’t like to do multiple takeswith the same lenses because then you get intoediting, and you have the same setup and the samelens over and over,” says Zombie.

The duo managed about 75 setups a day onHalloween II. “Brandon gets the way I like toshoot,” says Zombie. “And we usually don’t havethe time to do it any other way.”

One way to achieve that kind of quantity andstill craft a high-quality image is to shoot with twocameras and minimal lighting. “On ‘Torture,’” Trostexplains, “we shot all the spooky stuff in broaddaylight. I didn’t use anything except for somenegative fill.”

The “fade” sequence in the commercialemploys some practical tungsten fixtures provided by the art depart-ment, and Trost punched them up with a couple of 1K Par cans.“Rob and I tend to use practicals or nothing at all,” he says.

“Torture” was not only Zombie’s first commercial, but also hisfirst experience with a digital-cinema camera; Trost convinced him toexperiment with a Red One (upgraded with the Mysterium-Xsensor). “Rob and I both like the texture of film because we candegrade it,” notes Trost. “But you can do that with digital, too, andI wanted to show him those possibilities.”

Based on some tests he’d done with the Red for the featureGhost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance , Trost decided to shoot all scenesinvolving The Torturer at 3,200 ASA — even though they’re all dayexteriors. “It brings out noise in the image, so it starts to feel likegrain and starts to look a little more analog,” he says. “When youadd a little contrast, the digital grain starts to stand out. When Robsaw that, he got really interested.”

“Cinematography matters to me, but I don’t share this newobsession with higher resolution,” notes Zombie. “I think things arebecoming so high resolution that they look like shit. People lookweird. You can see the makeup in the actors’ pores. I’ve always shiedaway from that.” In fact, he tends to lean in the opposite direction:for Halloween II, he and Trost chose to originate on Super 16mm,and they pushed the stock so hard that shots sometimes came outtoo dark or out of focus.

Being able to see the image immediately on set is what finallyconvinced Zombie to take the digital plunge. “That’s something thatI like about it as well,” says Trost. “It makes us a little more comfort-able and allows us to work a little more quickly. It’s especially goodfor focus, because we do a lot of handheld work with no marks. Ifwe can see right away that we’re sharp, it makes a big difference in

Short Takes

A burly sadist puts clothing through its paces in “Torture,” a Woolite commercial shot by Brandon Trost and directed by Rob Zombie.

I

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Top row, left to right: Curtis Clark, ASC; Richard Crudo, ASC; Daryn Okada, ASC; Dennis Dillon, DP; Francis Kenny, ASC

Bottom row, left to right: Cassie Brooksbank, Senior, USC School of Cinematic Arts; Cameron Combe, Student Filmmaker, Cal State Long Beach;

Brian Smith, Award-winning Photographer; Brooke Mailhiot, Cinematographer

how quickly we can work.”With Zombie, Trost prefers to shoot

wide open, narrowing his depth-of-field asmuch as possible. At 3,200 ASA, even stack-ing multiple filters and narrowing thecamera’s shutter down to 45 degrees onlyafforded him a stop of T2.8. (He used ZeissUltra Prime T1.9 lenses.)

If the first half of the spot is classicZombie, the second half is a complete shift.“We also did the ‘Look how bright and cleanand glossy and gorgeous the world is whenyou use Woolite’ part of the commercial,”says Trost. This segment features pretty girlswalking down a peaceful street, trying onnew clothes in a sunny bedroom, and relax-ing in a yoga studio by a lake.

The shots in these scenes — capturedat 800 ASA in single-camera setups on loca-tion around Vancouver — are smooth andstabilized. Strong, high-key illumination isprovided by 6K and 18K HMIs. “It looks likestandard commercial fare, which isawesome because it’s Rob Zombie behindthe camera,” says Trost. “I was really happyto see him do something totally outside hiswheelhouse.”

For his part, Zombie shrugs off thesuggestion that dabbling in conventionalitymight pose a challenge. “How hard can it beto light two 20-year-old girls nicely and askthem to pretend that they’re shopping?”

The challenge, if there was one, wasin the commercial medium itself. There waslittle time for preparation leading into theproduction, and once the shoot wrapped, allof the footage was turned over to the postteam. (Technicolor Vancouver handled thecolor correction.)

“I don’t know if this is normal, butI’ve never been involved with color correc-tion on a commercial,” says Trost. “But I’vealways been happy with the way they’veturned out. That’s no surprise, because theagencies usually pump a lot of money intothe grade.”

On “Torture,” Trost did his best tobake in a look that couldn’t be undone. “Iknew my involvement [in post] would belittle to zero, and I figured that if I made itlook the way we wanted it to on the day weshot it, then everybody would be happy withit later.” ●Top: A woman admires her freshly laundered blouse. Middle: The hooded fiend hunts for unsuspecting

apparel in a Gothic landscape. Bottom: Zombie (left) and Trost take a break from the mayhem.



Bad MedicineBy Jean Oppenheimer

The Skin I Live In (La Piel Que Habito), the latest collaborationbetween iconoclastic Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar and cine-matographer José Luis Alcaine, AEC, resists easy classification.“From one moment to the next it is a melodrama, a thriller, a horrorfilm and a love story,” observes Alcaine. In contemplating a visualdesign for such a hybrid, Almodóvar initially considered an expres-sionistic approach, but he eventually opted for a style that assidu-ously avoids any visual clues that might influence viewers’ percep-tion of the characters or hint at where the story is going. Essentially,the look “doesn’t emphasize anything,” says Alcaine, whoanswered AC’s questions via e-mail with the aid of translator DeidreMacCloskey.

Based on Thierry Jonquet’s novel Mygale, the film concernsa brilliant plastic surgeon, Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas), whobecomes obsessed with creating an artificial human skin after hiswife is horribly disfigured in a fire and takes her own life. Robertlives and works in a secluded mansion, where he has two compan-ions: the housekeeper, Marilia (Marisa Paredes), and a beautifulpatient named Vera (Elena Anaya), who wears a skin-tight bodystocking that covers her from head to toe. Vera has been a captivefor six years, and cameras in her room allow Robert and Marilia totrack her every move via monitors positioned around the house.

The film was shot entirely at practical locations. Most of theaction takes place indoors, with day interiors relying almost exclu-sively on simulated sunshine. Working with a single camera (anArricam Studio), the filmmakers made decisions about blocking,camera placement and camera moves on set. The only calculationsAlcaine worked out beforehand concerned the hue and angle ofthe simulated sunlight. He recalls, “I asked our script supervisor todraw up a shooting schedule for me with the actual times of eachsequence. Instead of ‘daytime,’ it would say ‘18:00 [6 p.m.].’ Thatallowed me to plan the color and angle of the HMIs comingthrough the windows.”

To light Vera’s room, which was located on the second floorand had trees and a swimming pool directly outside the windows,Alcaine’s crew positioned three 12K HMIs and a mix of Osram fluo-rescents on scaffolding outside. The cinematographer has reliedalmost exclusively on Osram tubes for the past 25 years. “They areinexpensive and they don’t take up a lot of space,” he told AC in2006 while discussing Volver (Dec. ’06). “They have dimmers thatcan be interconnected, they cause practically no variation in thecolor of the light emission anywhere in the dimming range, andyou can shoot at any shutter setting.”

Alcaine’s lighting package, which came from IluminacionesCinetel, where owner Rafael Martos helps him design many of thehousings for the Osram tubes, included 10-banks with 20 55-wattDulux tubes, 20-banks with eight 36-watt Dulux tubes, 15-banks

Production Slate

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Skin I Live In,shot by José Luis

Alcaine, AEC.

I


of four 36-watt Lumilux tubes, 8-banks oftwo 36-watt Lumilux tubes, and a varietyof 18-watt Lumilux tubes. “We had3,200°K tubes and 5,500°K tubes, and ifwe needed to get an in-between colortemperature, we mixed them on thebanks,” says Alcaine.

Among the film’s most inspiredsequences, from both a conceptual andtechnical standpoint, are scenes of Robertin his bedroom at night, watching Vera ona giant monitor that covers one wall. Vera

knows Robert watches her, and she oftenstares straight into the camera, as if meet-ing his gaze. “We shot Vera in her roomand Robert looking at her on the monitorat the same time, and the actors were, ofcourse, in two separate spaces, so Pedrohad to coordinate their performancesperfectly,” says Alcaine. For the smallermonitors in the kitchen, he adds, “we shotthe video footage first and then played itwhen we were filming the kitchen scenes.”

The camerawork in each space also

had to be precisely synchronized. At onepoint, the video camera (a Panasonic AG-HVX200) pushes in on Vera until her facefills the frame while the Arri pushes in frombehind Robert, who is standing in front ofthe screen. In another scene, Robertwatches as Vera sits with her back againstthe arm of her divan, her legs stretched outin front of her; Robert also has a divan in hisroom, and the camera remains behind himas he sits down in a position that mirrorshers, except that he is on the opposite sideof the frame. The two characters appear tobe facing one another.

Vera is almost always lit with fluo-rescents placed at the edge of the frameand usually aligned with her eyes. LightingRobert’s bedroom required ingenuitybecause of the blue cast emitted by themassive monitor. “To make it work, I had tomake all of the lighting [in the room] thatsame color,” reports Alcaine. “[I did this] bylighting with 5,500°K [tubes] placed behindAntonio and at his sides. That way wedidn’t have light all over the room, whichalso helped [eliminate] reflections. The crewdressed in black for the filming of thesescenes.”

Alcaine notes that The Skin I Live Inmarks his first digital intermediate withAlmodóvar. Their four previous collabora-tions — Volver, Bad Education, Tie Me Up!

Top: Ledgard’sdaughter (Blanca

Suárez) escapeshis watchful eye

at a party to take a fateful

walk with Vicente(Jan Cornet).

Bottom: DirectorPedro Almodóvar

(right) looks on asBanderas and

Elena Anaya runthrough a scene

involving Ledgardand his captive

patient, Vera. This large

fluorescent sourcewas typical of

Alcaine’s approachto Vera’s room.

A half-century of service, mentorship, friendship, innovation, brilliance and passion.

Your legacy will live on.

Takuo “Tak” Miyagishima 1928-2011


Tie Me Down! and Women on the Verge ofa Nervous Breakdown — were timedphotochemically. “The DI allowed us tosuppress the tiny imperfections in Elena’sskin, befitting Ledgard’s ‘perfect creation,’”notes the cinematographer. All of thenegative processing, scanning, color correc-tion and filmout was handled by FotofilmDeluxe in Madrid. “I found the work of theentire laboratory to be of a very high stan-dard,” says Alcaine.

The Skin I Live In marked a few otherfirsts for the Almodóvar/Alcaine team.“Our previous four films were shot

anamorphic, but Pedro decided this oneshould be 1.85:1,” says Alcaine. “I wasgrateful because that meant I could use myfavorite lenses, [Arri/Zeiss] Master Primes.”The camera package came from EPC inMadrid.

Another distinct difference was thecolor scheme. Almodóvar’s films arerenowned for their rich, bold colors, with aspecial emphasis on red. “By Pedro’s owndesign, however, this movie looks veryneutral,” says Alcaine. “The tones arebeige, white, gray, black and metallic. Onlyoccasionally is there an explosion of red:

crimson drapes in a couple of settings, a reddress in a shop window, or fresh blood onthe floor.”

Alcaine remembers a mildly trouble-some night exterior at a location in Galicia,where Robert and his teenaged daughter,Norma (Blanca Suárez), attend a wedding.Norma wanders into the garden withVicente (Jan Cornet), a young man she hasjust met. When Robert can’t find his daugh-ter, he goes outside to look for her. “Thevegetation was very thick, and light couldbarely penetrate it,” recalls Alcaine. “Mysource of inspiration was the great Frenchartist Henri Rousseau, in particular his 1910painting The Dream. Even though it wasnight, I tried to make the greens very strongand bright, just as in the painting.”

The film’s biggest lighting setup wasa nighttime car chase along an isolated,winding road deep in a forest. Robertpursues Vicente, who is on a motorcycle,because he believes Vicente has raped hisdaughter. The filmmakers had to lightalmost a full mile of road to capture theaction. “We had two 18K HMIs, three 12KHMIs and a crane truck with six 12K HMIs,”says Alcaine.

Alcaine praises his crew for their“enormous contributions.” He notes, “Mygaffer, Fernando Beltran, works with me alot, and on this film, as always, he did asuperb job. Our camera operator was theexcellent Joaquin Manchado, who, thougha fine cinematographer himself, offered toserve as operator in order to be part of theproduction.”

Contemplating the five films he hasmade with Almodóvar, Alcaine observes,“It’s strange. Pedro and I understand eachother very well, but we hardly ever talk. Ourintuitions about the images are almostalways the same, and only occasionally dothey need any clarification. This shoot was areal delight for me, and I think for him, too.”

TECHNICAL SPECS

1.85:135mm and Digital CaptureArricam Studio; Panasonic AG-HVX200Arri/Zeiss Master PrimeKodak Vision3 500T 5219; Fujifilm Eterna Vivid 160Digital Intermediate ➣

Top: Ledgard admires his handiwork after Vera returns from a trip to town. Bottom: Alcaine (left) and gaffer Fernando Beltran confer on location.

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Capturing a Financial FreefallBy Patricia Thomson

“The longer I work in films, themore I find I need less lighting,” says New York-based cinematographer FrankDeMarco. A pianist since age 6, he offersa musical analogy: “I remember listeningto jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter whenhe was in Weather Report. He was avirtuoso; he’d be playing a thousandnotes a second. I saw him again about 15years later at the Blue Note, and he wasan older, mellow guy, and everyone in hisyoung, hot group was playing a millionnotes a minute. Wayne was just playingone note, but everybody was listening tohim, because he was doing somethinginteresting with that note. It’s similar withlighting: once you find the one light orthe minimum number of lights that work,you make it work, really bend it. That’swhat people are going to see and feel.”

DeMarco had ample occasion tobend a few notes on Margin Call, anensemble drama written and directed byJ.C. Chandor, whose characters — agroup of Wall Street analysts — are thefirst to foresee the 2008 financial melt-down. The cinematographer had 10 daysof prep for the 17-day shoot, which tookplace mainly in a high-rise office buildingin Manhattan. After principal photogra-

phy wrapped, the producers approved an18th day to shoot real trading floorsdowntown and some nighttime heli-copter shots of the hero high-rise.

The story, which takes place over36 hours, is a pressure-cooker workplacedrama. When one analyst, Eric (StanleyTucci), gets sacked, he passes a jumpdrive to an entry-level colleague, Peter(Zachary Quinto), warning him to “becareful” as the elevator door closes. Peterextrapolates the drive’s financial formulato its logical conclusion and sees immi-nent disaster for the firm. He alerts hisboss, who in turn calls his boss, and so onup the chain. The movie examines theresponse of each character to the firm’slikely meltdown as they race to resolvethe situation before “The Street” findsout. “It’s not panic if you’re the first oneout the door,” says CEO John Tuld(Jeremy Irons), as he greenlights a fire saleof worthless stocks.

Most of the movie was shot on the42nd floor of 1 Penn Plaza. As luck wouldhave it, the floor’s previous occupant wasa hedge fund. “That was a gift,” saysChandor. “Everything we might needwas there: boardrooms, a 200-persontrading floor, corner offices, hallways.”Even the trading-room desks had beenleft in place.

Another boon was the involve-

ment of Bloomberg Trading Systems,which not only loaned and wired up 150trading stations, but also created a loopof screen shots showing financial graphsthat any Wall Street trader would recog-nize as authentic. “That really helpedbring things to life,” says Chandor.

Those monitors were both motifsand practical sources. “From the minute Iwrote the first couple of scenes, I decidedthose screens should be a recurring visualtheme,” says the director. Always loom-ing over analysts’ heads and active evenduring the dead of night, “they’re repre-sentative of the outside market pressureand the paranoia in these crisis situa-tions,” he says. “The screens let youknow that the market never sleeps.”

Another motif is Manhattan, aliving, pulsating presence outside theoffice windows. “We had beautiful floor-to-ceiling windows, and the breathtakingview of Manhattan is definitely one of thecharacters,” says DeMarco. “It’s alwaysthere, looming and glowing in the back-ground.”

To ensure that the windowswouldn’t blow out during day scenes,DeMarco had his crew cover the windowswith 4'x8' sheets of ND.3, ND.6 andND.9. Upon doing so, they discovered aproblem: though the windows lookedidentical, each had a slightly different

Will (Paul Bettany, right) consults with Sam (Kevin Spacey) as a crisis looms at their firm in Margin Call.

