CINEMATOGRAPHER CANAdIAN · Canadian Cinematographer is a publication of the Canadian Society of Cinematographers

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CINEMATOGRAPHERCanadian SoCiety of CinematographerS Summer 2009 Vol. 1 no. 3

CANAdIAN

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The Canadian Society of Cinematographers (CSC) was founded in 1957 by a group of Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa cameramen. Since then over 800 cinematographers and persons in associated occupations have joined the organization.

The purpose of the CSC is to promote the art and craft of cinematography and to provide tangible recognition of the common bonds that link film and video professionals, from the aspiring student and camera assistant to the news veteran and senior director of photography.

We facilitate the dissemination and exchange of technical information and endeavor to advance the knowledge and status of our members within the industry. As an organization dedicated to furthering technical assistance, we maintain contact with non-partisan groups in our industry but have no political or union affiliation.

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A publication of the Canadian Society of Cinematographers, formerly CSC News

2 From the President

3 Michel Bisson csc: Shooting in the Third World Is a Moving, Life Experience

A simple compassion for the suffering of people in less fortunate parts of the world has led Michel Bisson csc to several humanitarian journeys over the last 14 years. By Don Angus

8 Shooting the Shooter: Pierre Gill csc and the Making of Polytechnique Once past his initial misgivings, Pierre Gill csc saw the restrained power the film could have and signed on as DOP, eager to help Denis Villeneuve achieve his disturbing but scrupulously respectful vision. By Maurie Alioff

14 Watchmen: Under the Hood: High Tech Meets Old School, Lensed by Glenn Taylor & Christopher M. Oben

CSC associate member Chris Oben had the opportunity to contribute to the blockbuster Watchmen and its subsidiary productions in a number of different capacities. By Christopher M. Oben

18 Hot Docs 2009 Wrap By Lance Carlson

21 Industry News

25 Camera Classified

26 CSC Members

28 Production Notes/Calendar

Cover image

Watchmen images courtesy of Warner Bros. ‘Minutemen’ photo by Clay Enos

Michel Bisson csc

Pierre Gill csc

Hot Docs 2009

CINEMATOGRAPHERCANAdIAN

2 • Canadian Cinematographer - Summer 2009

From The PreSIDeNT

Canadian CinematographerSummer 2009 Vol 1, No. 3

CSC EXECUTIVEPresident: Joan Hutton cscVice-President: George Willis csc sascTreasurer: Joseph Sunday phdSecretary: Antonin Lhotsky cscMembership: Philip Earnshaw cscPublicity: Nikos Evdemon cscDirector Ex-officio: Dylan Macleod cscDirector Ex-officio: D. Gregor Hagey cscEducation: Ernie Kestler

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFJoan Hutton csc

CO-EDITOR-IN-CHIEFGeorge Willis csc, sasc

EDITOR EMERITUSDonald Angus

EXECUTIVE DIRECTORSusan [email protected]

EDITORWyndham Wise [email protected]

ART DIRECTIONBerkeley Stat House

COPY EDITORDonald Angus

PROOFREADERSKaren LonglandPaul Townend

WEBSITE CONSULTANTNikos Evdemon csc www.csc.ca

ADVERTISING SALESDonald [email protected]

CSC OFFICE / MEMBERSHIP 131–3007 Kingston RoadToronto, Canada | M1M 1P1Tel: 416-266-0591 | Fax: 416-266-3996Email: [email protected]

Canadian Cinematographer is a publication of the Canadian Society of Cinematographers. Canadian Cinematographer is printed by Winnipeg Sun Commercial Print and is published 10 times a year. One-year subscriptions are available in Canada for $35.00 for individuals and $70.00 for institutions, including GST. In U.S. rates are $35.00 and $70.00 for institutions in U.S. funds. International subscriptions are $50.00 for individuals and $100.00 for institutions. Payment by money order in Canadian funds.

ISSN 1918-8781

Canadian Mail Product Sales Agreement No. 478423

I am not sure how strongly I can emphasize to all our CSC members the importance of your input, commitment, support and participation in our Society’s goals andservices. Apathy does not progress make. All of us in the CSC executive are

trying hard to generate new ideas to promote and strengthen the CSC’s role not only in fostering but also promoting excellence and artistry. And we need more ideas and suggestions from all members. Aiming towards those goals, our Canadian Cinematographer magazine did not only change its name but also its look and content and will continue to be attractive and informative. Our CSC Awards are expanding their scope in honouring both traditionaland new categories of film and video cinematography. Our Awards Gala team is meeting its difficult task with innovation and excellence.

Our new CSC website, with its simple and functional elegance, has introduced many new elements for promoting our goals and our members to cyberspace. Producers, directors and filmmakers can connect to our website for information about our Society and its members. We have been getting up to 350,000 hits a month, depending on the season.

The CSC Reels is one of those areas where producers and directors, can with a simple click, see the work of our members. But only a small number of our members have sent us their demo reels. Adding your demo reels to the CSC Reels is a win-win proposition. You increase exposure for your work, while the CSC, your professional association, gains by displaying the widest and most diverse range of cinematographic excellence – which in turn reflects positively back to you.

The CSC is proud to have this incredible roster of outstanding cinematographers and would like to have everybody’s demo in the CSC Reels. We are aware that many of you have agents hosting your reels in their servers, or have them in your personal websites, but you should have them in the CSC Reels as well.

It is sad that we have to try so hard, to have your support for something that will benefit all. Nikos Evdemon csc, our publicity chair and web master, has spent endless hours putting all this together. All you have to do is send him your DVD. They can be sent to him directly, [email protected], or to our administrative office, [email protected]. Starting with this issue of Canadian Cinematographer, those members whose reels are on the site will be indicated on the CSC members pages.

On a final note. This is the last issue of Canadian Cinematographer before our summer break. We will be back in September. So to all our members, sponsors and readers, have a great summer and see you in the fall!

Canadian Cinematographer - Summer 2009 • 3

MICHEL BISSON CSC Shooting in the third World is a moving, Life experienceBy Don AngusPhotos by Kim Saltarski

Michel Bisson csc pulled out a photograph of Jennifer, a five-year-old girl living in the slums of Cartagena, Colombia, and his voice choked with emotion. His eyes

watered and his smile widened with joy. He was, he recounted, on a shoot for American-based Children International when Jennifer literally attached herself to him.

“She hugged and held on to my leg,” Bisson said. Despite the urban squalor, “she smiled all the time.” On the spot, the rugged, motorcycle-riding, freelance cinematographer decided he wanted to sponsor Jennifer… and Children International got it done in quick order. “Jennifer’s mother was dying of cancer, and it was very emotional when I told her that I was sponsoring her child. She passed away seven days later.” Because of Bisson’s sponsor-ship, Jennifer now has her own room in a small cinder-block home and goes to school.


All in a day’s work for the Toronto-based cameraman, whose athletic frame, soft heart and photographic smarts have led him on several humanitarian journeys over the last 14 years to Africa, Haiti, Paraguay and Colombia. Bisson himself claims no selfless philanthropy, other than a compassion for the suffering of people in less fortunate parts of the world. He doesn’t work for free, but he gives the production houses that hire him a discounted rate which includes a state-of-the-art camera and accessories.

Over the years, he has worked in Benin (West Africa), Haiti and Paraguay for the now-defunct Bascombe Group, Toronto (producer/director Kirston Nielson), on behalf of the Christian Children’s Fund; for Northern Lights, Toronto (producer Ian French and director Kim Saltarski), in Colombia and Zambia for Children International; and for Northern Lights again (French and Saltarski) on a Ghana (West Africa) shoot for Plan Canada.

Born and brought up in Montreal, Bisson has had a successfuland varied career since he first shot film with his father, news cameraman Jean Bisson, at the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics. He has shot series, MOWs, documentaries, commercials, PSAs and promos, including a few 3D video pro-jects, and has been virtually a one-man band on some low-low- budget features (see CSC News February 2005). Nothing has compared with the challenges and rewards of capturing images in the Third World for the two-minute-to-half-hour direct-response television (DRTV) programs that charitable organizations screen in late-night time slots.

“The long flights, shooting in pretty bad slums, the language barrier – these television shows are lots of hard work. They have allowed me to travel to many different countries and experience things that most people only see on television. I loved every

For shooting in tropical climates, “A hat with a large brim is a must. I’ve had sun stroke three times in my life.” Michel Bisson csc


minute of it. You get to see the real world and how many people need help on this crazy planet. Everyone should experience this at least once in their life. It will change the way you view the world… and appreciate your life and where you live. Canada is a great place.”

