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AUGUST 2014

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The International Journal of Motion Imaging

On Our Cover: Iconic performer James Brown (Chadwick Boseman) belts out a song
in Get on Up, shot by Stephen Goldblatt, ASC, BSC. (Photo by D. Stevens, courtesy
of Universal Studios.)

FEATURES
28
42
54
66

Funk Soul Brother


Stephen Goldblatt, ASC, BSC shoots his first digital
feature with Get on Up, a stylish biopic about soul singer
James Brown

42

Capturing All 4 Seasons


Tom Stern, ASC continues his collaboration with director
Clint Eastwood on the musical Jersey Boys

Bad Blood
Four cinematographers, including ASC members Checco
Varese and Gabriel Beristain, lend chills to the vampire series
54
The Strain

Shaking a Familys Foundation


Ben Richardson shoots the indie film Happy Christmas on
Super 16mm

DEPARTMENTS
10
12
14
20
76
80
81
82
84
86
88

Editors Note
Presidents Desk
Short Takes: Giants
Production Slate: And Uneasy Lies the Mind
New Products & Services
International Marketplace
Classified Ads
Ad Index
In Memoriam: Gordon Willis, ASC
Clubhouse News
ASC Close-Up: Kramer Morgenthau

VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM

66

The International Journal of Motion Imaging

LOOK FOR MORE AT WWW.THEASC.COM

John Baileys Bailiwick


an extraordinary personal blog that I
wholeheartedly recommend.
Matthias Stork

Author, Chaos Cinema


The Movie That Haunts You
The Rite of Spring at 100
Bill Brysons Little Hike
Jack Cardiffs Magic Life
The Spinning Top
and the Parvo
Willard Van Dyke
and Edward Weston
The Red Book:
A Psychic Odyssey
In Search of a
Cinema Canon
Tim Hetherington
and Chris Hondros
John Alton:
Cinematographys Outlier
The Unhinged Animator:
Tex Avery
Carl Sagan and the Pale Blue Dot

www.theasc.com

A u g u s t

2 0 1 4

V o l .

9 5 ,

N o .

The International Journal of Motion Imaging

Visit us online at www.theasc.com

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF and PUBLISHER


Stephen Pizzello

EDITORIAL
MANAGING EDITOR Jon D. Witmer
TECHNICAL EDITOR Christopher Probst
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Benjamin B, Douglas Bankston, John Calhoun, Mark Dillon, Michael Goldman, Simon Gray,
David Heuring, Jay Holben, Jean Oppenheimer, Iain Stasukevich, Patricia Thomson

ART & DESIGN


CREATIVE DIRECTOR Marion Kramer
PHOTO EDITOR Kelly Brinker

ONLINE
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WEB DEVELOPER Jon Stout
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CIRCULATION, BOOKS & PRODUCTS


CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Saul Molina
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ASC ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE Nelson Sandoval

American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 94th 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.
Subscriptions: U.S. $50; Canada/Mexico $70; all other foreign countries $95 a year (remit international Money Order or other exchange payable in U.S. $).
Advertising: Rate card upon request from Hollywood office. Copyright 2014 ASC Holding Corp. (All rights reserved.) Periodicals postage paid at Los Angeles, CA
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POSTMASTER: Send address change to American Cinematographer, P.O. Box 2230, Hollywood, CA 90078.

American Society of Cinematographers


The ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but
an educational, cultural and professional
organization. Membership is by invitation
to those who are actively engaged as
directors of photography and have
demonstrated outstanding ability. ASC
membership has become one of the highest
honors that can be bestowed upon a
professional cinematographer a mark
of prestige and excellence.