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width ranging from 50"-52". The 48" NDpanels therefore left a gap. DeMarco’ssolution was to ask production designerJohn Paino to make removable pilasters toact as vertical window dividers. “Once weinstalled the ND panels, we could takethese pilasters and Velcro them againstthe window,” says DeMarco. “They notonly hid the gaps, but they also lookedgreat. As exterior lighting changed, partic-ularly at the end of the day, it was abreeze for [key grip] Caswell Cooke andhis crew to quickly change the panels.

“Our limited budget made it atough choice for the producers, but theyrecognized that even though the ND

panels cost a little money up front, theysaved a ton of time and aggravation,because we didn’t have to add big HMIsinside to balance with the outside light,”adds the cinematographer.

Because most of Margin Call takesplace at night, DeMarco knew he neededto shoot at around 800 ASA. He explains,“Shooting film wasn’t possible on ourbudget because J.C. wanted to capturethe dialogue-heavy drama with twocameras, so we decided to go digital.”(Footage of the real trading floors and thenighttime aerial work was shot on film,Kodak Vision3 500T 5219.)

DeMarco chose two Red Ones

(upgraded with Mysterium-X sensors) ashis main cameras. However, he found thedaylight-balanced sensor to be closer to400 ASA. “Maybe it’s 800 ASA in HMIlight,” he allows, “but I was shootingmostly in tungsten or mixed light, and Ifound the sensor wasn’t as sensitive as itsspecs claimed.”

Nevertheless, the camera’s sensitiv-ity was sufficient to allow DeMarco tomake the onscreen monitors work forhim. “I balanced the overall lighting onthe set so the monitors were always legi-ble,” he says. “Even with overhead light-ing, you could still very much see thecontent on the monitors. In really darkscenes, the monitors often become thelight source.”

DeMarco’s minimalist lighting is ondisplay in a shot that tracks through theempty office after the firm’s bigwigs haveset the wheels of fate in motion. Thecamera dollies past trading stations withglowing monitors, and then continuesinto an office belonging to Sam (KevinSpacey). “That was a dead-of-nightscene,” says DeMarco. “We kept theother rooms dark, so the monitors aredoing a lot of the lighting. We left onsome of the small tungsten practicals onthe desks, enhancing them with stronger

Top: This shot ofcast and crew

preparing a scenein Sam’s office

shows theneutral-densitypanels used forday interiors at

the location.Bottom: Seth

(Penn Badgley) receives a

worrisome call ata nightclub.

bulbs on dimmers, and we hid some KinoFlos on the floor to enhance particularpieces of architecture.

“We changed out the bulbs in theceiling lights to work with our colortemperatures,” he continues. “Oncegaffer Radium Cheung and I figured outour night and day lighting schemes, it

was pretty simple. We used Kino FloImage 80s on rolling stands for big wideshots to give everybody a little edge oropen up an area, and we used ArriPocket Par 200-watt and 800-watt Jokersto put hot hits here and there for dayscenes.” For close-ups, he cranked up thecomputers’ brightness levels and

augmented that with small Rosco LEDLitePads that were balanced to match themonitors’ cool hue.

Although the movie’s subject isgrim, Chandor’s goal was a handsomefilm. “I didn’t ever want this to have agritty, down-in-the-pits feel,” he says.“The audience has to spend an hour anda half in this room, so I wanted it [to look]as beautiful as possible.” DeMarco strovefor smooth dolly moves and used olderZeiss T2.1 Standard Speed primes as hismain lenses. (He also used AngenieuxOptimo 17-80mm zooms.) “The olderlenses have a wonderful way of maintain-ing a handsome image while smoothingout the harsh look of these new large-chip digital cameras without requiringfilters,” he observes.

At times, however, the dramacalled for lighting that was intentionallybrutal. DeMarco notes, “The night exteri-ors of Peter wandering the city streets ina pensive daze were lit with a mix ofambient city light and a little fill; the mixreflects the character’s moral ambiguity.”

CinematographerFrankie DeMarcotakes a break on

the roof of theproduction’s

primary location.

26

In another example, Sam and an assistantwait to conduct colleagues to a bigwigmeeting. “They’re standing right under arecessed ceiling light, and it gives themboth hideous raccoon eyes. It’s a severemoment, but the look is appropriate forthe story and the emotion of the scene.”

For the toplit conference-roomscenes, DeMarco’s crew hung skirtedChina balls on a “suicide arm,” which hedescribes as “a hefty stand with a longpole. Then, to brighten someone’s face orput a little glint in his or her eyes, I usedan altered-snoot Mole Baby Soft. It’scalled a Néstor, after Néstor Almendros[ASC]. You can shoot soft, concentratedlight 6 to 8 feet out without it spilling allover everything. Apart from that, we justhad a few practicals in the background.”

DeMarco used a Canon EOS 5DMark II in tandem with the Red camerasfor a couple of driving scenes. In one, twojunior analysts scour the city for Eric, theirfired boss. The Canon was suction-cupped to the limo’s untinted windows.“Inside the vehicle, we positioned a

Rosco LED LitePad so you could simulta-neously see the actors in the car andManhattan reflected in the curve of thelimo window,” says DeMarco.

Fortunately, the technical needsand the emotional dynamics of MarginCall neatly converged. “Using minimallighting allowed us to move quickly,which was extremely important on amovie with such a short shooting sched-ule,” says DeMarco. “Using minimallighting also means you’re not going tohave a lot of f-stop; a 40mm lens at a T2gives you about 8 inches of depth-of-field, so you essentially hold the face.Thus, while Manhattan shimmers out-of-focus in the background, the charactersare visually isolated in their own respec-tive spaces, which perfectly reflects theirmental and emotional states.”

“People like this pride themselveson being able to stay calm on their worstday, so at key moments in the drama,these characters just pull back,” saysChandor. “Frankie’s cinematographydoes a beautiful job of [conveying] that.”

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27

TECHNICAL SPECS

1.85:1Digital Capture and 35mmRed One, Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Arri 435Zeiss Standard Speed, Angenieux OptimoKodak Vision3 500T 5219Digital Intermediate ●

ERRATUM

In last month’s print edition, DanteSpinotti’s first name was misspelled in theASC Close-Up (page 104).


It’sday 11 on the shooting schedule for Drive, the firstHollywood movie from Danish director Nicolas WindingRefn, who made his name on the international stage withsuch projects as the Pusher trilogy, Bronson (AC Oct. ’09)

and Valhalla Rising. Refn has invited AC to the set, built onthe fourth floor of Los Angeles’ Park Plaza Hotel. With ablanket wrapped snugly around his waist, the director leadsthe way down a faux-brick hallway that opens into a roomfeaturing four mirrored walls outlined with vanity bulbs —the dressing room of a strip club. It’s time, Refn says, “toplace the girls.”

Based on the crime novel by James Sallis, Drive

Newton Thomas Sigel, ASC anddirector Nicolas Winding Refncraft a violent fairytale on the

streets of Los Angeles.

By Jon D. Witmer

•|•

RoadWarriorsRoadWarriorsrevolves around the unnamed Driver (Ryan Gosling), whospends his days as a Hollywood stunt driver and his nightsbehind the wheel of getaway cars for members of the LosAngeles underworld. In order to protect his neighbor, Irene(Carey Mulligan), he agrees to help her ex-con husband,Standard (Oscar Isaac), pull off an easy heist. But when thejob goes horribly wrong, Driver has to cut a bloody swath toguide Irene to safety.

“It’s almost a mythological story, not a story abouttoday or yesterday or tomorrow, so it was important that themovie have an almost indefinable time period,” says directorof photography Newton Thomas Sigel, ASC. After Drivewas in the can, Sigel spoke with AC by phone from the U.K.,where he was shooting Jack the Giant Killer for Bryan Singer.

Drive marks Sigel’s first collaboration with Refn, andthe cinematographer recalls that when he was approachedabout the project, “I took a look at Bronson and was reallyimpressed. It was clearly a film with a limited budget andlimited resources, but it had a very strong vision from thedirector.”

“I met with a lot of wonderful cinematographers —that’s the good thing about Hollywood, they’re all out here,”says Refn. “But when I met Tom, I really dug his energy, andhis background as a documentary filmmaker made me confi-

www.theasc.com October 2011 29

dent we could make our seven-weekshooting schedule work. Plus, his firstfilm as a cameraman was KennethAnger’s Lucifer Rising!”

Refn often cites avant-gardefilmmaker Anger as an influence. “Thefirst visual reference I showed Ryan inregards to Drive was [Anger’s] ScorpioRising,” he says. “Ryan asked, ‘Why areyou showing me a movie with a lot ofguys working on motorcycles?’ And Isaid, ‘It’s how it’s shot — the sensual,sexual nature of it, the fetish, the objec-tification. That’s what we should try togo for.’”

In addition to Anger’s oeuvre,Refn and Sigel were inspired by thelook of location-scout photos Sigelsnapped using the Hipstamatic app onhis iPhone. “There are some colorpalettes in that program that referenceretro photographic looks, like Koda-chrome or Ektrachrome,” says Sigel. “Ishowed Nicolas some of the photos,and he wasn’t certain of the strangetonalities, but he really responded tothe vibrancy of the colors. We designedUni

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Opposite: The unnamed Driver (Ryan Gosling) takes the wheel in Drive, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and photographed by Newton Thomas Sigel, ASC. This page, top: Driver

becomes a thorn in the side of mob boss Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks). Bottom: Sigel plans a shot of Driver and Irene (Carey Mulligan).


a lot of sets and costumes to make useof that kind of vibrant palette.”

Early in his month-long prep,Sigel decided to shoot with Arri’sAlexa digital camera. “We had a tightbudget and very little time, and I wasintrigued by the look I could getshooting available light downtown,” heexplains. “I did some driving tests withthe Alexa, and it blew me away interms of what it could do with existinglight.

“I rated the camera at 800[ASA],” he continues. “I think themyth of digital is that you underexposebecause it can’t hold the highlights likefilm. I find that when you underexposedigital more than a little bit, very oftenyou increase your noise level signifi-cantly. What’s extraordinary about theAlexa is that even if I pushed thesensor to 1,600 [ASA] there was verylittle noise, and I could actually under-expose quite a bit without introducingnoise in the blacks. The dynamic rangewas mind-boggling.”

The cinematographer adds thathe typically shot nights and interiorsaround T2.8, and day exteriors aroundT8.

Clairmont Camera in NorthHollywood provided the camera pack-age. Sigel shot most of the pictureusing the 15-40mm AngenieuxOptimo zoom lens. “I also used CookeS4 primes for the daytime car interiors,and Zeiss Master Primes for the night-time car interiors.”

He kept filtration to a mini-mum, although he occasionallyemployed a Tiffen Soft/FX filter (ineither 1⁄2 or 1 density) for diffusion.

“Nicolas really loves wide lenses,like the 18mm and 21mm,” says Sigel.“That’s a challenge when you’re tryingto get a lot of work done in a shortperiod of time. You tend to want to setup multiple cameras and have the tele-photo lens pick off close-ups whileyou’re getting a two-shot, but welimited that approach as much as wecould.

“Whenever there was a fight oran act of violence, we’d get two

◗ Road Warriors

Top: Driver andShannon (Bryan

Cranston) talkinside Shannon’s

garage. Thelocation isactually a

Hollywoodpicture-car

garage; the warmbacklight was

provided by a 5Kgelled with Rosco

Urban Color.Middle: Refn

(left) talksGosling and

Cranston througha scene that

shows Driver inhis day job as a

Hollywood stuntdriver. Bottom:

Driver flips apolice car for themovie within the

movie.


cameras on it so we didn’t have torepeat that action over and over,” addsthe cinematographer.

Sigel operated the A camera,and Greg Lundsgaard served as B-camera/Steadicam operator. “I’dworked with Greg before,” says Sigel.“He’s got a good eye, and I’m veryconfident in what he does.”

By the time Sigel joined theproduction, it was a given that theentire shoot would happen in andaround L.A. The Park Plaza Hotelbecame one of the production’s hubs.The location provided ample space tobuild the strip club’s dressing room, thedesign of which grew out of Sigel’spreproduction discussions with Refnand production designer Beth Mickle.Sigel recalls, “I mentioned that onFrankie & Alice,we created a dressingroom that had tables at differentangles, so when we shot we got layersand layers of detail in the mirrors.Nicolas took that idea one step furtherand said, ‘Let’s make it all mirrors.’ Sowe basically made a mirror box — itreminded me of a Lucas Samarassculpture — and it was just lit withpractical light.

“We had one shot where we hadto do a 360-degree camera move,”

Irene andDriver’sapartments werebuilt inside thePark Plaza Hotel,and they weredesigned tofunction like apracticallocation. Thecommon corridor(top andbottom) was litwith 250-wattPhotofloodsfitted inside wallsconces.


I’d come down with the flu and hadtaken some anti-flu drugs before

meeting with Ryan Gosling aboutDrive, and I was high as a kite throughdinner. Halfway through the meal, Iasked if he could take me home,because I needed to lie down. It was likea blind date gone bad. In the car, Ryanturned on the radio, and REOSpeedwagon’s “Can’t Fight ThisFeeling” started to play. I was so out ofit I started crying, turned the radio upand began singing. Then I turned toRyan and screamed, “I know whatDrive is! It’s about a man who drivesaround at night listening to pop musicbecause that’s his emotional release!”

Ryan said, “Okay,” and that’s howthe film was born.

I loved James Sallis’ book. It’s anexistential story about a stuntman who’salso a getaway driver. He lives inHollywood, he can’t quite deal withreality, and he goes a bit psychotic at theend. Driver is two people: by day heworks in Hollywood, and at night hedrives in an almost armored suit. Iwanted him to be like a superhero inthe making.

I wanted to make Drive an L.A.fairytale, which is what Sallis’ book is.To make the violence feel extreme, Ihad to make the first half of the movievery pure and sentimental, almost like aJohn Hughes movie. Then it goes reallyviolent. It’s like Pretty in Pink with ahead smash.

I spent a lot of time redesigningthe script with Hoss Amini, whoadapted the book, and Ryan. We hadthe whole movie on index cards, andwe’d move things around on the living-room table. Then, at night, Ryan droveme around and showed me LosAngeles. We were almost living themovie as we were writing it.

I felt I would benefit from work-ing with a Hollywood cinematogra-pher. While talking with Tom Sigel[ASC], it quickly became clear that wehad similar tastes and understandings. I

explained to him that I don’t do a lot ofcoverage, and I like wide-angle lensesbecause I want depth. I wanted to gowith a classical style, which I felt wouldgive the film its own identity. Also, I’mcolorblind, so I told Tom and BethMickle, the production designer, “Ineed contrasting colors, and I like a lotof red.” It was a wonderful collabora-tion.

There are so many movies whereyou see cars spin and fly. With ourbudget, we couldn’t even get close tothat kind of action, so I wanted to see ifI could define each driving scene specif-ically. I did something similar onBronson, in which each of the threefight scenes had a different feel. I don’thave a driver’s license, but I’ve alwaysbeen fascinated by speed, and I alsohave a fetish for curves, so I wanted toshoot the cars how I would see themsexually. I’m very much a fetish film-maker; I make films out of what Iwould like to see.

Visually and technically, I try tomake every film different. We shot a lotof Drive in slow motion because I lovethat language.

Shooting with the Alexa was ablessing. I don’t see it as a replacementfor 35mm negative, which is a uniquething we’ll never find a substitute for,

but as another canvas. I stipulated in my contract that

my editor, Matt Newman, would editthe film with me. When we make thefirst cut, we make the movie incoherentjust to see what it is not. By doing that,you can see if there might be other waysof putting the movie together. Then westart cutting it more as planned. It’s aconstant discovery process, which I like.

Showing Drive at Cannes wasvery joyful because I’d been able to makethe movie I wanted to make, which initself is always a battle. I’d been nervousthat working in Hollywood wouldmean I might not have the control Iusually have. But Ryan had directorapproval, and he protected me — it wasa similar situation to when Lee Marvininsisted on John Boorman directingPoint Blank — and producers AdamSiegel and Marc Platt were also veryrespectful. There are a lot of smartpeople in Hollywood. I was in goodhands.

Coming from Europe to makefilms in Hollywood, it’s almost likeyou’re living the dreams of all theEuropean filmmakers who came toHollywood from the very beginning.You can make your film within thesystem. There’s still hope.