Bisson sponsored another child in Asunción, the capital of and largest city in Paraguay, with the help of the Christian Children’s Fund. She was a squeegee girl of about 12 who had been working on the streets since the age of eight. “We shot a piece on her, and I saw the drive she had so I wanted to give her a jump on life. I figured if somebody just helped her out a little bit, she had a chance to get out of the gutters, at least surviving instead of living out of a box.” That girl is now a woman of 25 and doing well.

The first shoot was about 14 years ago in Haiti; the most recent was in Zambia in April last year. The Cité Soleil slums in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, were a jolt to a first-time visitor. “Right away you are thrown into a world of poverty,” Bisson recalled. “It took me about three or four days to get used to it. It’s kind of scary in a way. At one point you’re shocked by the smells, the people around you are in really bad shape; then, after a while, everything seems normal to you. You can never get rid of the smell though. Some places will knock you right over.”

The average shoot is about nine or 10 days. “We location scout at the start for a day or two and get acclimatized because of time and climate differences. It takes about two days to get to Africa, sometimes on as many as five different airlines and five more to get back. One day of rest, one day of scouting, looking at the different stories and then start shooting. We’ll shoot probably three or four days in a row, take a day off and then go back at it for another three or four days.” The shoots are about a year-to-two years apart because funding is always tight.

“We started off shooting the shows with [Bisson’s] Betacam 400, then moved to a rented Panasonic SDX-900 in NTSC because the client wanted 16:9. Then we shot on HD with my Panasonic HDX-900 at 24p, which gave me more latitude in the dark huts and cabins that don’t have any electricity at all. Once inside, I used the clear filter on the wheel and changed the colour temperature in the camera’s menu to 5600K. That way I could get 640 ASA. The HDX-900 records on DVC PRO 33-minute tape that helped us out with the high-shooting ratio. In six days of shooting, we shot 30-to-35 tapes. If we had to render all that footage on to a computer every night from a card, I would not have gotten any sleep.

“I brought two Fujinon HD lenses – a wide-angle zoom HA13x4.5 and a telephoto zoom HA22x7.8. The wide lens I used about 80 per cent of the time because we were mostly up close and personal. The telephoto lens I used to shoot the locals in the village – usually hiding beside a hut to catch them going about their lives – on a two-time extender which gave me about 340 mm. Once they saw us it would be all over; we would get swarmed. “I also brought one 36-inch round and one California bounce

4 x 8 reflector that I used most of the time in the huts and inter-views, and my never-go-anywhere-without Easy Rig, my poor man’s Steadicam. When you are shooting hand-held in the sun for eight-to-10 hours a day at 30C and 90-per-cent humidity, it will save your life. Of course, I brought a lightweight O’Conner 1030 tripod with baby legs, a Panasonic 17-inch monitor for checking the shots at the end of the day in the hotel, along with a portable monitor with a wireless transmitter for the director [Saltarski], who enjoyed showing the shots to the kids. They loved that.

“At first I brought a lot of lighting,” Bisson continued. “But later I brought only one Kino Flo Diva-Light 400 that works 110 to 220v and has 32k and 50k bulbs and a portable Ultralight 30w just in case. The natural light with a reflector works best and gives a great look you really capture the mood of the location.”

Northern Lights has engaged Bisson for a three- or four-week shoot in Rwanda for Plan Canada in late August for early September.

“She hugged and held on to my leg… she smiled all the time.” Michel Bisson csc


“You get to see the real world and how many people need help on this crazy planet. Everyone should experience this at least once in their life.” Michel Bisson csc


When Shooting in the Third World, Be Prepared

Shooting in underdeveloped, third world countries can be tough, says cinematographer Michel Bisson csc – long flights, hot climates, bad slums, open sewage, insects, few

if any production resources, customs problems and language barriers. So, like the Boy Scouts, his motto is Be Prepared.

Besides a careful selection of essential camera and lighting equipment (covered in the main story), Bisson has some tips for survival in conditions most Canadians can barely imagine. Clothing, for example: “On one trip to Haiti, the producer brought sandals because of the heat; she ended up spending the day in the Jeep looking at the wireless monitor and the next day she had shoes on. Lots of times we were shooting on top of garbage dumps, open sewers, even slogging through the jungle. I wore shoes that covered my ankles, thick wool socks, not cot-ton, and T-shirts in a material that wicks away moisture (from Mountain Equipment Co-op). A hat with a large brim, and not black, is a must. I have had sunstroke three times in my life; it will knock you out for 36 hours.

“Another thing is getting the right shots (inoculations) for the area you are going to. One trip I got up to $1,600 worth of shots and medication. Also, make sure the production company gets you health insurance. I also get my own just in case someone messes up at the office.” As for travel documents, Bisson says you must have a passport of course, “but it can’t be within six months of expiry or you could be turned back.” Make sure your carnet is valid wherever you go, too. “You have to check not only the country you are traveling to but also the countries that you travel through to get there, especially the United States. We did not need a carnet to enter Colombia, but when we changed planes in Miami on the trip home the customs agent said we needed a carnet to enter the U.S. After about an hour he let us through. We just made our plane.”

Also, he advises, “make sure all the serial numbers match the descriptions of the equipment you are travelling with. Once I was flying to the Middle East and the Canada Customs agent did not like a couple numbers on the paper so she held us up for two hours. On that note, when you are leaving a third world country always give yourself at least four hours at the airport before boarding. In Benin, West Africa, we used every second.”

Bisson, with more empathy than rancour, suggests that in some places a camera crew should maybe consider hiring a local body-guard. “It’s not that people are that dangerous,” he says. “it‘s just that we carry expensive equipment that can disappear quickly,” and it has. “One time in Paraguay we went into a village where we made the guard stay with the Jeep and toured the area with the local priest. We were in safe hands; nobody messed with the priest. As for the guard, he was glad to see us at the end of the day. He was all alone and the local kids were throwing things at him and teasing him. We had the priest on our side.” – Don Angus


Before he decided to commit himself heart and soul to director Denis Villeneuve’s Polytechnique, Pierre Gill csc was spooked by the project. “I refused to shoot that

movie,” he told me during an interview, remembering how he stormed out of his car at a gas station in the Laurentian Mountains and “threw the script a mile away. I lived that moment in 1989. I know exactly where I was when I heard the story. I had friends who were at the Polytechnique.”

The moment was a snowy day in early December. Marc Lépine walked into the University of Montreal’s engineering school, look-ing like any other 25 year old until he pulled a semi-automatic rifle out of a garbage bag and opened fire. During his shooting spree, Lepine murdered 14 girls, wounded 13 other students, and traumatized an entire society. In his suicide note, he ranted against women, especially the feminists who “ruined my life.”

Gill’s first reaction to Villeneuve’s nervously anticipated drama-tization of the slaughter mirrored the apprehensions of many Quebecers who wondered why anyone would want to probe such deep wounds. Naturally, some feared that the movie would turn a horrific loss of life into some kind of splatter-filled shockorama.

In fact, Villeneuve, highly regarded director of Un 32 août sur terre (1998) and the Genie-winning Maelström (2000), is the moviemaker least likely to see the Polytechnique massacre as an opportunity for cheap thrills. Villeneuve wanted to break the taboo against confronting the event, offer catharsis and create, as Katherine Monk wrote in her Vancouver Sun review of the English-language version of the picture, “an ode to the strength and beauty of the fallen.” As Peter Howell said in his critique in the Toronto Star, the film reflects on “moments in life when nothing makes sense and sadness descends.”

Shooting the Shooter


Three weeks after being rattled by Jacques Davidts’s script for Polytechnique, Pierre Gill took another look at it and met with Villeneuve. Once past his initial misgivings, he saw the restrained power the film could have and signed on as DOP, eager to help Villeneuve achieve his disturbing but scrupulously respectful vision. When the film was released earlier this year, critics and audiences responded positively to the duo’s approach and the controversy waned. Telefilm Canada included Polytechnique in a showcase of Canadian movies at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Bloc Québécois set up a pro-gun control screening for parliamentarians, and the film played at Cannes Film Festival.