OFFICERS - 2014/2015
Richard Crudo
President

Owen Roizman
Vice President

Kees van Oostrum


Vice President

Lowell Peterson
Vice President

Matthew Leonetti
Treasurer

Frederic Goodich
Secretary

Isidore Mankofsky
Sergeant At Arms

MEMBERS OF THE
BOARD
John Bailey
Bill Bennett
Curtis Clark
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Michael Goi
Matthew Leonetti
Stephen Lighthill
Daryn Okada
Michael O Shea
Lowell Peterson
Rodney Taylor
Kees van Oostrum
Haskell Wexler

ALTERNATES
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Steven Fierberg
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This months issue spotlights a pair of movie musicals whose makers put some new spin on a familiar genre.
Get on Up, shot by Stephen Goldblatt, ASC,
BSC, offers a non-linear look at the turbulent
personal history of dynamic performer James
Brown. Recounting the shoot for Jean Oppenheimer (Funk Soul Brother, page 28), the cinematographer notes that the movies approach is
more a kaleidoscope of the life of James Brown
than an A-to-B biopic. The storyline jumps backand-forth in time, covering some 60 years, and the
photography reflects the changing periods.
The production was the first digital feature for
Goldblatt, whose imaging arsenal included the Arri
Alexa, Canons C500 and an Ikegami EC-35. The
latter camera was used to lend a vintage look to a
sequence depicting Browns 1971 concert at Olympia Hall in Paris; for this performance set
piece and others, the crew sought to replicate the look of period concert lighting. We could
have done all sorts of rock-and-roll effects, acknowledges Goldblatt, but we didnt because
they didnt exist back then.
On Jersey Boys, director Clint Eastwood also transitioned to the digital realm with the
help of Tom Stern, ASC, AFC. The pair detailed their approach for AC contributor and Eastwood biographer Michael Goldman (Capturing All 4 Seasons, page 42). Our goal was to
go down the list of everything that could screw us up, and make sure it didnt, says Stern.
After all, no one wants to walk up to the Man with No Name and explain things like latency,
bandwidth and gigaflops! The cinematographer reports that Eastwood, who has always
favored a fast pace on set, was exceptionally pleased with one aspect of the new workflow:
Instead of flipping mags every eight minutes, wed flip mags every 26 minutes, which for
Clint is like Christmas seven days a week!
Santa is probably still making his list, but the indie feature Happy Christmas is already
here for those of you who need an advance dose of holiday mishegas. Cinematographer Ben
Richardson bucked the digital trend on his collaboration with pioneering mumblecore director Joe Swanberg, shooting the movie, which premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film
Festival, on Super 16mm. Super 16mm was my first love, and we didnt know how much
longer we would have the option to shoot movies on film, Richardson tells Noah Kadner
(Shaking a Familys Foundation, page 66). When film represents a substantial portion of a
tight budget, each take is precious. We got some magic moments because of that focus.
Four cinematographers Checco Varese, ASC; Miroslaw Baszak; Gabriel Beristain,
ASC, BSC; and Colin Hoult signed onto the FX Network series The Strain to help executive
producer Guillermo Del Toro realize his ambitious vision of a vampire plague in New York City.
My hope is that if youre scanning your TV and you see this show, youll say, Oh my God
what is this? Varese tells ACs Canadian correspondent, Mark Dillon (Bad Blood, page 54).
This is a world thats about to end. The vampires are taking over, so nothing is pretty; everything is a bit gritty, sordid and disturbing.

10

Stephen Pizzello
Editor-in-Chief and Publisher

Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.