— Nicolas Winding Refn

•|• “Pretty in Pink With a Head Smash” •|•


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Sigel continues. To avoid seeing thecamera’s reflection in the mirrors, “keygrip Alex Klabukov created a rig fromthe ceiling that was almost like a heli-copter blade — the camera sat on itand spun around above the actors, justbarely out of shot.”

As the crew prepares to shoot inthe dressing room, Refn places theextras playing the strippers and givesthem directions. In the scene, Driverenters the dressing room and takes ahammer to the hand of Cook (JamesBiberi), the club’s proprietor, and thenthrows him to the ground, demandinginformation about the heist that wentbad. As the violence erupts, some ofthe strippers make a speedy exit, whileothers stay seated around the perime-ter, waiting for the outburst to subside.

For much of the scene, Sigel andLundsgaard sit tucked in a corner ofthe set, rolling two cameras.Lundsgaard keeps his camera trainedon Cook, Sigel follows Driver, and asthe actors move through the frame, thebare bulbs positioned around themirrored walls occasionally flare thelenses. “The globes were 40 or 60watts, and they had a sort of mauvecolor,” says gaffer Anthony “Nako”Nakonechnyj, one of Sigel’s longtimecollaborators. “We would turn offglobes we didn’t see to increase thecontrast, and we could dim them downif they were too bright or were flaringthe lens.”

The Park Plaza also housedDriver’s and Irene’s apartments, whichwere designed to function like practi-cal locations. A common corridor wasconstructed, and doors along the corri-dor opened into the actual apartmentsets. Additionally, the set’s windowslined up with the Park Plaza’s realwindows, providing a view of down-town L.A.

Sigel recalls that the floor usedfor the apartments was “way up,beyond where you can reach withCondors for exterior lighting. Thechallenge was balancing the lightinside in a quick and efficient way, andthat’s where the Alexa was great. We

Top: In this framegrab, Drivernavigates LosAngeles'nighttime streets.Middle: Sigelchecks the lightsrigged to Driver'scar for thenighttime drivingsequences.Bottom: An ArriAlexa was riggedoff the front of astock car tocapture actionaround aracetrack. Sigeltook this photousing theHipstamatic app,and he notes thatRefn "respondedto the vibrancy ofthe colors."

had a lot of plans about how to gel thewindows, but once we got in there, Ididn’t need to use all of those tricksbecause the camera had more dynamicrange than I expected.”

To supplement the practicalsinside the apartments, the crew regu-larly employed Kino Flo 4' two-bankfixtures fitted with K32 3,200°K tubes,as well as several varieties of small,homemade instruments that houseddimmable Photofloods. The commoncorridor was lit primarily with 250-watt Photofloods fitted inside sconces

and “dimmed down as needed,” saysNako. Sigel adds, “We always gothrough a dimmer system. It’s fasterand gives you more control.”

At one end of the corridor, thecrew also constructed an elevator set.To sell the impression that the elevatorwas moving from one floor to another,the art department would redress thehallway just outside the elevator toappear as different floors. For shots inwhich the doors open to reveal theparking garage, the crew actuallyrebuilt the elevator set in a garage at

Los Angeles Center Studios.There, Nako explains, “wechanged out all the globes andreplaced them with 4-footKino Flo 3200s. We alsoadded kicks and sheens withsome 10Ks, and we did someraking with Mole Baby 2Kswith Small Quartz PlusChimeras; the Chimerasusually wore a Quarter GridFront and a 40-degreeLighttools LCD [light-control device].”

The elevator is the setting for acrucial scene in which Driver andIrene find themselves sharing a ridewith a hit man (Christian Cage) who’sbeen sent to kill them. Glimpsing thekiller’s holstered gun, Driver gentlypushes Irene toward the back corner;the lights dim, and, in slow motion,Driver turns and kisses Irene. Nakoexplains, “The units in the elevatorwere recessed can lights with 75-wattJDR Spot Globes. We also added whatI call a ‘Mini Space Light,’ a variationon the covered wagon. All the lights in


◗ Road Warriors

Right: Driverdemands

information fromBlanche (ChristinaHendricks) after a

heist goes awry. Inthe background,

Refn and Sigeldiscuss the framewhile 1st AC NinoNeuboeck stands

at the ready.Below: When

armed thugs stormthe motel, Driverresponds with a

shocking burst ofviolence. Hesurveys the

resulting carnagein this frame grab;

the light comingthrough the

window behindhim was provided

by an Arrimax 18K.

www.arri.com/l-series

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the elevator were controlled by adimmer board.”

The lights come back up to theirnormal level, and then, with the cameraagain rolling at 24 fps, Driver spins andsmashes the man’s face into the eleva-tor’s controls. A brief struggle ensues,ending when Driver literally kicks inthe man’s face. “It’s the ultimate irony,going into this act of violence from his

You don’t know if it’s his fantasy or hisreality, and he doesn’t quite knowhimself.”

The head smash “was very muchinspired by Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible[AC April ’03],” adds Refn. “Gaspartalked me through how he did it.”

For Drive, visual-effects supervi-sor Jerry Spivack oversaw the digitalcompositing of the actor’s body with aprosthetic head. Similar work was alsodone for an earlier scene in whichDriver and Blanche (ChristinaHendricks), an accomplice in the ill-fated heist, hole up in a tiny motelroom. When armed thugs break intothe room, one shoots Blanche in thehead. Sigel explains that the special-effects department “built a prosthetichead and blew it up, and wephotographed it at high speed [using aWeisscam HS-2 recording at 250 fps].

one good moment of love,” Sigelmuses. “When Irene walks out of theelevator and looks back at Driver, thiswild animal, you realize it’s overbetween them.”

“There’s a scene in every one ofmy films that is the heart of the movie,and in Drive it’s the elevator scene,”says Refn. “It was a way to tip theviewer to Driver’s essential dilemma.

◗ Road Warriors

Bot

tom

pho

to b

y N

ewto

n T

hom

as S

igel

.

This strip-club set was also constructed inside the ParkPlaza Hotel. The hallway (top left) was lit primarilywith 75-watt quartz-halogen globes inside the wallsconces, while the dressing room (top right) was litwith the practical vanity bulbs visible in frame. To

capture a 360-degree camera move without seeing thecamera in the mirrored walls, the crew suspended a

circular rig above the set (bottom left).


We also photographed Christina athigh speed, and then the visual-effectsteam combined the heads to create theeffect of her head being blown off.

“Trying to light someone in apractical bathroom not big enough tofit two people was a challenge,” Sigelcontinues. “Fortunately, there was awindow we could light from, but weneeded to add 2 1⁄2 more stops toaccommodate the high speed. To makematters worse, there was a tree rightoutside the window. Nonetheless, thejudicious use of an 18K Arrimax didthe trick.

“Nicolas wanted the moments ofviolence to be incredibly visceral,” thecinematographer continues. “Hewanted to go for the gore. The bulk ofthe film is not violent, but when it doesturn to violence, it really is horrific.”

Refn says his approach to thefilm’s violence was in keeping with thefairytale elements he saw in the story,with Gosling playing “the knight, andCarey as the innocent girl whose purityneeds to be protected. When violencecomes in a fairytale, it’s always verybrutal, in very short sentences, andcharacters die very violently.”

“Nicolas talks metaphoricallyabout character,” notes Sigel. “Evenwhen he was describing the tone of thecar sequences, it was as if the car was anextension of Driver, like he was partman, part machine.”

Finding the character within thedriving sequences was crucial for Refn,who doesn’t have a driver’s license. “Ihave no interest in driving and no inter-est in cars,” says the director. “But this isa movie about a man who happens todrive a car, not a movie about cars.”

Sigel says Refn “wanted the film’sthree main driving sequences to eachhave its own character and not be atraditional car chase. It wasn’t so muchabout being loud and noisy as it wasabout having a defined tonality.”

Those three sequences were allshot during the final two weeks ofproduction. In the first sequence,Driver navigates a silver Chevy Impalathrough downtown L.A. at night, evad-

◗ Road Warriors

Top: Driver andIrene find

themselves inan elevator

with a hit man(Christian

Gage) sent tokill them.

Middle: Sigelframes the

action whileRefn confabs

with theactors. “There’s

a scene inevery one ofmy films that

is the heart ofthe movie, andin Drive it’s the

elevatorscene,” says

Refn. Bottom:Sigel preps a

shot that looksoutside the

elevator.


◗ Road Warriors

ing the police and delivering twothieves to the parking lot of the StaplesCenter, where they and Driver disap-pear into the crowd.

“That first chase is meant to bevery subjective,” says Sigel. “For thebulk of it, [we] don’t even leave the car— the whole sequence is from Driver’spoint of view.” To position cameras inand around the car, Klabukov and hiscrew rigged high hats inside andspeed-rail rigs along the outside.

“As part of my test, I took Ryanout in a car, and Tony and I rigged thecar with a rack overhead with all differ-ent kinds of tiny lights, such as LEDsand 150-watt [Arri Fresnels],” saysSigel. “We wired them all intodimmers in the trunk that could bewirelessly controlled, so we could turnlights off and on or dim them up anddown. The lights were all so small andunobtrusive that they were never inshot, so Ryan could just drive aroundwhile Tony played the roof rack like amusical instrument. There were alsotimes when we’d kill all of our lights —we’d pull up to a stoplight, and youcould see the light on Ryan’s face gofrom red to green.”

For the shoot, the filmmakersrefined the system they had utilized forthe test and continued to light primar-ily from the roof-mounted speed-railrig, which sat like a halo atop the car.Off of the rig, the crew positioned Arri

Driver hunts Nino (Ron Perlman, in frame grab above) at night in the film’s final chase sequence, which culminates in a crash that sends Nino’s car hurtling onto the

beach. The sequence was filmed at Malibu’s Point Mugu, where the production set up the sodium-vapor streetlamps shown here.

150-watt tungsten units, some gelledwith Rosco Urban Color #3152 or LeeFluorescent 5,700°K #241, to supple-ment the output of sodium-vapor andmercury-vapor practicals. Nako alsoemployed what he calls “D-Lights. JoshStern, my best boy, and I designed thesehousings that look like an iPhone and[fitted them with] LiteRibbon LEDsfrom LiteGear.” Some of the D-Lightscontained hybrid LiteRibbons, whichallowed Nako to switch between tung-sten and daylight color temperatures,and others contained RGB strips, whichallowed for a wider array of colors.

Nako and his crew also placed D-Lights inside the car, along with whatthe gaffer calls “LED Sticks,” strips ofHybrid or RGB LiteRibbon fittedinside 3", 6" or 12" lengths of aluminumchannel. “We used the 12-inch on thewindshield [to supplement] the red-light/green-light effect, and we used a3-inch LED Stick in the instrument-panel area to provide some glow,” saysNako.

To power all the lights in andaround the car, the crew placed a 12-volt 150AH MF Truck battery in theImpala’s trunk. “They put a bigger alter-nator in the motor, so the battery wasbeing charged by the engine of the caras we drove,” explains Nako. “Thebattery pushed 32 channels of 12-volt.Each D-Light was either two or three channels — the RGB had threechannels and the hybrids had two chan-nels. I also had two 6-by-1.2KLightronics dimmer packs on top of thecar for the Arri 150s, and the wholesystem was being controlled by wirelessDMX, so we could chase the car withthe follow van, where I had the ETCSmart Fade ML dimmer board.”

The second car chase takes placeduring the day and begins with the heistgone wrong, which leaves Standarddead at the scene. As Driver andBlanche speed away in a black FordMustang, a Chrysler 300 sedan withtinted windows begins its pursuit. “Iloved the idea of this strange extra car,”says Refn. “My reference was whenCary Grant runs in the crop field in

North by Northwest . The plane comes,and you don’t really know why it’sthere; it’s a dreamlike situation.” Thedirector was equally inspired by ClaudeLelouch’s short film Rendezvous, inwhich a car tears through the streets ofParis while the revving engine fills thesoundtrack. Refn recalls, “I said, ‘Whatif I did a chase that’s all about thesound of the cars?’”

In terms of coverage, says Sigel,“the second car chase is meant to be themost traditional. The twist at the end isthat Driver’s ability to overcome the carthat’s chasing him is done by a bit oftrickery: spinning his car around anddriving backwards. It’s almost like atongue-in-cheek play on the climacticmoment of a traditional car chase.”

The sequence was shot over twodays around the Templin Highway exitoff of Interstate 5. AC visited the loca-tion on the second day and found thecrew busy prepping the climax of thechase, when Driver puts his Mustangthrough a 270-degree spin to separatehimself from the Chrysler, which thencaroms off a guardrail. The Chrysler’scrash is seen through the rear wind-shield of the Mustang as Hendricks“freaks out in the foreground,” saysSigel; the shot was captured with anAlexa locked down where the frontpassenger seat would normally be, nextto the precision driver who took thewheel for the stunt.

Despite the heat, Refn was againwearing a blanket around his waist ashe oversaw the proceedings on loca-tion. In addition to the Alexa in theMustang, the crew was prepping anumber of other cameras to ensure thecrash would not require more than onetake; the other cameras included anAlexa on a remote head positionedalong the side of the road, another on aMercedes SUV-mounted UltimateArm, and an Iconix HD-RH1 on theMustang’s dashboard.

Sigel notes that he also “set upmy [Canon EOS] 5D in a fixed-camera position to get more coverage.Every time I pulled out my 5D, itended up being used, just because you

41

can put that camera where you would-n’t dare put an Alexa.” However, thecinematographer adds, “in prep, focuspuller Nino Neuboeck and I tested the5D, 7D and Iconix cameras, thinkingthey would come in handy for the carwork, but the quality of the Alexaoutdistanced the other cameras by so

far, we kept them to an absolute mini-mum.”

Sigel describes Drive’s third andfinal chase sequence as “the mostpredatory.” Having traced his problemssince the heist back to crime bossBernie Rose (Albert Brooks) and hisassociate, Nino (Ron Perlman), Driver

hunts Nino at night and runs the gang-ster’s car off the road. Driver then drivesstraight into the side of Nino’s car withenough force to send it toppling over acliff.

The sequence was filmed atMalibu’s Point Mugu, where theproduction occupied a parking lot thatoverlooked the stretch of beach whereNino’s car lands. To backlight the crash,Sigel and Nako employed a 16-headand a 9-head Bebee Night Light, andfor fill they utilized 4' tungsten spheresrented from Skylight LightingBalloons. Additionally, the crewbrought in “cobra head” sodium-vaporstreetlamps, which play in frame behindDriver as he walks onto the beach andchases Nino into the crashing surf. Thestreetlamps’ warm backlight was furthersupplemented by “what I call LightGrenades, bare sodium-vapor globesthat we could easily move around andflag off, depending on what effect wasneeded,” says Nako.

◗ Road WarriorsDriver

approaches hisride along one

of Los Angeles’seedier

backstreets.Sigel says that

Drive is “almosta mythological

story, not astory about

today oryesterday or

tomorrow, so itwas importantthat the moviehave an almost

indefinabletime period.”

42

“Another big effect we had onthe beach was a searchlight, which wasactually a 7K Xenon bounced into aspinning 4-by-4 mirror,” the gaffercontinues. “Then, when the cameralooks at the ocean, we turned the 16-head Bebee toward the water and lit theatmosphere above it, so we could actu-ally see the ocean.”

Throughout the shoot, the film-makers recorded out from the Alexa toHDCam-SR tape. The camera wasalso monitored through a FilmLightTrulight On-Set system, which wasoverseen by digital-imaging technicianRyan Nguyen. Sigel explains that theTrulight system allowed the filmmak-ers to do “real-time color correction onthe set. We didn’t do anything radical,but we’d add some contrast and a littlebit of saturation. All of the [metadata]would be recorded on a Flash drive that would go to FotoKem, where[colorist/ASC associate member]Mark Van Horne, whom I’ve known

for many years, was kind enough to sitin during the transfer. Mark knew thelook I was going for, and if he sawsomething going in the wrong direc-tion, he’d make some corrections andgive me a call. It was a very simple andeasy system.

“Because of all the work we didwith the Trulight, the DI was prettysimple,” continues Sigel. The finaldigital grade was carried out atCompany 3’s New York facility withcolorist Tom Poole; Sigel also did somepreliminary work with colorist StephenNakamura.

Drive had its premiere at thisyear’s Cannes Film Festival, whereRefn received the award for BestDirector. In a conversation with thedirector a few months later, AC at lastasked the pressing question: What’sthe deal with that blanket he wears on set?