Gill recalls that as soon as discussions about the “touchy project” began, he not only agreed with Villeneuve’s idea that Polytechnique should be a black-and-white movie; he saw it as an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shoot one. The widely experienced cinematographer (winner of five CSC Awards, one

from the ASC, two Genies and a Prix Jutra) says that he was a “bulldozer” in his support of the director’s choice because monochrome “was the only way to get the audience to partici-pate” in the film’s imagining of the attack.

“There’s a very big difference between colour and black and white,” Gill explains. “When you have a black-and-white picture in front of you, you find your own emotion. If you look at an image of the Canadian Rockies in black and white, the mountains are very textured and they feel old and powerful. If you have the same picture in colour, the image will tell you that you have to feel good, you want to ski and do this and that.” In the case of Polytechnique, the insistence of colour, spilling over with red blood, “would have been a disaster.”

Once producers Maxim Rémilllard and Don Carmody okayed black and white, Gill and Villeneuve began refining their visual

pierre gill csc and the making of

PolytechniqueBy maurie alioff

Shooting the Shooter Ph

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strategies, a process that continued into post-production. “We have to shoot this film with four short lenses,” Gill remembers saying to Villeneuve: “a 21, a 27, a 35 and a 40. Anything that’s longer is dangerous because we have a guy with a gun.” Short master prime lenses, mounted on an Ari 235, gave the movie a naturalism, rather than engage in typical movie glamorization of a gun-wielding young man.

Polytechnique was shot entirely on Kodak Vision3, 5219, “a very fine grain, amazingly crisp and beautiful colour stock,” says Gill. Combined with the precision of the lenses, it allowed cinema-tographer and director to avoid making what he calls “an artsy, grainy black-and-white movie.” Moreover, at 500 ASA, the 5219 gave the moviemakers the latitude they needed to shoot with the fluorescent lighting of two college locations, as well as other instances of available light. Gill credits his gaffer René Guillard with matching the light sources on sets constructed in warehouses, with “the fixtures and colour light that we had in different real schools. It’s not because you take out colour that you match. It’s far more complex.”

For both moral and creative reasons, Gill believed that he and Villeneuve should resist the temptation to hyper-aestheticize the black and white into the glossy contrasts of a film like the Coen Brothers’s The Man Who Wasn’t There.” At the stage of the final correction, “the first thing we did was to start putting contrast into the picture,” Gill recalls. “But I said to Denis and the colour timer, ‘We’re going to stop and watch the film, the offline on a big television screen.’” Viewing the footage with sound, it was clear to Gill that Polytechnique “is a grey-and-white movie.”

Working out the tonal subtleties during 2K post-production, Gill experienced “one of the most exciting things that happened to me on that project.” At Technicolor Montreal, a Parisian colourist called Charlotte Mazzinghi figured out that a friend’s special plug-ins would allow the team to “play in the blue, red and green layers” on the Lustre-colour correction system.

Rather than merely render from colour to black and white, “we were doing what you do in a darkroom. We were able to do a beautiful black and white much easier and much faster. It made my vision come up very quickly and easily, instead of working hours and hours on different levels. It was an example of technology and film mixing perfectly.”

Throughout the making of Polytechnique, the moviemakers aimed at drawing viewers into a close approximation of un- sensationalized reality. “With every shot we needed to be careful,” Gill says. “Every single shot, and I’m saying every one of them, was a question of ‘is the camera too low, are we too tight, are we too far?’ Before opting for any of the film’s rare close ups, “we talked about it for a long time. A close up in that kind of movie means a lot.”

A movie in nearly constant motion, Polytechnique relies heavily on Steadicam work executed by the skilful Daniel Sauvé. “There are no dolly shots,” Gill continues, pointing out that some shots were possible only because of the short lenses. “With Steadicam, we could move slowly into corridors, follow the actors anywhere and go through doors.” Set on an apple box, the Steadicam was even used for static images, a big time saver according to Gill.

In certain key situations, Gill hooked up a small camera to “dif-ferent rigs we called the cat cam, the monkey cam, the crazy cam or the guitar cam, whatever you want,” and often operated himself. For instance, when depicting the shooter attacking groups in large open spaces, “I was running with the students, hiding under the desks, pushing chairs. I was wearing a helmet and a lot of protection equipment, looking like a Robocop. I wore so much protection, I could film three feet away from the shooter with no problem, concentrating on the feeling of being a person in the crowd.” Fond of plunging into the action, Gill also shot hand-held while skating with Roy Dupuis during the filming of Charles Binamé’s 2005 bio-pic of Maurice Richard, The Rocket.

Maxim Gaudette as mass murderer Marc Lépine in Polytechnique.

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director denis Villeneuve wanted to break the taboo

confronting the montreal massacre and offer catharsis.


Of all the movie’s painful scenes, the toughest to shoot was the one in which the seemingly robotic killer (played by Maxim Gaudette) interrupts a classroom lecture, orders the men to leave, and mows down the women, including characters played by Evelyne Brochu and Karine Vanasse. “To film that scene was unbelievable,” Gill remembers. “You wanted to vomit.”

Shooting the film’s most traumatic moment, Gill worried that the professor’s overhead projector would provide a light source that would look “so good and so cool that we would be in trouble.” Gill found ways to bring down the impact while allowing for the camera to pick up the abstract shapes of the projector graphic on the killer’s face. “I was going nuts about this,” says Gill, who is happy that the film’s occasional “crescendos” never disengage audiences from the grey zone he and Villeneuve created.

Loaded with evocative details like orange peels strewn on the floor beside the girls’ bodies, Polytechnique never stops reminding viewers that the horror of the massacre is unfolding on a snowy Montreal day. Flakes swirl through the Polytechnique windows. The killer’s face appears against frost. He trudges through a heavy snowfall with his death kit. The network of wintry images gives the film a dreamy sense of place, contrasting with the story’s bru-tality while paradoxically enhancing its chilly darkness. Because the more elaborate images of snow strained the picture’s budget, Gill had to convince the producers that “they were to die for. I fought with my blood. There was colour on the meeting table. I said, ‘Guys, we need the snow, don’t cut it. It’s a character in the movie.’ And finally, they decided to go for it.”

This wasn’t the only time that Gill put up an argument for something that Villeneuve wanted, acting as a buffer, or finessing the director out of a tight spot. When the producers were breathing down Villeneuve’s neck, and he worried about overruns, Gill would say, “Sorry, but we’re going to shoot that scene; it will be in the movie until the end of time. There are some scenes in the script that are not important, and we’ll save time on those days.”

After abstaining from moviemaking for nearly 10 years, the 42-year-old Villeneuve dove back in with last year’s short Next Floor, which picked up innumerable prizes, and then took on the challenge of Polytechnique. “The movie put a lot of weight on his shoulders,” says Gill. “I think I made him feel very secure, and sometimes he told me, ‘You’re my big brother.’ Denis is a great director and a great human being. I would work with him anytime.”

Pierre Gill has put in 20 plus years as a cinematographer, work-ing numerous productions at home and abroad, collaborating with some of Quebec’s most interesting and talented directors, including Jean-Marc Vallée, Léa Pool and Charles Binamé. His work ranges from the restraint of Polytechnique to the experimental flamboyance of Binamé’s Le Piège américain (2008), which deployed 17 different film stocks. At this point in his career, Gill wants to direct himself, and is developing “a very big feature film called VK with a story set in 1763.”


Written by Doug Taylor, VK depicts the real-life Wolfgang von Kempelen who created a chess-playing automaton with the appearance of a turbaned-and-robed magician. Known as The Turk, the machine matched wits with Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin. They apparently didn’t realize it was operated by a human player hidden away within its mechanical innards. In March, Gill flew to L.A. for a meeting with Oscar-winning Adrien Brody, who had been intrigued by the script. “He is de-lighted with the project and my approach,” Gill told me recently, just before Brody signed onto the project.

Few cinematographers direct, or even want to. Gill says that he “ended up working as a cinematographer by default.” At Concordia University, he studied all aspects of moviemaking, but he was a gifted cameraman whose fellow students wanted him to shoot for them. “I’ve always been closer to the script than the lights,” Gill continues. If he’s a successful cinematographer, it’s because “my goal is to make sure that we get the shot that will tell the story.”

On the left: Pierre Gill csc: Cinematographer as Robocop. Top: Co-producer and star of Polytechnique, Karine Vanasse. Below her, Evelyne Brochu. Images courtesy of Alliance Films. “I was running with the students, hiding under the desks, pushing chairs. I was wearing a helmet and a lot of protection equipment, looking like a Robocop. I wore so much protection, I could film three feet away from the shooter with no problem, concen-trating on the feeling of being a person in the crowd.” Pierre Gill csc. Photo by Dominic Bourget.



