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

Michael Chapman, ASC

W W W . T H E A S C . C O M

TO SUBSCRIBE BY PHONE:

Call (800) 448-0145 (U.S. only)

(323) 969-4333 or visit the ASC Web site

spent my early childhood in

the days before television.

Movies were everything to

us; cinema was truly ‘the

church of the 20th century.’

“Through a series of

accidents, I stumbled into the

industry, and American

Cinematographer reassured

me that somehow I might

actually survive there. It

seemed to be written by and

about people like me, who

struggled and worried. It also

gave me access to the minds of

people I’d met and respected.

“AC is a generous

magazine. There are no

secrets. No matter what our

style or method, we’re all

cinematographers, and AC

expresses the insight that

comes with that unique

vantage point.”

— Michael Chapman, ASC

“I

© p h o t

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The International Journal of Motion Imaging

28 Cosmic QuestionsEmmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC captures existential imagery for The Tree of Life

40 Darkest ArtsEduardo Serra, ASC, AFC brings a beloved franchise to aclose with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

48 An All-American HeroShelly Johnson, ASC pumps up a super soldier forCaptain America: The First Avenger

58 Once Upon a Time in the WestMatthew Libatique, ASC mixes genres on Cowboys & Aliens

DEPARTMENTS

FEATURES

— VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM TO ENJOY THESE WEB EXCLUSIVES —DVD Playback: The Outlaw Josey Wales • Au Revoir, Les Enfants • Scream

On Our Cover: Members of the O’Brien family (Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, LaramieEppler and Tye Sheridan) are reunited in The Tree of Life, shot by Emmanuel Lubezki,

ASC, AMC. (Photo by Merie Wallace, SMPSP, courtesy of Fox Searchlight and TwentiethCentury Fox.)

8 Editor’s Note10 President’s Desk 12 Short Takes: The Arrival

18 Production Slate: Rise of the Planet of the Apes • Femme Fatales

72 Post Focus

76 New Products & Services82 International Marketplace83 Classified Ads84 Ad Index86 Clubhouse News88 ASC Close-Up: Tom Houghton

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A u g u s t 2 0 1 1 V o l . 9 2 , N o . 8

T 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

Visit us online at

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EDITORIAL

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CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Stephanie Argy, Benjamin B, Douglas Bankston, Robert S. Birchard, John Calhoun, Michael Goldman, Simon Gray, Jim Hemphill, David Heuring,

Jay Holben, Mark Hope-Jones, Noah Kadner, Jean Oppenheimer, John Pavlus, Chris Pizzello, Jon Silberg, Iain Stasukevich,

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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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Copyright 2011 ASC Holding Corp. (All rights reserved.) Periodicals postage paid at Los Angeles, CAand at additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA.

POSTMASTER: Send address change to American Cinematographer , P.O. Box 2230, Hollywood, CA 90078.

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OFFICERS - 2011/2012

Michael GoiPresident

Richard CrudoVice President

Owen RoizmanVice President

John C. Flinn IIIVice President

Victor J. Kemper Treasurer

Frederic GoodichSecretary

Stephen LighthillSergeant At Arms

MEMBERS OF THE

BOARD

John Bailey Stephen H. Burum

Richard CrudoGeorge Spiro Dibie

Richard EdlundFred Elmes

Michael GoiVictor J. Kemper

Francis Kenny Isidore Mankofsky

Robert PrimesOwen Roizman

Kees Van OostrumHaskell Wexler

Vilmos Zsigmond

ALTERNATES

Michael D. O’SheaRodney Taylor

Ron GarciaSol Negrin

Kenneth Zunder

MUSEUM CURATOR

Steve Gainer

American Society of Cine matographers

The 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 invitationto 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.

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It’s relatively rare these days to encounter a movie as philosophically and artistically ambitious as Terrence Malick’s The Tree oLife. The film’s bold, nonlinear structure serves up a series ofemotionally wrenching family memories, a mind-blowing“creation of the universe” sequence, and a mysterious climaxthat offers a surreal glimpse of the afterlife — in other words, averitable smorgasbord for undernourished cineastes pining forthe heyday of headier fare from highminded auteurs like Anto-nioni, Bergman or Kubrick.

Although he remains as enigmatic and elusive as Kubrick,Malick’s on-set strategies are, by all accounts, considerably morefreewheeling than those of the notoriously rigorous taskmaster.In an interview with European correspondent Benjamin B

(“Cosmic Questions,” page 28), cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC and othermembers of Malick’s production team offer enlightening insights about the director’s unique methods. “Terry was incredibly well prepared because he had been thinking about this film for manyyears, but he wanted the film to feel unprepared,” says Lubezki. “We couldn’t really ‘set up’ shotswe had to ‘find’ them.”

This divining-rod approach produced a picture filled with unforgettably fresh and sponta-neous images: a butterfly alighting on a woman’s arm, a luminous swarm of fireflies, and someremarkable perspectives that show the world through children’s eyes. Winner of the Palme d’Or atCannes, The Tree of Life will challenge viewers who prefer straightforward narratives, but richlyreward anyone who appreciates adventurous, beyond-the-box artistry.

A more structured magic was applied on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the two-parconclusion to one of the industry’s most beloved fantasy adventures. Waving the wand on both

installments was Eduardo Serra, ASC, AFC, who found himself conjuring images on massive setsfashioned by production designer Stuart Craig. “This thing is so huge, with so much space and somany people, that there is actually limited freedom to determine a look on set,” he tells Londoncorrespondent Mark Hope-Jones (“Darkest Arts,” page 40). “I must say, I was surprised by how dathey were prepared to go with the visuals. Throughout my career, producers have argued that ifimages are dark, the audience won’t see them, but on this film it was the opposite, which was nice

Shelly Johnson, ASC also found himself facing daunting logistics onCaptain America: The Firs Avenger,a production filmed on more than 115 sets and locations. In discussing the project withNew York correspondent Iain Stasukevich (“An All-American Hero,” page 48), Johnson notes thatas many as seven sets were up and running at any given time. “This shoot was like a giant freighttrain,” he marvels. “When it leaves the station, there’s a lot of momentum behind it!”

On Cowboys & Aliens , Matthew Libatique was yet another ASC member in big-budget

mode, reteaming with Iron Man director Jon Favreau on a project that required the careful blendinof two distinct genres. “We wanted to be as honest with the Western as possible, and the challengwas how to mesh that with science fiction,” he says in an exceptional overview penned by associ-ate editor Jon Witmer (“Once Upon a Time in the West,” page 58). “The question became, ‘Howdo we create the tension within the Western to graduate into the science-fiction thriller?’ That wasterrifying, but ultimately, as a cinematographer, it’s not my position to worry about the story’s structure. I just have to worry about the visual language of it all.”

Stephen Pizzello

Executive Editor

Editor’s Note

8

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As I begin my third and final year as president of the ASC, I find that thoughts about where thecraft of cinematography is going become more important, not so much in terms of what the ASCcan do to affect the future, but in terms of enjoying the discovery of new talent. There are veryfew things that warm the heart of a seasoned cinematographer more than seeing a new andunique vision discovering its place in this form of artistic expression.

Many people have asked me if the Society has a mentorship program. We do not have aformal arrangement, but individual ASC members freely mentor young cinematographers on aregular basis. One of the most valuable and rewarding things a veteran can do is pass his or herknowledge and love of the craft to an eager apprentice. And as often as the veteran may jokinglysay, “Now he/she is going to go after my jobs,” there is a calm satisfaction in knowing that, in asmall way, you’ve helped pave the way for someone who may reach artistic heights that couldsurpass your own.

I’m always mentoring a few people at any given time. Sometimes I can get them onto sets

so they can experience the professional world of production, and sometimes their interest is inthe myriad ways post tools can affect the final image. I always try to see what truly sparks theirimagination, to see what makes them excited about cinematography. In those moments of inspi-ration, I rediscover what makes this profession exciting for me as well.

I was recently interviewed for the Rising Stars department of Friends of the ASC about onesuch person. Polly Morgan was a student of mine when I taught a semester at the Maine Media Workshops a few years ago. A nativeof England, she made her way to Los Angeles to continue her studies here and began shooting student films. Two silent shorts sh ephotographed during that time convinced me she had a talent worth developing. As I became reacquainted with her ambition tocreate compelling visual stories, I was drawn to help that quest. As we prepared to launch Friends of the ASC, I asked Polly to be thedirector of photography on the promotional video. There are probably few things more unnerving for a young cinematographer thanbeing given the responsibility of lighting and filming Caleb Deschanel, ASC, and Nancy Schreiber, ASC, who were the spokespersons,but Polly didn’t show any sign of anxiety. She did her job, and today that video is seen all over the world.

Subsequently, when I was asked to shoot a feature and could not do so because of a schedule conflict, I asked Polly to stepin for me. I was able to be around during the first few days of filming to make the producers feel at ease, and to observe how Pollyworked. Her command of the set and the respect she received from the crew and the director spoke well of her ability to lead acomplex project with a team of professionals without ever raising her voice above a conversational tone. Her focus on the details thatmattered during chaotic filming schedules was befitting a cinematographer with many more years of experience. The joy that Poll yhas in exploring visual styles for a project is evident in the careful way she approaches setting up every shot. There is a logic and rhythmto the flow of images, and it incites anticipation in the viewer for where the story will take you next. The capper was when the produc-ers thanked me for introducing them toher . She was subsequently profiled inBritish Cinematographer as a cinematographer to watch.

Many cinematographers working today were given a boost of confidence and inspiration from an ASC cinematographer ata crucial time in their careers. George Spiro Dibie and Vilmos Zsigmond did it for me, and I have tried to do so in return, as have manyother ASC members. It’s part of our passion and our mission. It keeps us young.

I have said this many times about many talented, young cinematographers, and I love saying it: Now Polly is going to go after

my jobs.And you know what? I’m okay with that.

Michael Goi, ASCPresident

President’s Desk

10 August 2011 American Cinematographer

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Family is very important to me. Being part of

the Clairmont family gives me this same

sense, feeling safe and secure wherever I am.

Tony Richmond ASC, BSC

www.clairmont.com

7/29/2019 AC aug 2011



Sony’s F65 Makes Debut With The Arrival

By Stephanie Argy

Directed and shot by Curtis Clark, ASC, The Arrival is the firstproject to be photographed with Sony’s F65, the company’s soon-to-be-released 4K digital motion-picture camera. The movie is a modern

film noir set in downtown Los Angeles, and Clark describes it as “aneffective test of the F65’s performance in production.”

Clark chairs the ASC Technology Committee, and heconfesses that prior to the committee’s involvement in the ASC-PGACamera Assessment Series ( AC June and Sept. ’09), he was “not afan of so-called digital-cinema cameras,” even though he’d beenfollowing their evolution closely. “For me, the issue was that most ofthose cameras were too restrictive in their tonal latitude and colorgamut because of their reliance on HD-video parameters,” he says.The limitations were exacerbated by post workflows that frequentlytook place in a Rec 709 environment that “tended to accentuate anHD-video look,” he adds.

But Clark was intrigued by how closely Sony’s F35, configuredwith S-Log and S-Gamut, was able to match images from the filmcameras that were used as benchmarks for the CAS, and this led himto more in-depth conversations with the Sony development team.Eventually, he became a consultant for the company, advising on anadvanced motion-picture workflow for their next-generation high-resolution camera. Sony, he says, was eager to get the input of work-ing cinematographers, and Clark felt it was essential to help themget it.

He was also becoming increasingly aware of the work theAcademy’s Science and Technology Council was doing on the Image

Interchange Framework/Academy Color Encoding Specification, aworkflow architecture whose components are designed to preservethe widest possible image information from production throughpost, exhibition and archiving, using a standardized, non-proprietaryset of transforms and file formats ( AC March ’11).

“Those two things started to converge,” says Clark. “I

became the focal point for the convergence in that I brought Sonyinto the mix by making them aware of IIF/ACES.” Sony becamecommitted to designing the F65 as a true digital motion-picturecamera that would support IIF/ACES.

Sony’s major goals for the camera included:• Spatial resolution: Unequivocal 4K, 4096x2160, using a

single 20-megapixel CMOS sensor.• Dynamic range: The target is more than 14 stops without

the use of blended-exposure techniques or electronic-gain increaseto extend dynamic range. “It’s a single-frame exposure, just like film,so there are no motion artifacts from shooting blended exposures toget a wider dynamic range,” explains Clark.

• Color reproduction: The camera was to have not onlysignificantly wider color space, but also “the emotional quality ofhow film reproduces color and contrast,” says Clark. “It had to beable to replicate a cinematic film look and feel.”

Planning to introduce the F65 at this year’s NAB conference,Sony wanted to present footage that would demonstrate how thecamera had reached all of these goals. So, in December 2010, Clarkbegan conferring with Toshitaka Ikumo, Sony Electronics’ business-development manager of digital motion-picture production, aboutwhat the NAB presentation should include. Clark recommended ashort, dramatic narrative that would not be based on a collection of

Short Takes

The climax of theshort The Arrival ,

designed toshowcase thecapabilities of

Sony’s F65 camera,was shot at the Los

Angeles Theater.The piece was

conceptualized,directed and shot

by ASC memberCurtis Clark.

I

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majestic landscapes or beautiful vistas,which are often used in camera demos. “Iknew a travelogue of picture-postcard vistasor glitzy commercial images wouldn’t grabfilmmakers’ imaginations,” he observes.

“Toshitaka agreed, and said, ‘Can you comeup with a story?’”

Clark began thinking of a story thatcould tap into classical film history. His imag-ination was sparked by the Bradbury Build-

ing, a Los Angeles landmark famous as alocation in Blade Runner and many othermovies. He conceived a modern film noirthat would take place in the Bradbury Build-ing and in other iconic downtown sites,including Union Station and the Los Ange-les Theater, a French Baroque movie palace

on Broadway that was built in 1931.“I wanted to engage the viewer in avisually driven narrative by using an evoca-tive play of light in carefully selected andcomposed architectural spaces that atmos-pherically served the story,” says Clark.

The Arrival follows a detective look-ing for a mystery woman. He receives amessage from her suggesting a rendezvousat the Los Angeles Theater. As he makes hisway to the theater from his office in theBradbury Building, she travels there fromUnion Station. At the end of the movie,they meet in front of the theater.

While Clark and Ikumo were plan-ning the production, the F65 was beingdeveloped in Japan, and this added a littleextra suspense to the undertaking. Wouldthe camera be ready in time for its produc-tion debut? The shoot, scheduled for lateMarch, was already perilously close to NAB.Clark didn’t even see the camera — excepton an engineering bench at a Sony facility inJapan — until three days before principalphotography.

“The weekend before the shoot, Ihad the F65 for one afternoon and eveningto do tests on three scenes,” Clark recalls.“We took the tests to Sony Colorworks,where we processed 4K images through aBaselight using a 4K projector. In addition tothe camera’s high resolution, it was essentialto validate critical camera specs, especiallysensitivity and dynamic range, because ourability to fully realize the aesthetic intent ofThe Arrival depended on those capabili-ties.”

Fortunately, the tests went smoothly,so Clark confidently embarked on theshoot, which comprised two days plus afew pickups on a third day. He used a set ofLeica T1.4 prime lenses ranging from 18mmto 75mm. Because the F65 sensor is Super-35 size, the camera is able to use standardPL-mount lenses without any vignetting, henotes.

The camera was still in prototypeform, which presented a few logistical chal-

Top: The short’s private investigator (Victor Browne) arrives at his office in the Bradbury Building.Middle: A shot of the detective at his desk illustrates the dynamic range of the F65, which was able to

capture street details on Broadway with no need for supplemental exterior lighting. Bottom: Themystery woman (Katherine Randolph) arrives at the theater. Rimlight on the actress was provided by the

headlight of a motorcycle traveling behind the car.


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lenges. The production version of thecamera will record 16-bit linear raw toflash-memory media called SRMemorycards, but at the time of the shoot, thecamera had to be hard-wired to an externalrecorder.

There were also some limitations onthe supporting technology. As yet, thereare no 4K waveforms and no practical on-set 4K monitoring, so Clark worked withdown-converted HD image proxies usingan HD (1920x1080) Sony BVM L231 moni-tor, which “served as an ultra-high-endvideo assist,” he says. Because the F65 hasa dynamic range comparable to that of filmnegative, he was able to rely on his light

meter to control exposures. “It was just likeshooting film, where we don’t rely onmonitors for validation,” he notes.

Clark knew the Bradbury Buildingalone would present many photographicchallenges for the camera. One of thebuilding’s most notable architecturalfeatures is a large, central atrium open fromthe ground floor to a skylight five storiesabove. The atrium is ringed by staircasesand balconies with filigreed ironwork rail-ings that would test the camera’s resolu-

tion, and the skylight would be a challengefor any camera’s dynamic range, especiallysince one of the shots in The Arrival followsthe detective as he ascends in the elevatorframed against the skylight, which is actu-ally lighting the scene.

One of the most spectacular shots inthe film is a view out the detective’swindow, looking down Broadway. He hasreceived his message from the mysterywoman, and the camera tracks toward the

window, from which the Los AngelesTheater is visible in the distance. The viewgoes many blocks down Broadway at dusk.“The sharpness and detail in the image aresolid proof of the chip’s 4K resolution, alongwith its incredible dynamic range,” saysClark.

Clark planned the outdoor scenes, inwhich the detective and the woman maketheir journeys to the theater, so that hecould shoot primarily using existing light —practical streetlights, neon signs, storefrontfluorescents and the waning light of magichour. He found that the F65 had no troublecapturing what he wanted. “Its ability tohandle mixed lighting is remarkable,” he

notes.So far there is no official exposure

rating on the camera, but Clark estimates itis easily up to 1,250 EI. “I thought 800 EIand 1,000 EI would be good starting points,where we could go without impacting thenoise floor,” he says. “We even tested to1,600 EI and didn’t see any appreciableincrease in noise, but I didn’t need to pushit further than 1,250 EI for this project.”

He adds that the equivalent on filmwould have been far more challenging,

with increased grain appearing in the shad-ows. “Shooting a current film negative inexcess of 1 stop underexposed wouldn’thave had the same ease of use.”

Although Clark arranged the shootto take advantage of the best natural lightwhen shooting the day/dusk interiors, heused some supplemental lighting and diffu-sion frames of various sizes to augment theexisting light. These sources includedChimera-diffused HMI Pars, Kino Flo

VistaBeams, Chimera-diffused 2K and 5Ktungsten lamps, and small LEDs.

In a shot of the woman riding in alimousine from the train station to thetheater, the headlight on a motorcycleriding just behind the car gives the womana rimlight to supplement her LED soft key.

To show the F65’s ability to capturevivid color, Clark incorporated a dress shop just outside the Bradbury Building thatfeatured a window full of brightly coloredgowns; these appear particularly dramaticcompared with the muted colors seen inthe Bradbury Building.