“It’s a ritual I’ve had since myfirst movie,” says Refn. “On all my

films, I find a blanket in the costumedepartment, and I wrap it around mystomach to keep the energy within me.I only take it off if I’m very, very angryor very, very hot. It keeps my stomachwarm, which centers me and gives me peace. Filmmaking is a stressful experience.” ●

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43


The new drama Machine Gun Preacher is loosely based onthe life of Sam Childers (played by Gerard Butler), abiker and ex-con in Pittsburgh who experienced a reli-gious conversion and subsequently dedicated himself to

helping war orphans in Sudan. He and his wife, Lynn, oper-ate Angels of East Africa, the Children’s Village Orphanagein Nimule, Sudan.

When director Marc Forster began discussing the film

with longtime collaborator Roberto Schaefer, ASC, AIC,they agreed that the story, whose locations encompass urbanand suburban Pittsburgh and various sites in Africa, presenteda stylistic conundrum. “It seemed to want an epic feel, butwithout gloss,” says Schaefer. “We were after an immediate,down-and-dirty feel that people could relate to, but we alsowanted to do justice to the sequences in Africa, which havelandscapes and a lot of big action sequences.”

They decided to shoot Super 16mm with the newHawk 1.3x anamorphic lenses from Vantage Film inGermany. “We felt that would make the most of the horizon-tal landscapes and also deliver the intimacy that anamorphiccan bring,” says Schaefer. “We chose the format for aestheticreasons, but we also knew we’d be able to move a lot fasterbecause the cameras are small. Marc wanted to shoot a lot ofmaterial handheld with two cameras, and I think handheldhas a more natural feel with Super 16. We also felt the smallercameras would be less intimidating for the many children inour cast.

“Shooting film helped in difficult circumstances —

Roberto Schaefer, ASC, AIC takesaim at Machine Gun Preacher, hisninth feature collaboration with

director Marc Forster.

By David Heuring

•|•

ManofActionManofAction


bright daylight, high-contrast situationsand dark nights,” he adds. “As for thegrain, we embraced it!”

The 52-day schedule involvedlocations in Detroit, standing in forPittsburgh, and the area aroundJohannesburg, South Africa, standing infor Sudan and Uganda.

After Schaefer tested Hawk V-Series anamorphic lenses and experi-mented with Arri Relativity, a softwarepackage that facilitates grain manage-ment, he and Forster decided to shoot afew large-scale wide shots in Africa andMichigan on 35mm. “When you shootvery-wide-angle shots in Super 16, shotswith a lot of distance and depth andsmall objects deep in the frame, yousometimes lose a bit of the detail becausethe resolution isn’t the same as with35mm film,” explains the cinematogra-pher. “So we shot some of the very bigwide shots on 35mm, and we wentspherical because I knew I wouldn’t usethe full negative. I knew I could cut intothose images and use Relativity to fine-tune the grain so it would match the16mm material.”

Schaefer’s prep also included test-ing every 16mm negative available. “Itook everything into account — look,grain structure, color rendition,” he says.“We decided to use Kodak [Vision3250D] 7207 for day exteriors and mostday interiors, and [Vision3 500T] 7219for night scenes and some darker dayinteriors.”

Over the course of their collabo-rations, which have included Quantumof Solace (AC Nov. ’08), The Kite Runner(AC Nov. ’07) and Monster’s Ball,Schaefer and Forster have refined theirplanning method. “We come up with aplan book that includes every location orset drawing,” says Schaefer, “and wespend weeks going over it. Marc tells mewhere he wants the actors and how theaction should happen. I’ll take notes andmake diagrams with arrows that indicatemovement based on how I feel the sceneshould be represented and shot. I’ll makecamera positions and lens notations, andsay when there should be a crane, aSteadicam, dolly or handheld. TheUni

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P Pr

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LC.

Opposite page: Sam Childers (Gerard Butler) prepares to confront the Lord’s Resistance Army in Sudan. This page, top: After robbing a crack house, Childers and a friend

(Michael Shannon, right) make a fateful decision to give a stranger a ride. Middle: Childersembarks on a new path by choosing to be baptized. Bottom: Roberto Schaefer, ASC, AIC (left)

confers with director Marc Forster.


results look like football-play diagrams. “We don’t hold to it 100 percent

because we want to be creative when weare out there on set,” he continues. “Ifsomething better or more excitingcomes up, great. But our prep moves usa lot closer to a feeling and a look, andthe plan book helps us stay true to thestory points. It keeps us from jumpingall over the place and saying, ‘This will

look really cool here,’ when that ideawon’t work in the cut or the arc of thestory.

“I liken it to a story I heard aboutMinor White, the nature photogra-pher,” he adds. “He did what he calledZen photography, where he would walkthrough nature without a camera, justseeing things. Then he would planeverything in his head and then go back

and execute the shot.”One early scene shot in Michigan

shows Childers and a friend (played byMichael Shannon) robbing a crackhouse and then partying in their car.The production found a real crackhouse in downtown Detroit that was soconvincing the art department actuallyhad to clean it up a bit for the shoot.“We used two cameras for most of thatscene,” Schaefer recalls. “We tried tolight it very craftily with practicalsso itwould feel real.”

His collaborations with Forsterhave made him well versed in how tolight and shoot in tiny locations, henotes. The Detroit crack house had a 7'-high ceiling, and the main roommeasured about 8'x6'. “We had to bringin some light from outside, mostlymercury-vapor streetlight through thewindows,” he says. “We were trying tofit all the actors and two cameras inthere while keeping our angles andmaintaining a dramatic look. I don’t likeoverly shaky handheld, especially on thebig screen — I think it alienates theaudience. So we had to plan our shotsvery well.”

Schaefer usually operated the B

◗ ManofAction

Top: Children whohave taken

refuge atChilders’

orphanagewelcome their

hero back toSudan. Bottom:

Burning treesilluminate theaction as the

Lord’s ResistanceArmy attacks a

village.


camera, working with A-camera/Steadicam operator Jim McConkey.The A and B cameras were Arri 416s,and if additional cameras were neededthe team turned to Arri 16SR-2s. The416s were equipped with 1.3x “de-squeeze” viewfinders provided byVantage Film. Other cameras had regu-lar finders, meaning that the image inthe finder was squeezed. “Honestly, the1.3x squeeze is not all that difficult towork with,” says Schaefer. “We had nocomplaints.

“The biggest challenge presentedby the format, as is often the case withanamorphic, was close focus,” hecontinues. “You can’t really get anycloser than about 3 feet. Sometimes youwant to get in the actor’s face, but youjust can’t do it. Vantage has a beautifulrectangular diopter that slides right intothe matte box, and we used it on abouthalf a dozen close-up detail shots, butyou’re still limited in how much you canmove. Otherwise, shooting anamorphicdid not slow us down at all in eitherMichigan or South Africa.”

Most of the scenes shot inMichigan didn’t require a big lightingpackage. Some day scenes mixed interi-

ors and exteriors, requiring 12K HMIsthrough windows to create balance. Onehouse location had extensive greenerythat the crew covered with muslin toprevent a green cast from reflecting intointerior scenes. For night exteriors inDetroit, Schaefer mostly went withexisting streetlight.

At the beginning of the film,Childers is released from prison, and itisn’t long before he gets into troubleagain. Out of desperation, he agrees toattend church with his wife, Lynn(Michelle Monaghan), a former strip-per who changed her ways while he wasincarcerated. After his religious conver-

Top: Childerstakes the pulpitto welcomecongregates tohis own church.Bottom: Thepreacher’s wife(MichelleMonaghan) anddaughter(Madeline Carroll)see him off at the airport.

mended to me by Daniel Craig,”Schaefer says. “Guy is unbelievablyresourceful; he could devise any gag orgimmick to mount the camera at amoment’s notice, including motormounts that allowed the operator towobble or shake the camera in acontrolled way. He has developed a lotof stuff of his own, including these great20-foot-long, single-piece dolly-tracksections called Dragon Precision Tracks.They stay perfectly aligned and levelvery quickly, and actors or operators canrun right down the middle.”

Micheletti says he designed theDragon Precision Tracks out of frustra-tion. “I was seeking a design that wouldmake laying track easier,” he says. “Iwanted a smooth ride and a more imag-inative, versatile configuration. Thereare no cross joiners. You can lay them inany width that works. They accept mostcranes and dollies. On a number ofoccasions, we set up an 8-foot-widesteel deck with skate wheels, creatingthe ability to put two dollies on the trackat the same time.”

Micheletti says the prevailingweather conditions in and around CapeTown, where he is based, haveprompted him to develop a variety of


◗ ManofAction

sion, Childers is inspired by a visitingpreacher who describes his experiencesin Africa, and he decides to go there tohelp out. Soon he is carrying an AK-47and trying to rescue children who havebeen rounded up to serve as soldiers. Hedecides to raise money to build anorphanage in the middle of the warzone.

Night action in Africa was essen-tially lit by a pale moonlight source, a100K SoftSun that was usually 400'away on a construction crane, and prac-tical sources such as gas lamps, camp-fires and, in one instance, burning huts.“The SoftSun was 1 1⁄2 to 2 stopsunder,” says Schaefer. “I was happybecause material we shot in very darkconditions came out brilliantly, so tightand beautiful. I pushed 7219 by 1 stop,and it actually came out less grainy thanI wanted it to be. The stock held up sowell that if I ever do another 16mmanamorphic film, I might shoot regular16mm with a 2x anamorphic lens,which would give me more of thatanamorphic feel.”

Although the lighting was oftenminimal, Schaefer emphasizes that thecoverage style was cinematic. “We didn’twant this to feel like a documentary,” he

says. “We wanted it to feel like a ‘majormotion picture,’ if you will, with almostclassic Western imaging at times, heroicstances. It’s not super smooth, but itfeels like something very big and excit-ing is happening.”

One night scene that challengedSchaefer called for three pages ofdialogue and near-total darkness.Childers and some of his Africanfriends are driving on a remote road atnight when a vehicle approaches themand suddenly explodes. A shootoutensues. “You have to make your choicesfor a scene like that,” says Schaefer. “Atfirst, in close shots in Sam’s jeep, there’sa little bit of dashboard light on theirfaces. The truck exploding gives ussomething to use — it gives us a glimpseof their surroundings. Once Sam andthe others get out of the jeep, they’re litby their own headlights. Then they startshooting at the guys running away andare only lit by their gunfire bursts. Ourlighting was that minimalistic for muchof the shoot.”

If the lighting aspect of the shootwas relatively small, the grip logisticswere major. “I was amazed by the SouthAfrican crew, especially our key grip,Guy Micheletti, who was recom-

Childers happilyreturns to Africa

to check onprogress at the

orphanage.

strategies and equipment for controllingwind. Some of these were used onMachine Gun Preacher, including screensas large as 60'x20' constructed of shadecloth, which stops 80 percent of the

wind but allows 50 percent of the lightto pass through. The screens werestaked and allowed to fly without aframe, like a sail. The same material wasused to reduce wind around day-for-

night sets to minimize extraneoussound. In walk-and-talk situations, two15'x20' frames were held by grips in a Vshape and carried along, thus reducingthe wind’s impact on Steadicam opera-tor McConkey while improving soundconditions.

During the shoot, Schaefer usedGamma & Density’s 3cP System tosend color-corrected stills to theproduction’s dailies timers. “For themost part, we had very good dailies,” hesays. “I pretty much shot the negativefor where I wanted it to sit, the sweetspot. In the final digital grade, which wedid at Company 3 with StephenNakamura, we crushed a few scenesslightly or opened it up a bit here andthere. We also did some reframing ofthe 35mm shots and some aerial shots.Stephen is a brilliant colorist whoknows what I need and want.”

Visual-effects house Buf, whichcreated the visual effects for the show,also did the final scanning of the 16mm

◗ ManofAction

50

Gaffer Scott Spencer joins Schaefer behind the camera.

and 35mm negatives. The Super 16footage was scanned at 2K, and the“unsqueeze” was done digitally. Schaeferfound Buf’s willingness to work withthe unusual format was refreshing. “Inthe past, I’ve encountered resistancefrom visual-effects companies aboutshooting Super 16 anamorphic,” hesays. “In some instances, I wasn’t able toshoot anamorphic because they saidthey didn’t have the time or money toachieve the desired quality, because eachlens would have to be tracked separately,making it a much more difficult process.With the advent of auto-tracking, Ibelieve that has changed. Still, therewere some concerns about shootingSuper 16 — some [effects facilities] saidit would be too grainy, and that therewould be weave. Fortunately, Buf said,‘No problem,’ and we forged straightahead.”

Once the digital grade wascompleted, FotoKem took care of thegrain management, but Schaefer notes

that this work was not extensive. “Ingeneral, we felt the grain was rightwhere it should be on much of the film.The producers agreed from the begin-ning to use Estar-based Kodak [Vision32254] intermediate film, which can beused to make close to 2,000 directprints. That eliminates three generationsin the post path, which is where most ofthe grain gets introduced.”

Schaefer has given a lot ofthought to the way grain impacts anaudience. “If there’s no grain or no noisein the image, I think it can feel too realto people, and that takes away some ofthe magic of being in a cinema,” heobserves. “On the other hand, if youhave a whole lot of grain bobbling allover the place, it can feel like bad late-night TV or extreme documentary stuffshot undercover. For this film, wewanted just enough grain to have a cine-matic quality, and to provoke a kind ofnostalgia in the viewer. We wanted theimage to have a touch of the dirt that

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Childers was in. Grain creates a visceralresponse; it’s difficult to say exactly howit works or what it does. Making thoseaesthetic choices is what makes thecinematographer’s job so interesting.”

●

51

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Digital Intermediate


When director Rod Lurie phoned Alik Sakharov, ASC acouple of years ago and asked if he wanted to shoot aremake of Sam Peckinpah’s violent drama Straw Dogs(1971), the cinematographer told him, “Rob, you got

some balls. That’s not something everyone would take on.”But Sakharov had worked with Lurie before (on

Nothing But the Truth) and had dealt with lots of controversialsubject matter in his own work, which has included TheSopranos (AC Sept. ’07, March ’01) , Rome (AC Sept. ’05)andGame of Thrones. He agreed with Lurie’s intent to follow the

HomeInvasionAlik Sakharov, ASC helps

Rod Lurie remake the 1970sclassic Straw Dogs.

By Michael Goldman

•|•


overall path of the original story but givethe remake a different visual style. So hesigned on to shoot the movie in 2009 inShreveport, La.

Among the first decisions he andLurie tackled was whether to accede tothe studio’s suggestion that they shootdigitally using Panavision’s Genesis.Sakharov felt the camera would notprovide the latitude he and Lurie wouldneed, so he insisted on shooting filminstead. The producers agreed, butmandated that he shoot 2-perf (Super35mm) to help keep costs down. Threeweeks into the shoot, after gate-hairissues arose in several shots that had tobe cleaned up in post, the productionswitched to 3-perf.

The filmmakers used a Panavisionpackage comprising a PanaflexMillennium XL2 (A camera), aPlatinum (B camera) and a Lightweight(Steadicam work); Primo prime lenses;Primo 4:1 17.5-75mm and 11:1 24-275mm zoomlenses, and AngenieuxOptimo 15-40mm and 28-76mmzooms. Sakharov shot the picture on twoKodak Vision3 stocks, 500T 5219(which he used for all interior locations,stage work and night exteriors) and250D 5207 (all day exteriors).

Sakharov maintains that hisbiggest challenge revolved around howto light the movie. Teaming withUni

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s.Opposite page:Amy (KateBosworth) andDavid (JamesMarsden) discovertheir property isunder attack. Thispage, top: Charlie(AlexanderSkarsgård)introduces himselfto the couple in abid to land a job.Middle: The actorsstand by asdirector Rod Lurie(center) discussesa setup with AlikSakharov, ASC.Bottom: With alarge diffusionframe at the ready, cast andcrew prepare ascene depictingCharlie’s first dayon the job.


◗ Home InvasionShreveport-based gaffer Bob Bates, heended up making some choices aboutboth the “what” and the “how” of thelighting scheme in order to make themovie stand on its own visually, ratherthan walk in the photographic footstepsof its predecessor (shot by JohnCoquillon).

Like Peckinpah’s film, however,the new Straw Dogs features extensivebrutality. The protagonist, David (JamesMarsden), is driven to the brink of greatviolence, and eventually beyond, by localthugs who harass and eventually assaulthim and his wife, Amy (Kate Bosworth).The film contains a disturbing rapescene, as the original film did, and amajor pyro sequence that marks a depar-ture from the original.