Editors Note

Though many of you might think it more a guilty pleasure than something to shout
about in a public forum, I have no hesitation in revealing that Planet of the Apes (the 1968
original, of course) is one of my all-time favorite movies. And why should I feel strange
about that? Its a fantastic science-fiction story adapted from an outstanding book and
molded into a hell of a ride by a director, cast and crew who were functioning at the top
of their game. Theres a multi-faceted hero, adventure, plenty of action, sex (well, at least
the intimation of it, between chiseled star Charlton Heston and his curvaceous human
companion, Linda Harrison) and a serious underlying theme. You also cant forget the apes
themselves the makeup actually works and the alien world in which were immediately immersed. Then theres the shock ending, whose effect was so strong that contemporary films, both cheesy and grand, continue to ape it 46 years later.
Director Franklin J. Schaffner had already enjoyed a long and successful career by the
time he signed on to shoot this simian saga. He started out in television during the late
1940s and went on to direct nine more movies after Apes, among them two that I often
find worming their way into my all-time Top 20: Patton (1970) and Papillon (1973). ASC
Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Fred Koenekamp was Schaffners most frequent
feature-film cinematographer, but for Planet of the Apes he chose to work with the
legendary Leon Shamroy, ASC.
These days, people tend to toss that word legendary around with blind abandon, but in Shamroys case the adjective is truly deserved. A past president of the ASC, he was born in 1901 and became a cinematographer in 1926 after working on the laboratory side for a number of years. Over the course of a career that included such
memorable films as Twelve OClock High (1949), The Robe (1953) and South Pacific (1958), he earned a record 18 Academy Award
nominations, with four wins.
Shamroy was also an early adopter of the 2.40:1 CinemaScope format, which he used to extraordinary effect on Planet of
the Apes. Check out the films 32-minute opening sequence, shot mostly in and around Utahs Lake Powell and Arizonas Glen
Canyon National Recreation Area. This section of the movie is a veritable clinic on how to execute epic-scale widescreen shots.
Certainly it ranks alongside the work of Freddie Young, BSC (who conducted his own widescreen tutorials with Lawrence of Arabia
and other classics) or the broad canvasses created by the cinematographers who partnered with Stanley Kubrick. That Shamroy
achieved his look without the help of todays digital tools makes it all the more impressive. In an almost completely day-exterior situation, theres barely a mismatched shot to be found, and we all know how difficult it can be to maintain that kind of consistency.
The rest of the movie offers a near-perfect blend of location and back-lot situations, interspersed with set work whose lighting and
compositions represent some of the last (and best) examples of a style that was going out of vogue. Combined with the movies
succinct, elegant pacing and a music and sound-effects track whose sophistication rivals anything youll hear today, Shamroys work
is elevated to something more impressive than youll find in most high-end dramas, let alone the science-fiction genre.
Its interesting to note that the hand-crafted qualities of Planet of the Apes were completely swept aside with the release of
Star Wars a mere nine years later, but both of these classics share those strands of DNA that make certain movies memorable. I intuitively recognized the creative significance of Apes when I first saw it at age 11, and apparently those feelings have stuck with me,
because Im still looning about it all these years later.
Even if the thought of watching Chuck Heston running around in a loincloth is not your cup of tea, I urge you to acquire a
copy of Planet of the Apes (the Blu-ray is amazing) and give it a chance. As a reader of this magazine, you owe that much to the
memory of Leon Shamroy.
Anyway, its summertime. Go ahead treat yourself!

Richard P. Crudo
ASC President

12

August 2014

American Cinematographer

Photo by Douglas Kirkland.

Presidents Desk

Short Takes

Multiple Formats on the Fly


By Douglas Bankston

Cinematographer Michael Pescasio had a Vision Research


Phantom Flex camera. Director Mark Pellington had never worked
with one before. A mutual friend brought the two filmmakers
together in Los Angeles, and what started out as a test shoot turned
into a full-fledged music video. The band Bear Hands, who specialize in driving pop hooks fused with disco and funk melodies, benefitted from this happenstance collaboration for its single Giants.
Although he has directed such features as Arlington Road,
The Mothman Prophecies, Henry Poole is Here and I Melt with You
and co-helmed the concert film U2 3D Pellington has been
synonymous with music videos since the early days of MTV. When
Bear Hands management approached him with the Giants track,
Pellington recognized an opportunity to work with Pescasio and test
the Phantom Flex for his upcoming feature, Clang, which hes planning as a multi-format mixture of digital and analog mediums.
I thought this would be a good testing ground for my film
and a chance to work with Mike, who is a really accomplished cinematographer, and be a little punk rock about it get the band, get
some girls and get some graphic locations, the director says.
Pescasio, who recently wrapped Uncle Nick, his first feature as
a director of photography, came up through the grip and electric side
of production before moving over to camera operator and cinematographer. He purchased a Phantom Flex4K camera, but due to
production delays, Vision Research sent him a Phantom Flex on an
interim basis. The 2.5K camera is capable of frame rates up to 1,275
fps at 1920x1080 resolution in HQ Mode and even higher frame
14

August 2014

rates at lower resolutions.