Because The Arrival has no dialogue,sound design and music were critical story-

telling elements. Clark found his collabora-tion with composer Alexander Kovacs to beespecially important. They began by talkingabout the Japanese composer ToruTakemitsu (Ran), and they also referencedDavid Raksin’s score for the noir classicLaura (1944).

Kovacs was thrilled to play such anintegral part in Clark’s process. “I’ve nevercollaborated with a director quite like this,and it was an absolute joy,” says Kovacs.

The Arrival is also a testament to the

benefits of a close collaboration between acinematographer and a camera manufac-turer. “Cinematographers need to beactively involved in the development of thetools, not sitting back and waiting to seewhat they get,” says Clark. ●

Left: Most of the illumination for the short’s opening scene, which takes place on a stairwell in the Bradbury Building, was pr ovided by naturallight coming down through a skylight. Right: Clark lauds the F65 for its “incredible dynamic range.”

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Simian RebellionBy Simon Gray

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a re-imagined origin story ofthe Planet of the Apes film franchise. At Gen-Sys laboratories, scien-tist Will Rodman (James Franco) tests a serum touted as a cure for

Alzheimer’s on a chimpanzee named Bright Eyes. He races againstthe clock to finish the serum before his father (played by John Lith-gow) completely succumbs to the disease.

After Bright Eyes unsuccessfully attempts to escape the Gen-Sys facility, Rodman’s project is shut down. But he soon discoversthat before she was shot, Bright Eyes gave birth to a son. Namingthe baby chimp Caesar, Rodman covertly cares for the infant in hishouse. Meanwhile, the other apes at Gen-Sys are moved to a prisonfacility called The Ranch. As Caesar (portrayed via motion capture byAndy Serkis) matures, it becomes evident that a side effect ofRodman’s serum is high intelligence. After attacking a neighbor,Caesar is taken to The Ranch, where he exposes the apes to

Rodman’s serum and plots a mass escape. He then leads the apes ina revolt against humankind.

In addition to Serkis, whose motion-capture résumé includesplaying cinema’s largest ape in King Kong ( AC Dec. ’05), a group ofperformance-capture artists, including acrobats from Cirque duSoleil, enacted a variety of simians for the production. The visual-effects team at Weta Digital then brought the creatures fully to lifethrough simultaneous performance-capture and live-action photog-raphy on the same location or set.

“Performance-capture volumes are typically set up in dedi-cated spaces,” says visual-effects supervisor Dan Lemmon. “The

average volume takes several days to set up and cali-brate, and it’s not unusual to have a dozen or morecomputers and operators running the equipment andmanaging the flow of data. In order to capture perfor-mances on a working set, we had to reduce our foot-print and make everything as flexible and as fast to setup and take down as possible.

“As in the originalPlanet of the Apes films, thelead roles in our movie belong to humans and apes,”he continues. “We knew the apes would need to beevery bit as emotionally engaging and nuanced intheir performance as the humans, and there is nobetter way to create a rich, emotive digital characterthan to start with the performance of a talented actor.That performance is our foundation, and you willalways get a better performance with the performerplaying the digital character physically present in thescene with the other actors.”

Weta Digital’s motion-capture and perfor-mance-capture units utilized Motion Analysis’ Eagle and Raptorcameras, with others provided by Standard Deviation. “For mostsetups, we used about 20 cameras while another 20 were pre-rigged for the next location,” says Lemmon.

“A dedicated motion-capture space with its own cameraswas constructed in a large rehearsal room at Mammoth Studios [in

Vancouver] for capturing a library of background ape actions, andfor picking up any action that was missed during the live-actionshoot or required modification,” he continues. “We didn’t botherwith facial capture in those sessions.”

The term “motion capture” typically refers to capturing bodymovements only, whereas “performance capture” implies that facialperformance and body movements are captured together, Lemmonnotes.

Coordinating the crews proved to be a logistical challenge,according to director of photography Andrew Lesnie, ASC, ACS.“Each setup involved an extra 20-30 people on top of the mainunit,” he says. “This was true both on location and on stage. When

we finished a setup and moved to change angle, we’d beconfronted by a massive circus of people and equipment. I had tobe extremely diligent in organizing each day to ensure we werealways getting a jump on our next angle.”

For its part, the performance-capture crew had to contendwith much higher light levels than most capture systems aredesigned to accommodate. Highly reflective surfaces — cars, light-ing stands and even the ScotchBrite patches worn by the crews —can obliterate performance-capture and motion-capture data. Tosolve the problem, reflective sphere markers that are typically placedon the performers’ bodies were exchanged for active, infrared LEDs

Production Slate

R i s e o f t h e P l a n e t o f t h e A p e s p h o t o s b y J o

e L e d e r e r a n d D i y a h P e r a h c o u r t e s y o f T w e n t i e t h C e n t u r y F o x F r a m e g r a b c o u r t e s y o f W e t a D i g i t a l

After his intelligence is heightened by doses of an experimental serum, the chimpanzeeCaesar leads an ape uprising.

I

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wired to a control pack worn by each

performer.“Performance-capture supervisor

Dejan Momcilovic and his team devised themobile mo-cap systems and our LED mark-ers,” explains Lemmon. “The LED strandsflashed short, intense bursts of infrared lightin sync with the motion-capture cameras’shutters. Those bursts of light, coupled withstrong IR-pass filters and very short shutterspeeds on the cameras, enabled us topunch through the ambient light in theenvironment and get a good, clean marker

signal.“Preproduction tests had confirmed

that the Kodak stocks Andrew planned touse, Vision3 500T 5219 and 250D 5207,showed no sensitivity to our LEDs’ infraredwavelengths [670-850nm],” Lemmon adds.

The marker control packs werecustom-built in collaboration with StandardDeviation and featured industrial-gradelong-reach Bluetooth, providing for wirelesschecking of sync against the main clock of

the mo-cap computers, monitoring of

battery levels, remote on/off of the markers,and adjustment of their light output.

In addition to the mo-cap cameras,Weta Digital’s crew used four Canon XH G1witness cameras as an aid to any requiredroto-animation, and to provide additionalperformance reference footage. “We’d runa couple of the cameras wide to cover thefull body of the performer, and a couplewould capture more detail on faces andhands,” says Lemmon. “In situations wherewe couldn’t use our performance-capture

system, we relied on the witness-camerafootage to provide a good look at bodymotion from complimentary angles.”

The climactic action sequence in Riseof the Planet of the Apes is a battle on theGolden Gate Bridge between the escapedapes and the authorities (San Franciscopolice and military personnel). The produc-tion built a 250'x90' portion of the iconicbridge on the outskirts of Vancouver; theset had an east-west orientation and was

backed by a greenscreen wall. The famoussuspension towers were omitted from thebuild so the action would not be locked tospecific points on the bridge.

Second-unit visual-effects supervisorErik Winquist had to contend withinclement weather and the sheer size of theset in capturing the action during the three-week shoot. “Erik and his crew had to dealwith interference from fog, smoke, up to 80shiny cars, and atmospheric heat distortionrising from the sun-baked pavement,” saysLemmon. “To protect the cameras placedon top of the greenscreen wall, each onewas enclosed in little birdhouse-like shelterscourtesy of the construction department.They could still be easily panned, tilted and

recalibrated to accommodate the needs of aparticular setup.

“The rest of the cameras weremounted on our mobile T-towers, allowingus to cover in-between cars and otherobstacles on the set that changed positionfrom setup to setup,” continues Lemmon.“Most setups required a capture volume ofabout half the set, at either end of thebridge or right in the middle. I believe thatthe Golden Gate Bridge motion-capturevolume, roughly the size of a football field,

was the largest of its kind in the world. Thesheer size of the set put us right at the limitof the reach of our cameras and markers.”

In lighting the vast set, Lesnie wasreluctant to rely on the British Columbianweather. “Larry Blanford, our action-unitcinematographer, and I discussed how greatit would be if the entire sequence took placeon a lightly overcast day,” recalls Lesnie.“That would give us continuity of light, theflares on the multitude of vehicles on the set

Clockwise fromtop left: Andy

Serkis performs ina motion-capture

suit;cinematographer

Andrew Lesnie,ASC, ACS surveys

the scene fromatop a ladderpod;

on the outskirts

of Vancouver, theproduction team

prepares a250'x90' setdepicting a

section of theGolden Gate

Bridge.

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would look better, and we could simply keepshooting regardless of whether the sun wasgoing in or out.”

To achieve the desired look, a 300'x80'scrim was constructed by the production’srigging department. Rigging grip KevinMcCloy explains: “The scrim consisted of 80-

by-50-foot panels of Light Grid that werestitched together. At first we tried to attachthe panels with Velcro to give the shootingcrew greater flexibility, but the 10-to-12-knotwinds and 20-knot gusts coming off thenearby ocean easily overpowered the Velcro.”

The attachment structures comprisedheavy-duty theatrical truss suspended from a70-ton and a 120-ton mobile constructioncrane. The trussing was further secured bymultiple aircraft cables, anchored andtensioned to several 2-ton concrete blocksthat were located at either end of the set. Thescrim could be flown as high as 55' above theset, but was mostly used at around 30' tocover more area.

An additional construction crane flewa 40'x40' frame of either Light Grid or blue-screen. “24,000 square feet of sail can catcha lot of wind,” recalls McCloy. “We peaked atabout 30,000 pounds of force combined onthe two cranes! The system was made up ofmany ‘soft’ but still safety-rated componentsso that in the event of catastrophic failureduring shooting, the cast and crew wouldn’t

be put in jeopardy. We used synthetic ratedropes over the set as our purchase for the gridto attach to and travel on, and small ratedquick-links as our attaching hardware.”

Skytrackers and boom lifts flew20'x30' and 20'x20' frames that providedadditional bluescreens, diffusion or negativebounces. “If it hadn’t been for the dedicationof our rigging team and the support of thedrape and crane vendors, this part of theshoot could have been a big, scary mess,”says McCloy. “I’m proud of the fact that we

achieved it, from concept to execution, ineight days.”

TECHNICAL SPECS

2.40:1

Super 35mm

Arricam Lite, Arri 435

Arri/Zeiss Master Prime, Angenieux Optimo

Kodak Vision3 500T 5219, 250D 5207

Digital Intermediate

Dangerous BeautiesBy Michael Goldman

In many ways, the risqué Cinemaxseries Femme Fatales can be viewed as aprototype of how tightly budgeted televi-sion production can succeed in the era ofdigital tools and ridiculous turnarounds.Each half-hour episode is shot at a singlepractical location in the Los Angeles area

with a single camera, a Red One (with theMysterium-X chip). There are one day ofprep and three days of actual production(and the occasional pickup shoot) perepisode.

What makes the challenge morecomplex is the fact that Femme Fatales is ananthology series, so characters, locationsand stories change with each episode. Andit all has to be done in the context of a visualaesthetic inspired by the moody photogra-phy in such films as T-Men and The Big

Combo (both shot by John Alton, ASC),Body Heat (Richard Kline, ASC), Bound (BillPope, ASC) and Basic Instinct (Jan De Bont,ASC).

“Every three days we have a newscript, new characters and new actors,”says director of photography Roger Chin-girian, who was in the midst of shooting theseries’ second season when he spoke to AC .“And the producers want a different lookfor every episode to support the individual

story. We have a set approach, but not a setlook. That’s difficult to do in three days, butwe have a great team, and we’ve allbecome quite good at it. We do a techscout on each episode and discuss tools,colors and how best to use the inherentqualities of our given location, but mostly it’sabout changing style and color palette anddeveloping effective camera moves.”

During location scouts, the team

makes key decisions about the look andshooting method for the episode at hand.They always carry a six-lens set of Arri/ZeissUltra Primes and an Angenieux Optimo12:1 (24-290mm) zoom lens. They usuallyrecord to Red Raid hard drives, and occa-sionally employ a Canon EOS 7D with a PLmount (modified by FGV Schmidle) forspecialty shots.

Chingirian, who does his own oper-ating on the show, says his main tool inmaintaining high production value is his lens

package. “During my interview, the onething I really pushed the producers on waslenses,” he recalls. “The lenses matteredmore to me than the camera. It’s all aboutthe glass. Going in, we didn’t know whatkind of spaces we’d be shooting in, but Ihad a low-budget background, so I knewwe had to have a zoom. And quite honestly,the Optimo often saves our schedule.”

In fact, the Optimo has been dubbed“The Daymaker,” according to 1st AC Kyle

The scheming Barbara (Tina Casciani) aims at her prey in theFemme Fatales

episode“The White Flower.”

I

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Klutz. “It’s really the workhorse for us,” hesays. “We put it on a dolly track at the endof the day, and we can get wide shots andtight shots all with the same lens.”

Layering a noir aesthetic overepisodes that vary wildly in tone — hard-boiled drama, comedy, horror — is probablythe biggest challenge the filmmakers face.Some of this aesthetic is achieved as onemight expect: with less light, lots of silhou-ettes and plenty of contrast and diffusion.“But we also want our actresses, the

femmes fatale, to always look glamorous,”notes Chingirian, “so sometimes it’s hard togo as dark as we might want. In those situ-ations, we’ll have them come in and out oflight, for example, but really, a lot of theshow’s look is achieved with colorcontrasts.”

For example, several episodes havebeen set in hospitals. “We aren’t afraid toshoot on a location with institutional-greenwalls and really go with it, mixing up colortemperatures along the way,” continues the

cinematographer. “We’ll also add and takeaway light in shots. Our colorist at TunnelPost, Sebastian Perez-Burchard, and I willlater take it further if necessary.”

Gaffer Steve Lundgren says the look“is all about playing with shadows and high-lights in deep backgrounds. We often posi-tion practicals such as Christmas lights,sconces and floor lamps beyond the mainaction to create depth, so we don’t get stuckwithout a solution at our [various locations].”

Chingirian uses camera placementand movement to not only highlight theblocking of each scene, but also to maxi-mize the strength of each location. “Werecently shot a robbery sequence in a 1930sArt Deco bank that had incredibly high,ornate ceilings,” he explains. “We put thecamera on the ground so we could angleup on our actors and get all that architec-tural detail in the frame, and it was a greatvisual. That’s how we take advantage ofpractical locations; we’ll walk in, identify its

best features and then figure out how toenhance those with camera angles andlighting. If it requires a specific piece of gear,we’ll try to arrange that.”

A heist-gone-wrong episode,“White Flower,” was shot mostly in a smallspace in the old Los Angeles Herald Exam-iner building downtown, and the filmmak-ers “strived to utilize a constantly movingcamera in order to allow the confined spaceto become a character of its own,” saysChingirian. “Key elements of the approach

involved using a Fisher dolly on dance floorand adding foreground elements to makethe space come to life. A malfunctioningneon-sign lighting effect staged outside onewindow [achieved with practicals and addi-tional lamps on flicker boxes] added visualinterest and noir ambience.”

In the supernaturally flavoredepisode “Haunted,” he continues, “weessentially added a horror aesthetic to ournoir approach to suggest a haunted house.

Our director said he wanted to get as closeto a Hammer Films look as possible, so weexperimented with negative space, creatinga layering effect by framing the audience’sattention toward the actors in the scenewhile keeping the edges of the frame incomplete darkness aside from firelight andcandle effects.

“We usually choose locations thatwe can play for exactly what they are, butalso play as more than one thing,” he adds.“We’ve shot in a warehouse that also

doubled for an alley, and in a mansion thatalso doubled for a park. Those are thingswe do all the time. That’s how we make ourschedule and give the show a ‘bigger’look.”

The production carries a fairly exten-sive tungsten and HMI lighting package,which allows the team even greater flexibil-ity in solving creative and logistical prob-lems. Indeed, the collaboration betweenChingirian, a former gaffer, and Lundgrenaccounts for many of the production’s solu-

tions.Lundgren explains that the lighting

strategy is about “working in layers, main-taining contrast while creating separationby adding kicks and hotspots in the back-ground. We also use a number of smallpractical sources that can easily be droppedinto the background for separation.”

For night exteriors, the productiontends to use an 18K or 20K Fresnelmounted on 60' or 80' Condors, along with

Left: Nurse Violet McReady (Christine Donlon) preps for revenge against Laz (Robert LaSardo)in “Bad Medicine.” Right: Beth (Carlee Baker, left) and Darla (Anya Monzikova) hatch a plan

in “Something Like Murder.”

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1.2K Firestarter Par cans to highlight partic-ular buildings or vegetation.

“Our night looks vary dramaticallyfrom episode to episode,” says Lundgren.“For ‘Help Me, Rhonda,’ we had to shootan action scene at night on a narrow, ropebridge crossing a deep gorge. The locationwas a ranch out in Big Tujunga, and wecreated a classic moonlight effect by drivingan 80-foot Condor up a hill overlooking the

ravine and blasting two 24K Luka Lights[gelled with Daylight Blue] from there. Weused some Nine-light Maxis, Baby 5K Fres-nels and Firestarters on the ground tosupplement.

“When we’re shooting in a clean-looking suburban area,” continues thegaffer, “we tend to do a bit of uplightingaround the perimeters using VNSP Par 56sand Par 64s on beaverboards, along with anumber of 300-watt stake lights.”

Day interiors are usually lit with 18K

Fresnels, 6K and 4K Pars and small HMIs,almost always through windows. These aresometimes supplemented with daylight-globed Kino Flos. “Larger HMI units areusually topped from the inside by usingdiffusion frames,” Lundgren says. “Thatway, faces are modeled while we maintain ahotter streak on the subject’s body andacross furniture and objects. We do quite alot of shaping to take the light off walls. Weoften mold keylights for day interiors by

shooting a 400-watt Jo-Leko into a 4-by-4muslin bounce, sometimes with a 4-byframe of diffusion in front to create a smallbooklight. We try to avoid using Kino Flosfor day interiors in order to maintaincontrast, and we also sometimes bring innegative fill to further control the ratio.”

On the episode “White Flower,” thecrew used off-the-shelf, bug-repelling lightsas a practical solution in the background “to

create an interesting, rather dirty look thatwe mixed with Cool White overheads andedges, while keeping keys white,” saysLundgren.

While shooting the episode “KillerInstinct” in an industrial part of downtownL.A., the crew found several 50-watt metal-halide exterior streetlights in a Dumpsternear their location. “We wired them up andused them as practical uplights in the back-ground of a warehouse,” says the gaffer.

Naturally, great care is taken in light-

ing each episode’s actresses. Lundgrenexplains, “Female subjects are generallykeyed with 45-degree diapered Kino Flos orBarger Baglites with an added layer of diffu-sion, or sometimes we use a book lightcomprising a Source Four [Leko] bouncinginto 4-by-4 muslin with Opal 250 in front.We prefer to use keys that wrap, rather thanadding fill in order to further maintain asolid contrast ratio. For further glamour, weadd strong backlights. If the woman has

darker hair, we tend to use tungsten unitswith a layer of diffusion inside doors, and ifthe hair color is lighter, we’ll usually go witha tungsten unit with a Chimera, or evendiapered Kino Flos, depending on the envi-ronment.”