In general, says Sakharov, his goalwas a contemporary aesthetic, but asubtle one. “We didn’t want the photog-raphy to feel like it was calling attentionto itself,” he says. “We wanted it to feellike a camera just happened to be there,

Top: The filmmakers capture a scene in which David and Amy chat with a member of Charlie’s crew.Bottom: Lighting in another room in the couple’s house included Whities (angled overhead at left and at

right), fixtures that Sakharov created with gaffer Kevin Janicelli years ago. Louisiana gaffer Bob Batesembraced and helped to evolve the lights on Straw Dogs.


quiet and subdued, while these eventswere taking place.”

Bates, who was working withSakharov for the first time, says he wasamazed by the cinematographer’s metic-ulous planning of camera and lightplacement. That effort included layeringlighting and camera information on topof aerial photos Sakharov had created ofkey locations, giving Bates a detailedreference template. “Alik almost alwaysknew exactly where he wanted thecamera to be and how he wanted to light[a location] before we started shooting,”

recalls Bates. “For all the big scenes, hehad printouts with notes about what weneeded where. He broke down thescript, as many cinematographers do, buthe went a lot further than that. Thoseaerial pictures, which had details aboutwhere the camera would be, what lightswere needed where and much more,were pretty impressive!”

The foundation of Sakharov’slighting plan was an instrument he callsWhities, which he and gaffer KevinJanicelli created for The Sopranos yearsago. They’re essentially simple work-

horse lights on a dimmer system that areeasy and fast to erect and move aroundhorizontally or vertically on a set withouthaving to place them on the ground.The goal, says Sakharov, was to speed upthe batten-strip concept so he couldlight fairly sizable areas more efficiently.“Batten strips almost touch each other,and they generate a single shadow whenyou turn them on,” says Sakharov. “Ifyou put two or three of them together,you suddenly can light a good 12-to-14-foot area quickly and be really flexible,providing a long throw that actors canD

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Top: This diagram shows Whities in play for a nighttime car interior depicting

David and Amy’s reaction to a strange sight in the road. Bottom: Sakharov’s photo of the setup with the actors’

lighting stand-ins.


walk through. What I wanted was tocontrol them better, and after talking toKevin, we decided to encase them insome sort of box. His team built a boxthat was a prototype for what Whitieswould become later on — a box builtaround a batten strip, and then an eggcrate to control the spill. It became atransportable and repeatedly usable unit,but after seeing it take some bangs, we

eventually put them in metal boxes.“We built more than 200 of them

for The Sopranos, and I still carry twodozen with me on every show,” hecontinues. “I use them on everything. It’sjust a great way to work fast and get mylights off the floor and up in a gridquickly.”

By the time he began preppingStraw Dogs, Whities had evolved into

1'x4' boxes measuring 1' deep and hous-ing strips of 100-watt bulbs that couldbe mounted quickly above a set flap or agrid, or vertically on an apple box orstand. Sakharov says they allowed him tolight perimeters on set, and because theyare dimmer controlled, he could easilychoose which side of the set would be litat a given moment. The units also acceptgel frames and egg crates. They becamethe primary lighting instrument formost of the interior work on Straw Dogs.

Bates acknowledges that theWhities initially presented him with abit of a learning curve, but he eventuallybecame very impressed with the tooland, in fact, helped Sakharov evolve itfurther. “Alik is devoted to the concept,and he even told me at the start whatbulbs to buy for the sockets,” says thegaffer. “He asked me to use them all thetime, but I realized that because of theway some of our sets were laid out, wewould need smaller versions that werebasically 2 feet long instead of 4 feetlong. So we made up some 2-footversions, ‘Little Whities,’ and we endedup using them extensively.

“I came to really like using them,”

◗ Home Invasion

Top: David andAmy encounter

Charlie at thechurch in town.

Bottom:Sakharov directs

his crew as thefilmmakers prep

a scene at ahigh-school

football game.

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Bates continues. “Each fixture canreceive up to three gel frames. We endedup having several more gel frames madeto keep them pre-gelled for quick access,and we also skinned them with Opaland 250 diffusion in addition to 1⁄4 or 1⁄2 CTB frames, depending on the setup.Alik always knew exactly what kind oflight he would get out of them. I nowown a couple of Little Whities myself,

and to be honest, I’ve used them onevery show since Straw Dogs!”

Sakharov says Whities gave himnot only more flexibility in his lightingoptions, but also a certain “realisticimperfection” and mix of color tempera-tures that suited the subtle approach hewas pursuing. For example, during thefilm’s climax, all hell breaks loose asDavid finds himself defending his wife

and his home from assault. In that situa-tion, says Sakharov, he was able to useWhities for a subtle backlight effect.“The story calls for the lighting in thehouse to be out, because David doesn’twant to be seen from the outside,”explains the cinematographer. “He’sattempting to move around in the housewithout being detected. In those shots,we basically used Whities to outline thefigures in the shot, and then used a mini-mal amount of fill light from the cameraside. That was our only lighting.”

Eventually, a fire is set in a nearbybarn, and Sakharov had to determinehow to create this lighting effect throughDavid and Amy’s windows. Thebedroom from which they see flameswas a set built onstage, so extensive lightwas required. Bates’ crew bounced six12-light Maxi-Brutes with either 1⁄2 orFull CTO gels into muslin orUltraBounce through the bedroomwindows. “That was the keylight comingthrough the windows, and it gave thesense of fire flickering nicely,” says Bates.“We couldn’t use flame bars because weneeded control over the whole thing. It’s

◗ Home Invasion

Top: David joinsCharlie and his

crew for ahunting

expedition.Bottom: The

filmmakersprepare to

augment naturallight at the

location withSourcemakerHMI Lighting

Balloons and twobounced 18Ks.“The grips also

flew 12-by silksfrom the trees to

help diffuse thesun,” adds Bates.

meant to be extremely dramatic, becausethrough that light you see silhouettes ofthe men attacking the house.”

Exterior lighting was typically the“big lighting” part of the job, notesSakharov, and his approach was to go for“large, broad, soft sources.” He adds,“Sunlight is prominent in this movie,and we had a range of big frames, suchas 20-by-20s and 12-by-20s, andflyswatters to control it, and an array of

18Ks to mimic it. We usually had the18Ks on a 60-foot crane, so we couldadjust or extract the arm to cover thearea where [the sun] needed to be. It wasan efficient way to do it, but we had toplan carefully where to shoot and how toposition all the equipment around theset so it would be out of frame.

“For night exteriors, we joined 12-by-20 frames to create a 24-foot or 40-foot run of light. We had an array of

20Ks behind them on dimmers toprovide either sidelight or three-quarterbacklight. Then I’d have a hard light —like a 20K and a Dino or Super Dino— on the direct opposite lens, raised upon a 100-foot or 120-foot lift. That gaveme a backlight to isolate figures againstthe blackness of night. On the cameraside, I’d have minimal fill light to openblacks and shadows, which was veryimportant on this film.”

◗ Home Invasion

The film’s grim finale plays out in the couple’s home in almost total darkness.

60

“We often used the 12-by-20salong with the fabric grids fromLighttools, and we’d use anywhere fromone to three 18Ks through it [for dayscenes],” adds Bates. “Sometimes we’deven go to three 18Ks and two 12K Pars.There’s one scene in particular — a bandis playing outside, and several charactersare interacting — where we lined up two12-by-20s next to each other to create a12-by-40, and we pushed three 18Ksand two 12Ks through them. We weretrying hard to push light in because theactors are under a canopy in the scene,and the background is raw sun.”

One of the most delicate aspectsof Sakharov’s job was filming the rapesequence. He and Lurie wanted to avoidbreaking into handheld mode to empha-size the chaos of the moment. Instead,they adhered to their philosophy for themovie as a whole and kept the camerasstationary and unobtrusive.

Sakharov had planned to shootthe scene with his usual two cameras, but

Lurie asked him to use three in order toget adequate coverage more quickly. “Ididn’t want to do three cameras at first,but once I understood how rough thescene was for Kate, I said, ‘Of course,we’ll figure it out,’” recalls the cine-matographer. “I lit more broadly toaccommodate all three cameras, and, asis always the case when you light formultiple cameras, some angles suffer.But it was necessary, and Rod had agood plan to edit it all together.”

Sakharov credits A-camera/Steadicam operator Henry Tirl and B-camera operator Bob Foster for theirsensitivity during that scene. Tirl hadworked on Nothing But the Truth andwas requested by Lurie, and Foster was alocal operator new to the filmmakers.

Sakharov calls himself “a framefanatic,” and says he was particularlydemanding of his cameramen duringproduction. “I work very closely with myoperators,” he says. “Building the frameis one of the most important elements in

visual storytelling, so I was not easy onthem, but I had glowing discussionswith them after the project, so I thinkthey appreciated the input. I think StrawDogs gave all of us a chance to grow.”

●

Th ink LEEwww.leefi lters.com

126

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Digital Intermediate

61

As the smiling face of General Camera Corp., DiBonabecame a benevolent father figure to nearly every cameramanworking in New York between 1962 and 1992. During thosethree decades, General Camera supplied equipment andsupport to almost 90 percent of productions filmed on theEastern seaboard. Those familiar with the company say thesecret of its success was DiBona’s business acumen, but theyare also quick to emphasize his deep knowledge of cameratechnology and his unwavering dedication to filmmakers ofevery level.

“Cameras are my love,” says DiBona. “I was a film-maker, a camera designer. I was born with the movies insideme.”

Born in Brooklyn in 1922, DiBona exhibited talents forphotography, machinery and music in his youth. In 1941,shortly after the United States joined World War II, heenlisted in the army, entering the Signal Corps as a non-commissioned officer at its Photographic Center in Queens.


ASC associate member Richard DiBona’s livingroom on Manhattan’s Upper East Side is filledwith dozens of photos depicting friends, familyand collaborators. For DiBona, there’s practi-

cally no distinguishing among them.

King ofNew YorkKing ofNew York

Richard DiBona and others recallthe glory days of General Camera,which helped a number of great

cinematographers make their names.

By Iain Stasukevich

•|•


He was selected to staff the machineshop, where he spent the next four yearsconverting 35mm wind-up Eyemos and16mm Filmos and Auricons for hand-held use on the battlefield.

The Signal Corps station servedas a school whose faculty included someof the most prestigious names incinema. “Stanley Cortez [ASC] pridedhimself on teaching those soldiers thecraft,” DiBona recalls. “He finally madeit to PFC, and a lot of the guys whoworked with him were officers. He wasalways yelling at them, telling themwhat to do with the camera. Theylistened, of course!”

During his time at thePhotographic Center, DiBona also metfellow soldier and future ASC cine-matographer Gerald Hirschfeld. Afterthe war, DiBona and Hirschfeldaccepted civilian positions in the SignalCorps. When the U.S. ramped up itsatomic-bomb program, DiBona wasone of the cameramen present inNevada for the first tests. He and othersphotographed the explosions from“News Knob,” a mesa about 7 milesfrom ground zero. “I went out theretwice,” DiBona recalls. “We didn’t gettoo close, although we were closeenough to get knocked off our feet.”

DiBona left the Signal Corps in1955 to take a position as a camera tech-nician with Camera Equipment Co.(known as CECO) in Manhattan. “Itwas the biggest camera company inNew York,” he says. CECO introducedDiBona to the world of Hollywoodfilmmaking. Commercials were alsomaking money in New York, andCECO did big business with thecompanies producing content for the adagencies on Madison Avenue. One ofthese companies was MPO, a commer-cial production house that had a staff ofcinematographers and its own cameras,mainly 35mm Mitchell NCs andBNCs.

Future ASC member OwenRoizman worked at CECO as a techni-cian for two summers, in 1955-56, andthen later assisted Hirschfeld at MPO.He recalls sitting in on breakfasts with

his father, Sol, who was a cinematogra-pher for Fox Movietone News, andDiBona. “Dick has such a dynamicpersonality, and he’s fantastic withcameras,” Roizman says. “Wheneverthere was a tough technical questionabout cameras, even the pros turned tohim.”

CECO founder Frank Zuckerleft the company to his son, Burt, whodied in a plane crash in 1961. Thisprompted the sale of CECO’s assets toanother New York camera house,Florman & Babb, which renamed itselfF&B CECO. Without the Zuckers incharge, DiBona decided it was time tostrike out on his own, and at the invita-tion of CECO salesman MiltonKeslow, he helped start up GeneralCamera.

“In the beginning,” says Keslow,“all we had was a name and a dream.”

The company’s first customer wasHirschfeld. “Dick and Milton bought aMitchell NC and were trying to rent itout,” he recalls. “I was then the vice pres-ident at MPO, and I told them I’d rentthe camera, leave it at the studio and

give them whatever they wanted for theyear. We took their camera, and theytook our money and immediatelybought another Mitchell.”

General Camera’s first office wasat the corner of 7th Avenue and 48thStreet, above the legendary CafeMetropolé. In 1962, the company’s staffcomprised DiBona and Keslow, alongwith DiBona’s wife, Anne Marie, whohandled the books, and Joe Malavenda,a young machinist. One year later,DiBona hired a young German engi-neer named Fred Schuler (future ASC).

Schuler had started out workingfor Arri in Munich, and he was 24 whenhe joined General Camera. One of hisfirst tasks was to build a noiselessmirror-reflex viewing system. Some35mm cameras used a prism to directthe image through a viewfinder, but theglass would absorb and refract preciouslight before it reached the film plane.The Arri 35IIC, an old camera by thattime, used a reflex viewing system, butthe gear-driven rotating shutter was tooloud for sync-sound production.

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Opposite: General Camera co-founder Richard DiBona (second from left) poses with Panavision executives (from left) Egon Stephan Sr., founder of CineVideoTech Inc., which

represented Panavision in Florida; Sydney Samuelson, founder of England’s Samuelson Film Service,which represented Panavision in Europe and Australia; Robert Gottschalk, who co-founded

Panavision in 1953; and Mel Hoppenheim, founder of Panavision Canada. Following General Camera’ssuccess in the 1960s, Panavision offered the company exclusive distribution of Panaflex cameras on the East Coast. Above: DiBona (fourth from left) is surrounded by a group of Signal Corps enlisted

men at the U.S. Army’s Photographic Center in Queens.


picture cameras in use were MitchellNCs and BNCs, which had a rack-overdesign. The camera box housed themovement, motor, magazine, controlsand viewing system. There were twoviewing positions for the cameraman:focusing and framing. To focus, thecameraman would “rack over” thecamera box laterally on its base so thefocusing tube was directly behind thetaking lens (mounted on a turretattached to the base), then rack back toalign the aperture with the lens. Anoffset viewfinder allowed the camera-man to frame the shot while the camerawas rolling.

There was nothing inherentlylacking in the rack-over design, butDiBona wanted to improve it so thecameraman only had to look throughone viewfinder to operate the camera.He asked Schuler to modify a BNC. “Ididn’t want to do it because I wasn’teven sure I could do it,” says Schuler.“Plus, I thought it was a great camerajust the way it was. But about sixmonths later, one of our BNCs wasdropped and damaged. That gave us acamera to convert, and it became the

first reflex-mirror camera produced inthe States.”

The design called for the modi-fied BNC’s single-blade focal-planeshutter to rotate at a 2:1 ratio with thebutterfly reflex mirror. This meant thatfor every exposure taken, the mirrormade half a revolution. DiBona had theidea to use beveled-spiral gears, whichwere relatively quiet compared to theirstraight-toothed counterparts. “I used alot of Arriflex parts to make thatcamera, particularly the mirror,” saysSchuler. “Because the mirror in the35IIC is also the shutter, we had togrind it down. We only needed it toreflect an image to the viewfinder.”

The first feature to use GeneralCamera’s reflexed BNC was TheSwimmer (1968), shot by David L.Quaid, ASC, whom DiBona describesas “a very adventurous cameraman.” Notsurprisingly, the new technology wasmet with some skepticism. “Somecameramen wouldn’t look through theeyepiece,” says DiBona. “They didn’twant to keep their eye there, so they’dput the finder on the side and use that.They thought when they looked

through the eyepiece they weren’t seeingwhat was going on the film, because itwas a reflection off the shutter.”

About nine months later, Schulerleft General Camera to become acamera assistant. On one of his firstjobs, he assisted Haskell Wexler, ASCon The Thomas Crown Affair (AC Oct.’68). “When I got hired, I had no ideathey were shooting with my reflexBNC,” Schuler recalls. “The operatorcomplained all the time because he hada stiff neck. He said it was a pain in theass. I wasn’t about to tell him I was theone who’d converted it!”