I was watching Marks videos when I was in film school,
says Pescasio. Were both from Baltimore, and I remember thinking, This is a guy I need to meet. Cut to 20 years later, and were
talking about shooting something interesting in high speed, and it
evolved into this music video. It became not only a Phantom experiment, but an experiment with anything that is a capture device.
The production spanned all of one night and covered various
locations within a two-block radius of its base camp in downtown
Los Angeles. Pescasio and Pellington deployed an arsenal of cameras
both old and new, including the Phantom Flex (recording to onboard
512GB Cinemags in 2.5K raw), a RED Epic MX with Angenieux
Rouge lenses (recording to onboard SSDs in 5K Redcode raw), a
Canon EOS 5D Mark III and EOS-1D X with Canon L Series primes
and a LensBaby selective-focus specialty lens, an iPhone, a Sony Digital Handicam DCR-TRV120 Digital Hi8 (a.k.a. Digital8) camera, a
VHS camera (footage from which did not make the final cut), and
Pescasios own Arri 235 and personal set of Zeiss Super Speed MK III
lenses.
At any given moment there were three or more cameras
rolling, recalls Pescasio. I was shooting the film camera, Mark had
the Epic and his assistant, Matt Sakatani Roe, who is a great cinematographer, had another camera. It seemed like everyone had a
camera. Ive never been on such a chaotic experience, but Mark just
said, Go with me. Itll be a good time and by the end we will have
something great.
For the Arri 235 material, Pescasio pulled three rolls of Fujifilm Velvia 50D 8540 reversal stock from his refrigerator, and Pellington brought short ends of Kodak Vision2 500T 5218 and Vision

American Cinematographer

Unit photography by Shayan Asgharnia. Frame grabs courtesy of the filmmakers.

Cinematographer
Michael Pescasio
and director
Mark Pellington
turned a Vision
Research
Phantom Flex
camera test into
a multi-format
music video for
Bear Hands
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Top: The filmmakers shot each scene with multiple cameras, including a Red Epic MX (left) and a
Sony Digital8 Handicam (right). Middle: 35mm film was also utilized for portraits of the band.
Bottom: Pescasio (at camera) lines up a shot with the band members.

16

August 2014

American Cinematographer

200T 5274. To avoid stop loss, Pescasio


eschewed color-correction filters. The first
thing we shot was film, the cinematographer recalls. The plan, he says, was to walk
up and down the street and get portraits of
the band members and other people in the
setting sun. But by the time we were able to
start rolling, the sun was gone.
The suns absence was disconcerting,
since the small production was particularly
lean on lighting. It was kind of a crapshoot, Pescasio acknowledges. When we
were shooting film, I tried to make sure we
had pools of light so I could actually get an
exposure. We pushed some of the film a
few stops because there was not enough
light. Mark was like, Whatever, just shoot!
I tried everything I could to get an image on
all these formats.
Pellington adds that part of the
experiment was to see how bare bones we
could be and still make something interesting.
I operated a lot on this, the director continues. It felt so great hearing the
film roll through the magazine. I felt this
nostalgia it was like I was touching a
memory. With a digital camera, I look to the
AC to turn it on before he hands it to me;
otherwise, I wont know its on.
The lighting package primarily
consisted of a couple of battery-powered
Litepanels LED fixtures and a Sun Gun,
which enabled a mobile, run-and-gun
shooting style. For the high-speed Phantom
shots, though, Pescasio managed to
squeeze in additional units. I told Mark, If
we shoot high speed, we will need at least
a 2K or its going to flicker, he says. We
found an alley lit by sodium vapors where
Mark liked the background texture. To
make them pop, I keyed the subjects with

Pescasio (left) and Pellington (middle) each operate a camera on location in downtown Los Angeles.

two open-face Arri 2Ks through some diffusion, powering [the lights] with a 6,500watt generator. If there is a flickering edge
light in there, its from 1K Par cans. The overall flicker, however, is from the sodium
vapors.
In fact, the potential for flicker from
the industrial lighting and lower-wattage
sources in downtown L.A. gave Pellington
the idea to add strobing throughout the
video, so three Martin Atomic 3000 DMX
strobe lights were rented for the shoot.
These 3,000-watt, 5,600K Xenon units
were wired to 20-amp DMX circuits and fed
to a small DMX controller operated by
gaffer Lou Ramos.
Lous a straightforward kind of guy,
and hes been around forever, says Pescasio. They call him Studio Lou because he
came up through the studio system. He was
beside himself, saying hed never worked
on anything like this before!
Shooting with the high-speed Phantom did require Pellington to adjust his
methodology and actually plan shots. At
first, Mark was thinking he could just grab
the camera and get some high-speed
stuff, says Pescasio. I had to explain that
he needed to tell the performers what to do
18