Klutz notes that Chingirian also hasan extensive filter package at his disposal.“One of Roger’s favorites for shooting thewomen is the Hollywood Black Magic

filter,” Klutz says. “The Red’s resolution is sohigh that it reveals just about everything, sowe have to take off curves with somethingin front of the lens.”

Chingirian emphasizes that a keycomponent of the creative approach onFemme Fatales is decisiveness. “I’ve becomea big believer in that,” he notes. “Find adirection, do as much of it as you can in-camera, and presume your decisions willhold up. With our tight schedule, you can’tsay, ‘Let’s keep trying things.’ You have to

make a decision and run with it.”

TECHNICAL SPECS

1.78:1

Digital Capture

Red One

Arri/Zeiss Ultra Prime, Angenieux Optimo

●

Left: Working on a breakaway prison set while shooting the episode “Behind LockedDoors,” cinematographer Roger Chingirian (at camera) angles in on actresses AnaAlexander (on bunk) and Kit Willisee (at door). Right: Actor William Gregory Lee,

portraying a bank robber, delivers his lines as Chingarian frames his shot.

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A t a press conference after The Tree of Life premiere at theCannes Film Festival, it fell to the producers and leadactors to explain the film. Not surprisingly, director

Terrence Malick, who is known to shun all personalpublicity, was absent. Brad Pitt, who produced and stars in themovie, was asked about his experience working on the film.“It’s changed everything I’ve done since,” he said. “The bestmoments were not preconceived; they were not planned. I’vetried to go more in that direction.”

The Tree of Life went on to win the festival’s top honor,the Palme d’Or.

Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMCcreates emotionally resonant

imagery for Terrence Malick’sThe Tree of Life .

By Benjamin B

•|•

CosmicQuestionsCosmicQuestionsMalick’s unique approach to filmmaking appears to

have left a similar mark on his other collaborators, starting withdirector of photography Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki, ASC,

AMC. “You learn so much by watching an artist like Terry at work,” says Lubezki. “For me, he has been an extraordinary film teacher and much more.”

The cinematographer counts himself fortunate to have worked on three of Malick’s films; they first teamed on The New World ( AC Jan. ’06), and after wrapping The Tree of Life they embarked on another feature, as yet untitled, that will bereleased next year.

The Tree of Life is a film whose scope and ambition rivalthat of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey ( AC June ’68).Malick combines a poetic evocation of childhood in an

American suburb in the 1950s with plainspoken metaphysicalquestions that echo the Book of Job’s inquiries about themystery of unjust affliction.

The main characters are the O’Brien family: Jack (played as a boy by Hunter McCracken and as an adult by Sean Penn); his younger brothers, R.L. (Laramie Eppler) andSteve (Tye Sheridan); their mother (Jessica Chastain); andtheir father (Pitt). The story begins with Jack’s parents learning

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www.theasc.com August 2011

of R.L.’s sudden death at the age of 19. This tragedy leads the mother to ask,“Why, Lord?” and the whispered ques-tion calls forth a dazzling, 20-minutehistory of the universe, including thebirth of stars, volcanoes, dinosaurs and ameteor crashing into the Earth.

The primary narrative focuses on Jack’s childhood, which is evoked in aseries of powerful vignettes that begin

with his birth and end roughly a dozen

years later, when his family moves fromthe home where he was raised. Imagesof the brothers playing, fighting andexploring their neighborhood are beau-tifully and simply lit with natural lightthrough windows, doorways and treecanopies. The scenes are often brief buttelling, often jump cut, and feature littledialogue. Fluid Steadicam and hand-held camerawork follows the childrenthrough the house, yard or woods, or U

n i t p h o t o g r a p h y b y M e r i e W a l l a c e , S M

P S P . P

h o t o s a n d f r a m e g r a b s c o u r t e s y o f

F o x S e a r c h l i g h t a n d T w e n t i e t h C e n t u r y F o x .

Opposite: In The Tree of Life, an enigmatic coda finds Mrs. O’Brien (Jessica Chastain) traversing alimbo-like desert. This page, top to bottom: Mr. O’Brien (Brad Pitt) examines his newborn son;

a butterfly lands on Mrs. O’Brien’s arm; cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC meters thelight on a church organ.

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frames a family fight at the dinner table. After the family moves out of

Jack’s childhood house, the narrativereturns to the adult Jack for a mysteriousepilogue. The story concludes with Jack’smother delivering a memorable answer

to God. When they began planning The

New World , Malick and Lubezki sketchedout a set of rules that, over time, evolvedinto what the crew called “the dogma.”However, Lubezki observes that ruleshave always been a mainstay of his own

work. “In all the movies I’ve done, I always worked with a set of rules — they help meto find the tone and the style of the film,”he says. “Art is made of constraints. When

you don’t have any, you go crazy, becauseeverything is possible.”

He says his previous movies weredictated by rules such as using only onelens, or shooting the entire film at T2.8.

Although there is no written version of

the Malick-Lubezki dogma on Tree ,interviews with the cinematographerand some key collaborators suggestsome parameters:

•Shoot in available natural light•Do not underexpose the negative

Keep true blacks•Preserve the latitude in the image•Seek maximum resolution and

fine grain

•Seek depth with deep focus andstop: “Compose in depth”

•Shoot in backlight for continuity and depth

•Use negative fill to avoid “lightsandwiches” (even sources on bothsides)

•Shoot in crosslight only afterdawn or before dusk; never frontlight

•Avoid lens flares

•Avoid white and primary colors inframe

•Shoot with short-focal-length,hard lenses

•No filters except Polarizer•Shoot with steady handheld or

Steadicam “in the eye of the hurri-cane”

•Z-axis moves instead of pans ortilts

•No zooming•Do some static tripod shots “in

midst of our haste”•Accept the exception to the

dogma (“Article E”)

With a laugh, Lubezki notes,“Our dogma is full of contradictions!For example, if you use backlight, you

will get flares, or if you go for a deepstop, you will have more grain because

you need a faster stock. So you have tomake these decisions on the spot: what

◗ Cosmic Questions

Intimateclose-ups placeviewers in the

midst of theO’Briens’ most

emotionallyrevealing

moments.

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is better in this case, grain or depth?“The most important rule for me

is to not underexpose,” he continues.“We want the blacks; we don’t likemilky images. Article E does not apply to underexposure!” The cinematogra-pher concedes that there is a singleunderexposed shot in Tree , an amazing

accomplishment for a film shot in suchfree form.

Lubezki appreciates the “com-plexity” of natural light. “When you putsomeone in front of a window, you’regetting the reflection from the blue sky and the clouds and the sun bouncing onthe grass and in the room. You’re gettingall these colors and a different quality of light. It’s very hard to go back to artificiallight in the same movie. It’s like you’resetting a tone, and artificial light feels

weird and awkward [after that].”Lubezki shot Tree with two tung-

sten-balanced Kodak Vision2 negatives,500T 5218 and 200T 5217, going tothe faster stock when the light was low.He did not use an 85 filter because it“homogenizes” the complex color.Instead, he prefers to color balance inthe timing.

The picture was shot in standard1.85:1, in 4-perf for maximum resolu-

tion and low grain. Lubezki explains,“Even though anamorphic has more

resolution, we decided on 1.85 becausethe close focus was going to be extreme— we were so close to the kids, theirfaces, hands and feet. And we didn’t

want the grain of Super 35.”Lubezki’s camera team included

operator Joerg Widmer, who often shotSteadicam, and 1st AC Erik Brown.Underwater footage was shot by PeteRomano, ASC, and second-unitphotography was done by Paul Atkins

and Peter Simonite. Principal photogra-phy ran for 12 weeks. The main location

was the Texas town of Smithville, withother scenes shot in Austin, Houston, onthe Texas coast and in Utah. (Additionalphotography was done in New York by Ellen Kuras, ASC; in Versailles by Benoît Delhomme, AFC; and in Italy by Widmer.)

Although Tree was shot singlecamera, Brown prepped three camerasevery day: an Arricam Lite on theSteadicam, another Lite in an EasyRig

Top: Tensionsmount during afamily dinner.Bottom: OperatoJoerg Widmer(center, wearingblack shirt) movinto position foran over-the-shoulder angle.

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configuration, and an Arri 235 for run-and-gun work. All three cameras wereoutfitted with Arri wireless focus controlsso that the assistant could quickly switchfrom one to the other. Brown maintainsthat 90 percent of the movie was shot

without a tripod.Lubezki chose Arri/Zeiss Master

Primes and wider-angled Arri/ZeissUltra Primes. Brown says the lenses mostoften used were the 14mm, 18mm,

21mm and 27mm, and that the camera was usually very close to the actors, “oftenbetween 1½ and 2 feet.

“It’s the most difficult thing I’veever done,” Brown continues. “There wereno marks, and I had to guess what theoperator was about to do because he wasreacting to what the actors were doing. Ideveloped this wonderful partnership

with Chivo and Joerg that became adance where they led and I followed.”

Production designer Jack Fisk, who

has worked with Malick since Badlands (1973), notes, “I often tell people whenthey start working for Terry that he asksfor nothing and expects everything, sothey have to be prepared. Terry’s very humble and very passionate. You end updoing more for him than you would dofor anybody else because the film is soimportant to him.”

The shooting rhythm on Tree wasexceptionally fast. Widmer would often


Despitetheir initial

“no flares” rule,the filmmakers

incorporatedbacklight asa consistentvisual motif.

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start filming a scene with the Steadicam with Lubezki at his side riding iris, and when the magazine ran out, they mighttrade places, with Lubezki shooting hand-held. “I’ve never been on a set where thecrew was so tuned into the movie,” saysLubezki. “At one point while we wereshooting, somebody suddenly screamed,‘Oh, my god! The fireflies are out!’ becausehe’d heard six weeks earlier that Terry

wanted to shoot fireflies.” The crew

immediately rushed out to shoot the fire-flies.

Serendipity is another key featureof Malick’s approach. His collaboratorsare always open to shooting the acciden-tal and the unexpected. One morning, abutterfly flew by as the crew was prepar-ing for the day. Lubezki grabbed the Arri235 and filmed it as it landed onChastain’s outstretched arm. The shotthen follows the butterfly onto the grass,

where a cat shows up in the frame.

“Usually on a film set, you waitmore than you shoot, but in our case weshot more than we waited,” says Widmer.“Sometimes we didn’t wait to reload; wesimply took a different camera andrestarted the scene. Everything happenedso quickly, and the kids’ energy was lost soeasily if we didn’t continue immediately.

“The concept was to change, toalways vary things,” he continues. Malick

would alternate between Steadicam and

Top: TheO’Brien boys

climb skyward.Middle andbottom: Mr.O’Brien entersa cathedralof trees,where viewersexperience hisPOV fromthe ground.

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The 20-minute “creation” sequence inThe Tree of Life depicts the birth of

stars, the beginning of life on Earth, amemorable interaction between twodinosaurs, and a meteor crashing intothe Earth, among other cataclysmicevents. The sequence begins with theformation of early stars and ends over 5billion years from now, when the sun

will, according to scientists, shrink to asmall “white dwarf.”

In creating the sequence, artistsled by senior visual-effects supervisorDan Glass worked with an array of material, including 65mm and 35mmmotion-picture film; digital footagecaptured with the 4K Dalsa Evolution,the Red One and the Phantom HDhigh-speed camera; and large-formatCanonstills. Real and virtual elements,like the CGI dinosaurs, were layeredand composited in 5K (5,464 pixels

across) and recorded as 32-bit floating-point EXR files. The finished images

were exported to EFilm’s DI suite as10-bit log DPX files.

“The greatest challenge of thisproject is that Terry Malick’s approachis the opposite of the way we commonly

work in visual effects,” say Glass. Thedirector, he explains, wanted to avoiddefining the imagery ahead of time andoften used the word “Tao” to convey anorganic search for unpredictable images.

“Terry objects if there’s a sense of the human hand [in the image], of someone interfering with the process,”says Glass, “so our work involved a lot of experimenting. The goal was to createglimpses of natural moments.”

To get these images, Malick organized a series of shoots he called“Skunkworks” over three weekends at astudio in Austin, Texas. A small groupled by visual-effects pioneer Douglas

Trumbull ( 2001: A Space Odyssey ) exper-imented with liquid tanks, flashlights,glass paperweights, dry ice, pinholeflares and sundry objects to shootelements that were then layered torepresent cosmological images. “The

material that came out of those shoots was really rich and fantastic,” says Glass.“We tried to create interesting visualimagery first, and then figured out how to shape it and where to place it in thefilm.”

A shot of light lattices in the early universe was primarily constructed withlayered light leaks recorded with a RedOne without a lens — flashlights wereshone through glass objects like paper-

weights. “There’s an organic core to the

image, a kind of natural beauty,” saysGlass.

A dark eclipse image was shot with a polystyrene planet on a pole infront of a light shining through dry ice.In post, the colors were finessed andtiny details of planetary fragments wereadded.

A cloud-like nebula beginning toform was a 4'-wide pool of half-and-half poured into a water tank and shot

•|• Big Bang Theory •|•

7/29/2019 AC aug 2011



handheld, go from “an 18mm to a27mm,” from low mode to high mode,putting the actors in different positions,and sometimes he would redo the scenein another way the next day, perhaps

with a different child or in a differentsetting.

“Terry was incredibly wellprepared because he had been thinkingabout this film for many years, but he

wanted the film to feel unprepared,” says

Lubezki. “We couldn’t really ‘set up’shots; we had to ‘find’ them.”

Mornings in Smithville started with Malick meeting with the crew,reading from index cards that bore type-

written notes about things to find.“They could be shots, emotions he

wanted to capture or specific angles he wanted to get,” says Lubezki.“Sometimes he had a little pictureclipped to the index card that he wanted

to show me. Or he might talk to Jack [Fisk] about changing colors in a room.Every morning he had information toshare, and then everybody knew whatto go for during the day.”

The filmmakers were “constantly talking behind the camera, trying tosteer the shoot into a place that feltunrehearsed,” he continues. “The sceneshad to be found, like in a documentary.”

He adds that Malick would often

surprise the actors and crew by intro-ducing unexpected elements, a tech-nique referred to as “sending in atorpedo. Sometimes it was anotheractor, sometimes it was a dog, or some-times it was the operator runningthrough the scene without tellinganybody! It’s like pulling the rug fromunder your feet. What happens is that

you suddenly get something unexpectedthat feels more natural.” For example,

As O’Brien bonds with one of his younger sons, R.L. (Laramie Eppler), over theirshared affinity for music (top), his eldest son, Jack (Hunter McCracken, bottom) lashes out

at a neighbor’s house.

in slow motion, with stars added andcolors shifted to auburn later.

Another reference for imagery was scientific visualizations. For

instance, an intricate, reddish image of early “Pop III” star formation wasbased on a simulation by astrophysicistVolker Bromm that he ran at theNational Center for Supercomputing

Applications in Illinois. With thescientist’s approval, Glass asked aconcept artist to “illustrate up” theimage and render it as a “cavern” from

which light emerges, “incorporatingnebulae-like elements. We then fedthat data to Double Negative inLondon, and their team mixed in addi-tional elements and artistry.”

The Hubble telescope wasanother image source, providing theshot of the Carina nebula, a tiledassembly that was 27,000 pixels across.

The visual-effects team added depthcues, “tamed” the arbitrary coloring andadded a slow push in, according toGlass.

Background plates for thecreation sequence were shot in 15-perf 65mm Imax. They are perhaps most

prominent in the dinosaur scene, thelongest segment of the creationsequence. “Terry didn’t want to featurethe dinosaurs more than necessary, sosometimes they’re almost in silhouette,”notes Glass. Once Malick and a scien-tific adviser vetted 4'-long maquettes of the dinosaurs, the maquettes werescanned to form the basis for CGmodels.

Malick asked the visual-effectsteam to listen to music as they worked,

and he often tested the imagery withdifferent music as the team watched.“That’s highly unusual — visual effectsis a silent world,” says Glass. “Workingon this movie was a wonderful, all-encompassing experience.”

— Benjamin B

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during a scene that shows the father andmother arguing, Malick sent in one of the boys, and it immediately changedthe way the adults acted. “If somethingfelt intentional to Terry, be it in a cameramove, a performance or a sound, he

would react against it [in the edit],” sayseditor Mark Yoshikawa. “He didn’t wantthat feeling of manipulation. He wantedto feel as if things were found and notpresented. We ended up just cutting outanything that felt false, and that gave

way to the jump cuts, which give themovie its elliptical feeling. Terry said, ‘If it’s a 10-second shot and five of theseconds feel false, then just take it outand see what happens.’ A lot of the timeit didn’t work — it was a horrible cut.But sometimes it did work, and we went

with that feeling.”For Lubezki, the greatest chal-

lenge posed by Malick’s emphasis onnaturalism was obtaining a good expo-sure and extended latitude. Part of the

solution came from his collaboration with Fisk. “In the dining room of one of the houses we used, we replaced wallspace between two windows with a third

window so that the whole wall was glass,and it faced south,” says Fisk. “We alsoput in a new back porch with a plasticceiling so it would let light into thekitchen.” To avoid “light sandwiches,”Fisk’s crew would often “darken thebackgrounds as much as possible” and

T1.3 in the same take. You have tothink really fast: does it work?”

One scene where Lubezki keptthe exposure constant is a beautifulmoment that shows R.L. playing guitarin a doorway in changing sunlight.

In other scenes, like family dinners at the table, the challenge wasfilming people with a range of exposure

values. Lubezki notes that he does notuse white bounce boards or white cardsto help the exposure “because they will

show.” At one meal, for example, “Brad was 2 stops darker than the boy sittingnext to the window. You can only capture that with film; I had to exposefor Brad, and those closer to the

window were many stops overexposed.”Lubezki marvels at film’s latitude.

“Looking out from inside the house, we were sometimes shooting at T2, and youcan see detail in the curtains, you can seethe grass outside, you can see the sky and you can see the clouds, which were

maybe T64. They’re overexposed, but you can see them!”

In day exteriors, the cinematogra-pher would often reposition the actors toshoot them in backlight for continuity.“We can ensure that shots will cuttogether if the actors don’t have directlight on their faces, because that tells youthe time of day and what kind of light isthere,” he notes. “Backlighting is very important because it helps the editing

add drapes to opposing windows. Thomas Edison’s small film

studio, the Black Maria, was built on agiant turntable that allowed him to turnthe building to follow the sun. The film-makers on The Tree of Life adopted asimilar strategy by shooting in threeseparate houses with different orienta-tions to the sun. Fisk explains, “If wehad a room that faced east, we couldshoot early in the morning, and if itfaced west, we could shoot later in the

afternoon. Terry took that to theextreme by having the same room repre-sented in several houses so that we couldshoot at different times of the day.”