By the mid-1960s, New York’sfilm and television industry had startedto change. Filmmakers began takingadvantage of smaller cameras, shootingon locations all over the city with mini-mal crew and minimal gear. “Thecameras we’d used during the war reallychanged the industry — equipmentbecame very portable,” says DiBona.

16mm cameras were particularlypopular with news cameramen, whofavored the lightweight Bach-Auriconsound-on-film cameras, but 16mmcamera bodies and magazines were partof a single, solid cast and could onlyaccept 100' loads. DiBona reflexed abatch of Auricons and chopped off thefused magazines, replacing them withMitchell magazine mounts, whichallowed the cameras to run loads rang-ing from 400'-1,200'. The cameras werea hit with the networks, but theAuricon’s motors and gears weren’tstrong enough to pull the larger loads atproper sync speeds, so DiBona designedan entirely new camera based on theAuricon movement: the SS3 (SingleSystem, third design).

As General Camera’s reputationand customer base grew, the companyexpanded to include lighting and griprentals, as well as three soundstages on19th Street. In the late 1960s thecompany moved to 321 West 44th St.,which became Technicolor’s headquar-ters when General Camera movedagain, this time to 38th Street and 11thAvenue. “It was like a supermarket —we supplied everything,” says DiBona’s

◗ King of New York

DiBona (left) greets an associate at a nuclear-test site in Nevada. DiBona was among the cameramen who photographed the first atomic-bomb explosions from “News Knob,” a mesa

about 7 miles from ground zero.

son, Craig, now an ASC member. “Wehad two camera floors complete withour own machine shop, a stock floor,and lighting and grip on the bottom twofloors.”

General Camera’s position wasbolstered further when Panavisionoffered DiBona exclusive distribution ofPanaflex cameras on the East Coast.“After that, we handled almost all thefilms that were shot in the East,” saysDiBona, who also held the exclusivelicense for Chapman dollies and cranesfor a time.

What Panavision got in returnwas DiBona. Hirschfeld remembersrenting a Panavision package fromGeneral Camera for a job in Chicago:

“Our zoom lens wasn’t calibrated, so wesent it back to Dick in New York forrecalibration. After that, I wrote a letterto Robert Gottschalk, the president ofPanavision, and said Dick could cali-brate a Panavision lens better than theguys at Panavision. I went to seeGottschalk in Hollywood some yearslater, and he had the letter posted on aboard in the office. He wanted all of hisemployees to see it.”

In addition to knowledge andequipment, DiBona stockpiled loyalty.“I wouldn’t go to any other rentalcompany in New York,” says Victor J.Kemper, ASC, whose East Coastfeatures included The Friends of EddieCoyle (1973)and Dog Day Afternoon(1975). “Dick went out of his way tomake cinematographers comfortable

“I wouldn’t go to any other

rental company in New York.”

66

and make whatever idea we had work. Ifthere was a problem you couldn’t solve,he’d come to the set in the middle of thenight.”

Like many camera houses,General Camera bred cameramen fromits rosters of technicians and clients.Veteran camera assistant Gary Mullerspent a couple of summers on theGeneral Camera prep floor in the mid-1960s. He recalls, “I was a young kidamongst all these adults, but Dick tookme under his wing and showed me theimportance of having a good technicalfoundation. His knowledge was ourguiding light.”

Some of the best-known films inthe American New Wave were shot inNew York during General Camera’sreign, among them Klute (1971), TheFrench Connection (1971),The Godfather(1972), Taxi Driver (1976) and AnnieHall (1977). DiBona might be toohumble to admit it, but if it wasn’t forGeneral Camera, many of these classics

◗ King of New York

DiBona (left) and a colleague service equipment in the camera shop at Camera Equipment Co. (known as CECO) in Manhattan. “It was the biggest camera company

in New York,” DiBona notes.

67

might not even exist as we know them.Roizman appreciates this better

than anyone. In 1970, he was working atMPO as a commercial cinematographerand looking for a way to break intofeatures. One day a young directornamed Billy Friedkin was at GeneralCamera having lunch with DiBona, andhe mentioned he’d just fired the cine-matographer slated to shoot his nextfeature, The French Connection. DiBonarecommended Roizman for the job,even though the young cinematogra-pher had just one (unreleased) featureunder his belt.

“The rest is history,” Roizmansays. “Dick’s always been a great cham-pion of cinematographers. He pushedfor Gordy, too.”

“Gordy” is, of course, GordonWillis, ASC, who also worked at MPOas an assistant before moving up theranks. “Dick made working in NewYork great,” says Willis. “One of themore outstanding stories I have about

him involves a picture I’d rather notname. I was working with one of hisPanaflex cameras, and one day wetipped the camera down on the gear-head and it started making noise. Wehad to stop shooting, take the A cameraoff and put the B camera on. This took20 or 30 minutes, and by that time thecast was breaking down and the crewstarted going for coffee.

“I sent the camera back to Dick.He turned it around and brought itback, but it started making the samenoise. We lost another hour. The thirdtime the camera came back, the samething happened. I was livid that thisthing was taking up all of our time.Without saying a word, I pulled thecamera off the head and threw it intothe middle of the street. Dick never saida word to me about it. He just sent overa camera that was so quiet I kept it forthe rest of my career.”

DiBona retired in 1992 and soldGeneral Camera’s camera, lighting and

grip departments to Panavision.Although General Camera is gone, thecompany’s name and legacy remainsharp in the memories of the camera-men who called it home.

“General Camera was like ahome,” emphasizes Muller. “When youwere there, you were part of the DiBonafamily. There was truly no other placewhere you could get that kind of knowl-edge and honesty.”

“Dick is bigger than life,” saysRoizman. “I love the man so much.”

“Like a brother,” adds Kemper.“It’s very hard to be all things to

all men,” Willis observes, “but DickDiBona comes very close.” ●


Restoring Méliès’ MarvelBy Robert S. Birchard

Anyone who edited films in the days before Avid and FinalCut Pro will remember the nightmare: There’s a screening in 10minutes for the head of the studio, and all the changes have beenmade except for extending that one crucial shot, the “beauty shot”with the moving camera and fluid motion. You find the trim hang-ing in the bin and splice it into the work picture, only to discover ajump cut. A frame is missing. You can slug it with black leader for thenegative cutter, but the “suits” at the screening will demand toknow what that black frame was, and the carefully spun mood willbe broken. So you pull all the film hanging on hooks and search thebottom of the bin for that elusive frame, and the clock is ticking.

Now imagine a whole film made up of one- and two-frametrims, and some of those frames are in pieces, exponentiallycompounding the challenge. And that clock you hear ticking is thedoomsday clock — if you can’t put these pieces back together again,

a unique treasure will be lost forever. It was just such a nightmare that confronted Serge Bromberg

and Eric Lange of Paris-based Lobster Films when they acquired ahand-colored print of the century-old fantasy-film milestone byGeorges Méliès, Levoyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) , in aswap with Anton Gimenez, who was then director of the Filmotecade Catalunya in Spain. This was the sort of bargain a slick horsetrader might make. The Spanish archive received a previously lostfilm by Segundo de Chomón, and the French got a unique colorprint of an otherwise common French film, only the print wasshrunken, brittle and fused together into a rigid mass that made itresemble a hockey puck. It certainly couldn’t be projected, nor wasit in any kind of shape to be fed into an optical printer for copying.

More than one film lab told Bromberg and Lang their printwas a total loss. There was, however, a bit of a silver lining: for themost part, the film was fused only along the perforated edges of thefilm, and with infinite patience and a small, flexible card it was possi-ble to peel the film apart from itself. Then Haghefilm Conservation

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An iconic frame from George Méliès Le voyage dans la lune , recently restored to its original hand-colored glory at Technicolor. The restoration premiered at Cannes and made its U.S. debut at the Telluride Film Festival.

B.V. in Amsterdam was able to rejuvenatethe film by placing it under a bell jar andgiving it the gas — suspending it in a chem-ical vapor originally formulated by ArchivesFrançaise du Film.

“The film was put in the chemicals atthe end of 2001, and it took about twoyears to have all the images photographed

with the best digital still camera available atthe time,” recalls Bromberg, adding thatLange supervised this work. “Every time afew images were recovered, we’d photo-graph them before they turned to dust,which is a consequence of using the chem-icals. Basically, there were only a few days tophotograph the stills, which can be consid-

ered the ‘scan’ of the original source.” In October 2002, to celebrate the

movie’s centennial (and the 10th anniver-sary of Lobster’s famous Retour de Flammeshows), Lobster publicly screened a Beta SPtape of the available color images — unsta-bilized and unrestored — with about halfthe film in color and the rest in black-and-white from a fine-grain master positive. Atthe time, much of the original hand-coloredprint was still in the chemical vapors. Itwould be nearly a decade before anythingmore could be done with these digital snapshots.

“Reconstructing the entire film wasour Holy Grail,” says Bromberg, “but wenever thought we could do it when westarted photographing the color frames. Weonly realized it might be possible when 2Kand 4K digital technologies emerged, buteven then it seemed like a dream, becausethe puzzle we were starting with was in somany pieces.”

First released in France on Sept. 1,1902, Le voyage dans la lune was a world-wide event movie in its day. Méliès had abackground in theater, and he was neverable to shake his reliance on stage tech-nique — he shot his films from a front-row-center perspective against painted trompel’oeil backdrops. But he was also one of thefirst to utilize jump cuts, stop-motion anima-tion, reverse action and other camera tricksthat made his films breathtaking in theirtime. Ever the showman, Méliès oftenpresented his films with live narration thatwould flesh out character and story foraudiences, and he offered his films for salein both black-and-white and color.

A 1905 American catalogue forMéliès’ Star Films (in the collection of theMuseum of Modern Art) lists the pictureat845' in length with a sale price of $126.75,or 15 cents per foot, for a black-and-whiteprint. Color, which was hand-painted oneach of the 13,375 frames, was consider-ably more expensive, and it was thereforefar less common for exhibitors who wereinterested in turning a fast buck to pony upthe extra money for a color print.

Probably because of its subjectmatter, Le voyage dans la lune nevercompletely disappeared from publicconsciousness and continued to elicit curios-ity as Man began to dream of venturing into


Here is an example of a damaged frame from the hand-colored print and the same frame fully restored.

space for real. It was even seen in theprologue to Mike Todd’s adaptation of JulesVerne’s Around the World in 80 Days(1956)as a pale, small-screen, monochromecomparison by which to judge the modernwonders of 70mm Todd-AO and EastmanColor.

Was it possible to fully resurrect thehand-colored marvel of 1902?

“It became clear that there was a possibility when Gilles Duval of theGroupama-Gan Foundation and SeverineWemaere of the Technicolor Foundation forFilm Heritage decided to be part of theventure,” says Bromberg. “They were realpartners, not only financial backers. Thefinal restoration work was made at Techni-color in Hollywood.”

It may be only a coincidence, butwith his curled mustache, pointed beardand cheerful demeanor, Tom Burton, Tech-nicolor’s executive director of restorationservices, bears a striking resemblance toMéliès. Burton oversaw the restoration ofthe picture, supervising a team that includedlead restoration artist Danny Albano;producer Karen Krause; restoration artistsTrey Freeman, Joe Zarceno and John Healy;and colorist Mike Underwood.

“What we received from LobsterFilms were digital files in various formatsand in several different resolutions,” Burtonrecalls. “Some frames were captured viadigital camera, frame by frame, and somewere captured on a digital scanner fromshort sections of the 1902 original thatcould be copied on Haghefilm’s step printerin Holland. Because the initial digitizationtook place over a period of years in differentlocations and with different equipment, thematerial was not organized in any sort ofsequence; each digitization session gener-ated its own naming convention and frame-numbering protocol. So, for example, therewere numerous ‘Frame Ones’ from differentparts of the film.

“Much of the image data repre-sented broken frames and shattered piecesof frames, and there were even severalversions of some shots, with the files differ-ing greatly in color, density, size, sharpnessand position,” he continues. “It was notpossible to play back a continuous imagestream.”

Using an HDCam telecine of a black-

and-white version transferred from a 1929nitrate dupe negative, which also containedthe final three seconds that were missingfrom the hand-tinted print, “we eye-matched individual color frames and shortframe sequences, which we’d reformattedas DPX files, to the dupe neg in a digitalediting environment,” says Burton. “In thiseditorial conform we were able to see forthe first time exactly what original colormaterial existed, what condition it was inand which material was missing entirely.

“The next step was a stabilizationpass, adjusting the relative position relation-ships of all individual frames. Then de-flickerprocessing was used to balance frame-to-frame and intra-frame density variations.Following these steps, we used Resolve’scolor-correction platform to do a ‘pre-timing’ to bring the widely diverse colorsand densities of the various capture sources

into reasonable proximity with oneanother.”

The archival dupe neg provided thescaffolding on which the color elementswere built, but to replace most of the mate-rial missing in the color footage, the teamturned to a black-and-white nitrate printowned by Madeleine Malthete-Méliès,granddaughter of the pioneering film-maker. This print was scanned at the FrenchFilm Archives of the Centre National duCinema on a Sasha scanner, which outputsframes as vertically oriented TIFF files. Thisscan was reformatted to match horizontallyoriented DPX files, and then the sceneswere digitally graded to approximate thetinted look of the color print.

“Then the serious image reconstruc-tion began,” says Burton. “We used apalette of restoration and visual-effects-specific digital platforms, including Digital

Vision Phoenix/DVO, MTI and After Effects.Our restoration team rebuilt shatteredframes into new, full-frame re-creations oftheir original state. The black-and-whitematerial was then digitally painted to repli-cate the original color frames where theoriginal colors had not survived.”

Today such colorization can be donewith such precision that it can look like thefootage was originally shot in color, but thiswould not match the look of Méliès’ hand-painted original. In an effort to replicate theworkspace the hand-painters worked withmore than a century ago, Technicolor’s digi-tal painters experimented with small-screenimages approximating the size of a 35mmframe as they applied their electronicbrushes. This helped them establish, for thefinal painting process, the look of the hand-painted colors sometimes overflowing andsometimes not quite filling the image.

“The black-and-white replacementsequences did not match the color materialin size, position, grain structure or densitybecause of the differing conditions of thesource elements,” says Burton. “Each indi-vidual frame was carefully resized and repo-sitioned as necessary. The grain structurewas also tweaked to match the originalsource in order for it to intercut more seam-lessly with the original. Once the recon-struction was complete, another stabiliza-tion and de-flicker pass was applied tofurther integrate the disparate sources. Afinal color-timing pass balanced the overallcolor integrity of the various elements, andthen separate color-space grades werecompleted for 35mm, DCP and HD releaseformats.”

“When Technicolor showed me aside-by-side comparison of the black-and-white material and the original survivingcolor frames in January of this year, onlythen were we certain the restoration wouldbe possible,” says Bromberg. “But we hadno idea how long it would take — threemonths, a year? As it turned out, the workwas completed on May 2, and the film, inits original colors, opened the Cannes FilmFestival.” ●


These photosreveal the sorry

state of theoriginal print,

which wasshrunken, brittle

and fusedtogether when

it was first turned over toLobster Films.

the future in hand | createasphere.com/expo

NOVEMBER 2-3, 2011 | BURBANK MARRIOTT | BURBANK, CA

Launched in 2001, our largest annual gathering features industry renowned decision makers and thought leaders.

Explore where future technology and creative vision converge. Featuring educational sessions, interactive panels, and hands-on access to gear, the Expo offers the knowledge and tools you need to compete in the ever-changing world of content creation.

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Shooting Dolphin Tale in 3-DBy Karl Walter Lindenlaub, ASC, BVK

Last summer I had packed for a six-month, once-in-a-lifetimeadventure in India — shooting a movie about the life of Buddha —when the producer called with the bad news that the financing hadcollapsed. Since the plane tickets had already been purchased, I tookmy family for a short trip to Germany, but I still really needed a job!

Luckily, when I got back to Los Angeles, my agent arranged forme to interview for a movie about a boy and a dolphin without a tail.The director, Charles Martin Smith, had helmed some nice indepen-dent films and had also starred in Carroll Ballard’s Never Cry Wolf, afabulous picture about men and nature. I felt that if we couldapproach that movie’s quality on Dolphin Tale, we would be just fine.

Then Charles said, “We’ll be shooting in 3-D.” I was a littleshocked. The project involved child actors, a dolphin who had nodouble, a location-based shoot in Florida during hurricane season andlots of underwater work. Capturing in 3-D would add to an alreadytall order.