The Warner Bros./DC Comics feature film Watchmen is an adaptation of the Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons 1986 graphic novel of the same name. The original publi-

cation is well known for its complexity, multi-layered subtext and rich detailed illustration. It was chosen one of Time magazine’s Top 100 pieces of literature in the 20th century. More than two decades since the story’s genesis, it has now been over a year since the principal photography of Zack Snyder’s Watchmen was completed in Vancouver.

The challenge for the film adaptation was to properly tell the massive and sprawling story in a form that was watchable in theatres. The film pays homage to the original graphic novel by utilizing flashbacks and fictional historical documents to flesh out the characters and the developing plot. But as many references as there are to the original book in the final screen-play, two major elements of the film could not be included in the theatrical release without tipping the running time well past the 180-minute mark. Tales of the Black Freighter and Under the Hood are companion films to Watchmen and are available only on DVD and Blu-Ray.

Throughout the course of the Watchmen main-unit filming in late 2007 and into 2008, I had the opportunity to contribute to the film and its subsidiary productions in a number of different capacities. First, I had the good fortune to be a camera-man for the DVD, Internet and publicity content produced by Eric Matthies of Los Angeles-based EMP Inc. Second, I was invited by Watchmen production manager Jim Rowe to oper-ate one of two Sony F900R HDCam cameras used to capture Billy Crudup’s performance of his character, Dr. Manhattan. The data from our VFX unit cameras was used to assist and guide the animation of Dr. Manhattan who was created entirely in CG by Sony Pictures Imageworks. Third, I was able to contribute to the mock documentary Under the Hood as cinema-tographer. Officially my Under the Hood credit is for additional cinematography.

Under the Hood was produced and directed by Eric Matthies and primarily lensed by director of photography Glenn Taylor. As Taylor was also contracted to DP the “behind the scenes” footage for the entire 100-day Watchmen shooting schedule, this meant that I was able to take on some of the workload of Under the Hood.

Early in pre-production, Taylor and Matthies discussed shooting Kodak, black and white, 16-mm reversal and/or negative film to recreate the 40s-, 50s- and 70s-era newsreel footage of the film’s masked crime fighters. The inten-tion was to intercut actual archival footage with our material. As an owner of a Bolex H16 myself, I was very happy to oblige and concurred that actually shooting film would definitely give the images a filmic look. Previously Taylor had shot the-making-of Jet Li’s Romeo Must Die almost entirely on 16 mm using an Aaton XTR. He and Matthies had been very pleased with the results.

Hooded Justice, Silhouette, Silk Spectre, Moth-Man, Dollar Bill, the Comedian, Captain Metropolis and Nite Owl are all Watchmen historical figures placed in the context of the story of Under the Hood. Collectively they are referred to as The Minutemen. For each of these characters Matthies staged scenes that were either “accidental” or newspaper photo-ops. This conceit gave our production a vehicle to show the costumed heroes in full character.

As an example, in the story, the character Silhouette is reported as having busted up a child pornography ring and given the gang a severe beating. Matthies and his production team cast the three ruffians and then borrowed Silhouette from the Watchmen main unit to shoot our scene – basically a photo-op. In our one-shot vignette, Silhouette, played by Vancouver actress Apollonia Vanova, leads the chained men from the doorway of a seedy alley and forces them onto their knees and makes them smile for the news camera.

For this particular setup Matthies and I chose a Canon 15-mm still lens adapted to C-Mount and Kodak 7222 Double-X B&W negative stock. A 100-foot daylight spool was loaded into the director’s trusty Bolex H16, and I prepared for the shot by

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cranking up the spring-wound motor. The first take worked well but as a precaution we shot another take on the Bolex and a third on my HVX200, using a Century .6X wide angle to match the 15 mm as closely as we could.

Although the scene gained character and atmosphere from the alley, which was part of the New York backlot constructed specifically for the main unit, it was a dark set. Basically it was my job to properly expose the players in the existing light. This would have been more difficult if the weather had not cooperated, providing semi-consistent overcast skies. I also had key grip Steve Machan routing some backlight with a mirror board and some closer fill from a large 4 x 8 styro bounce that gave directionality to the light and helped to see under the brims of the hats and to create some ‘specularity’ on Silhouette’s black costume. Even though the digital material from the HVX200 looked great, it was the footage from the Bolex that made the cut.

Matthies, Taylor and I setup mock interviews of many other notable, but also sometimes sidelined characters, from the main Watchmen feature. These included Hollis Mason, Sally Jupiter (a.k.a. the first Silk Spectre), Bernard the newsstand vendor, Wally Weaver and Laurence Schexnayder. One of my favourite setups of Under the Hood was the stylized lighting for Sally Jupiter’s interview. It was one of those moments where everything seemed to come together just right. The art department and set decorating team built and decorated a perfect 1970s brick-walled den background. The hair, make up and wardrobe team executed a wonderful 1970’s look for Carla Gugino (Sin City, Night at the Museum), and Taylor’s choice to use hard light as per the look of the period complemented and enhanced each of the other departments’ work. All these elements allowed Matthies to encourage a very believable and engaging performance by Gugino.

The lighting fixtures for the Sally Jupiter interview included an undiffused Desisti 600W Fresnel as the key and an Arri 300W as backlight/rim. A dimmed 500W Red-head was bounced off a 3 x 3 piece of showcard for fill. A separate 300W Fresnel rimmed the interviewer and a half CTB gelled Cotelux fluorescent fixture spilled some ambient fill onto the brick wall to give contrasting color to the yellows otherwise present in the set decor and wardrobe.

Although much of the look of Under the Hood was created through lighting and appropriate choice of film stock, a considerable amount of time and effort went into colour timing the material from the various acquisition formats. The majority of the scenes/interviews were shot in HD with Taylor’s Panasonic HDX900 in 1080 24PA. We also made good use of a Panasonic HVX200 in either 720 24PN or 1080 24PA as a kinetic hand-held camera and as a backup for the Bolex.

Occasionally Matthies asked Taylor and me to shoot A and B cameras side-by-side to cover a scene in wide and tight shots. In this case we were in hand-held mode one with the Bolex H16 and the other with the HVX200. An example of this was for Mothman’s bank robbery arrest. Taylor recalls intentionally operating and making quick zooms on the barrel which would better emulate the look of a 1970s cameraman’s work without the servo zooms of today’s higher end HD cameras. In another situation we captured a wide shot of Mothman being interro-gated at the House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings with the Bolex and used the HVX200 for simultaneous inserts and ECU’s of the set and props.

Looking back at the time spent working on the set of Watchmen, and having the opportunity to contribute creatively to the companion project Under the Hood, I

realize now that it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that will not soon be forgotten.

Endnote: The Tales of the Black Freighter/Under the Hood DVD has been released and is now available for purchase.


So many films, so little space. With 170-odd

documentaries screening, of which 65 were

Canadian – buoyed by the fact that this included a

70th anniversary retrospective of the National Film

Board of Canada – there were an abundance of really

exceptional films to see at this year’s edition of Hot

Docs, the International Documentary Film Festival. Opening night at festivals is usually

2009 Wrap


for blockbusters, and blockbusters are what we got – Jennifer Baichwal’s Act of God and Larry Weinstein’s Inside Hanna’s Suitcase. Both Canadian docs were screened at the Winter Garden Theatre in downtown Toronto. Act of God was shot and co-produced by Nick de Pencier – CSC associate member and Jennifer’s husband – in 35 mm. If nothing else, this tells you that they had a decent budget, and since the film is about lightning, my questions to de Pencier were this: Did he shoot the lightning in HD rather than film? And did he take advantage of pre-role buffer so as not to miss the flashes? He confirmed that it was the only sensible way to shoot lightning, and the blend of formats made for a stunning theatrical look for the film, which is an exploration of the psychological impact on survivors of lightning strikes rather than any kind of technical or scientific study.