According to Yoshikawa, theediting team described Malick’sapproach to continuity as being “likeCubism, shooting the same scene indifferent locations. We’d mix and matchthem with no continuity and worry only about the feeling. We jumped aroundthe three different houses, but you don’t

really catch on because you’re acceptingthe house as Jack remembers it.”

In day interiors, Lubezki oftenplaced the actors near the windows,riding the iris “to keep the negativehealthy,” he says. “It sounds easy, but it’sincredibly scary! Let’s say the sun is outand it’s bouncing into the room. Youstart the scene at T8 and follow the kids,Brad comes into the shot, and thenclouds suddenly drop the exposure to


The Steadicam was used in “low mode” to capture action close to the ground.

7/29/2019 AC aug 2011


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without requiring silks and so on. If bothcharacters in a scene are backlit, you cancheat the audience — no one will know that one was shot in the summer and theother in winter.” In the scene where

Jack’s father teaches him to fight, bothcharacters are backlit, a physical impos-

sibility that intercuts well.“We also used backlight because

it gives a sense of depth, whereas front-light is flat,” adds Lubezki. “However,

we didn’t backlight all the time becausethat would be boring.”

Another important tool for exte-

riors was negative fill, provided by a beadboard or other black surface. This wasoften used to eliminate a “light sand-

wich” of two similar sources on eitherside of an actor, and it also added a senseof depth.

Lubezki admits that some simplelights were used on night interiors, “but we never put a single light stand insidethe house.” A single lightbox withPhotoflood bulbs was rigged overheadfor evening dinner scenes, supplementinga practical. Night interiors in the boys’room were lit with a mobile light with ahand dimmer, a 2K with a Chimera that

was held by Lubezki or Widmer,“whoever wasn’t shooting,” says the cine-matographer. “We didn’t want to tell thekids where to go; we wanted them to tellus where to go, so we followed them withthe light. I don’t think the audience cantell the light is moving.”

One scene in the bedroom wasplayed with real flashlights that were heldby Lubezki or Malick. In another scene,


The adult Jack (Sean Penn) encounters his loved ones, including his deceased brother,in a dreamlike beach setting.

8

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Lubezki gave one of the boys a practicaldesk lamp to play with in frame.

In a remarkable dusk exteriorsequence, Jack walks around his neigh-borhood, peering into the houses andcatching glimpses of families. This scene

was shot over several evenings during a15-to-20-minute window when thedeep blue sky was still luminous enoughto register. The house interiors were lit

with practicals on dimmers. According to Lubezki, Malick

originally intended to color time the live-action portion of the picture photo-chemically, but this plan changed whenthe print dailies came back with lessdetail than the filmmakers wanted. “Thedailies were very well-printed,” says thecinematographer, “but they didn’tcapture the wide latitude of the negative.

We lost detail in the whites, for example.I’ve been printing film for a long, longtime, and I can tell you that today’s printstocks are too contrasty. That’s becausethey’re not made to print film anymore;

they’re made for the DI process.”Lubezki subsequently worked

with colorist Steve Scott and his team atEFilm to create a look-up table that

would enable him to retain the detail of the negative by making the values fit in

the tonal range of the prints and also theDCP (which was prepared atLaserPacific). Comparing the print andDCP, Lubezki notes, “You could almostsay they are two slightly different

versions of the movie.” The DCP is“more sparkly,” whereas the prints (from4K filmouts) have “better blacks.”

Looking back, Lubezki reflectsthat he could not have worked on The Tree of Life without the deep trust hehad in Malick. He remembers thedirector telling him early on to “work onthe edge of catastrophe — my words,not his — on the edge of exposure, of framing. He told me to experiment andtry anything. And he said, ‘I will neveruse any shot that will humiliate you ormake you feel bad. You can come to the

editing any time you want, and you cantake anything you want out of themovie.’ In that moment, I felt I couldtruly try anything — I could shoot

without lights, I could make mistakes— and I would have Terry’s support. He

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The release last month of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, a decade after the boy wizard’s first screenouting, marks the close of the most ambitious franchisein cinema history. Over the course of the eight-film

series, based on the novels by J. K. Rowling, four differentdirectors have worked with six different cinematographers:

John Seale, ASC, ACS; Roger Pratt, BSC; Michael Seresin,BSC; Slawomir Idziak, PSC; Bruno Delbonnel, ASC, AFC;

and, finally, Eduardo Serra, ASC, AFC.Series producer David Heyman decided in 2008 to split

Deathly Hallows , Rowling’s final book, into two features, butshoot them as one production over 16 months. Director David

Yates, who has helmed the Potter films since the fifth install-ment, says he recommended hiring Serra because “I’m a big fanof the classical, naturalistic style he has employed on his films.

“This was a tricky assignment for a cinematographerbecause I wanted the two films to look different,” he contin-ues. “I told Eduardo at our very first meeting that we’d bechecker-boarding the shooting because our schedule dictated

that we had to jump between filming bits of Part 1 and Part 2. He was up for the challenge of trying to go for a differentlook depending on where we were in the story on each shoot-ing day.”

Like all of the other films in the franchise, Deathly Hallows was a British production, filmed northwest of Londonat Leavesden Studios. Constructed on the site of a formerRolls Royce factory in 1995, the studio complex grew into a

vast facility over the course of Potter’s tenancy and can now accommodate productions of any scale. Warner Bros.purchased the site last year, and next year it will reopen as

Warner Bros. Studios-Leavesden, the first permanentEuropean base for a Hollywood studio in many years.

For Serra, joining the long-running enterprise couldhave been a daunting experience, but he found himself warmly

welcomed into the fold. Many of the cast and crew havereturned for every film, working at Leavesden almost continu-ally for a decade; the three lead actors have literally grown upon set, being cast as 10-year-olds and finishing the franchise asadults. This gave the entire enterprise a familial feel. “It was

wonderful,” says Serra. “Quite honestly, it was such a friendly environment, and there just weren’t any problems. Difficult toimagine for something of this scale, but true!”

The scale and longevity of the Potter productionmachine did, however, have some impact on Serra’s visualapproach. “This thing is so huge, with so much space and somany people, that there is actually limited freedom to deter-mine a look on set,” he says. “We knew the general direction

we were going, but in a way, the sets themselves determinedour approach because of their size and because they expressedso much.”

Eduardo Serra, ASC, AFC and hiscollaborators discuss Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which brings a

beloved franchise to a close.

By Mark Hope-Jones

•|•

Darkest Arts

7/29/2019 AC aug 2011



“[Production designer] StuartCraig has authored the architecture of this world,” agrees Yates. “BeforeEduardo came on board, we’d beenpreparing Deathly Hallows for severalmonths, so the sets were already

designed by the time he arrived. In a way, that does create certain aestheticrestrictions, but Eduardo was always

very willing to go along with all of that.”Serra found it an easy process, notingthat Craig “is a wonderful designer —always ready and always perfect. This

was probably the best working relation-ship I’ve had with a productiondesigner.”

The Potter stories mainly takeplace in and around Hogwarts School of

Witchcraft and Wizardry, where Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and his constantcompanions, Ron (Rupert Grint) andHermione (Emma Watson), are pupils,so a number of the Deathly Hallows sets

were already in existence. The 130'-longGreat Hall at Hogwarts, for example,

was built for the first Potter film. Very often, the lighting design for thesesets was also already established. “Youcouldn’t walk onto one of those sets and U

n i t p h o t o g r a p h y b y J a a p B u i t e n d i j k . F r a m e g r a b s a n d p h o t o s c o u r t e s y o f W a r n e r B r o s .

P i c t u r e s .

Opposite: LordVoldemort(Ralph Fiennesmarshals hisforces inpreparation foattack in aframe fromDeathly Hallows Part 2This page, topIn a scene from

Part 1, thevillains enjoy afearsomedisplay ofVoldemort’spower. MiddleEduardo SerraASC, AFCprepares aforest scene.Bottom:Voldemortseizes hisnemesis (DaniRadcliffe) in aframe fromPart 2.

7/29/2019 AC aug 2011



say, ‘Oh, I have an idea: let’s do it this way,’ when there are already 300 lightsrigged,” says Serra. “Everything was justso big. I was fortunate to have a wonder-

ful gaffer in Chuck Finch. The first timeI shot a film in England [ Funny Bones ,1995] he was on it, and he helped me agreat deal, so it was very good to work

with him again.”Finch, who also served as gaffer

on the second, fourth and sixth Potterfilms, notes, “These sets were basically always lit with the same units, but it wasdown to how the individual cinematog-raphers wanted to handle them. The

approach has stayed broadly the same:big, soft sources [positioned] as far back as possible. Most of the sets were litfrom outside with Quarter Wendy

Lights and 20Ks, and for the closer work, we went down to various softsources like [Lowel] Rifa lights.”

A sophisticated and versatiledimming system gave Serra controlover the lights and allowed him tostamp his own style on the lighting. “I

would talk with Chuck about what we were going to do a few days before we went onto the set,” recalls thecinematographer. “Everything was

controlled from a wireless dimmerboard, and I had the dimming operator

with me all the time. If the actorsdecided to go for another position and

we had to change the lighting setup, wecould just bring different lights up ordown.”

The Visilink dimming system,

based on a Chamsys desk and runningalongside WYSIWYG, was developedby Panalux and allowed console opera-tor Andy Mountain to make instantadjustments via a tablet computer. “Wehad control over every single light,” saysFinch. “For the Wendy Lights, whichare four pods of 650-watt bulbs, we hadcontrol over each individual pod. It wasa massive cabling job. Sometimes wehad up to 1,000 dimming lines.”

The filmmakers wanted a darker

look for Deathly Hallows to reflect themore mature themes. Harry is a yearolder in each successive adventure, sothe storylines have become increasingly complex as the series has progressed. “Imust say, I was surprised by how dark they were prepared to go with the visu-als,” Serra observes. “Throughout my career, producers have argued that if images are dark, the audience won’t seethem, but on this film it was the oppo-

◗ Darkest Arts

Throughout

Part 1, Harry, Ron(Rupert Grint) andHermione (EmmaWatson) hide outin a tent as theyattempt to both

evade Voldemortand find a way todestroy him. The

top image is aunit still; the

bottom image is aframe grab.

7/29/2019 AC aug 2011



site, which was nice. Of course, as thecinematographer, I had to make surethere was enough detail on the negative,and we knew the final level of darkness

would be determined in the digitalgrade.”

Supervising digital colorist PeterDoyle had been with thePotter franchisesince the third film, and was actively involved in shaping a look for Deathly

Hallows from the very beginning. “I wassitting down with Eduardo from themoment he came on board,” says Doyle.“We worked through what he had inmind and explored how the grade couldhelp that. One of the luxurious aspects of the production was that we had a fully equipped DI theater with a 50-footscreen set up at Leavesden. It was avail-able for the cinematographer to use fromday one, so tests could be carried all the

way through a DI workflow in order to

determine what might best be done inpost and what could be done on set withlighting.”

Serra worked closely with Doylethroughout the shoot. He notes, “Whatcan I say about Peter? He’s just incredi-ble. At 7 each morning, I would meet up

with him and look at rushes on the bigscreen, describing what I wanted beforegoing to set. Then, at lunch, about 30 of us would meet in the theater and watch

the graded rushes together.”“Our philosophy was that the

rushes grading was almost the first passof the DI, so these studio screeningsgave everyone an idea of what the final

would look like,” adds Doyle. “Anotherimportant function was that we could

give Eduardo feedback about the neg. We weren’t printing dailies, so we’d look at the proposed grade and then switch itoff so Eduardo could see what washappening with his exposure and light-ing. Then we’d go back to the grade andmake any decisions required before it

was sent to editorial. If it was a green-screen shot, we would look at it with thegrade applied but actually deliver it to

visual effects with the grade off.”

In order to maintain consistency across the long shoot and the multipleunits, Doyle devised a grading databaseso that Serra could call up color refer-ences from any shot on any day. He alsoset up the facility to print calibratedframe grabs on A3 photographic paper

so that the grade could be assessed onset. “The printouts allowed a mucheasier handover from first to secondunit,” says Doyle. “They were also usefulfor being able to go back to sets, and forthe art department to refine the setdecoration based on how it was beingread by the neg and the grade. You justhave to be careful that you don’t startchasing the grade on set, rather than thegrade following what’s on the neg. With

Top: A-cameraoperator MikeProudfoot lines

up a shot ofRadcliffe andWatson in thetent set. Bottom:In this Part 1

frame, the heroictrio lands in aLondon café, anurban settingthat marks avisual departurefrom the rest ofthe movie.

7/29/2019 AC aug 2011


the oil lamps to lift the back of the tent.It was almost always a real flame in thelamps themselves.”

The practicals were oil lanternsbecause there is no electricity in Potter’smagical world, so lighting these sectionsof the story could sometimes be like

working on a period film. Serra notes,“I’ve done a lot of period lighting in my career, on Girl With a Pearl Earring [ AC

Jan. ’04] and Wings of the Dove [ AC June

’98], as well as earlier films in France andPortugal, so I’ve been working withflame-based sources for a long time.”

The result was exactly what Yatesdesired. “The tent scenes were beautiful,as was the lighting at Grimmauld Place,another location where Harry,Hermione and Ron hide out,” says thedirector. “I think Eduardo’s real gift isthat he can light a scene incredibly natu-ralistically and believably, and yet it canstill have this wonderful, painterly qual-

ity to it.”For scenes that take place in the

non-magical world of Muggles (i.e.,humans), which does have electricity, amore contemporary approach could betaken. At a moment of extreme dangerin Part 1, Harry and his friends magi-cally transport themselves to centralLondon and take refuge in a dingy café,

which provided Serra with an opportu-nity to utilize more gritty, urban lighting.


◗ Darkest Arts

Eduardo it worked very well, becausehe’s so disciplined with his lighting.”

On occasion Serra had to be flex-ible with the simple, natural lightingstyle for which he is renowned. “I don’t

like using backlight, but if you’re doing anight scene with 1,000 people and a lotof visual effects, then you might nothave a choice,” he says. For the night-time courtyard scene he’s describing,

which takes place during the battle forHogwarts in Part 2 , the unavoidablebacklight came from two full Wendy Lights on 150'cranes. These werecombined with four soft sources over-head, each comprising 18 space lights in

a box with the sides blacked off and a30'x10'silk positioned underneath.

It was the more intimate scenesthat gave Serra a chance to express thenatural look Yates had envisaged.

Examples of this include interiors of themagic tent in which Harry, Hermioneand Ron live while on the run from dark forces in Part 1. “Most of the tent scenes

were done with practicals, although Ihad some soft light coming down fromabove the set as well,” says Serra. “I triedto keep the lighting to a minimum.”

Finch adds, “We hung Chinaballs wherever we could, just above thepracticals, and put peanut bulbs behind

Top: In aframe grab from

Part 1, theSnatchers

prepare to nabHarry and his

friends and turnthem over to

Lord Voldemort.Bottom: The

crew capturesRadcliffe on

the run inthe woods.

7/29/2019 AC aug 2011


“The café scene was refreshing,” he says.“I was one of the first cinematographersto work with fluorescents, a long timeago, and I still use them when I get thechance, so that scene was fun.” Finchadds, “We built fluorescents into thatset, and even the fill was fluorescent — it

was all Kino Flo tubes. It was pretty simple and felt a bit more like workingon a normal film.”

A recurrent challenge for Serra

was the tendency toward lenses of shorter focal lengths, a decision moti-

vated by cavernous sets and large-scaleaction. “Often we were on a 16mm or18mm, so positioning the lights could bea challenge,” he says. “With a 16mmlens in a forest, it gets quite tricky. Wehad to work on some trees in the gradebecause it was impossible to get thelevels consistent. The DI was the only

way.” Whereas wider lenses were the

norm in Part 2, Yates notes, “ForPart 1,I suggested that we sometimes go for amore compressed feel with a 50mm or a65mm because it was different from

what we’d done before and felt right forthe story.”

Close-up shots of Harry contem-plating his situation in the quiet of theforest were an instance when longerlenses seemed appropriate. Yatesdescribes this scene as “a moment where

we wanted to bring the central characterinto real relief. It was all about being inhis head and the intimacy that lensbrings, the way it abstracted the forestbehind him. We also used long lenses

for a chase through the woods with theSnatchers [bounty hunters]. It’s a well-trodden path for filmmakers, the frac-tured dynamic that long lenses can give

you when you’re rapidly cutting betweenmultiple handheld and fast-movingshots. Eduardo was very willing toaccept that the story had to dictate thetools we used at any particularmoment.”

Even less kinetic sequences were

frequently shot with two cameras. “Weoften had two Arricams set up on thesame angle, with different lenses,” Serraexplains. “I prefer to avoid havingcameras at different angles because it

has a big impact on the lighting, andalways, at some point, the angles won’tbe correct.”

However, Serra never feltrestricted in how he could use thecamera, even with the extensive visual-effects work. “Aside from all the green-screens, we shot normally,” he says.“There were no limitations on thecamerawork. In fact, we were so freethat it was quite hard to find Tim

Top: Steadicamoperator AlfTramontincaptures a closeshot of Radcliffefor Part 1. Bottom:

Director DavidYates (pointing atright) preps a shotfor Part 2 ascamera operatorsTramontin (withSteadicam),Proudfoot (center,placing camera onground) and B-camera operatorDavid Morgan (inbackground, witheye to camera) getready to film.


7/29/2019 AC aug 2011


Burke, our senior visual-effects supervi-sor, on the set. We generally just saw each other at the dailies!”

In the digital grade, the filmmak-

ers worked to convey a sense of journey, which meant developing multiple looksrather than just applying one look throughout. For a memory sequence in

Part 2, Yates was keen to communicatethe impression of past events withoutresorting to familiar techniques.“Flashbacks have been done ad infini-tum in the movies, and there are all sortsof clichés,” says Yates. “Peter is incredi-

bly proficient technically, but he can alsograde emotionally, and we ended up with a very beautiful look that actually feels nostalgic without pushing all thosefamiliar buttons. Peter can make youfeel things without using the traditionalpalette — none of his choices come off the shelf.”

Doyle’s great challenge was tocreate a feeling of darkness without theimage actually getting too dark.“It wasalmost like an intellectual exercise of figuring out how to get darkness on thescreen that you can see,” he says. “I builta few tone-mapping and micro-contrasttools into the grading pipeline to putdetail back just in the black areas. In theprocess, I researched what solutions hadbeen found in other image-reproduc-

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7/29/2019 AC aug 2011


tion industries. In the late Seventies andearly Eighties, when the print industry

was at its zenith, they had some fantas-tically elegant techniques to get aroundthe same problem. They would build acontrast map by making a black-and-

white negative of the image, inverting itand using that to control the blacks. Youcan reproduce that digitally in about fiveminutes, which is what we did. Weslowly built up an array of tools that

were focused around working in thedark areas of the image.”