However, I also felt Dolphin Tale might be a great opportunityto use 3-D differently. The technology was being used mostly for big,action-packed blockbusters, and our story was a family-orienteddrama.

I would have liked to compare various 3-D systems, but theproduction worked out a deal with Paradise FX before I was hired. SoI began learning what I could about the format. After a great intro-ductory 3-D seminar conducted by Sony and arranged through ourunion, Local 600, I asked for a camera test. The Paradise system,designed by Max Penner, uses Preston motors for all of the focus, lens-conversion and interaxial adjustments. Max also works as the stereo-grapher on his movies, and he brings with him a lot of knowledge andconfidence.

Arri’s Alexa was not available at the time, and I wasn’t toohappy about shooting on the Red One, which came with the Paradise

system. I was concerned about the Red’s reliability andergonomics, and at that time it still had a lot of troublein low-light tungsten situations — I felt the skin tonesnever looked real. On the plus side, Max had some verynice Zeiss Master Primes and short Angenieux zoomlenses that I knew would help.

Camera weight was another concern. TheParadise rig weighed almost 100 pounds in studiomode, and we also needed an underwater housing.

I was able to hire several of my longtime LosAngeles crewmembers, including 1st AC Tommy Klines,2nd AC Miki Janicin and key grip Loren Corl. The gaffer,Pat Murray, had just moved to our location in Clearwa-ter, Fla., and came highly recommended by Russell

Boyd, ASC. I wanted to operate one camera myself, and for the second

camera we were lucky to get Michael St. Hilaire, who had also recentlymoved to Florida. The underwater photography would be operated byPete Zuccarini, one of the most experienced underwater cameramenin the country.

Paradise offered an underwater rig that used Silicon Imaging’sSI-2K cameras, but I wasn’t happy about the prospect of shooting thevery important underwater sequences at a lower resolution than theabove-water scenes. In prep Pete suggested he could build a newhousing for the 4K Red 3-D rig, and he and his engineer designed ashiny, silver housing that we called the Volkswagen. It could work asan underwater housing and as a splash box at water level.

I decided not to use the Steadicam, which I usually like to use,and instead shoot everything from cranes and dollies. The 3-D camerarig was so big it reminded me of my early days in film school, whenthe only way for us students to shoot sound was to use an old Arriblimp that had to be carried by two people. This was progress?

The production had also struck a deal with Scott Howell atCinemoves, which provided various Technocranes with image-stabi-lized heads for the entire shoot. These gave us great freedom to movethe camera a lot, which helps bring the 3-D space to life. We were ableto reach almost everywhere over the dolphin pools, and for the finalscene in the lagoon we used a 50' Technocrane on a pontoon boat.

My biggest concern was how to deal with all of the day-exte-rior shots. Going digital means less highlight retention, and the expo-sure curves just don’t roll off as nicely as film does, especially whenscenes involve harsh contrast and bright skies in backlight situations.Most of the story takes place at a marine hospital and aquarium thatserves as home to our dolphin, Winter, but the main location wasn’texactly pretty. It was a former sewage plant that had been converted,so everything was built out of concrete and painted toilet blue!

The production designer, Michael Corenblith, had designed anadditional outdoor pool area, but there was no sun cover for the

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actors. The typical solution — flying a big silkover the set for every scene — didn’t seemvery promising because the location was closeto the sea, and we had to anticipate strongwinds and heavy weather.

I knew nobody would want to wait forthe light, given that we had a six-hour on-setschedule with child actors and a dolphin whowas making her first movie. Inspired by thearchitecture of Frei-Otto, who designedMunich’s Olympic Stadium, I thought abouthanging sails over the outdoor set. I worriedthat I’d be stepping on Michael’s toes if Isuggested this to him, but fortunately, he wasincredibly supportive. He came up with greatdesigns for sails and masts that would help usdeal with the harsh Florida sun and addanother layer to the 3-D photography. Ourvery supportive producers (Alcon Entertain-ment) agreed to cover the extra costs, so aftera tough process of static engineering, local sailmakers helped us add 10 masts and lots ofdifferent sails in various colors and translucen-cies to the set.

Because a lot of the show’s gear had tobe specially built, our test period was short.Once principal photography began, welearned pretty quickly how to deal with fourdifferent video-playback stations and all of theextra cable! To keep things moving quicklywhile we were capturing shots of the kids andour dolphin, I decided to use the Angenieuxshort zooms for all of the day-exterior work,and the Master Primes for all the interiors andnight shoots. One rig was designated forwider lenses, one for longer lenses (this onehad a smaller mirror), and one for primes orthe underwater housing.

Every lens change took time andbecame a bit of an adventure, and the processof reloading the cameras with the small SDcards looked like a miniature science project.Placing two cameras next to each other toshoot A/B coverage was almost impossiblebecause of the size of the mirrors and thenecessary lens shades, which my assistant,Tommy, had to make himself.

I was fortunate that our director wasvery patient with the technical limitations andhiccups we experienced. We were also luckyto have a great first assistant director, PhilPatterson, who had weathered many stormson Terry Gilliam’s movies. With his help, I couldplan our shooting directions for each day,keeping the sun mostly where I wanted it. ➣


Our two child actors, Nathan Gambleand Cozi Zuehlsdorff, were extremely giftedand professional. Harry Connick Jr., whoplays the marine doctor and father, andMorgan Freeman, who plays the inventor ofthe dolphin’s prosthetic tail, kept things lighton the set. Winter was always happy toperform a trick as long as she received somefood as an incentive, and the weather stayedpretty consistent throughout the entireshoot. I only had a hard time when we shota hurricane sequence during the only threehours of bad weather we encountered.Some sky replacement and DI work will helpthat sequence.

Pete finished his Volkswagen just intime for principal photography. Oncelowered into the water with a crane arm, the600-pound rig enabled him to capture greatfootage of the boy and the dolphin. Wewanted to keep rolling once Pete was under-water, so we recorded those sequences to ahard drive inside the housing.

My main lighting instruments were18K ArriSuns, which gave me a great suneffect underwater and helped soften thecontrast in almost every daylight situationwhere we bounced them or extended thesunlight. Together with the new Arri 1.8KM18s, they almost eliminate the need forany other HMIs.

One major set built inside a ware-house was a big aquarium exhibition spacewith six large, square windows looking intothe tanks and lots of round windows on thesecond floor. I was told the objects in thetanks would have to be all CG because wewere shooting 3-D. This required me todevise lighting that would accommodateseveral large bluescreens, interactive lightingfor the underwater world, and a lightingscheme for the visitors’ space — lots of funstuff. Best boy/rigging gaffer Marc Wostakhelped us come up with a nice solution:bouncing our whole daylight package intoMylar to create water reflections, andaccomplishing the rest with lots of tungstenlights (gelled with various levels of CTB) ondimmers.

We finished Dolphin Tale almost onschedule, and I really enjoyed the experi-ence. I hope the movie will help the audi-ence feel that they can actually changethings and move forward, just as the pros-thetic tail helps our dolphin to survive. ●

Top: Lindenlaub surveys alocation while workingwith a 4K Red 3-D rig.Middle: To create sun

cover for the actors on anoutdoor pool set,Lindenlaub drew

inspiration from thedesign of Munich’s

Olympic Stadium andasked productiondesigner Michael

Corenblith to add mastsand sails to the structure.

Bottom: Underwatercameraman Pete Zuccarini

designed an underwaterhousing for the cameras

that the crew dubbed the Volkswagen.


Arri Unveils L-SeriesLED Fresnels

Arri has introduced the L-Series of LED Fresnelfixtures. The L7-T, L7-D andL7-C fixtures incorporateFresnel characteristics ofcontinuous focusing fromspot to flood and asmooth, homogenouslight field.

The “L” in L-Seriesstands for LED, and the “7” correlates to the 7" Fresnel-like lensshared by all three models. The L7-T is tungsten balanced at3,200°K, the L7-D is daylight balanced at 5,600°K, and the L7-C iscolor-controllable. All three can be operated in identical manner.

As with a conventional Fresnel, precise light-field control canbe achieved with barn doors and flags, permitting the same cuttingand shaping of the beam that lighting designers depend on. Allthree L-Series fixtures draw 220 watts of power, and the L7-T andL7-D both produce a light output comparable to a conventional 1Ktungsten Fresnel. The white light of the L7-C can be adjusted fordifferent skin tones, camera sensors and mixed-light environments,and specific color shades can be matched through full-gamut colormixing without compromising the quality of the light field; the L-Series combines uniform light and single-shadow rendition withabsolute control of color temperature.

In addition to RDM-enabled DMX, L-Series fixtures can besupplied with on-board manual controls. For the color-tunable L7-C,this enables rapid and precise adjustment of intensity, color temper-ature, green/magenta point, hue and saturation.

The L-Series also offers a completely passive cooling systemin a high-intensity LED fixture, resulting in truly silent operation. Likeall Arri products, the L-Series Fresnels utilize durable componentsdesigned for high-impact handling. They feature IP54 weather resis-tance and are built to withstand the rigors of modern production.

For additional information, visit www.arri.com.

LEDZ Fires Up SuperspotLEDZ has introduced the LEDZ Superspot, a

robust LED luminaire. Similar in style to thecompany’s Brute products, the Superspot producesa sharp, powerful, circular beam. Boasting 5,500°Kcolor temperature and a throw in excess of 40', theSuperspot is comparable to a 575-watt HMI fixtureand draws only a single amp.

According to LEDZ’s photometrics, the

New Products & Services• SUBMISSION INFORMATION •

Please e-mail New Products/Services releases to:[email protected] and include full contactinformation and product images. Photos must be

TIFF or JPEG files of at least 300dpi.

Superspot boasts an output of 3,650 foot candles at 3', 1,300 footcandles at 6', 550 foot candles at 9', 345 foot candles at 12', 225foot candles at 15', 110 foot candles at 21', 68 foot candles at 27',45 foot candles at 33', and 29 foot candles at 39'.

The Superspot features an all-aluminum housing and yokesystem with a junior mounting pin. It has a slim profile and producesno sound and minimal heat. The fixture also incorporates two built-in dimmers, which allow for 0-100-percent output control with mini-mal color shifting.

The Superspot comes complete with a switchable powersupply unit (110-volt to 240-volt AC) and an extension cable withon/off switch. Additional accessories are available, including theLEDZ speed frame, filter frame, DMX capabilities and 12-volt batteryoptions for mobile applications.

For additional information, visit www.led-z.com.

Gekko Expands Karess RangeGekko Technology has expanded its Karesslite LED soft-light

range with the Karess 6012 Blendable and Karesslite 6012 FX. Whereas the standard Karesslite is switchable between

daylight and tungsten color temperatures, the Karess 6012 Blend-able can be adjusted to any intermediate color temperature between3,200°K and 5,600°K. “Lighting-system designers, lighting directorsand cinematographers appreciate the precise control this new optionprovides,” says Ian Muir, Gekko Technology’s business-developmentmanager. “They now have the ability to select the color temperaturethey require by adjustment on the back of the unit, or remotely viaDMX. Like all Karesslites, the blendable version delivers consistentcolor temperature throughout its full range of intensity variation. It

delivers an output color quality that is consistentwith more traditional technologies, as well asproviding the many benefits that LEDs offer.”

Designed for visual effects and chroma-keywork, the Karesslite 6012 FX is switchablebetween blue and green outputs for both blue-screen and greenscreen applications. The unitfeatures on-board dimming and switching inaddition to integrated DMX.

Both the Karess 6012 Blendable and the

Karesslite 6012 FX incorporate a 6x12 emit-ter format in a 23.6"x11.8" panel with afront-to-back depth of 6.5" and a weight of15.4 pounds. Power consumption is 85watts, allowing more than 90 minutes ofcontinuous operation from two rear-mount-able V-lock batteries. Power can also besupplied from a 12-40-volt DC feed via anXLR 4 connector, or from a mains supply.

Each Karesslite comes complete withan integral diffusion grating, providing asingle-source output with minimal light loss.Egg-crate options can also be deployed tomake the source more directional. Otheravailable accessories include the Gekkoswivel mount, yoke, encapsulated color-correction gel sets, removable barn doors,honeycomb louvers, remote dimmer andsoft transit case.

For additional information, visitwww.gekkotechnology.com.

Litepanels Upgrades Sola ENGLitepanels, a Vitec Group brand, has

added more versatility to its on-camera SolaENG LED Fresnel light. The upgraded SolaENG operates on battery or AC powerthanks to a new AC/DC adapter, and theSola ENG Kit includes a detachable D-Tappower cable and Stand Adapter Bracket,making the fixture easy to mount on eithera camera or light stand.

Litepanels’ daylight-balanced Solafixtures provide great controllability andlight-shaping properties, including variablebeam control from 10-70 degrees whileutilizing just a fraction of the power of stan-

dard fixtures. Employing a 3" proprietaryFresnel lens, the Sola ENG draws just 30watts but produces light levels equivalent toa 250-watt tungsten unit.

Sola Fresnels feature instantdimming from 0-100 percent with nonoticeable color shift. The Sola ENGprovides ergonomic manual focus anddimming via lens-style rotating control.Output is flicker free and remains consistenteven as the battery voltage goes down.

The Sola ENG fixture measures4"x4"x5" and weighs 10 ounces. The SolaENG Kit comes with the fixture, two-leafbarn doors, three gels ( 1⁄4 correction, fullcorrection and diffusion), an AC powersupply with power cord, a Stand AdapterBracket, a detachable D-Tap DC powercable, and a shoe-ball mount and adapter.

For additional information, visitwww.litepanels.com.

3-Point Lighting With Ikan iLEDsIkan has introduced the iLED 312

Three-Point Light Kit, which includes adurable carrying case, three iLED 312 LEDfixtures, three light stands, three lightdiffusers, three AC power adapters, sixSony L-series DV batteries, three dual-battery chargers and three iLED 312 softcarrying cases.

The iLED 312 boasts a bright (6,580lux at 50cm) wide-angle beam pattern,tungsten-to-daylight (3,200°K-6,500°K)blending, dimming, on-board battery-lifeindicator, and dual battery-life capabilities.

The kit’s suggested retail price is$1,799. For more information, visitwww.ikancorp.com.

Elation Professional Zooms With Platinum WashElation Professional has introduced

the Platinum Wash LED Zoom, a compact,energy-efficient LED color wash with abuilt-in zoom and integrated DMX. Featur-ing a 300-watt Quad Color LED system and


DMX signals from up to 3,000' away. Thefixture also features an electronic dimmerand strobe and can pan 540 degrees and tilt265 degrees. It can be run in three DMXmodes (12, 14, or 15 channels) with athree- or five-pin DMX input. A convenienttouch-screen display on the rear of the basemakes it easy to scroll through DMXsettings. The unit also offers multi-voltageoperation.

For additional information, visitwww.elationlighting.com.

High End Systems Breaks out TechnospotHigh End Systems, a Barco company,

has introduced the Technospot, a compact,hard-edged fixture designed for a wide vari-ety of applications.

The Technospot features smoothCMY color mixing and a fixed color wheelwith eight replaceable positions plus open.Two rotating Lithopattern wheels, eachwith six patterns plus open, provide a largenumber of output patterns and images. Theoutput can be further enhanced with arotating four-facet prism and an animationwheel.

The Technospot also features aprominent 5.3" lens, 11-34-degree zoomand more than 12,000 lumens of outputfrom its 575-watt mini-fast-fit lamp. With itsincredibly efficient optics, the Technospotprojects clean, crisp images that cut throughany wash. Additionally, an indigo high-

lighter provides light output from four 1-watt indigo LEDs, thus increasing the layer-ing abilities of the large-aperture fixture.

Other features include mechanicalstrobe, a fast mechanical iris, a color LCDmenu with battery operation, low ambientnoise, RDM and DMX compatibility viathree- and five-pin XLR connectors, and anincluded road case. The Technospot alsoboasts high-resolution micro-steppingmotor control for smooth motion at allspeeds; fast, smooth and quiet yoke move-ment; an exterior design that prevents straylight scatter; a low-noise, high-efficiencyelectronic cooling system; and pan and tiltlocks for easy transportation.

For additional information, visitwww.highend.com and www.barco.com.

Hive Lighting Illuminates Plasma LineHive Lighting has announced plans

for a line of plasma luminaires for the enter-tainment industry. Incorporating Luximlight-emitting-plasma technology, thefixtures boast flicker-free, silent operationwhile generating little heat and producingfull-spectrum daylight-balanced light.