August 2014

because we could only shoot eight seconds


of real time at 800 fps. The Phantom work
was the most planned part of [the shoot].
Indeed, a lot of shots were on-the-fly
discoveries. Roe, who also served as 2ndunit director of photography, says, I would
grab my skateboard, grab a camera and go
off for 30 minutes or so and just shoot. He
was accompanied on these visual walkabouts by camera operator Erick Wilczynski,
whose three-second macro videos, captured
with an iPhone, Pellington discovered
through Instagram. Erick and I would walk
around with his iPhone and the Hi8 and get
certain elements and different textures,
Roe explains. He came up with this technique to throttle the night vision on and off
on the Hi8. It looked like the image was
pulsing because the exposure would take
some time to catch up.
Pellington adds, Some really beautiful mistakes come out of messing with the
exposure. The director says flashlight gags
were also used for in-camera flares. Im
most interested in the mistakes and the
noise.
Mark gives you direction, but it is
very abstract, says Roe. He wont tell you
what to shoot, but hell tell you the emotion
American Cinematographer

he wants you to capture. Ive worked with


him for so long that I have a pretty good
understanding of what he wants. Its interesting to see how fast new people can pick
up on his direction. It was the first time
Michael and Erick had worked with Mark,
and they took to it pretty quickly.
FotoKem processed the productions
negative, which was then scanned on a
Spirit DataCine at Ntropic, where Pescasio
and Pellington worked with colorist
Marshall Plante for the final color grade.
We couldnt find anyone to process the
reversal film normally, Pescasio notes, so
we had to cross-process it, which was too
bad. But it looked interesting anyway.
When it came to the edit, I felt the
Epic stuff was the least interesting because
it was the cleanest, Pellington notes.
Working with editor Ben Redmond who,
the director says, is a great director in his
own right Pellington wanted the visuals
to come hard and fast during the verses to
match the songs driving lyrics and beats,
and then calm down during the chorus.
(Richmond worked with ProRes 4:2:2 HQ
files in Adobe Premiere and After Effects.)
I was making videos like this, with
really fast cuts, in 1985, but I wanted someone younger to edit [Giants] because the
whole editing approach has changed, the
director explains. Kids raised on desktops
are different from kids raised on [Sony] RM440s or on film. Bens natural instinct wasnt
to cut fast, so I told him, This is an experiment. In the verses you have to be under 15
frames per shot and you can never repeat a
[capture] medium from cut to cut, like
cutting from one film shot to another film
shot. The way things rub against each
other is the meaning and connection
between clips. Plus, its really interesting to
see the texture of a person go from super
degraded to super high end. I love what he

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Production Slate

Shooting a Feature on an iPhone


By Ricky Fosheim

Peter (Jonas Fisch) is a freshly minted movie star. He has it all:


wealth, fame and a beautiful expecting wife (Jaime Spezzano).
When the couples two best friends join them at their new mountain
mansion for Peters birthday, envy, secrets and paranoia play out
against a barren winter landscape. As the two couples grow increasingly antagonistic, they turn to alcohol and drugs to bury the past,
and when an old acquaintance shows up unexpectedly, Peter must
scramble to protect his new life. The harder he fights to hold it all
together, though, the faster he descends into a cavernous mental
abyss. As the night grows late, Peter struggles to decipher reality
from a twisting rabbit hole of truth and illusion.
The two writers of And Uneasy Lies the Mind, Jonas Fisch and
Dillon Tucker, are an abstract painter and poet, respectively. When
they approached me about producing, directing and shooting the
project, I knew right away it was going to be an unconventional
movie. The whole story unfolds through the fragmented and traumatized memories of a man who has been robbed and violently hit
over the head. The films visuals needed to reflect this point of view,
which is far from crisp and clean.
My first thought was to shoot on 16mm film. Without the
budget for that, though, I set out on a quest to replicate a 16mm
aesthetic with newer digital-camera technology. From the start, I
welcomed grain, dirt, flares and any other techniques that would
help me create a dirty, fragmented and organic look.
I was heavily influenced by Janusz Kaminskis work on Saving
20