This work was further compli-cated by Warner Bros.’ decision toconvert Part 2 to 3-D in post to facili-tate a simultaneous 3-D and 2-Drelease. Yates opted for “a very conserv-ative approach” to the stereoscopicconversion and took pains to prevent itfrom breaking the audience’s involve-ment in the story. Serra points out,“Because the 3-D work was done lateron, we didn’t pay much attention to it onset. In fact, we didn’t even know it was

going to happen until near the end [of the shoot].”

Given that 3-D presentations areby nature darker than 2-D, Doyle foundthat he had to develop two differentgrades. He notes, “I’m still not

convinced by 3-D grading packages, soI graded the film in 2-D and then builta color-conversion model so that thegrade would work in 3-D. In simpleterms, I made it darker for 2-D ratherthan brighter for 3-D, which goesagainst the prevailing industry methodat the moment. It meant operating in a

YUV color space as opposed to RGB;this allowed me to work on the lumi-nance and density mapping when we

went from 2-D at 16 foot-lamberts into3-D at 3.5 foot-lamberts.”

Having just wrapped the postprocess, Serra reflects on the unique,two-year Potter experience: “SometimesI would look around on set at all thesethousands of people and wonder, ‘How did I come to be here?’ It was a great

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AnAll-American

H

An All-American

H

Shelly Johnson, ASCbrings a super soldierto the big screen with

Captain America:The First Avenger .

By Iain Stasukevich

•|•

7/29/2019 AC aug 2011



I

t’s the height of World War II, andthe U.S. Army is recruiting soldiers inthe fight against the Axis forces, evenas a greater threat looms on the hori-

zon in the form of Hydra, a shadowy organization led by Hitler’s villainoushead of advanced weaponry, JohannSchmidt/Red Skull (Hugo Weaving).Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) has themakings of a good soldier — he’s loyal,honest and brave — but he is also a 98-pound weakling who is summarily rejected by every recruitment office.Finally, he volunteers for ProjectRebirth, a top-secret military program

designed to create “super soldiers.”Rogers emerges as a taller, stronger,nearly perfect being: Capt. America.

Director of photography Shelly Johnson, ASC says he eagerly signed onto Captain America: The First Avenger because it offered a chance to reteam

with director Joe Johnston, a favoritecollaborator, and because “the story offered a lot of cinematic appeal.”

Part of that appeal, he continues,lay in the parallels between Captain

America and another action-adventurefilm set in the same period,Raiders of the Lost Ark , for which Johnston was the

visual-effects art director at IndustrialLight & Magic. “One of the things thetwo films have in common is that they take you on a long journey, and you’rerarely in the same place twice,” the cine-matographer observes. “It has a cumula-tive effect and really helps immerse theaudience in that world.” U

n i t p h o t o g r a p h y b y J a y M a i d m e n t . P h o

t o s , f r a m e g r a b s a n d c o n c e p t a r t c o u r t e s y o f P a r a m o u n t P i c t u r e s a n d M a r v e l E n t e r t a i n m e n t .

L i g h t i n g d i a g r a m c o u r t e s y o f S h e l l y J o h n

s o n .

➣

Opposite: Amilitaryexperimenttransforms thediminutive SteveRogers (ChrisEvans) into CaptAmerica, a secret

weapon of theAllied forces, inCaptain AmericaThe First AvengeThis page: Naziofficer JohannSchmidt (HugoWeaving), a.k.a.Red Skull, shownhere in a framegrab (top) andtwo unit stills,seeks the CosmicCube, whosemysterious powehe wants to

harness for theNazis.

7/29/2019 AC aug 2011



◗ An All-American Hero

All told, Captain America wasfilmed on more than 115 sets and loca-tions. Principal photography took placein the United Kingdom, with variouslocations standing in for sites in theUnited States, Iceland and Europe. Stage

work was shot at Shepperton Studios. The schedule was so packed that

as many as seven sets were up and

running at any time, according to Johnson. “This shoot was like a giantfreight train: when it leaves the station,there’s a lot of momentum behind it!” hesays.

Seven months before the shootcommenced, Johnston and productiondesigner Rick Heinrichs began sketch-ing out every scene in great detail.“Preparation is the one ingredient youcan’t have too much of,” says the direc-

tor. “I think of prep as having twophases. In the first, anything is possible.In the second, which I call ‘the wake-upcall,’ you have to compromise, to rein-terpret your ideal version of the film assomething you can actually put on thescreen.”

While the director concentratedon building his world, Johnson concen-

trated on giving it light. The cine-matographer starts every production by making a reference book containingcamera lists, lighting lists, orders, inven-tories, diagrams, photos and productionart. The book is a constant presence onset, and it’s an evolving record, with

Johnson updating it almost daily.“On these types of films, a large

part of the cinematographer’s job isbeing organized,” he notes. “It’s the best

way to manage the technical side of the job, and you can then be free to focus onthe creative side of things.”

Johnson and Johnston’s collabora-tions have been diverse — Jurassic Park

III , Hidalgo ( AC April ’04) and The

Wolfman ( AC Feb. ’10) are among them— but the director maintains that his visual style has a certain consistency. “Ilove letting the camera help tell thestory, but I hate fatuous camera moves,”he says. “In terms of my visual approach,most critics would probably consider mea traditionalist, or even, God forbid, old-fashioned. The camera is more mobile inCaptain America than in any film I’vemade, and the shots are designed tocontinuously reveal new information, toshift focus from one character toanother, to change dramatic emphasis.”

Johnson maintained maximumflexibility by keeping the A camera on a30' Technocrane (operated by Gary andPaul Hymns) as often as possible, but“we used it more as a moving platformor a dolly, not as a crane,” he notes. “Joe

would watch a scene play out and ask for changes while we were rolling, and

we could make adjustments on the fly,sometimes without even cutting.”

Shooting digitally was another

stage in Johnston’s metamorphosis. Thedirector became fascinated with digitalcinema after seeing George Lucas’ Star Wars prequels, but Captain America marked his first opportunity to exploreit. “When Joe started talking to meabout Captain America , [the format]

wasn’t even a question,” says Johnson.“He asked me to shoot it, and I don’tthink he even took a breath beforeadding, ‘And we’re shooting digital.’”

“I find the flexibility of digital

technology really liberating,” says thedirector. “The time the camera is rollingis less precious, so I don’t have to cut inorder to discuss changes with the actors.But the real advantage is in post, whereI can recompose or enlarge shots with-out degrading the image. Sometimes

we’ll reframe a shot to look like it’s fromanother camera. We can even makeclose-ups out of two-shots or three-shots if we have to.”

Top: Dr. Erskine(Stanley Tucci)

prepares toadminister the

experimentaltreatment to

Rogers. Bottom:Director of

photographyShelly Johnson,

ASC adjusts asource forthe scene.

7/29/2019 AC aug 2011


7/29/2019 AC aug 2011



while viewing the monitor to achievethe cool blue he desired, the fixtures onset actually looked green.

“The camera was either addingred to our desired color or not seeing alot of this green,” he surmises. “Thecolor-temperature meters we use aremade to read fluorescents, gas arcs andtungsten lamps, and all those lightsoccupy very specific areas of the visiblecolor spectrum. LED light occupiesenormous areas of the color spectrum,including some not visible to the eye but

visible on film.”Despite requiring some extra

time at the monitor, the LEDs workedout so well that the filmmakers usedthem to achieve the effect of theCosmic Cube, a mystical energy sourcesought after by Red Skull. The cube wasdesigned as an intense, blue light source,small and self-contained, so that

Weaving could walk around with it without being tethered or constrained. Johnson and his gaffer, John “Biggles”Higgins, decided on high-output blueLEDs, and Higgins’ crew built a five-

sided cube with about 64 bare LEDs oneach side. Inside the cube were two 4.8-

volt battery packs and a wireless DMX dimmer module to control the sources.

“It was blindingly bright and justpunched through the warmer tones,”says Johnson. He explains that the film’sheroes and villains are delineated in partby color: the heroes’ world is rendered in

warm colors, whereas the villains’ envi-ronments feature blue and green tones.


Top: A framegrab of the

Modern MarvelsPavilion exterior.

Middle andbottom:

Stark Industries,led by HowardStark (Dominic

Cooper), occupiesthe pavilion’s

main stage.

7/29/2019 AC aug 2011



“When the Allies gain possession of samples of the cube technology, thesignature blue source has an other-

worldly presence in their warm environ-ment,” says Johnson.

Captain America ’s period settingkeeps the action rooted in reality, allowingthe story to go to impossible places andstill feel real. One particularly impossibleplace that had to feel real is the frozen

wasteland where modern-day explorersdiscover Rogers encased in a block of ice.“It was a scene that could never have beenachieved in reality,” says Johnson.

“There’s an intense blizzard. It’s a day exterior with a midnight sun sitting onthe horizon. All the warm sky colors hadto pierce the cool ice colors. It’s an imageconstructed of primary elements, and if any part of the execution had failed, it

would have been unsuccessful.” The team briefly considered shoot-

ing the scene on location in Iceland, butthey soon determined that Shepperton’sStage H was a more viable option. Only ahandful of elements were required to

create the necessary illusion: skylight,horizon light, and a sun projected onto amuslin cyclorama behind a forced-perspective glacial landscape.

“We rigged 15 4K Fresnels over-head to bounce up into 12-by-20-footUltraBounces and go through Rosco 251Quarter White diffusion, which gave usa soft, ambient toplight,” explains

Johnson. “For the sun ball, we used aVari-Lite 3000 spot on a dolly track

This frame grashows theArctic sunsetscene thatJohnson and hcrew createdonstage atSheppertonStudios. Belowis Johnson’slightingdiagram for thscene.

7/29/2019 AC aug 2011



behind the cyc, and we moved the lightas we tracked with our characters so itlooked like a believable sun in thedistance.” Higgins adds, “We put upabout a hundred 5K cyc strips circlingmore than half the set, which was about

250 feet by 150 feet. We were at about 25percent on the dimmer, and that gave usa nice, red glow around the setting sun.

The snow and smoke really sold it.” Another set created on Stage H

comprised several elements of theModern Marvels Pavilion, where Stark shows off his latest technologies. Only theforeground elements were built: the mainfloor, six exhibit platforms, monorailpylons (the CG train was added later) andthe main stage. A greenscreen cyc fully surrounded the set to facilitate views of the outside, all CGI added in post.

Johnson’s crew rigged hundreds of lights in the pavilion, most of them KinoFlo Image 80s that were illuminating the360-degree greenscreen. Six of the 4K HMI bounces created for the frozen-

wasteland set provided cool ambientlight, which was punctuated by Vari-Lites spotlighting exhibits on the mainfloor. Battens of low-profile 55-wattMR-16s, “Biggles Strips,” were placedalong the base of the main stage to act as

footlights.“The main stage is the jewel of this

whole set, so we concentrated onsurrounding it with a more refined light-ing style,” says Johnson. Above therevolving platform were three spinningVari-Lite 3000 spots and a 12' light box

with a space light wired to 2-3-5 behindLight Grid and 1⁄2 CTB. Sixteen Par 36spots were installed in the upper soffitthat ringed the stage.

“When I’m working with a large

set or complicated lighting task, I try tosimplify it down to its basic elements sothat every light is serving a singlepurpose,” says Johnson. One of his goals

with this set, he continues, was to faith-fully translate Heinrichs’ concept art.“The pavilion has a spectacular look, andRick designed a lot of the exhibits,” hesays. “There is also an incredibly stylizedCG set that extends into the background.Our lighting doesn’t interact with that,


Top: Rogers

begins to shapeCapt. America’s

signature shield.Below: The super

soldier and hisshield go into

battle in this shotof some second-

unit action, whichwas captured by

2nd-unit director/cinematographerJonathan Taylor,

ASC. Most ofCaptain America

was shot digitally,

but many fire andexplosion scenes

were shot on film.“The problem

withphotographing

pyrotechnics[digitally] is thatyou get clipping

in the flamesand explosions,”

notes Taylor.

7/29/2019 AC aug 2011


but it carries out the same design idea.”One of the production’s largest

locations was an old Royal Navy Propellant factory in Caerwent, South

Wales, which was transformed intoHydra’s headquarters in Germany.

Rogers steals into the facility at night torescue his sidekick, Bucky (SebastianStan), who has been captured by Hydra.Rogers and Bucky escape with the aid of some Allied POWs, but not without afight. “That was a large installation — thebuildings were about 200 feet apart —and there was an enormous amount of light around it,” says Johnson. “It was atotally artificial night exterior. I mixedcolor temperatures — uncorrectedmercury-vapor, daylight and tungstenlamps.”

He knew some of his sources would have to be in frame, so he had hiscrew position four scissor lifts holdingtwo SyncroLite 4K Xenon spots gelled

with 1⁄2 CTO around the location, andthen asked visual-effects supervisor Chris

Townsend to replace the lifts with CGguard towers.

It took Higgins, rigging gaffer Wayne Leach and their crew about two weeks to pre-rig the four staging areas inCaerwent. There were so many lights

spread over the area that the only way tocontrol them all was through a DMX dimmer board. Most of the action takesplace in one spot, in front of the mainHydra building, and Johnson lit the area

with Vari-Lite spots and washes, Xenonlights, roving 20K and 5K lamps, andthree crane-mounted 20'x20' softboxes

with solid sides. Inside the softboxes were2-3-5 modified space lights rigged to ascaffold arm with jubilee clips and rigidmetal bars, allowing the lights to be

angled.Higgins explains the “2-3-5”

configuration: “U.K. space lights come with six bulbs in two circuits, so we takeone bulb out. With the five left, we canturn on two or three, or all five, and thatgives us three different light levels at thesame color temperature.”

Once Rogers gains access to Hydraheadquarters and attracts Red Skull’sattention, the ensuing battle was captured

by 2nd-unit director/cinematographer Jonathan Taylor, ASC. After walkingthrough the sequence with his gaffer,Steve Costello, Taylor designed theshots. He and his crew then spent fivenights following stuntmen and extras

with dollies, Technocranes, Ultimate Arms and Steadicams, dodging explo-sions as the base went up in flames.

“The problem with photograph-ing pyrotechnics with digital cameras is

that you get clipping in the fires andexplosions,” notes Taylor. “Special-effects supervisor Gareth Wingrove

worked with me to darken the pyro by adding more cork and dust to the explo-sions, and different gas mixtures were

used to create a richer flame. My gaffer,Steve Costello, increased the exposure,allowing me to shoot at a deeper stop.”

When cameras had to be placed very close to explosions, Taylor used

7/29/2019 AC aug 2011


Arri 435s and 235s in crash housings,shooting 4-perf Super 35mm. “We alsoused a film camera, a [Panaflex]Millennium XL, to shoot fire andexplosion plates that were beyond the

dynamic-range capture capability of theGenesis,” says Johnson. He adds thatunderwater cinematographer PeteRomano, ASC used an Arri Alexa forhis portion of the action.

Another memorable second-unitsequence shows Capt. America chasinga Nazi spy through the streets of Brooklyn. (Manchester doubled for thelocation.) Film and digital were mixed,

with Taylor favoring the 435s and 235s

for the car-mounted 15' Technocraneand the quad-bike-mounted wirelessLibra head ridden by stunt rider Jean-Pierre Goy. The Libra head wasmounted to a Rise and Fall rig (designedby key grip Kenny Atherfold andCamera Revolution’s Ian Speed) thatcould take the camera from ground levelto a high angle. “Jean-Pierre is so good

with the camera on the motorcycle thathe’s actually like an operator,” Taylorremarks. “My operators, Tim Woosterand Peter Field, had to make a few adjustments, but Jean-Pierre always putthe camera in the right position.”

The chase covers about nineblocks, but Taylor only had access tothree blocks of downtown Manchester.

To complicate matters, streets could


The crew preps a night exterior on location in Caerwent, South Wales, where an old factorywas transformed into Hydra headquarters.

7/29/2019 AC aug 2011


only be blocked off at certain times of day, and there were rain delays.Fortunately, Manchester’s soft, overcastdaylight made it easy to match shotscaptured on different days, and Taylormade the most of the location by shoot-

ing the available streets from every angleand redressing store fronts. Taylor used a Canon EOS 5D

Mark II to capture the moment of impact when the Nazi spy’s taxi is hit by a truck that sends it flying into the air.He hid two 5Ds with kit lenses in smallPelican cases that each had a hole cutinto one side. The holes were sealed

with clear Lexan polycarbonate, and thecases were painted to match the detail-ing on the front bumper of the truck and the back bumper of the taxi.

Another 5D was rigged inside the taxito get the driver’s POV. As the momentof impact approached, Taylor also hadtwo Genesis cameras tracking alongsidethe taxi on a winch-drive remote railsystem (built by Jason Leinster).

“Second units really shine when they’regiven authorship over a large piece of asequence,” Johnson observes, “and

Jonathan’s work is just dazzling. Heunderstands what action is and how tomake it exciting for the camera.”

Although Johnson desaturatedthe dailies on Captain America , he saysthat once he started the final colorcorrection with colorist/ASC associateSteven J. Scott at EFilm, “I foundmyself doing almost no desaturation.On the big screen, with our colorchoices being so simplified, desaturatingthe image takes the life out of it.”

Johnston trusted Johnson’s judg-ment completely. “Shelly is an artist

with paint and brushes as well as lightsand lenses,” he says. “I don’t hesitate tohand over to him all technical andcreative responsibilities for capturing theimage, and I know he’ll deliver some-thing above and beyond what I had inmind.”

One of the most gratifying

aspects of Captain America , the cine-matographer notes, was “Joe’s ability tointegrate human moments into anaction film. Now that I’ve seen it all puttogether, I think it’s quite masterful.”●

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of the desert. Broken glass and debris litter what used to bethe ceiling of the boat’s grand interior, and rain pours throughthe splintered hull overhead. The night sky alights with light-ning, sending shadows dancing across the boat’s interior.

There’s an unsettling sense that the searchers are not alone,and their dog’s sudden barking seems to make the inkling acertainty.

From out of the darkness, director Jon Favreau calls“Cut!” The rain stops and work lights come up inside Stage27 at Universal Studios in Los Angeles. CinematographerMatthew Libatique, ASC joins Favreau at video village,

where the two discuss whether to go again or move on to thenext setup in Cowboys & Aliens. As the title suggests, theproject is a genre mash-up that pits cowboys in the American

West against an alien invasion force.


The year is 1870. A band of frontiersmen has set out fromthe town of Absolution in search of family and friends

who were abducted by an unknown enemy in an explo-sive show of force. The men’s search has brought them to

an inexplicable site: an upside-down riverboat in the middle

Once

Upon a TimeintheWest

Once

Upon a TimeintheWestMatthew Libatique, ASC blazes a creative trail for the sci-fi Western

Cowboys & Aliens .