With Inside Hanna’s Suitcase, a brilliantly crafted film and heart rending story, I was struck by the shear brilliance and luminosity of the cinematography, including the stylized re-enactments that were matched with archival photos and film. Larry Weinstein was able to introduce me to Horst Zeidler, the film’s DOP just before he headed back to Germany. I wondered if he had used an HD camera with extended dynamic range, or cooked up his own settings to achieve the look of the film. Zeidler assured me that it wasn’t any particular application, but he worked within the limitations of the video range (F-900) and was certainly meticulous about the lenses he used. For example, he related that on the Canadian leg of the shoot, he didn’t just order a camera package from Sim Video, but went through every available lens and picked the best. It obviously paid off and is probably indicative of Zeidler’s thoroughly professional and meticulous approach to equipment, lighting and execution, from prep to post.

Fig Trees, produced and directed by maverick John Greyson, is a delightful multi-image, multi-genre mix of opera, rock video and cheesy docudrama exploring how governments and pharmaceutical companies have prevented patients from getting access to AIDS drugs. It was shot by Ali Kazami (Canada) and Jesse Rosensweet (South Africa), and is a stunning series of eclectic visuals, music and ideas that keeps the viewer enthralled. I only had a few brief moments to chat with

Kazimi, and he was thrilled and proud of being able to meet the challenge and maintain consistent image quality in spite of the varied settings and styles.

There is no other way to describe Peter Greenaway’s Rembrandt’s J’accuse other than tour de force. And, yes, it’s documentary, albeit a very big-budget one. Based on the painting “The Night Watch,” it is ostensibly a forensic investigation into the motive of the 34 characters that appear in the painting, and their collective conspiracy to kill. But what it really is, is a historical treatise on visual literacy, and, yes, he even works in a little lessonon Rembrandt’s famous lighting. It also utilizes multi-images, including Greenaway himself inserted as a brilliantly charming and humorous narrator. I assume it will be in theatres soon, and I recommend it highly for both entertainment as well as enlightenment value. It was shot by Reinier van Brummelen nsc, who has some history with Greenaway and is an accomplished lighting designer and DOP for film and a variety of commercial and television projects.

Above: Kara Black’s Delian Mode. To the right: Jennifer Baichwal’s Act of God. Previous page: Hubert Davis’s Invisible City.


Rupert Murray’s The End of the Line is a message film about the plundering of fish life in the oceans (specifically blue-fin tuna); the Canadian connection referenced by the demise of the cod fisheries around Newfoundland. The somewhat stark message is that if we continue to capture fish from the oceans at the current rate, by 2048 there will be nothing left but plankton. You may not want to eat sushi or tuna after watching this film, but you cannot but be impressed with the stunning underwater HD images of schools of fish flying past the lens of Rupert Murray.

Diary of a Time Square Thief is an extremely well shot investigative journalistic piece, more poetic than hard-nosed. A Dutch film shot by Jacko van’t Hof, it’s been showing in theatres in Holland since January, but there is no indication that it will reach the cinemas over here. I am not familiar with Hof ’s work, other than the fact that I did see his name crop up on two other Dutch films at Hot Docs, so he is obviously favoured by several leading documentary directors there.

Waterlife is a follow-up of sorts to The Falls, the documen-tary on Niagara Falls made about 12 years ago by Kevin McMahon. It was inspired by Bill Mason’s NFB classic short Paddle to the Sea (1966), and beautifully shot by John Minh Tran (CSC associate member). Tran has shot several films for McMahon, Waterlife being a particularly exciting challenge for him. It was shot over the period of almost a year to capture the seasons and allow time to plan and capture the power of nature and the stresses man is imposing. Tran told me that some of that pre-planning was to look for patterns and to design shots that involved the viewer, such as the use of a waterbag on surface shots of pools and shorelines. He got wet a lot. Also there was liberal use of jib with remote head. Shot primarily on a Sony 900R, he utilized the Iconix pencil camera for some of the tight shots. To capture slow motion in cinema-quality impact, Tran used a prototype of the new Phantom high-speed camera with stunning results. The 35-mm release print from DI was finished at Technicolor and will be hitting theatres June 5. – Lance Carlson, CSC Associate Member

Jennifer Baichwal’s Act of God was shot and co-produced by Nick de Pencier – CSC associate member and Jennifer’s husband – in 35 mm. Photo

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At the festival awards ceremony, held Friday, May 15, the Best Canadian Feature Award was presented to Invisible City (Hubert Davis). The award is sponsored by the DOC and the Brian Linehan

Charitable Foundation and comes with a $15,000 cash prize. The Special Jury Prize: Canadian Feature was presented to Waterlife. The prize is sponsored by the Brian Linehan Charitable Foundation and comes with a $10,000 cash prize courtesy of the Brian Linehan Charitable Foundation.

The Best International Feature Award was presented to The One Man Village (Simon El Habre, Lebanon). This award is sponsored by A&E and comes with a $10,000 cash prize, courtesy of Hot Docs. The Special Jury Prize: International Feature was presented to Cooking History (Peter Kerekes, Austria, Czech Republic & Slovakia). This prize is sponsored by the Ontario Media Development Corp. The Best Mid-Length Documentary Award was presented to Rabbit à la Berlin (Bartek Konopka, Germany & Poland), sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts. The Best Short Documentary Award was presented to The Delian Mode (Kara Blake; Canada), The award is sponsored by Playback. The HBO Emerging Artist Award was presented to Chung-ryoul Lee, director of Old Partner (South Korea).

Hot Docs board of directors presented this year�s Outstanding Achievement Award to veteran NFB filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin. The Don Haig Award, presented annually to an emerging Canadian documentary filmmaker, was awarded to Montreal�s Brett Gaylor (RiP!: A Remix Manifesto). The Don Haig Jury also named Montreal’s Tracey Deer (Club Native) a runner up for the award. Each filmmaker received a $10,000 cash prize. The Lindalee Tracey Award, which honours an emerging Canadian filmmaker with a passionate point of view, a strong sense of social justice and a sense of humour, was presented to two filmmakers: Laura Bari from Montreal and Will Inrig from Ottawa. Each filmmaker received a cash prize of $3,000 from the Lindalee Tracey Long-Term Fund and $1,500 in film stock, courtesy of Kodak Canada.

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sIm vIDEO’s BIG sHOOT

Imagine you’re talking to a client who says, “We may have a shoot coming up in a month or so that will require over 50 cameras, all hidden from view, and, by the way, we’re going to need to figure out a way for the di-rector to view all camera feeds at the same time.”

Well, that was the conversation John DeBoer, director of HD sales at Sim Video in Toronto, had with Michel Korchinsky, an executive producer at Circle Productions, which has offices in Toronto and Vancouver. The Red shoot, as it came to be known, was going to put Sim Video to the test.

“Once we made the commitment, there was no turning back. John and I talked about it, and we thought it was an exciting project and decided to take it on,” says Rob Sim, founder

and president ofSim Video. DeBoer operated as the technical producer on the shoot and was behind the decision to use the Red One camera as the acquisition format.

Ted Schilowitz of Red Digital Cinema holds the title of “leader of the revolu-tion,” although with over 4,000 Red One cameras on the market (in only three years after its launch), it would seem the revolution is over and Red One won. To say he was surprised when he first heard about the shoot in Toronto is putting it mildly, “When we first spoke to Sim about the 50-plus camera shoot, our first reaction was, ‘how the hell are they going to use 58 cameras in one shoot?’”

This was the first big challenge for Sim to tackle. Although they have 25 Reds, they only had seven available at the time of the shoot (November 2008). The rest were out on other jobs. So most of the cameras were brought into the Toronto office from other rental houses around the world, including New York, London, England, L.A. and a few from Vancouver and Montreal.

The next big challenge was for the camera technicians at Sim. DeBoer explains: “Because the Red doesn’t have its own accessories, we were forced to swap some accessories with our own. But all the cameras came in good working condition, accept one which had a minor problem.” Then it was up to the DOP and Ken Rice, Sim’s HD engineer, to spend an afternoon working on the look of the camera and to set all the cameras with that look.

The idea of the commercial [editor’s note: the client can not be named due to copyright considerations] was to shoot without the public knowing it. “It’s one thing to put 58 cameras on the street,” DeBoer said, “it’s another to have 58 cameras on the street hidden from view.

The cables, the transmitters… the public was totally unaware of them. I watched a rough edit while we were filming, and it was like we were spying on people at 6:30 in the morning.”

There were logistical con-cerns of where they could lay the feed lines. At one location they had to go over streetcar lines, and the Toronto Transit Commission was called in to pull the cables across College Street. The camera truck was an empty storefront with two

people on full time to handle the gear and to keep track of it all. This could have been a big problem with so many camera packages out at one time, but it wasn’t. All the gear was accounted for at the end of the shoot.