August 2014

Private Ryan [AC Aug. 98], in which he used in-camera tricks and
other technological means to essentially break down the 35mm
image. The disorienting images that resulted had an inherent beauty
in the way they captured the feel of battle. I was also influenced by
the camerawork of Harmony Korines Gummo, Thomas Vinterbergs
The Celebration, Richard Linklaters Tape and Roman Polanskis
Repulsion Ive always been a big fan of the bold images in those
films.
My research led me to a community of filmmakers who were
shooting on iPhone cameras with 35mm lens adapters. Inspired by
their work, I purchased an iPhone 5 and a Turtleback SLR Jacket lens
adapter, then went to Division Camera in Hollywood to conduct
comparison tests against the Red Epic MX and Canon 5D Mark III.
The results blew my mind: The iPhone footage was raw, dirty,
vignetted and unlike anything Id seen before. I immediately fell in
love with the look, and I decided to fully embrace these unconventional limitations as powerful storytelling tools.
The Turtleback adapter incorporates a focusing glass with a
patterned texture, almost like a fingerprint. Hair, dirt and oil from my
hands would always get stuck on the glass, adding further texture
and imperfections that I completely welcomed. In fact, I elected not
to clean or replace any of the dirty parts, and at times I even added
dust or dirt.
Another interesting result of the focusing screen is a vignette
around the entire image. You can control this vignette by adjusting
the iris; the more you close down, the heavier the vignette gets.
Even at a mid-range f-stop of 5.6, the edges become extremely dark
and full of aberrations, and begin to deteriorate in beautiful and

American Cinematographer

All images courtesy of the filmmakers.

Peter (Jonas
Fisch) endures a
mental collapse
in the feature
And Uneasy Lies
the Mind, which
director/
cinematographer
Ricky Fosheim
shot entirely on
an iPhone 5.

THE FINEST
ANAMORPHIC
GLASS

Fosheim (in white shirt) lines up a shot with Fisch and Michelle Nunes while employing a
lightweight dolly rig and a Turtleback SLR Jacket lens adapter.

unpredictable ways. Additionally, the


amount of vignetting is affected by the
focal length of the lens. To give myself
complete control over this effect, I opted to
shoot with f1.4 Nikon Nikkor AI-S F-mount
lenses, and I shot the majority of the movie
with 35mm and 50mm lenses, which
produced a medium vignette. The 18mm
was extremely vignetted; I had to shoot
wide open with that lens or it looked like I
was shooting through a black hole.
Shooting wide open also allowed
the actors to move in and out of focus. I
embraced this shallow depth-of-field, placing the camera right in the middle of the
action, where the actors would literally
22

August 2014

bump into me at times. Again, this added to


the atmosphere of disorientation and claustrophobia I hoped to achieve.
I recorded directly to the iPhone 5
while using the Filmic Pro app, which
allowed me to control the color temperature, frame rate and bit rate; I elected to
shoot at a bit rate of 50 Mbps instead of the
iPhones native 24 Mbps. Filmic Pro also
allowed me to adjust the capture frame rate
and output frame rate, the effect of which
is akin to adjusting the shutter on a conventional camera. I shot a number of the more
abstract sequences at 6 fps and played
them back at 6 fps within the 24 fps video
file, resulting in incredibly blurred moveAmerican Cinematographer

ment and a watercolor-like look. As these


abstract scenes progressed, I continued to
adjust the recording and output rates to
further deteriorate the images.
When recording while the iPhone is
plugged into a charger, an electrical pulse
affects the image every couple of
seconds, you get a quick flash from a single
frame that is slightly overexposed. When I
discovered this bizarre and unexpected
effect, I of course fell in love with it. After all,
what better way to represent a dying mans
fragmented memories than to have
random electrical pulses uncontrollably
changing the exposure of the image?
The small iPhone camera rig allowed
me to place the camera anywhere I wanted.
We mounted it on sleds going down ski
slopes, in small cubbies on set, in the
kitchen sink and even directly on the actors
bodies. The iPhone is so unobtrusive and
simple to use, it freed me to move and react
to the actors, who in turn appreciated the
camera because it allowed them to stay in
character for longer periods of time.
Principal photography took place
over four weeks of extreme winter weather
in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., where we shot
in the beautiful cabin home of a family
friend. Inside the house, I rigged 6' covered
wagons fitted with six 250-watt incandescent globes and draped in muslin; we
attached hooks to the 15'-high ceiling so
we could hoist the covered wagons up or

down depending on the shot.