By Jon D. Witmer

•|•

7/29/2019 AC aug 2011



The production is nearing theend of its 75 shooting days when AC

visits the set, and Libatique acknowl-edges that the experience has been fardifferent from his last feature, Darren

Aronofsky’s Black Swan ( AC Dec. ’10), which earned the cinematographer ASC and Oscar nominations. “I get re-energized when I go from a smallproject to a big project, or big to small,or from features to commercials,” hesays. “If it was a different director,maybe it would have been a littlecrazier, but Jon’s like family.

“I was never one to want to do a Western,” continues Libatique. “In fact, when Jon first told me about this

movie, it sounded kind of ridiculous tome. But after two movies and countlessconversations, I trust him. He said, ‘It’sgood,’ and I thought, ‘Okay. I trust Jon.’

“I did embrace [the Westerngenre] as soon as I got into it,” hecontinues. “I liked the references, the

John Ford films that we watched, and Igot into the pace of a Western. I wasinspired by The Proposition [ AC May ’06] because it’s patient, and a contem- U

n i t p

h o t o g r a p

h y

b y

Z a d e

R o s e n t h a l , S M

P S P

, c o u r t e s y o

f U n

i v e r s a l P i c t u r e s .

A d d i t i o n a l p

h o t o s p r o v i d e d

b y

M i c h a e l

B a u m a n .

Opposite: Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) takes aim at alien invaders in Cowboys & Aliens. This page, topCol. Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) and his men ride to the town of Absolution in search of

Lonergan. Bottom: Cinematographer Matthew Libatique, ASC (at camera) and director Jon Favreau(right) find their frame on location in New Mexico.

7/29/2019 AC aug 2011



porary film with patience is a very rarething.

“We wanted to be as honest withthe Western as possible, and the chal-lenge was how to mesh that withscience fiction. We looked at Alien [ AC

August ’79], and we were taken by how,structurally, it resembles a thriller. Thequestion became, ‘How do we createthe tension within the Western to grad-

uate into the science-fiction thriller?’ That was terrifying, but ultimately, as acinematographer, it’s not my position to

worry about the story’s structure. I justhave to worry about the visual languageof it all.”

As preproduction got underway,the possibility of shooting 3-D arose.Libatique recounts, “I did the best Icould to absorb as much [3-D] infor-

mation as possible, and we tested forthree days with the Pace system. Thetests were very telling; they lookedstunning, but it terrified me how bigand cumbersome everything was. Wehad so many cables we had to dig

trenches so the horses wouldn’t trip.“When we showed the tests toDreamWorks and Universal, they wereunsure about it,” he continues. “Jonasked me what I thought, and I just hadan instinct it wasn’t going to be good.Cinematography is about action andreaction, and I didn’t think [shooting3-D] in the middle of New Mexico wasgoing to be conducive to any type of momentum.”

Once 3-D was off the table,Libatique quickly shifted gears. “Out of 10 weeks of prep, we spent seven prep-ping for 3-D,” he says. “Those last three

weeks were a whirlwind, but we had anamazing team, including [productiondesigner] Scott Chambliss and[costume designer] Mary Zophres. Allthe elements that didn’t have anythingto do with 3-D were in place. But it washard on the crew — we’d squandered

valuable mental energy trying to figureout how 3-D was going to work.”

The filmmakers ultimately

decided to shoot anamorphic 35mm.“Anamorphic is the language of theclassic Western, and it was a creative,aesthetic and technical draw for me,”says Libatique.

The production carried PanaflexMillennium and Millennium XLcamera bodies from PanavisionHollywood. “I’ve had a long relation-ship with Panavision Hollywood, and Ireally wanted to use the G-Series[anamorphic lenses],” says Libatique.

“We used them in combination withthe C-Series. My first AC, Mark Santoni, literally walked through thelens room and built the package lens by lens.”

Within the range of primes,Libatique gravitated toward the 50mmand 75mm. “We would go up to100mm from time to time, but rarely did we go wider than 50mm. We had acollection of Primo zooms as well, and

◗ Once Upon a Time in theWest

Top: Libatique enthuses that working with horses was “the best part of the job,” but maintaininga consistent look in the face of ever-changing weather conditions was “the biggest challenge of mycareer in terms of matching.” Bottom: To help maintain consistency on the Absolution set, the crew

suspended silks from construction cranes.

7/29/2019 AC aug 2011



our third camera would typically be onthe retrofitted 11:1 [48-550mm] Primozoom so it could get an extra piece hereor there.”

Libatique saw in Cowboys & Aliens ’ opening scene the opportunity to reference the opening shot of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly , in which a

wide landscape shot abruptly shifts to aclose-up as an actor steps into frame. InCowboys , Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig)

wakes up in the desert, his memory gone and a bizarre contraption attachedto his wrist. Libatique explains, “I putthe camera on sticks, framed up terrain,

and just slowly panned until Danielpopped up into frame. There’s no push-in with a crane, no helicopter, no boomup or down. I wanted it to be simple,and it works.

“I wanted to keep it simple forthe Western part of the film,” Libatiquecontinues. “We tried hard to designcoverage that was akin to John Ford’sand keep it patient for the first half of the film before ramping up for the thirdact.”

For sets that required it,Libatique occasionally utilized aSteadicam (operated by A-cameraoperator Peter Rosenfeld), and theproduction also carried a 32'Chapman/Leonard Hydrascope tele-scoping crane. “In prep, [key grip] TanaDubbe researched the best remoteheads for 3-D work and came up withthe Chapman G-3 [gyrostabilizedhead, which mounts on the

Hydrascope],” he explains. “We’dalready booked it by the time wedecided against shooting 3-D, so weput it to use, and it was fantastic. My dolly grip, John Mang, who’s phenom-enal at camera movement, swore by it.”

Once Lonergan finds his way to Absolution, Cowboys becomes an

ensemble piece, and to accommodatecoverage of multiple actors, the film-makers regularly rolled two or threecameras simultaneously. Libatiquenotes, “I find value in using multiplecameras with directors who like cover-age. It’s a compromise, but I’d rather getas much coverage as possible from thesame setup than shoot the same sceneover and over again.”

It had another upside, he adds. “I

was fortunate to have a collection of operators that represented me aestheti-cally. Peter Rosenfeld is super-precise,great with Steadicam and fantastic atmanaging the situation; Chris Moseley is probably more like me framing-wise,and a great complement to Pete; andmy wife, Magela Crosignani, brought

art to her choices.”Libatique also compliments the

production’s “amazing group of focuspullers,” including Santoni and B-camera 1st AC Matt Stenerson.

For shots of horses, Libatiquepreferred simple pans, but on therare occasion the camera traveled

with the horses, he employedChapman’s Maverick mobile-arm vehi-cle. “Learning to deal with the horses

Left: Damagecaused by analien craftsparks arecollection inLonergan of hiown abduction

Below: Themysterious Ella(Olivia Wilde)

joins Lonerganin his quest toremember whohe is and helprescuetownsfolkabducted by thextraterrestria

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W e had a lot of big guns on this one,including Ron Howard and

Steven Spielberg as producers. In my first meeting with Spielberg, he showedme a restored print of The Searchers . Hehas tremendous affection for John Fordand the classic Western, and, of course,he has tremendous facility withanything alien. Like The Searchers ,there’s a picaresque aspect to Cowboys &

Aliens . It’s a road film in many regards. To transition from the Western

into the alien adventure, we had to finda visual language that connected thetwo. Matty Libatique and I looked atand discussed movies like Alien andClose Encounters of the Third Kind , wherethe filmmakers had to use darkness andthe visual language of the thriller toslowly reveal the aliens, and then buildto a crescendo where you finally seeeverything. Structurally, Westerns also

tend to build to a crescendo, with the biggunfight at the end.

Part of what blends the “cowboy”and “alien” genres is the anamorphicformat. Thinking of Close Encounters and classic Westerns, we wanted the feelof those anamorphic lenses. This is thefirst time I’ve worked with anamorphic,and it may be the last time I can. Thechapter might be closing on analog 2-D

films, and we saw this as an opportunity to make something we might not beable to do again on this scale.

In many ways, the previs for thisfilm was more important than on the

Iron Man films. We had real cowboysand real horses interacting with digitalaliens, and it was a lot to keep track of.I worked with previs director DanielGregoire and his company, Halon

Entertainment, for previs and postvis, which is incredibly important for edit-ing. They start drawing the elementsinto the plates so when you look at thefilm in the editing room, you’re watch-ing something that resembles thefinished product.

Legacy Effects created alienpuppets we could film on set. Especially in the earlier sequences, where you’retrying to convince the audience tobelieve what they’re seeing for the first

time, it’s nice to have something with atactile aspect. But even later in the film,

we sneaked in some practical pieces. Asthe scale gets cranked up and the aliensare seen in daylight and get moreathletic, ILM steps in, taking their cuesfrom what Legacy created. The trick isto constantly switch what the audienceis looking at, because there are aspects of both digital and physical elements that

•|• A Maturing Collaboration •|•

won’t hold up under scrutiny. If youdon’t show the audience either one fortoo long, they can enjoy the film with-out questioning the reality.

On Iron Man we often usedmultiple cameras because it was very improvisational, but on this film there

wasn’t much variation between takes —cowboys don’t really riff verbally. But wehad a lot of different sets built during

production and we were in a lot of different cities, so we often didn’t havethe time for a proper scout, and usingmultiple cameras allowed Matty thefreedom to take the time at the start of the day to find the lighting scheme for aspecific space and still make our day.

Matty and I both come fromindependent film, and we’re able tobring a certain amount of that indepen-dent inspiration to populist entertain-ment. Matty was nominated for an

Oscar for Black Swan, which he shot onSuper 16 with such a muted palette.

That’s great for me, because if he runsup the lighting budget, I can say, “Wedon’t need all this gear. Just shoot it likeBlack Swan! You got nominated for thatone!”

— Jon Favreau

Left: Lonergan and Dolarhyde form an uneasy alliance in their mutual fight against the aliens. Right: Cowboys & Aliens marks the

third collaboration between Favreau and Libatique. “Over the course of the three films we’ve made together, Matty and I have ma turedas filmmakers,” says Favreau. “It’s been an enjoyable experience for both of us.”

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and their temperaments was the bestpart of the job,” he says. “HarrisonFord’s horse, in particular, was like agrumpy person. One day Harrisoncame off his horse and said, ‘Matty,

what lens are you on?’ I told him it was

a 50mm, and he said, ‘Will you put onthe 75mm and back up? You’re spook-ing my horse!’”

Before the filmmakers beganshooting onstage at Universal, they spent 60 shooting days in multiplelocations in New Mexico, includingBonanza Creek, which provided thesetting for Absolution. “We wanted thetown to feel as authentic as possible atnight,” says Libatique. “ScottChambliss and I spent a lot of timediscussing the practicals, the motiva-tion of the light, how dark we would goand the patina of the wood.”

“That was a big job for thefixtures team,” notes Michael Bauman,Libatique’s longtime gaffer. “All thebuildings had hurricane lamps withsmall bi-pin [25-, 50- or 100-watt]globes, and all those sources were tiedinto a dimmer, which allowed us to dimthe globes to get the color temperatureinto the ballpark of flame and easily create flicker effects.”

The other challenge for nightexteriors was to add “an element of separation” without the look of “over-done backlight,” says Libatique. New Mexico’s notorious winds preventedthe crew from using balloon lights tocreate ambience for separation, “so weended up using Condors with T8

Technologies Luma Panels on them,”says Bauman. “The Lumas are a big,fluorescent source with a throw of acouple hundred feet. It was a nice, even

backlight that didn’t create big, hardshadows.”

Production on Cowboys began inthe Bonanza Creek location, and thefirst sequence the filmmakers tackled

was a nighttime attack by small aliencraft called “speeders.” The speedersstrafe the town with laser blasts andsnatch up townspeople with long,

whip-like tethers in a dynamicsequence that was largely accomplished

Top: SheriffTaggart (Keith

Carradine, indoorway)interruptsLonergan’s driin Absolution’ssaloon. MiddleTwo camerascapture theaction. BottomOverhead softboxes with 250and 500-wattglobes wired ta dimmer boarhelp bolster thambience insid

the saloon.

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in-camera. Figuring out how to accom-plish the scene practically, however,proved a significant challenge.

To help determine which fixturescould best represent the speeders,Bauman approached Burbank-based

Chaos Visual Productions. “They’realways the dudes to call when you needsomething visually unique,” saysBauman. “They were working with

lasers from a company calledLightwave International [near]Pittsburgh. It’s a robust product, andthe output is pretty insane. We set up atest onstage at Universal, and we knew there was something there — the

patterns from the lasers were really interesting, and they had a differentquality than a moving light.”

The filmmakers ultimately chose

a few configurations that mixed andmatched Lightwave’s 12-, 21- and 26-

watt lasers, Clay Paky Alpha Beam1500 moving fixtures (rented fromChaos) and, “for pure firepower,” saysBauman, PRG Bad Boy moving

fixtures. The question then became how to rig the units and fly them over a1,500' run above the town. After test-ing and deciding against a helicopter,the filmmakers turned their eyes to theSpydercam system, which is designedto fly a camera by means of a modularcable rig.

Rigging lights to the Spydercam“was definitely non-traditional,” saysBauman. “Tana Dubbe and [riggingkey grip] Charlie Gilleran met withHammer Semmes at Spydercam to talk about the capacity of the system. Hesaid we could fly about 1,400 pounds at40 mph.” The high capacity wascrucial, as the Spydercam had to be ableto fly not just the lights, but also aSubaru generator that could power thefixtures.

“The Spydercam was very measured,” says Bauman. “The lightsmoved in a straight line, which worked


Above: The aliensmake their

presence knownwith a dramatic

nighttime raid onAbsolution. Right:Lonergan uses the

alien contraptionon his wrist to

shoot down oneof the “speeders.”

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like a metronome for the whole set. Asthe rig flew in, we could cue explosions,stunts and background. And we couldpark the rig where we needed it to setup gags or make any programmingadjustments.”

To enable the crew to filmtighter shots as the Spydercam wasreset, lasers, Clay Pakys and Bad Boys

were rigged on the Luma Panel-bear-ing Condors positioned around thelocation.

“There was so much planning[for that sequence], and there had to befor safety reasons,” says Bauman. “Weevaluated everything, and the scene hasa really strong visual sense.” Pausing, headds, “We made it work, but it proba-bly took a couple years off my life.”

Between setups on Stage 27,Libatique scrolls through photos of thespeeder attack on his iPad. “I shot at

T2.8 in that scene,” he notes. “Thebacklight was 2 stops down. If thebacklight was reading an incidentbrighter than T1.4, I’d turn off globes.I just wanted separation; I didn’t wantit to be ‘backlight.’

“Certain anamorphic lensesdon’t look good at T2.8, so I aimed fora T2.8/T4,” he continues. “If I can get

to a T4, it helps the guys on the longlenses. When John Schwartzman[ASC] told me he stops down to a T4[to help focus], I said, ‘Isn’t it darker?’and he said, ‘So what?’ And he’s right!

You bring it up [at the lab].” With the speeder attack in the

can, the crew still had another majorchallenge to face: day exteriors.“Weather conditions were changingconstantly,” Libatique recalls. “It wasthe biggest challenge of my career in

terms of matching.” Fighting the sun’sdance in and out of cloud cover becameespecially problematic when it cametime to film the exterior portion of theclimactic action sequence, when thehumans draw the proverbial line in thesand in a final showdown against thealien invaders.

Libatique shot the scene onKodak Vision3 200T 5213. “I wasn’thappy with the RGB nature of the

Top: The effect ofthe speeders flying

overhead wascaptured in-cameraby flying Lightwavelasers and Clay PakyAlpha Beam and PRBad Boy movingfixtures on aSpydercam rig.Middle: TheSpydercam alsocarried a generatorto power the fixtureBottom: The speedelighting configuratiowas also mountedbeneath Condors toallow the crew tofilm tighter shotsas the Spydercamwas reset.

7/29/2019 AC aug 2011



contrast that I would get in a direct-sunsituation, so I pulled it a stop,” he says.“And when the clouds came in, I’dshoot it normal. It was a nightmare forthe assistants — we’d shoot 50 feet andhave to change loads.”

Libatique had switched to 5213

for day exteriors after starting produc-tion with Kodak Vision2 50D 5201. “I

was aiming for a fine-grain clarity of foliage,” he explains. “I wanted a

juniper to look like a juniper, a cactus tolook like a cactus. Jon is a literal direc-tor. He’s not impressionistic, he’s not

expressionistic, he’s literal. And I wanted to achieve fidelity [with theimage].

“5201 stuck in my head because Ithink it has a beautiful texture no otherstock has,” he continues. “But I gotfreaked out because when it would go

dark in a shot, the faces would go warm, and nothing bothers me morethan something in the shadows thatgets warm. I shot about half the film’sexteriors on 5201, and then I switchedto 5213, which I thought was moremalleable and gave me a little moresensitivity.”

Libatique noticed 5201’s ten-dency to go warm in the shadows whileenjoying the rare privilege of viewingprinted dailies. He explains, “On a

show with this kind of budget, there’sa projection trailer, and once a day I’dgo in and watch prints. That was my guide the entire time. Our lineproducer, Denis Stewart, is extremely respectful of the craft. He understood

why I printed, so it wasn’t a fight at all.“Adam Clark at Deluxe timed

our dailies,” Libatique continues. “I’veknown him since Phone Booth [ AC Nov.’02]. I asked him what my [printing]


Right: Lonergan

and Ella maneuverthrough anupside-down

riverboat found inthe middle of the

desert. Below:Constructed on

Stage 27 atUniversal Studios,

the riverboat setwas lit from

above largelywith Clay Paky

moving fixtures.

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lights were, and if they were in the low 30s I knew I’d hit my mark.”

The cinematographer also com-municated with Clark by e-mailinghim color-corrected digital stills.“Every day I take stills, and every night

I put them in Aperture, color-timethem, write an explanation of what I’maiming for, and then e-mail them. It’sreally more for me than it is for [thelab]. It’s tedious, but I’m more in tune

with my work when I do it.”Flashbacks in Cowboys reveal

clues about Lonergan’s life before heawoke as an amnesiac in the desert. Forthose sequences, Libatique cross-processed color-reversal Kodak

Ektachrome 100D 5285. He adds, “Ididn’t do anything else to it. Usually I

would push it, pull it or bleach-bypassit [in addition to cross-processing], butI played it pretty straight because,again, Jon’s more of a literal guy.”

Libatique used Kodak Vision3500T 5219 for interiors and nightscenes. As with any self-respecting

Western, one important interior wasthe saloon, which was a part of the

Absolution set at Bonanza Creek.Libatique recalls, “I walked into thespace and thought, ‘It’s too dark todrink in here!’ There was no way they

wouldn’t have any augmenting light;something would be illuminating the

interior aside from windows.” Accordingly, as with the town’s exterior,frosted hurricane lamps were used tohide small bulbs on flicker gags. Toboost the overall light level, Bauman’steam “built overhead soft boxes with250- and 500-watt globes, and it was allon a dimmer board so we could warmup the color temperature,” says thegaffer. “It gave a soft toplight look [motivated by the set’s] chandeliers.”