In fact, there were so many cameras that the production had to rent a space near the shoot to serve as the battery charger room with its own generator. As for the hidden cameras, they were positioned in many different and creative spaces.

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One was the infamous “squirrel-cam,” which looked like a bunch of leaves in a tree. Some were in parked cars and a lot were in trashcans, mailboxes and inside some of the storefronts. All the cameras were wired together, except one on a Moped, three in cars and one in a school bus. These were all transmitted wirelessly. The idea was to follow the movement of the subject running along a street with an invisible eye.

Rob Sim was watching the first take on Saturday morning and sweating bullets. No one has ever done anything like this before; even the Super Bowl doesn’t use this many cameras. So Sim had a right to be a little nervous. But the first take went perfectly; all the cameras ran in sync. “This is a breakthrough concept,” he said, “but whether it flies or not we don’t know yet. The budget was huge. They [the client] may look at it, and say ‘it’s not working,’ but I doubt that.”

John DeBoer concurs, “What I think is going to happen is the public is going to see it, and say there was something

really special about that spot. The most exciting part for me was the day we got it all up and running and everything worked. Every camera rolled. The producer was on the walkie talkie and said to us all, ‘thanks, it all worked.’” – Roger Metivier

FuJINON INTrODuCEs Pl mOuNT ZOOm lENsEs AT NAB 2009

At the 2009 National Association of Broadcasters show held in Las Vegas earlier this year, Fujinon introduced its new PL Mount Zoom Lens series. The lens was shown on working cameras in Fujinon’s booth, and the 18–85 mm T2.0 (model number HK4.7x18F) will be available for a May delivery date. Three other lenses in the PL series – the 14.5–45 mm T2.0, the 24–180 mm T2.6 and the 75–400 mm T2.8-T4.0 – will be available in December 2009.

Fujinon’s PL series was developed with advanced optics design to maximize image capture capabilities of current and

rapidly emerging 35-mm motion picture film and digital cameras. The PL series of four zoom lenses provide unprecedented focal range choices from 14.5 to 400 mm, with fast T-stop performance and excep-tional optical quality.

With minimal breathing, 280-degres focus barrel rotation, constant and fast T-stops, accurate and repeatable marks and comparable size and weights of the four zooms, Fujinon PL series are ready to meet the challenges of modern digital cinematography.

TElEFIlm GrEENlIGHTs FIlms sTArrING DONAlD suTHErlAND AND PAul GrOss

Projects financed by the 2009 Canada Feature Film Fund announced by Telefilm Canada include Donald Sutherland’s return to Canadian movies with The Con Artist, directed by Risa Bramen Garcia and also starring his son Rossif Sutherland and Rebecca Romijn from the X-Men series. It’s Donald’s first Canadian film since The Art of War in 2000. Rossif recently appeared in Clement Virgo’s Poor Boy’s Game (2008).

Paul Gross, hot off his Genie Award- winning Passchendaele, has been hired to star in William Phillips’s (Treed Murray, Foolproof) $8-million comic Western, Gunless, and Daniel Roby (Le Peau Blanche) has been given the go-ahead

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todirect the Montreal-based Funkytown starring Patrick Huard (Bon Cop, Bad Cop).

Also the boys from FUBAR are back with FUBAR 2. Directed by Michael Dowse, the first mock-documentary about the adventures of a couple of Alberta slack-ers was a cult hit when released in 2002. And CBC Radio’s Sook-Yin Lee has been award $1.2 million to direct Year of the Carnivore, based on her own script.

KODAK lAuNCHEs vIsION3 250D COlOur NEGATIvE FIlm 5207/7207

In April, Kodak Canada launched its latest product offering in its Vision3 series – Vision3 250D colour negative film 5207/7207. It incorporates all of the advancements and imaging character- istics unique to the Vision3 family of films, optimized for an exposure index of 250 in daylight. The newest addition to the family is designed to retain the richness in colors and contrast that are characteristic of Kodak Vision3 technology with more details in the extreme highlight areas. Like Kodak Vision3 500T 5219/7219, the new film also incorporates proprietary advanced dye-layering technology, which renders finer grain images in underexposed areas and produces cleaner film-to-digital transfers for post-production.

Complimentary to the 500T product, this new medium-speed, daylight-balanced emulsion offers exceptional imaging in natural daylight, artificial daylight and a variety of mixed lighting situations, while maintaining pleasing flesh tones and color reproduction.

TOrONTO’s FIlmPOrT uNDEr NEW mANAGEmENT

Open for business for less than a year, Toronto’s megastudio, Filmport, has a new owner. In April, the City of Toronto approved a proposal to install and help bankroll the new owners, Britain’s Pinewood Studios Group. Once the final paperwork is complete, Filmport will be renamed Pinewood Toronto Studios.

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Meanwhile the studio is occupied with its first major multi-million-dollar inter-national co-production, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, based on the Canadian comic book by Bryan Lee O’Malley and star-ring Canadian Michael Cera (Juno). The director is Edgar Wright, the very talented Brit responsible for Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and the DOP is Bill Pope, who lensed The Matrix trilogy and Spider-Man 2 & 3.

vANCOuvEr ABuZZ WITH HOllYWOOD PrODuCTIONs

Recession, what recession? While Los Angeles is experiencing a downturn in production and New York City has cut back on its tax credits for film com-panies and Toronto struggles to fill its brand new megastudio (although things are getting busier), Vancouver is humming along just fine with several

major Hollywood productions on the go or just recently wrapped.

These include movies with major talent behind and in front of the camera: Cabin in the Woods (a.k.a. Mordecai), directed by Drew Goddard (producer of “Lost” and “Alias” and the writer on Cloverfield), with DOP Peter Deming (Mulholland Drive, The Love Guru) and starring Oscar-nominated Richard Jenkins (The Visitor) for MGM; and Hot Tub Time Machine, directed by Steve Pink (Accepted), with DOP Jack Green (Unforgiven, 40 Year Old Virgin) and starring John Cusak, again for MGM.

Also filming is Tron 2.0, directed by Joseph Kosinski, with DOP Claudio Miranda (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and starring Garrett Hedlund and Jeff Bridges, the star of the original Tron (1982), for Walt Disney Pictures; and Percy Jackson, directed by Chris Columbus (Home Alone), with DOP Stephen Gold-blatt (Charlie Wilson’s War) and starring Catherine Keener, Uma Thurman and Pierce Brosnan for Fox 2000 Pictures.

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Vancouver-based 35-mm moS camera package: Arri 35 III 3rd generation specs. 130fps motor, N35 4 perf movement, CE high-speed base and accessory box, PL mount, custom Jurgens optics with color tap and frameline generator; 2 x 400’ mags; FF2; 5x6 matte box; two dual 12v batteries and chargers. All gear ships in four cases. Well maintained former Clairmont package. Contact Adam Braverman: 604-418-0241; [email protected].

EquipmEnt for SalE

Sony BVW-400a Betacam Sp Camcorder Camera used by professional cinematographer (one owner), never rented out. Comes complete with Fujinon A15x8BEVM-28 lens, Petroff matte box with 4x4 and 4x5.6 filter holders, remote zoom and focus control for lens, 6 Cadnica NP-1 batteries, Sony BC-1WD battery charger, Porta-Brace fitted cover w/ rain jacket (like new) and Sony factory hard shipping case and manuals. Lens and camera professionally maintained by factory technicians. Usage hours are: A – 1,918 hours; B – 1,489 hours; C – 4,286 hours. $10,000.00 obo. Contact: Craig Wrobleski csc (403) 995-4202

aaton Xtr Super 16 pkg: including body, video relay optics, extension eyepiece, three magazines, Cooke 10.5-mm–60-mm S-16 zoom lens, Zeiss 9.5 prime lens, 4x4 matte box, 4x4 filters (85,85N6, polarizer, ND6, clear), follow focus and cases $22,000; Nikon 50–300 -mm F4-5 E.D. lens w/support, $1,000; Kinoptik 9–8-mm 35-mm format lens c/w sunshade $1,400. Contact [email protected] or [email protected]

factory-sealed fuji film stock. Three x 400ft., 35-mm 500ASA, 250ASA and 160ASA. Regular price, $500 per roll. On sale for $340 per roll. Also can sew various types of heavy-duty material. Repairs and zipper replacement on equipment and ditty bags. Lori Longstaff: 416-452-9247; [email protected].