The Hive Lighting plasma range wasthe brainchild of cinematographer JonEdward Miller and energy consultant RobertRutherford. “These beautiful, daylight-balanced lights are high output, have greatcolor quality, and are ready for the rigors ofproduction,” says Miller. “I started buildingthese lights for my own use and quickly real-ized that their amazing color and powerwere something I needed to share with theindustry.”

Hive’s Hornet180 Fresnel is the first inthe product line. Using a 180-watt lamp andpulling just 275 total system watts, aHornet180 Fresnel puts out more light than

built on Elation’s space-saving Platinumbase, the Platinum Wash LED Zoom offersbrilliant RGBW colors in a trimmed-downfixture.

Powered by 30 10-watt RGBW CREELEDs, the fixture produces an outputcomparable to a 575-watt dischargemoving head but draws only 360 watts atmaximum use. The LED source produces155 foot candles at 16'.

Measuring 14" long, 13.2" wideand 19" high, the Platinum Wash LEDZoom is ideal for tight spaces. Weighing35.5 pounds, the fixture is also easy tohandle and transport.

The fixture’s built-in, motorized, 11-50-degree zooming capability gives design-ers fast beam control, allowing them toproduce a smaller wash with a longer throwor wider coverage with a shorter throw.Additionally, the unit’s built-in EWDMXreceiver allows the fixture to receive wireless

Prism Projection Reveals LED ProfilePrism Projection has unveiled the Reveal Profile, a high-CRI LED profile spot with high

lumen output. The fixture’s debut follows the successful launch of Prism’s Reveal Color Washand Reveal Studio units.

The 16,000-lumen Reveal Profile features a variable color-temperature range from2,800°K to 6,500°K, adjustable focus from hard to soft edge, changeable lenses for beamangles from 14 to 70 degrees, and a flat field. The fixture also offers four shutters on a tri-

plane; an M-size gobo; DMX, Artnet and localcontrol; and universal AC input.

Reveal products from Prism Projectionare professional-grade solutions that offerexceptional color rendering, palette, repeata-bility and beam quality. Reveal-series productsincorporate energy-efficient, long-lastingsolid-state light sources applied with propri-etary control algorithms and projection optics.

For additional information, visitwww.prismprojection.com.

400-watt HMIs and 1K tungsten Fresnels.Additionally, Hive’s lamps last 10,000 hours.

Hive’s lights are compatible with allstandard lighting accessories. No newscrims, barn doors or Fresnel lenses areneeded. The lights are also controllablethrough DMX, laptops and a wirelessiPhone app.

Hive also plans to release theBumbleBee540 SpaceLight and Honey-Bee180 Softlight by the end of this year.

For additional information, visitwww.hivelighting.com.

Photon Beard Goes NovaPhoton Beard has introduced the

Nova 270 flicker-free, low-heat, energy-effi-cient lighting fixture.

“Nova is a completely new conceptin location lighting,” says Peter Daffarn,Photon Beard’s managing director. “Thefixture’s exceptionally low power consump-tion and ultra-cool beam provides a lightoutput equivalent to a 2,000-watt tungstenFresnel. Users will have all the light theyneed without breaking a sweat.”

The Nova 270 utilizes what PhotonBeard describes as a new type of lightsource. The unit runs cool, so no fans arerequired. Additionally, the daylight-balanced fixture is focusable from 12 to 15degrees.

For additional information, visitwww.photonbeard.com. ●

DENECKE, INC...

Celebrating 35 Years of Precision!

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CA 91355 Phone (661) 607-0206 Fax (661) 257-2236www.denecke.com Email: info@denecke.

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CLASSIFIED AD RATES

All classifications are $4.50 per word. Words set inbold face or all capitals are $5.00 per word. Firstword of ad and advertiser’s name can be set in capitalswithout extra charge. No agency commission ordiscounts on clas si fied advertising.PAYMENTMUSTAC -COM PA NYORDER. VISA, Mastercard, AmEx and Discovercard are ac cept ed. Send ad to Clas si fied Ad ver tis -ing, Amer i can Cin e ma tog ra pher, P.O. Box 2230,Hol ly wood, CA 90078. Or FAX (323) 876-4973. Dead -line for payment and copy must be in the office by 15thof second month preceding pub li ca tion. Sub ject mat teris lim it ed to items and ser vic es per tain ing to film mak -ing and vid eo pro duc tion. Words used are sub ject tomag a zine style ab bre vi a tion. Min i mum amount perad: $45

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Ads may now also be placed in the on-line Classi-fieds at the ASC web site.

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For more information please visitwww.theasc.com/advertiser, or e-mail: [email protected].

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Cavision Enterprises 59Chapman/Leonard Studio Equipment Inc. 39Chapman University 11Chimera 5Cinematography Electronics 75Cinekinetic 82Clairmont Film & Digital 21Codex Digital Ltd., 25Convergent Design 57Cooke Optics 27Createsphere 73

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Film Gear 65Filmtools 81Fletcher Chicago 49Fujifilm 37

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Technology Committee and the Interna-tional Standards Organization.

At the ASC Awards in 1999, in recog-nition of their exceptional contributions tothe art of filmmaking, Miyagishima andPanavision colleague Albert Mayer Sr.received the Presidents Award. Miyag-ishima’s other honors included a Fuji GoldMedal, for his contributions to anamorphiclens design; the Academy’s John A. BonnerMedal of Commendation, for his service tothe Academy; and the Academy’s Gordon E.Sawyer Award, for his overall technicalcontributions to the motion-picture industry.

During Miyagishima’s tenure atPanavision, the company was honored withmore than 20 Academy Sci-Tech Awards.

“He was a pioneer,” says Stephen H.Burum, ASC. “He was there at the very first.He was the living spirit of Panavision, and hereflected Panavision’s ethic of being aforward-looking, progressive company.Besides that, he was a great guy.”

“Tak was that rare person in ourindustry who made you feel like family,” saysDaryn Okada, ASC. “I’ll always rememberthe gleam in his eyes when he saw how tomake an idea reality and help all of us createimages in the demanding framework ofproduction. And as much as I will miss him,I feel he’ll be right there every time I look inthe eyepiece and roll the camera.”

Miyagishima retired in 2009, but heremained active in the industry. Early thisyear, the Academy named him one of thefirst three Academy Science Fellows.

“My dream of building bridges nevermaterialized, but my luck at being in theright place at the right time certainly provedright,” Miyagishima reflected in 1994.“Images being an international languagewithout boundaries assisted me in achievingmy goals of being able to build bridges ofunderstanding. I would not have had theopportunities to achieve my dreams had itnot been for Panavision.”

Miyagishima is survived by his wife,three sons and three grandsons.

— Jon D. Witmer●

Associate member Takuo “Tak”Miyagishima died Aug. 4 following anextended fight with pneumonia. He was 83.

Miyagishima was born on March 15,1928, in Gardena, Calif. He served in the U.S.Army during the Korean War, and during hisservice he occasionally worked as a projec-tionist of training films.

Miyagishima attended East Los Ange-les Junior College and the University of Cali-fornia-Los Angeles with the hope of design-ing bridges. In 1954, he joined a small manu-facturing company as an engineer/designer.Among the company’s clients was Panavi-sion, which had been founded that year byRobert Gottschalk and future ASC memberRichard Moore. Gottschalk quickly recog-nized Miyagishima’s talents, and by the endof the year Miyagishima was one of Panavi-sion’s first full-time employees.

Among Miyagishima’s early projectswere the Super Panatar projection lens andthe Micro Panatar printing lens. As Panavisionturned its focus toward camera systems andtaking lenses, Miyagishima contributed tosuch advancements as the 65mm Ultra andSuper Panavision camera systems, the Panav-ision Silent Reflex Camera, and several seriesof 35mm spherical and anamorphic lenses.

Over his decades of service at Panavi-sion, Miyagishima moved up from draftsmanto senior vice president of engineering, andhe remained a constant force behind thecompany’s technological advances, including

its push into digital capture. In 2004, reflect-ing on his 50 years with Panavision, Miyag-ishima told AC, “If a director of photographywanted a certain focal-length lens, we wouldlook into it. For Lawrence of Arabia , all themechanical parts of those lenses came off mytable. George Kraemer and I actually cali-brated the ‘mirage lens’ in the alleyway rightoutside Panavision!”

Miyagishima also designed thecompany’s “three-format” logo.

Miyagishima became an ASC associ-ate in April 1995, after being proposed bySociety members Woody Omens and KeesVan Oostrum.

“Tak was the most terrific engineer,”says Van Oostrum. “I could go to him andsay, ‘This doesn’t feel right. Somehow it does-n’t merge with what we do every day.’ Andhe would listen, nod and come back with asolution. As cinematographers, we deal withfeelings and ideas that don’t necessarilytranslate into engineering, but Tak had theability to translate those ideas so eloquently,beautifully and effectively. It’s a trait I’ve neverreally found in another engineer.”

“There was a synergy effect when Takand Panavision came together,” notesOmens. “It was a relationship made inheaven. He was a friend to the industry andto the people in it.”

Miyagishima was also active in suchorganizations as the Academy’s Science &Technology Council, the SMPTE Projection

Takuo “Tak” Miyagishima,1928-2011In Memoriam

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Dod Mantle, Geddes, Silver,WalkerJoin Society

The Society has welcomedAnthony Dod Mantle, David Geddes,Steven V. Silver and Mandy Walker to itsranks of active members.

Anthony Dod Mantle, ASC,BSC, DFF grew up in Oxford, England. In1985, he moved to Denmark and enrolledin the National Film School.His firstfeature as a cinematographer was theGerman film Terrorists, which went on toachieve cult status after being banned inGermany. His credits since then haveincluded The Celebration, Julien Donkey-Boy, Dear Wendy (AC Oct. ’05) and TheLast King of Scotland . Hehas enjoyedmultiple collaborations with Lars von Trieron such films as Dogville (AC May ’04),Manderlay and Antichrist (AC Nov. ’09),and with Danny Boyle on such features as28 Days Later… (AC July ’03), Millions,Slumdog Millionaire (AC Dec. ’08)and127 Hours (AC Dec. ’10). Dod Mantlewon ASC, Academy and BAFTA awardsand the Camerimage Golden Frog forSlumdog Millionaire.

David Geddes, ASC, CSC wasborn in Vancouver, and he developed alove of storytelling while working in BritishColumbia’s lumber mills and loggingcamps, where spoken yarns provided theonly entertainment. Geddes studiedphotography at the Banff Centre Schoolof Fine Arts and the Northern AlbertaInstitute of Technology, and then partici-pated in the Simon Fraser University FilmWorkshop. He earned his first cinematog-raphy credits on documentaries, shorts,corporate films and investigative journal-ism pieces before moving into 35mm tele-vision production with the series 21 JumpStreet. He has since shot more than 70projects, including the series Beverly Hills,90210, Dark Angel, Sanctuary (AC Nov.’08) and Lie to Me , and the featuresHere’s to Life! and Tucker & Dale vs. Evil.

Steven V. Silver, ASCwas born inIllinois and grew up in Southern Califor-

nia’s San Fernando Valley. He beganshooting with his father’s Super 8 cameraswhen he was 8 years old. At age 19, heset the cameras aside to hitchhike acrossAsia. Upon returning to the States, herekindled his passion for cinematographyduring his studies at San Fernando ValleyCollege. Silvergot his start in the industrywith jobs at Hill Production Service andthe Howard A. Anderson Co. He joinedthe union and climbed the ranks, startingas an assistant. His cinematography cred-its include themulti-camera series StillStanding, Dharma & Greg , The Big BangTheory and Two and a Half Men . For hiswork on the latter, he earned six Emmynominations, taking home the award in2007.

Mandy Walker, ASC, ACS wasborn in Melbourne, Australia, where shedeveloped an early love for art in generaland film in particular. When she was 12,she began developing her own photos ina darkroom her father set up in thefamily’s shed, and in high school shebegan studyingfilm history. While study-ing film at the university level, Walker meta producer who hired her as a productionassistant on the feature Dusty. She thenmade her way up through the cameradepartment, notching her first cinematog-raphy credits on music videos and studentfilms. Her first feature credit was ReturnHome. Since thenshe has photographedsuch features as Lantana (AC Feb. ’02),Australia (AC Nov. ’08)and Red RidingHood (AC April ’11). Her commercial cred-its include spots for Chanel, AmericanExpress, Mercedes, Nike and Gatorade.

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From Top: Anthony Dod Mantle, ASC, BSC,DFF; David Geddes, ASC, CSC; Steven V.Silver, ASC; Mandy Walker, ASC, ACS.

Clubhouse News



When you were a child, what film made the strongest impres-sion on you?The Czech movie Jumping Over Puddles (1972), which I now knowwas directed by Karel Kachyna. I haven’t seen it since. Also, I’vealways loved Miracle in Milan (1951)by Vittorio De Sica.

Which cinematographers, past or present, do you mostadmire?Sven Nykvist, ASC, for hisunderstanding of simplicity;Gabriel Figueroa, for his abilityto create strong, meaningfulimages; and Vittorio Storaro,ASC, AIC, for being theRenaissance Man of cine-matography.

What sparked your interestin photography?My mother was a photogra-pher, and that planted theseed in me. I grew up in thedarkroom (in more ways thanone).

Where did you train and/orstudy?I studied at Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica in Mexico City.

Who were your early teachers or mentors?Eduardo Maldonado, a documentarian who was the director of ourfilm school; Santiago Navarrete, who put me on the right track in myearly days; and David Watkin, BSC. Fortunately, I was able to tellDavid he had been my teacher before he died.

What are some of your key artistic influences?Motion, rhythm, light, shadows, volume, space, shapes andhumans.

How did you get your first break in the business?I shot La Mujer de Benjamin , produced by our film school, and itearned a bunch of awards worldwide. And working with JulianSchnabel on Before Night Falls definitely put me on the map.

What has been your most satisfying moment on a project?Having fun with my crews, creating an environment where we allwant to go to work. Also, watching a film I shot and being proud ofit is always satisfying.

Have you made any memorable blunders?Many. I once tried to play the piano in front of Sir Anthony Hopkins,and he kindly asked, ‘Can you play Far Away?’

What is the best professional advice you’ve ever received?Life is like an airplane: you either get onboard, or you don’t. It’s upto you.

What recent books, films orartworks have inspiredyou?Julius Shulman’s photographs,Richard Neutra’s architectureand F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise,one of the most beautifulmovies of all time.

Do you have any favoritegenres, or genres youwould like to try?Science fiction and Westerns. Ihad the chance to shootscience fiction on Gil Kenan’sCity of Ember , and I loveddoing it. I also enjoyed shoot-ing Deadwood.

If you weren’t a cinematographer, what might you be doinginstead?I’m not sure. Maybe I’d have a taco stand on Broadway in down-town L.A.

Which ASC cinematographers recommended you formembership?Emmanuel Lubezki, Henner Hofmann and Gabriel Beristain — inother words, the Mexican Mafia!

How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?It feels great to be part of the community. Being able to exchangeideas and share our work with each other helps make us better cine-matographers. ●

Xavier Grobet, ASC, AMCClose-up

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D A N M I N D E L , A S C , B S CONFILM

To order Kodak motion picture fi lm, call (800) 621-fi lm. © Eastman Kodak Company, 2011. Photography: © 2011 Douglas Kirkland

“What fi rst drew me to photography was the ability to freeze time. Once you had the image, you discovered things that the naked eye never saw. Now, telling stories with motion pictures is what really interests me. We cinematographers live and breathe it. The idea of having a 35 mm frame with chemicals that react to a focused beam of light, and turning that into a picture – that is one of the most incredible things I can imagine. I try to excite and stimulate the fi lm with light so that it does something that it’s not supposed to do. Those imperfections can give the images an unquantifi able magic. They put another layer of illusion onto something that is already artifi cial, tricking the audience into thinking it’s real. Film is a handmade art form that comes with a set of emotional tools. I like to use these subtleties and variations as part of the emotional landscape of the story. To me, the fi lm medium is irreplaceable.”

Dan Mindel was born in South Africa and educated in London, where he began his career as a loader at a commercial production house. He moved up to director of photography and segued into the feature fi lm world, eventually shooting Enemy of the State with Tony Scott. Since then, his credits include Shanghai Noon, Skeleton Key, Spy Game, Mission: Impossible III, Domino, and Star Trek. He is currently fi lming the feature fi lm Savages with Oliver Stone, using a wide variety of fi lm formats.

All these productions were photographed on Kodak motion picture fi lm.

For an extended interview with Dan Mindel, visit www.kodak.com/go/onfi lm.

Documents

AC oct 2011