To supplement candlelight andother flame effects both indoors and

out, the crew made regular use of covered wagons, diffusion-wrappedbatten strips the crew dubbed “JohnFords” in honor of their cinematicinspiration. They utilized a few differ-ent iterations, but the typical John Ford

was “about 2 feet long with six globes wired to three dimmer channels,” saysBauman. “Most of the time we put LeeFire gel on it to simulate firelight, andthat worked pretty well. If we neededmore throw, we sometimes used HPL

6-Lights; each channel is controllable,and we could run each [globe] througha flicker gag. But the John Ford wasreally our workhorse.”

The film’s titular aliens are intro-duced slowly, and it’s not until thesearchers arrive at the riverboat that oneof the creatures is finally shownonscreen. The day before AC ’s set visit,the crew had filmed that first appear-ance, utilizing a puppet created by


Above: Thetitular cowboysride against theinvading aliens

in the film’sclimactic

showdown.Right: Lonerganand Dolarhyde

run for cover.

7/29/2019 AC aug 2011


A Leading Provider of

EFFECT LIGHTING,

SYSTEM INTEGRATION,

and CUSTOM VIDEO SOLUTIONS

for the motion picture industry.

www.chaosvisual.com

Los Angeles • Nashville • London

CHAOS would like to thank

COWBOYS & ALIENS for utilizing our services.

7/29/2019 AC aug 2011


0

Legacy Effects. Libatique notes, “It wasnice to actually see a physical alieninstead of having an empty frame, andI think it works very effectively, espe-cially in this night scene.”

The alien is revealed in flashes of lightning provided by LuminysSystems 40K and 70K LightningStrikes units, which Bauman operatedmanually while seated near Favreau in

video village. In addition to theLightning Strikes, “we had [Kino Flo]Image 80s for an ambient source, and

we had a lot of Clay Paky moversbroken up with gobos,” says the gaffer.“Everything was flown from the ceiling

in that set because there was suchlimited access.” When another light was needed,

he continues, “we’d throw a rope with astinger down from the perms, attach apiece of pipe, and mount a moving light

with a wireless DMX receiver. ThenScott Barnes, our programmer, wouldstart building cues for it.”

The aliens become a major pres-ence onscreen in the film’s third act,

when humans discover their partially buried spaceship, which the extraterres-trials are using to mine gold. AC had achance to explore the ship’s subter-ranean passageways, which wereconstructed on Universal’s Stage 12.Examples of the aliens’ mining tech-nology dotted the set, and crewmem-

◗ Once Upon a Time in theWestInside the

aliens’ partiallyburied

spacecraft,Lonergan finds

the mechanismsof their

gold-miningoperation. To

create theeffect of gold

filteringupward

through tubes,the crew

utilized stripsof yellow

LiteRibbonwired to

customdimmers.

7/29/2019 AC aug 2011


bers worked on a few pieces as AC

passed by, fitting LED strips into verti-cally oriented tubes in order to create,in-camera, the sense of gold filteringupward.

Bauman later explained the

effect in greater detail: “We used smallsections of LiteGear’s yellow LiteRibbon and ran each to a customdimmer system built into the bottom of the mining machine. Then Joshua

Thatcher, our media-server program-mer, pixel-mapped the whole thing so

we could feed a video signal throughthe LiteRibbon dimmers and give thelight a flowing quality.”

AC again caught up withLibatique when he was in the midst of the digital grade at EFilm, where he

worked with colorist (and ASC associ-ate member) Steven J. Scott. “My firstpass on the DI is to get everything the

way I imagined, and then I let it mari-nate, go back to reel one, and gothrough the film again, thinking about

it from a less technical standpoint,” saysthe cinematographer.

During his first pass, he contin-ues, “I realized I should have stuck with5201 for day exteriors — I could fixeverything that bothered me about it in

the DI suite. There are some really nice5213 shots as well; that stock has amaz-ing detail in it. I use the word ‘fidelity’ alot — 5213 has kind of a thinnerfidelity, a thinner difference betweenone shade and another, whereas 5201 is

very bulbous, just texturally rich.” After making three features with

Favreau, Libatique observes, “I under-stand him better. There’s a trust. Andhe’s evolving — he has always beenstrong with performance, but he’ssavvier now at every technical level. He

won’t dictate a shot, but he’ll alwayshave an amazing idea that has anelement of drama and also an elementof comedy. Jon will always entertain

you.” ●

TECHNICAL SPECS

2.40:1

Anamorphic 35mm

Panaflex Millennium,

Millennium XL

Panavision G-Series, C-Series;Primo zooms

Kodak Vision2 50D 5201; Vision3 200T 5213, 500T 5219;Ektachrome 100D 5285

Cross-processing by DeluxeLaboratories


7/29/2019 AC aug 2011



Affordable Apps Poised to Transform PostBy Stephanie Argy

Earlier this year, Autodesk released, for the first time, a Mac-based version of Smoke, a compositing and finishing system that is arelatively low-priced cousin of the company’s high-end Flame. Thisnew version of Smoke joins a growing family of Mac-based software

that Autodesk has been rolling out, including Maya (a 3-D modeling,texturing and animation program) and Mudbox (a program thatenables artists to sculpt in 3-D).

What’s the impact of lower-priced computer-graphics applica-tions? And what does it suggest about the future for visual effectsand post facilities and the filmmakers who work with them?

Two people who have found ways to use the evolving tech-nology well are Sébastien Dostie and Mark Youngren, visual-effectssupervisors who have a background at large facilities but have nowmoved to smaller ones.

Youngren worked at Industrial Light & Magic for many years,and is now on staff at Minneapolis post house Splice, where he is a

visual-effects supervisor, post supervisor and senior Flame operator.“ILM is fantastic, but you do tend to get specialized,” says Youngren.“Everyone focuses on his specific role in the process there, and Imissed wearing many hats. At Splice, I have that opportunity again. Ifeel like I’m back in the driver’s seat of my career.”

Dostie previously held positions at companies that includedUbisoft Digital Arts, and he is now a visual-effects designer and super-visor at Boogie Studio in Montreal. He says the key to enabling smallershops to juggle work the way big facilities do is finding creative peoplewho want to band together and offer their talents under a smallerumbrella. “There will always be big facilities like Technicolor and ILM,

but I think we’ll see another business model, a new way of gatheringtalented people to make content for a show,” he observes.

Dostie notes that at a large facility, pipeline decisions have tolast for a long time, and if changes to them don’t work out, theyaffect a lot of people. But at Boogie, artists are better able to exper-iment with how things are set up, knowing that the choice will berelatively easy to undo, if necessary. “We can turn the boat way

quicker, and that’s what our clients need,” he says.Dostie says that this new generation of Autodesk tools has

facilitated that flexibility. “As we built Boogie, we started with Mayaand Smoke on Mac. They share technology, data and a uniqueproduction environment. Now it’s very convenient for small shops,because even without customizing, we can have software talk toother software.”

Boogie and Splice both have a wide range of clients. “We’retrying to open up Splice as a whole and have more baskets andmore eggs, if you will,” says Youngren, who explains that thecompany has done a few films, a few broadcast commercials, someWeb material and some episodic work.

“It’s not that the little shops are taking more and more of thepie — I think the pie is getting bigger,” he adds. Smaller houses, heexplains, not only capture work, but also generate it by tellingproducers and directors what’s possible at a lower budget, and bytailoring the work they do to particular projects.

“I heard a term the other day I really like: ‘the snowflakemodel,’ which means no two projects are alike anymore,” saysYoungren. “It’s hard to come up with a standard model. I imagine itmight have been like this when they moved from silent films totalkies. I think it might be like this as we move to a film-less andmedia-less environment.”

Post Focus

I f S l i d B i S

d i

I

Left: Josh Hartnett stars as Paddy in the feature Stuck Between Stations, which tookadvantage of the post services offered by Minneapolis-based Splice. Right: Splice’s

Mark Youngren served as the film’s visual-effects supervisor.

➣

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But changing paradigms come at acost. “What happened in desktop publish-ing and music was a big shake-up,” saysYoungren. Many of the big pillars of thoseindustries didn’t survive, but new onesarrived to take their place. Youngrenbelieves the power shifted from companiesthat had big resources to people who werethe most creative.

For artists and facilities, Dostie says,it’s critical to be well rounded. “Whetheryou’re in a big or small facility, the key iscuriosity. When you have Maya installed inyour room, and the guy in the next roomhas Smoke, it’s good for you to know what

Smoke is doing.”He encourages artists to try the 30-

day free trials of unfamiliar applications, totake part in lots of forums, and to networkwith people in the industry who are willingto share their knowledge. “Don’t stay inyour apartment and play with Maya — talkto people,” he says. “There are a lot ofpeople who can bring awesome stuff to thetable, but in the production environment,they break, and that’s very unfortunate. Inthe end, you’re always collaborating with

other people.”Youngren is hopeful about the new

generation of post artists. Although he seesstudents coming out of school who are veryspecialized — who only want to be charac-ter animators or riggers, for example — heis also starting to see people who are learn-ing a lot of tools, and who do one particu-lar thing in each tool. “They’ll learn SideEffects Houdini just to make a particleeffect, and then they’ll add that to a model

in Autodesk 3ds Max, use a renderer theylike, and put it together in Adobe AfterEffects. They’re generalists taking thecompositing tools as part of their lineup. The3-D and 2-D are coming together as ameans to an end, especially in the youngercrowd. I think that’s really exciting.”

Youngren says he feels fortunate tobe in a career where he is consistentlyexposed to new technology. “It fosters anenvironment where you want to evolve asmuch as your software does. An interestingside effect of having software that’supgraded is that you have to adapt. You’reconstantly changing and progressing.”

Free 30-day trials of the new Mac-based Autodesk tools are available athttp://usa.autodesk.com/products/free-product-trials.

Sixteen19 Celebrates FirstAnniversaryNew York-based post company

Sixteen19 recently celebrated the comple-tion of its first year in business. Co-foundedby managing partners Pete Conlin andJonathan Hoffman, the company offers DI,

editing, color-correction, mobile dailies, on-set data management and finishing solu-tions, and boasts satellite offices in Los Ange-les, New Orleans and London. The New Yorkheadquarters features 17 Avid editing suites,two color-correction theater/screeningrooms, digital dailies, file transcode/encodeand workflow management.

“We opened our doors to a set ofhigh-profile projects,” says Claire Shanley,Sixteen19’s managing director. “Our initial

clients included Black Swan , Salt , The Adjustment Bureau, Morgan Spurlock’s TheGreatest Movie Ever Sold and the hit HBOseries Treme.”

Conlin adds, “We conceivedSixteen19 around an exceptional team [thatshares] a broad sphere of technical knowl-edge across all departments. They embodya wealth of experience with feature filmworkflows and Avid systems for feature filmand broadcast. Their industry foundationsare universally rooted in internships. Each ofus has worked our way up through theranks.” Other members of the team includeEmmy-winning editor Anthony Cortese,

executive producer Ben Baker, director oftechnical services Travis Boyer and directorof technology Brandon Bussinger.

“It’s unusual for a company in ourbusiness to open its doors with no fanfarewhatsoever,” Conlin continues. “But ourprimary mandate was to create a blue-ribbon, international, service-oriented orga-nization which would attract and maintaina high-level client base. Our first year hasbeen extraordinarily gratifying. We arecurrently working on a number of projects,

and are extremely optimistic for our future.”For additional information, visit

www.sixteen19.com.

Imagineer Systems, ICO VFXStreamline 3-D ConversionImagineer Systems has partnered

with visual-effects company ICO VFX todevelop a streamlined 2-D-to-3-D conver-sion pipeline based on Mocha Pro, Imagi-neer’s 64-bit planar tracking and rotoscop-


Sébastien Dostie (right) serves as visual-effects designer and supervisor at Montreal-based Boogie Studio, whose credits includ e a series ofcommercials for kitchen-and-bath company Canac (left).

7/29/2019 AC aug 2011


ing visual-effects software.“Partnering with Imagineer Systems

on this initiative has put us at the forefrontof the booming 2-D-to-3-D conversionindustry,” says Chris Holmes, president andCEO of ICO VFX. “Imagineer’s team hashelped us tightly integrate Mocha Pro’s

technology into our stereo-conversionpipeline, and the intuitive interface hasmade it easy for us to rapidly scale our inter-national operations.”

“2-D-to-3-D conversion projects aretaking off in Hollywood and around theworld,” enthuses Ross Shain, chief market-ing officer for Imagineer Systems. “We arepleased to be working with ICO VFX, astheir experience and input on new featurerequirements will help our team improvefuture generations of Mocha Pro and ensureour products grow in the right direction forour customer base.”

ICO VFX has already leveragedMocha Pro in stereo-conversion and visual-effects pipelines for a number of majorreleases, including Harry Potter and theDeathly Hallows: Part 1 , The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and I Am Number Four .

For additional information,visit www.imagineersystems.com andwww.icovfx.com.

VES Announces New York

Section

The Visual Effects Society, whichrepresents approximately 2,500 visual-effects artists and practitioners worldwide,has announced the formation of a newsection in New York, which will focus itsshort-term goals on establishing membereducation and mentoring programs, orga-nizing and hosting creative and technicalpanels, and expanding membership in theregion.

Members participating in the NewYork Section are based in New York, NewJersey and Connecticut. New York marksthe sixth VES Section following Australia,New Zealand, London, San Francisco andVancouver. In order to qualify for officialsection status, 50 regional VES membersneed to organize and petition the VESBoard of Directors for recognition.

For additional information, visitwww.visualeffectssociety.com. ●

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Mobileviz ProvidesRolling HubBy Michael Goldman

When Idaho company Silverdraft LLC began planning asophisticated data center that might, in combination with local taxincentives, lure visual-effects-heavy productions to Boise, thecompany hired Srinidhi Varadarajan, the director of the Center ofHigh-End Computing Systems at Virginia Tech, to be the systems

architect. But after Varadarajan designed a much smaller computinginfrastructure than the team thought possible, Silverdraft decided tomake the technology mobile. The result, Mobileviz, offers massivecomputing power and sophisticated post tools that can neatly visitstages or locations.

“Once Dr. Varadarajan gave the data system a smaller foot-print, we realized it should be mobile,” explains Michael Cooper,who is in charge of business development for Silverdraft. “The ideagoes hand in glove with what filmmakers have been doing withvirtual productions, except that companies won’t have to buildthose infrastructures from the ground up. They can have us bring itto them wherever they happen to be shooting.”

Silverdraft hired Advance Systems Services to convert andbuild out a 53'-long trailer that expands in width from 8' to 16' with“pop-out” sections. Video and data integration was completed withthe help of Armadillo of Redondo Beach, Calif. Half of the trailerhouses two 200-amp generators and a control room, where thesupercomputer and all workstations, routers and other hardwaresystems live. The second half of the trailer is a functional post facil-ity capable of running up to 12 work stations, all networked withInfiniband fiber.

Varadarajan notes that Mobileviz relies on a single, sophisti-cated “brain” to crunch data from different areas of a project simul-

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.

taneously rather than requiring entirely separate systems, and it doesso in a mobile setting. He says the computing system can process upto 350 teraflops of data (350 trillion floating-point operations persecond) through 20Tb of Micron solid-state storage that is built intoa cluster of 1,536 computer cores on the truck. Plus, the networkthat connects all the trailer’s systems runs at 40 Gbps.

“This enables high-speed interconnectivity both externallyand to internal shared-storage systems,” he says. “This feature is

particularly important during data ingest on set from multiple high-resolution cameras and/or other data sources. The presence ofthishigh-speed network enables line-rate data ingest directly into ourstorage systems. Because the same high-speed network is usedinternally, it enables processing and rendering operations to run a lotfaster off the same shared storage used for ingest. Each of our twostorage systems is capable of sustained performance of two giga-bytes per second, which significantly accelerates rendering perfor-mance.”

In other words, he says, the big advantage of Mobileviz “liesin its ability to act as a one-stop shop that provides the entirepipeline, from previsualization to post rendering. The ability to inte-

grate the differing requirements of these workflow stages in a singlesystems infrastructure differentiates us from typical data centers.”

Mobileviz was recently put through its paces on a render jobfor Sony Pictures Imageworks. Silverdraft officials declined to discussthe project in detail, but Varadarajan says the studio “averaged over600 Mbps, 24-7, for three weeks straight during a production renderon Mobileviz. That kind of sustained bandwidth is nearly impossibleto achieve over the Internet to a remote rendering facility, and itwould also be prohibitively expensive. Secondly, cloud renderingwould require production assets to be transferred off site, whichpresents significant security issues. Because Mobileviz can physically

I

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travel to a customer’s office and directlyhook into his data-center networks at veryhigh speed, video assets never leave thepremises, thereby solving both data-transferand asset-security issues.”

Mobileviz’s ability to instantly previ-sualize virtual material while shooting liveactors for visual-effects sequences can alsobe useful to the production community. Toexplore these capabilities, Silverdraft putMobileviz to work on an extensive test,dubbed the Virtual Production Project. The

one-day shoot composited CG previs mate-rial created by The Third Floor (usingAutodesk Maya and MotionBuilder soft-ware) with a live performance-captureshoot run by motion-capture facility KnightVision to create avirtual battle betweenhumans and robots. The test was directedby Alex Frisch and shot by cinematographerSergei Kozlov.

Kozlov used an Arri Alexa outfittedwith Arri/Zeiss Ultra Primes, recording toCodex field recorders. Kozlov called the

truck “the spacecraft” because of its state-of-the-art tools, which include a range ofmonitors; a full Codex lab; a DVS Clipstersystem; FilmLight Baselight and Truelighttools; Autodesk’s MotionBuilder, Maya, 3dsMax, Flame and Smoke stations; MentalImages’ Mental Ray compositing stations;Chaos Group’s V-Ray and PipelineFX’s Quberendering stations; and Final Cut Pro andAvid editing stations.

Kozlov operated the camera andshot handheld, experimenting with ways to

frame subjects while accounting for sizeand perspective differences between actorsand animated robots. Simultaneously, theproduction had two live motion-capturevolumes sending motion data throughMobileviz’s central brain, which translatedthe data into virtual characters that inter-acted with the actors performing forKozlov’s camera. All environments andvirtual characters were visible to Kozlovthrough an on-board LCD monitor. He had

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to get used to a half-second delay whiletrying to match subjects with the virtualimage, but this was not difficult, he says.