Sony DSr-130 mini DV/DVCam Camera. ENG rig in excellent condition, comes with soft-shell carrier. Includes DXC-D30 head, DSR-1 DVCAM VTR, Canon YJ 18x9 KRS internal-focus 1x/2x lens (servo/manual), DXF-701WS ENG viewfinder, condenser mic and Anton Bauer battery. DSR-1 hours: A:233; B:133; C:327. Recent factory servicing, reports and pictures available. $8,500 obo. Justin Guimond: 604-568-8023, [email protected].

two Complete Video Villages for Sale $2,000. At this price, these units will pay for themselves in less than five weeks on a normal television series. Cost to create new would be over $5,000. Plus these very sharp, robust AC/ DC monitors are no longer available! Includes four x 9inch Sony AC/DC monitors, four 12V batteries and chargers, four A&J hard cases, remote controls and antenna signal boosters, spare power cords, connectors, etc. BNC cables in winder, two stands, dolly carts and doorway boxes with storage drawers. Contact :Robert McLachlan : office: 604-926-5253; cell: 604-761-4041; [email protected].

DVW700WS Digital Betacam with viewfinder and two widescreen zoom lenses. Canon J1 5x8 B4WRS SX12 and Fujinon 5.5-47. Very low hours on new heads. $16,000, plus taxes. Contact: Michael Ellis: 416-233-6378.

Betacam Sp Camera package. BVP550 Betacam SP camera with BVV5 recorder, complete with Fuijinon 15x8 broadcast zoom lens, “Red Eye” wide-angle adapter, 6 IDX Li-Ion batteries, IDX quick charger with AC adapter, flight case, soft carry case, Sony monitor and 10 fresh Beta SP tapes ($140 value). $2,500. Call Christian: 416-459-4895.

arri iii clear rain cover with carry bag (Like new, very little use.) $100. Anton Bauer Lifesaver “Interactive Logic Series” dual charger in excellent condition, minimal use with AC power cord and two Proformer batteries (need to be re-celled) $150. Hard-shell transport case for broadcast or 16 mm, good condition $40. Petroff 3x3 filter tray, $30. Photos available. Contact: John Banovich: 604-726-5646 or [email protected].

Elmo transVideo trV16 16-mm film-to-video converter color CCD. Converts mag or optical film frame, color, iris, focus adjustments. Excellent working order. Best offer accepted. Contact: Bea: [email protected].

Betacam Sp D30 camera, PVV3 Recorder Back, Fujinon 16X, 9-144 zoom lens, six batteries, charger, power supply and case, Sony PVM 80Q 7 1/2inch monitor and case. $3,500. Contact: Joan Hutton: 416-693-9776.

Sony DVW700 Digital Betacam camera. Excellent condition. One Sony viewfinder, one Sony battery case, one Sony tripod adaptor, and one 8x160-mm Canon zoom lens. $19,900 plus taxes. Call 613-255-3200.

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Looking for HD videographer to work pro bono on a gay 15-minute film entitled Epiphany. Based on a real event, and dealing with the relationship between spirituality and sexuality, the script tells the story of an ex-religious who visits a massage parlor and experiences a “revelation” of sorts. Shooting begins in May and extends into the fall, depending upon the availability of the cast and crew. It has a distributor and is scheduled to premier in March 2010. The script is available upon request. Interested persons are asked to contact Andrew Adams at 416-551-3584 or at [email protected].

Camera Classified is a free service provided for CSC members. For all others, there is a one-time $25 (plus GST) insertion fee. Your ad will appear here and on the CSC’s website, www.csc.ca. If you have items you would like to buy, sell or rent, please email your information to [email protected].

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CSC FULL MEMBERSJim Aquila cscEduardo Arregui cscJohn Badcock cscMichael Balfry cscChristopher Ball cscJohn Banovich cscJohn Stanley Bartley csc, ascStan Barua cscYves Bèlanger cscPeter Benison csc John Berrie cscThom Best cscMichel Bisson cscMichael Boland cscRaymond A. Brounstein cscThomas Burstyn csc, frsa, nzcsBarry Casson cscEric Cayla cscHenry Chan cscMarc Charlebois cscRodney Charters csc, ascDamir I. Chytil cscArthur E. Cooper cscWalter Corbett cscSteve Cosens cscBernard Couture cscRichard P. Crudo csc, ascDean Cundey csc, ascFranáois Dagenais cscSteve Danyluk cscDavid A. De Volpi cscKamal Derkaoui cscKim Derko cscSerge Desrosiers cscJean-Yves Dion cscZoe Dirse cscMark Dobrescu cscWes Doyle cscGuy Dufaux cscRay Dumas cscAlbert Dunk csc, ascPhilip Earnshaw csc Michael Ellis cscCarlos A. Esteves cscNikos Evdemon cscDavid Frazee cscMarc Gadoury cscAntonio Galloro csc James Gardner csc, sascDavid A Geddes cscIvan Gekoff cscLaszlo George csc, hscPierre Gill cscRuss Goozee cscSteve Gordon csc

Barry R. Gravelle cscDavid Greene cscJohn B. Griffin cscMichael Grippo cscManfred Guthe cscD. Gregor Hagey cscThomas M. Harting cscPeter Hartmann cscPauline R. Heaton cscBrian Hebb cscDavid Herrington cscKarl Herrmann cscKenneth A. HewlettRobert Holmes cscJohn Holosko cscGeorge Hosek cscColin Hoult cscDonald Hunter cscJoan Hutton cscMark Irwin csc, ascJames Jeffrey cscPierre Jodoin cscMartin Julian cscNorayr Kasper cscGlen Keenan cscIan Kerr cscJan E. Kiesser csc, ascAlar Kivilo csc, ascDouglas Koch cscCharles D. Konowal cscLes Krizsan cscAlwyn J. Kumst csc Jean-Claude Labrecque cscSerge Ladouceur cscGeorge Lajtai cscMarc Lalibertè Else cscBarry Lank cscHenry Lebo cscJohn Lesavage cscHenry Less cscPierre Letarte cscAntonin Lhotsky cscPhilip Linzey cscJ.P. Locherer cscPeter C. Luxford cscLarry Lynn csc Dylan Macleod csc Bernie MacNeil cscGlen MacPherson csc, ascShawn Maher csc David A. Makin cscAdam Marsden cscDonald M. McCuaig csc, ascRobert B. McLachlan csc, ascRyan McMaster cscMichael McMurray csc

Stephen F. McNutt csc, ascSimon Mestel cscAlastair Meux cscGregory D. Middleton cscC. Kim Miles cscGordon Miller cscRobin S. Miller cscPaul Mitchnick cscLuc Montpellier cscGeorge Morita cscRhett Morita cscDavid Moxness cscDouglas Munro cscKent Nason cscMitchell T. Ness cscRobert C. New cscStefan Nitoslawski cscDanny Nowak cscRene Ohashi csc, ascHarald K. Ortenburger cscGerald Packer cscBarry Parrell cscBrian Pearson cscDavid Perrault cscBruno Philip cscMatthew R. Phillips cscAndrè Pienaar csc, sascZbigniew (Ed) Pietrzkiewicz cscRandal G. Platt cscMilan Podsedly cscHang Sang Poon cscAndreas Poulsson cscDon Purser cscOusama Rawi csc, bscWilliam Walker Reeve cscStephen Reizes cscDerek Rogers cscBrad Rushing cscBranimir Ruzic cscJèrùme Sabourin cscVictor Sarin cscPaul Sarossy csc, bsc Michael Patrick Savoie cscGavin Smith cscChristopher Soos cscMichael Spicer cscJohn Spooner cscRonald Edward Stannett cscPieter Stathis cscBarry Ewart Stone cscMichael Storey cscMichael Sweeney cscAdam Swica cscAttila Szalay csc, hscJason Tan cscJohn P. Tarver csc

Paul Tolton cscBert Tougas cscChris Triffo cscSean Valentini cscRoger Vernon cscDaniel Villeneuve cscDaniel Vincelette cscMichael Wale cscJohn Walker cscJames Wallace cscTony Wannamaker cscPeter Warren cscAndrew Watt cscJim Westenbrink cscTony Westman cscKit Whitmore csc, socBrian Whittred cscRon Williams cscGeorge A. Willis csc, sasc Glen Winter cscPeter Woeste cscBill C.P. Wong cscBruce Worrall cscCraig Wrobleski cscYuri Yakubiw cscEllie Yonova csc