Kozlov adds that his perspective asan operator enabled him to advise thevisual-effects team on how, when andwhere to place certain characters, objectsand effects for maximum impact. “Forexample, the camera was on my shoulder,and we had CG helicopters in the air, so I

would pan up into the sky and see wherethe best place would be for the helicoptersto fly into the shot,” he explains. Within afew moments, the visual-effects artistscould make the suggested changes to theCG helicopters’ positions.

“It wasn’t final-quality CG, ofcourse, but I could see the basic animationof the choppers while shooting,” saysKozlov. “Then I could whip-pan while theywere shooting missiles to the ground, and Icould show [the visual-effects unit] the best

position for the explosions.”Silverdraft officials note that various

technologies can be configured in and outof the trailer on a per-project basis. TheVirtual Production Project was shot with anArri/Codex workflow, but this could bereplaced by a Red workflow, for example, ortheBaselight could be swapped out for aLustre.

Silverdraft founder and CEO AmyGiles says the goal is to allow creativity toflourish. “Mobileviz was designed with the

artist in mind,” she says. “I really see it as aplace to bring collaborators together onset.”

Ultimately, adds Cooper, Mobilevizrepresents another step toward unitingproduction and post under a singleumbrella. “Post schedules are so condensedtoday, and filmmakers are pushing the limitsof all their tools, so having literally every-thing available on set is obviously helpful tothem,” he observes. “With Mobileviz they

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can shoot [visual-effects sequences] morelike live action, with multiple takes and [theability to make] changes instantly. That’swhat we’re trying to facilitate.”

For additional information, visitwww.silverdraft.com.

Fletcher RepresentsFotoKem NextLabFotoKem has announced that its

NextLab system is now being representedin the Midwest region by Fletcher Camera& Lenses. Built on FotoKem’s proprietaryfile-based workflow software, the mobileNextLab system brings powerful postpro-duction capabilities toproductions aroundthe globe, and serves as an extension ofFotoKem’s in-house technological advance-ments and professional services.

Housed in a mobile, rugged enclo-

sure, NextLab was developed to service theindustry’s transition to RAW and data-centric formats supported by digitalcamera systems from Arri, Red, SiliconImaging, Canon and more. The customsoftware securely stores media, archives toLTO, provides quality-control tools andoffers access to metadata, audio syncing,color management and transcoding. Next-Lab streamlines the dailies process andprovides fast delivery to editorial andfinishing.

Fletcher Camera and Lenses oper-ates offices out of Chicago and Detroit,offering productions in the Midwest regiontop-of-the-line film and digital cameras andaccessories. Four years ago, Fletcher builtits own mobile system, Cosmos, to addressthe needsof productions for on-set datamanagement and editorial services. “LikeFotoKem, Fletcher was among a very smallnumber of companies that started to buildthe solutions for what was coming withdata-centric workflows,” says ASC associ-

ate member Tom Fletcher, vice president ofFletcher Camera & Lenses. “When I sawwhere FotoKem had taken NextLab, Iimmediately knew they had built some-thing truly amazing. The NextLab workflowimproves efficiency for all types of projects— motion pictures, commercials andtelevision.”

“We have worked closely with TomFletcher over the years on a wide variety ofprojects,” says Tom Vice, vice president and

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general manager of FotoKem’s NextLab.“As an expert who has been involved withthe use of emerging and evolving cameratechnologies,he became an early leader inmobile systems supporting file-based work-flows on location … All of us at FotoKemare very excited about this collaboration,and see it as a great way to have an indus-try leader represent us in the Midwest.”

For additional information, visitwww.fotokem.com and www.fletch.com.

Arri, Tweak IntegrateHigh Dynamic Range SupportTweak Software and Arri have

announced a collaboration to integratehigh-dynamic-range color support for Arri’sAlexa digital camera into Tweak’s tools forplayback, dailies and transcoding, includingRV, Tweak’s image and sequence viewer for

visual-effects and animation artists.RV’shigh-performance toolset is built on anopen, extensible architecture, allowingusers to adapt the software to their ownpipelines and styles of working.

“The Alexa’s astonishing dynamic

range and wide color gamut make it agreat source for visual-effects plates andelements,” says Seth Rosenthal, co-founderof Tweak Software. “RV’s floating point,high-dynamic-range image pipeline, linear-light workflow and uncompromised colorhandling are a natural match for Alexaimagery in a high-end visual-effectspipeline.”

For additional information, visitwww.arri.com and www.tweaksoftware.com.

Lightcraft OffersFree Photogrammetry ToolsLightcraft Technology, a developer

of real-time visual-effects technology, ismaking its photogrammetry tools availablefree-of-charge to the company’s clients andto members of the filmmaking community.

Lightcraft created a specific set ofphotogrammetry tools for developingphotorealistic sets and digital assets for usein Previzion, the company’s real-time visual-effects system, which provides a combina-tion of high-precision camera tracking,

sophisticated rendering and visual-effects-quality keying for on-set compositing ofvirtual backgrounds and CG characters. Thesame photogrammetry tools can also beused with other 3-D graphics applications.

“Lightcraft’s photogrammetry toolsare a complete set of Maya plug-ins, scriptsand shaders that are designed to importstandard photogrammetry data, undistortprojected images, assist in the modeling ofaccurate reference geometry and then bakethe resulting projections into standardtexture maps with the appropriate models,”explains Eliot Mack, Lightcraft’s founder andPrevizion architect. “This process dramati-cally speeds up the creation of complete,portable, photorealistic 3-D models that canbe rendered in real time. Our photogram-metry tools make it possible for a singleperson to go out with a DSLR and capture

enough stills to create a photorealistic 3-Dbackground model.”

Lightcraft also recently announced anumber of new features for Previzion,including real-time visualization of multipleanimated characters and moving objectsfrom Autodesk’s MotionBuilder via Light-craft’s Prelink plug-in; 3-D drawable track-ing mattes with assignable custom matteattributes such as garbage matteing andcolor de-spill; integrated multi-systemsynchronization; stereo metadata capture

and analysis tools, including accuratecomputation of true IO and convergencedistance; encoded crane support for usewith Encodacam and Kuper interfaces;expanded rendering using CGFX shadersfor reflection, bump and normal mapping,and advanced lighting effects; improvedreal-time keying with Add/Mix mattecontrols; full support for stage and locationoptical tracking; expanded video-formatsupport; in-camera motion blur on virtualelements; dual-selectable HD outputs,

including composited image and mattechannel; and support for rendering five to10 simultaneous HD video streams as back-ground plates and textures.

For additional information, visitwww.lightcrafttech.com. ●

The Foundry BringsWeta Compositing to NukeFollowing The Foundry’s collabora-

tion with Weta Digital on the Mari 3-Dtexture-painting technology, the twocompanies have entered into an agreement

to bring to Nuke the deep-compositing tech-nology developed by Weta for Avatar .

Deep compositing allows artistsworking with CGI material to process andcomposite “deep images” containing multi-ple opacity or color samples per pixel atdifferent depths. In addition to enabling newcreative possibilities in compositing, such asvolumetric effects, the technique leads tohigher-quality imagery when integrating andfinishing CGI rendered elements. Addition-

ally, by increasing the amount of useful dataavailable in compositing, the toolset providesgreater efficiencies by reducing the amountof rendering typically required from CGI

departments. For example, the generationof holdout mattes for individual CGI objectsor characters can be performed within Nukeitself, resulting in hundreds of hours ofsavings on large-scale projects that promi-nently feature CG assets.

“Working with The Foundry to haveour tools integrated into the core of Nukeensures that the rest of the industry hasimmediate access to this technology,” saysPeter Hillman, the lead developer for thedeep-compositing workflow at Weta Digital.

“This integration, together with the collabo-rative effort between Weta Digital and otherleading [visual-effects] studios to integratedeep data into the OpenEXR format, helpsestablish a true cross-industry standard forutilizing deep data.”

Nuke 6.3 supports deep data withinthe node graph and contains a range ofdeep-compositing nodes. For more informa-tion, visit www.thefoundry.co.uk/nuke.

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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.

Internet ads are seen around the world at thesame great rate as in print, or for slightly more youcan appear both online and in print.

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

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Advertiser’s Index16x9, Inc. 82

Abel Ciine Tech 9AC 1, 75, 83Aja Video Systems, Inc. 17

Alan Gordon Enterprises 82Arri 37ASC 78Assimilate 47AZGrip 82

Backstage Equipment, Inc.6

Barger-Lite 82Bron Imaging Group - US 57Burrell Enterprises 82

Cavision Enterprises 23Chaos Visual Productions 69Chapman/Leonard Studio

Equipment Inc. 21Chemical Wedding 81Cinematography

Electronics 78Cinekinetic 82Clairmont Film & Digital 11Codex Digital Ltd., 19Convergent Design 25Cooke Optics 39Createsphere 87

Deluxe C2Denecke 83

Eastman Kodak C4EFD USA, Inc 7

Film Gear 79Filmtools 6FotoKem 13Fujifilm 27

Gemini 3D Camera 6Glidecam Industries C3

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Kino Flo 71Kobold 57

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Maine Media Workshops 77

M.M. Muhki & Sons 83Movcam Tech. Co. Ltd. 15Movie Tech AG 83Musicians Institute 56

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Slamdance 73Studio 5 de Mayo 55Super16 Inc. 83

Tessive LLC 77Thales Angenieux 5

VF Gadgets, Inc. 82Visual Products 79

Welch Integrated 85Willy’s Widgets 82www.theasc.com 4, 70, 783, 84

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Society Elects 2011-12 OfficersMichael Goi, ASC has been electedto serve a third term as president of theSociety. “I am honored to be re-elected by amembership that is filled with tremendouslytalented and accomplished artists,” saysGoi. “It is a privilege to represent an organi-zation that is committed to educating aspir-ing filmmakers, as well as advancing andprotecting our art form.”

Other officers elected for the 2011-12 term are Vice Presidents Richard P.Crudo, Owen Roizman andJohn C. FlinnIII; Treasurer Victor J. Kemper ; SecretaryFred Goodich ; and Sergeant at ArmsStephen Lighthill. John Bailey, StephenH. Burum , George Spiro Dibie , RichardEdlund, Fred Elmes , Francis Kenny ,Isidore Mankofsky, Robert Primes, KeesVan Oostrum , Haskell Wexler andVilmos Zsigmond have been elected tothe Board of Governors.

ASC Active at AcademyRichard P. Crudo, ASC has been

elected to serve a three-year term on theBoard of Governors at the Academy ofMotion Picture Arts and Sciences. He joinsSociety fellows John Bailey and CalebDeschanel in representing cinematogra-phers on the board.

In other Academy news, ASCmembers Frank B. Byers, Steven Fier-berg, Barry Markowitz and CharlesMinsky were among 178 artists and exec-utives who were recently invited to join theAcademy.

Cinematographers FrameDigital AgeASC members John Bailey,

Guillermo Navarro and Dean Semlerrecently joined ASC associate RobHummel, directors Chris Sanders and DeanDeBlois ( How to Train Your Dragon ), andcolorist Adrian Seery to discuss “Cine-matography in the Digital Age” at theAcademy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater inBeverly Hills.

Bill Kroyer of the Academy Science &Technology Council moderated the discus-sion, which included pre-recorded remarksby Wally Pfister, ASC.

Members Busy at Cine GearASC members were especially busy

at this year’s Cine Gear Expo, which wasrecently held at Paramount Studios in Holly-wood. Dion Beebe, ASC, ACS joined keygrip Don Reynolds and gaffer John Buckleyfor a Kodak-sponsored panel discussionfocusing on Green Lantern.

Kodak also presented a panel ontelevision that was moderated by AC contributor David Heuring and includedproducer/director Rob Bowman and cine-matographers Kramer Morgenthau,ASC; Christian Sebaldt, ASC ; and Ivan

Strasburg, BSC.A presentation by Robert Primes,

ASCdetailed the results of the recent SingleChip Camera Evaluation, which involved ateam of cinematographers, engineers andother imaging experts. Curtis Clark, ASCdiscussed working with Sony’s F65 digitalcamera in the Sony-sponsored panel “AGiant Leap Forward: True 4K and Beyond.”Heuring interviewed John Bailey, ASC forthe Kodak-sponsored “Inside the Mind of a

Master.” Equipped with slides, film clips andprops such as a VistaVision movement,Bailey led the audience on a tour throughthe ever-changing technologies of imageacquisition.

Kodak also sponsored the panel “Lifeis a Series of Choices, and So is Filmmak-ing,” featuring ASC members Michael Goi,M. David Mullen , Roberto Schaefer andAaron Schneider.

Bill Taylor, ASC joined ASC associ-ate Jonathan Erland in conversation withScott Dyer for the Academy presentation“The State of Solid State Lighting.”

The centerpiece of the Society’sinvolvement was the “Dialogue with ASCCinematographers,” moderated by GeorgeSpiro Dibie and featuring Russ Also-brook, Stephen Burum, James L. Carter,Richard P. Crudo, Goi, Johnny E. Jensen,Rexford Metz, Schaefer and Dante Spin-otti. “We [in the ASC] love to share infor-mation, to share our experiences,” saidDibie, encouraging the capacity audience toask questions. The consensus among the

panel was to not get distracted byconstantly changing technology. “Technol-ogy is a tool,” saidSpinotti, who urged theaudience to instead focus on culture,aesthetics and art. “You need ideas.”

“You are creating a visual language,and that language is meant to evoke anemotion in the audience, so use your eyes asthe gateway to the heart,” added Jensen.“Stay focused on what it is we actuallydo ascinematographers.”

Agreeing with Jensen, Burum urged

aspiring cinematographers to study andunderstand acting and editing. “These arethe things that give you inspiration to dowhat is required for a scene,” he said.

In closing, Dibie advised aspiringcinematographers to “learn to work with allthese people who interfere with our jobs.”Then, he offered his three keys for success inany job: “Smell good, have a good attitudeand work very hard.” ●

Clubhouse News


From left: Associate member Rob Hummel; BillKroyer; John Bailey, ASC; Adrian Seery; Chris Sanders;Guillermo Navarro, ASC; Dean Semler, ASC, ACS; and

Dean DeBlois.

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When you were a child, what film made the strongest impres-sion on you?

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962),epic stories unspooled on the large canvas of an exotic locationenhanced by spectacular photography.

Which cinematographers, past or present, do you most admire?One of the first I noticed was Conrad Hall, ASC, forhis ability to do stunning black-and-white work withan emotional impact within the constraints of a TVschedule. More recently I’ve admired the work ofASC members Roger Deakins, Rodrigo Prieto, CalebDeschanel, Vittorio Storaro and John Bailey, andChristopher Doyle, HKSC.

What sparked your interest in photography?My uncle, an economist for the Federal TradeCommission, was a serious amateur photographerwho took his 16mm Bolex all over the world. I wascaptivated by the way he was able to entertainpeople by setting up a projector in his basementtheater.

Where did you train and/or study?At age 12, I began helping out on weekends at the radio station KVIPin Redding, Calif., and later at their TV station. When I was in highschool, they hired me to shoot, develop and edit news film. In Septem-

ber 1963, I had the privilege of filming President Kennedy dedicating theWhiskeytown Dam and Reservoir. I spent a college semester at the SladeSchool of Fine Arts, University College, London, and received my MFAfrom New York University’s graduate film program.

Who were your early teachers or mentors?I learned an enormous amount from George Abbott, my journalismteacher at Shasta High School; Doug Watson, a cameraman at KVIP-TV;and Jim Vestal, an award-winning local newspaper photographer. As anundergraduate at Mackinac College, I was greatly influenced by myprofessor Jack McCabe, a Shakespearean scholar and film buff.

What are some of your key artistic influences?I look at the Dutch masters for their shadow and luminosity, and I’malways influenced by foreign travel for the distinctive types of availablelight everywhere on the earth: on the Alps, on the plains of CentralAfrica, on the sands of Egypt, against the ochre walls of Tuscan villas, onfishing boats in Vietnam, gleaming up from rivers in Laos, and illumi-nating jewel-toned saris in India.

How did you get your first break in the business?I was called in to take over Fire Down Below , which became my firstcredit on a major studio feature.

What has been your most satisfying moment on a project?The Rescue Me Season 5 premiere at Radio City Music Hall. You don’t

often get to see TV in a room like that.

Have you made any memorable blunders?We make mistakes all the time, but the important thing is to try to keepthem small and take corrective action the next time around.

What is the best professional advice you’ve everreceived?I received early encouragement from Woody Omens,ASC; and Walter Lassally, BSC taught me many crucialconcepts over the course of several projects. I alsoappreciated the opportunity to be on the set of Fat City , where Conrad Hall was executing innovativeideas like using 8K (4x2K) umbrella lights for the fightscenes. In dailies, John Huston would just put his headdown and listen, trusting Conrad to deliver their visualplan.

What recent books, films or artworks haveinspired you?

I admireThe King’s Speech, Black Swan, Biutiful , True Grit and127 Hoursfor their innovative approach to drama. I’m also deeply affected by theblend of modern and historic architecture my distant relations havecreated at our Lancashire family seat, Hoghton Tower. Running a 16th-century estate in today’s economy takes monumental effort, but the de

Hoghtons have managed to preserve the Banqueting Hall, which is linedwith 2,000 panes of Flemish glass, and drawing rooms where WilliamShakespeare worked as a tutor’s assistant.

Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like to try?I’ve always been a fan of film noir, and after getting to know one of itsmasters, John Alton, ASC, I studied his films even more intensely. I alsoenjoy filming music, and it was great fun to shoot the musical segmentsfor Rescue Me in Busby Berkeley style.

If you weren’t a cinematographer, what might you be doinginstead?

I’ve never really thought about it, because being a photographer andcinematographer has been my quest since childhood.

Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for member-ship?Steven Poster, Ron Fortunato and Dean Semler.

How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?It’s a great experience to be able to commune and compare notes withmy friends and heroes and attend events where I can pass on what I’velearned to others. ●

Tom Houghton, ASCClose-up

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R O G I E R S T O F F E R S , A S C , N S C

ONFILM“I love to make images. I believe that you n

to know the technical aspects so well tha

don’t need to think about them anymore.

about the story and the characters, and a

with the ideas o your collaborators, your

approach is built out o that. I like to get o

or two images in my head that represent

movie or me. As a director o photograph

my place is at the camera, in the middle o

set, close to the actors, in the midst o all

craziness and creativity. Then, when I put

eye to the eyepiece, I enter my own world

that moment, nobody is concentrating on

movie as much as I am. That’s the mome

really love in filmmaking.”

Rogier Stofers, ASC, NSC grew up in the

Netherlands and studied filmmaking at th

Nederlandse Film en Televisie Academie

Amsterdam. His work on Character earne

the Golden Frog at the 1997 Plus Camerim

International Film Festival o the Art o

Cinematography, and since then his cred

include School of Rock , Quills , John Q, En

The Secret Life of Bees , No Strings Attachand The Vow , among others.

All these productions were photographe

Kodak motion picture film.

For an extended interview with Rogier Stof

visit www.kodak.com/go/onfilm.

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