CSC ASSOCIATE MEMBERSJoshua AllenDon ArmstrongJohn W. BaileyDouglas BairdKenneth Walter BalysDavid BattistellaGregory BennettJeremy BenningJonathan BennyAndrè BèriaultRoy BiaforeChristian BielzFrancois M. BissonNicolas BolducChristophe BonniereScott BrownRichard BurmanLance CarlsonJon CastellMark CaswellMaurice ChabotCèsar CharloneStephen ChungDavid CollardRenè Jean CollinsJarrett B. CraigRod CrombieJames CroweMicha DahanMichael Jari DavidsonNicholas de PencierGareth DillistoneJohn DrakeRandy DreagerJohn E. DurstJay FergusonAndrew ForbesRichard FoxTom GatenbyBrian GedgeRion GonzalesVladimir GosaricDaniel GrantJeffrey HanleyJohn Hodgson

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B&W 2008 Feb. 12, 2008

VANCOUVER CALGARY TORONTO HALIFAX604-291-7262 403-246-7267 416-444-7000 902-404-3630

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Cliff HokansonJames D. HollowaySuave HupaGeorge HupkaDavid JohnsJorma KantolaErnie KestlerShannon KohliCharles LavackJim LaverdiereRobin Lawless socByung-Ho LeePhilip LetourneauJohn V. Lindsay Dave LuxtonRobert MacdonaldMario Anthony MadauJeff MaherRoy MarquesKelly MasonAndris D. MatissPaul McCoolPatrick McLaughlinTony MeerakkerGerry MendozaTony MerzettiBill MetcalfeBentley MillerPaul MocklerHelmfried MullerBrian Charles Murphy Keith MurphyChristopher M. ObenEric OhTed ParkesDeborah ParksPavel ìPashaî PatrikiRick PerottoAllan PiilScott PlanteRyan A. RandallDave RendallCathy RobertsonPeter RosenfeldDon RousselChristopher SargentAndrew W. ScholotiukIan ScottNeil ScottNeil SealeWayne SheldonSarorn Ron SimBarry E. SpringgayPaul SteinbergMarc StoneMichael StrangeJoseph G. Sunday phdAndrè Paul TherrienGeorge (Sandy) ThomsonKirk TougasY. Robert TymstraFrank VilacaJohn WalshLloyd WaltonGlenn C. WarnerDouglas H. WatsonRoger WilliamsRichard WilmotPeter Wayne WiltshireKelly John WolfertDave WoodsidePeter Wunstorf ascSteven Zajaczkiwsky

CSC AFFILIATE MEMBERSChristopher AlexanderDwayne AlexanderDonald G. AngusDerek ArchibaldGarth ArchibaldRobin BainIain Alexander BairdP. J. Barnes P.Eng.Peter BattistoneJacques F. BernierMark A. BigginCaroline BrandesAdam BravermanGordon A. BurkellTim A. CampbellArnold CaylakyanBernard ChartouniJohnny Yan ChenMaggie CraigBrad CreasserAna CunhaColin DavisNicholas DeligeorgyDominika DittwaldMicah L. EdelsteinTony EdgarAndreas EvdemonZachary FinkelsteinRandy FrenchRichard GiraAizick GrimmanJames D. HardieBruce William HarperJohn Richard Hergel BA CDKristy HodgsonPerry HoffmannBrad HruboskaMarcel D. JanisseMichael JasenChristine JeoffroyRick KearneyMatthew Casey KennedyGuido KondrussBoris KurtzmanRyan LalondeTony LippaJohn LipszMatthew J. LloydChristopher G. LoganLori P. LongstaffRobert H. LynnMegan MacDonaldJill MacLauchlan ParksYoann MalnatiSean MarjoramJulie McDowellJustin McIntoshIan McLarenAndrew MedickySarah MoffatAlejandro MuÒozKar Wai NgBrent OíHaganPeter OsborneTed OvertonAndrew OxleyGino PapineauGraeme ParcherKalpesh PatelGreg PetrigoDouglas B. Pruss

Elise QueneauLem RistsooSusan SaranchukChirayouth Jim SaysanaJames ScottBrad SmithKyryll SobolevMichael SoosGillian Stokvis-HauerSteven TsushimaPaula TymchukAnton van RooyenTrevor J. WiensIrene Sweeney Willis

CSC FULL LIFE MEMBERSHerbert Alpert csc, ascRobert Bocking csc David Carr cscMarc Champion cscChristopher Chapman csc, cfeRobert C. Crone csc, cfc, dgKenneth R. Davey cscKelly Duncan csc, dgcJohn C. Foster cscLeonard Gilday cscJohn Goldi cscKenneth W. Gregg cscEdward Higginson cscBrian Holmes csc

Douglas Kiefer cscRudolf Kovanic cscKen Krawczyk cscNaohiko Kurita cscHarry Lake cscDouglas E. Lehman cscDuncan MacFarlane cscHarry Makin cscDouglas A. McKay cscDonald James McMillan cscJim Mercer cscRoger Moride cscRon Orieux cscDean Peterson cscRoger Racine cscRobert Rouveroy csc Robert G. Saad cscJosef Sekeresh cscJohn Stoneman cscDerek VanLint cscWalter Wasik cscRon Wegoda csc

CSC HONOURARY MEMBERSRoberta BondarVi CroneGraeme FergusonWilson Markle


indicates demo reel online, www.csc.ca


Calendar of Events June 5–7, nextMedia, Banff,AB, 403-678-1216, www.nextmediaevents.comJune 7–10, Banff World Television Film Festival, Banff, AB, 403-678-1216, www.banff2009.comJune 16–21, CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival, Toronto, 416-445-1466, www.worldwideshortfilmfest.comJune 17–21, Toronto Italian Film Festival, 416-885-5551, italianfilmfest.comaugust 27–September 7, Montreal World Film Festival, 514-848-3883, ffm-montreal.org

Production NotesBeing erica season ii (series); DOP John Berrie csc; OP Andy Chumura; to October 16, TorontoThe Border season iii (series); DOP Gavin Smith csc; to October 15, Torontole Baiser du barbu (feature); DOP Pierre Jodin csc; to July 29, MontrealBlue mountain state (series); DOP Éric Cayla csc; to August 21, MontrealThe Bridge (series); DOP Thom Best csc; OP David Sheridan; to August 30, TorontoCasino Jack (feature); DOP Adam Swica csc; OP Colin Hoult csc; Ist assist. Goffried Pflugheil; to June 22, TorontoChabotte et fille (series); DOP Marc Charlebois csc; to June 15, Montrealdefying Gravity (series): DOP Stephen McNutt csc; OP Tim Spencer; to June 17, Vancouverdegrassi: The Next Generation season iX (series); DOP Jim Westenbrink csc; begins May 19, Torontodino dan (series): DOP/OP George Lajtai csc; to July 19, Torontodon Cherry story (miniseries); DOP Glen MacPherson csc, asc; OP Keith Murphy; to July 16, Winnipegflashpoint season ii (series): DOP Stephen Reizes csc; OP Tony Guerin; to August 1, Toronto

Go Girl (series): DOP Milan Podsedly csc; OP Marvin Midwicki; B cam OP Peter Battistone; to May 1, Torontoi, darwin (TV movie); DOP Christopher Ball csc; to July 17, Halifaxlittle mosque on the Prairie season iV (series); DOP Yuri Yakubiw csc; OP Frank Polyak; begins May 13, Torontosanctuary season ii (series); DOP Gordon Verheul csc; OP Steven Adelson; to July 31, Burnaby, BCThe “socalled” movie (documentary); DOP Marc Gadoury csc; to July, Montrealsur traces de marguerite Yourcenar (documentary): DOP Stefan Nitoslawski csc; to June 30, MontrealThe Troop (series); DOP Michael Wale csc; OP Brian Johnson; to September 15, Burnaby, BCWeb of lies (feature); DOP Daniel Villeneuve csc; to June 29, MontrealYamaska (series); DOP Daniel Vincelette csc; to December 10, Montreal

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Kodak Canada Inc. KOD-EI-1805-09 Canadian Cinematographer OBC 8.5" W x 11" H N/A Yes 4 Colour May 2009 March 2, 2009

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CINEMATOGRAPHER CANAdIAN · Canadian Cinematographer is a publication of the Canadian Society of Cinematographers