To dig into the actors eyes and make
them pop, I floated a couple of China balls.
I didnt add eye lights for beauty, or to
better see reactions; instead, I considered
the eye lights to be portals into the characters dark and twisted psyches. At the
climax of the movie, one of the characters
gets sucked into a television, which acts as
a portal between the real world and his
memories. Here, the eyelight served as a
way to show this connection to the outside
world.
Extremely cold weather with
temperatures as low as 5 Fahrenheit
proved to be one of the most difficult
hurdles on the shoot. A fully charged
iPhone 5 will die in less than two minutes
when exposed to such frigid temperatures.
Between takes, I would tuck the camera
beneath my armpit to keep it warm. Even
so, we lost numerous takes when the
camera died in mid-shot. We rotated
between three 64GB iPhones, and even
under normal shooting conditions we
would run out of battery before wed run
out of memory.
For the films opening and closing
title sequences, I took two of the storys
major elements ice and oil and shot
them in ways that would suggest the dark
and fragmented tone of the movie. The
opening credits involved dying and freezing
water in homemade alphabet ice-cube
trays; I pulled the letters out of the freezer

Top: Jack (Dillon


Tucker) witnesses
Peters mental
collapse. Middle
and bottom:
The crew gets
a shot of Fisch
on location in
Mammoth
Lakes, Calif.

24

August 2014

American Cinematographer

and shot them at 1 fps as they melted onto


a large tray of ice. The end credits involved
printing out the title cards on paper I would
tape to the back of a greasy glass casserole
dish; I then added different layers of clear
and black liquids that I moved with a hair
dryer, shooting mostly at 2 fps with a
magnetic clip-on macro lens. In both cases,
the result is reminiscent of a Stan Brakhage
film or a Jackson Pollock painting.
We transcoded the native H.264
footage into ProRes 4:2:2 and edited with
Final Cut Pro 7. I worked with colorist Brent
Greer for the final color correction, using
Blackmagic Designs DaVinci Resolve. We
primarily focused on balancing and matching shots, since the footage was so textured
and vignetted to begin with. The iPhone 5
camera performed extremely well under
bright daylight conditions, but its latitude
fell off tremendously when we worked
under lower tungsten light levels. I also have
to give a lot of credit to our editor, Peggy
Davis, who managed to construct a coherent narrative out of such unconventional
images.
Every image in And Uneasy Lies the
Mind was shot with the iPhone 5 no
animations or visual effects were added in
post. I truly fell in love with the look of this
movie, and I thoroughly enjoyed pushing
the limits of this filmmaking technology,
even (and especially) when it meant breaking things down and experimenting. The
most important question filmmakers need
to ask themselves when shooting with an
alternative camera system isnt How do I
do this? but rather Why am I doing this?
I encourage other filmmakers to use these
cameras to explore and push the ways we
tell stories. I cant wait to see what they do.
Ed. note: And Uneasy Lies the Mind
will be released via video-on-demand in
September.

TECHNICAL SPECS
1.78:1
Digital Capture
iPhone 5
Nikon Nikkor AI-S

The Turtleback adapter created a vignette that Fosheim could control by adjusting the iris
and changing focal lengths.

26

August 2014

American Cinematographer

Z E R O D E L AY W I R E L E S S V I D E O
HDMI & 3G-SDIUp to 2000ft Multicast Uncompressed USB 3.0 GRAB engine*

www.teradek.com info@teradek.com

*Patent-pending

Funk Soul Brother

Stephen Goldblatt, ASC, BSC


captures the rollercoaster life of
dynamic performer James Brown
in the feature Get on Up.
By Jean Oppenheimer
|

e was an electrifying performer whose high-octane


vocals and explosive dance moves made him one of the
iconic figures of 20th-century popular music. He was
an innovator who blended gospel, rhythm-and-blues,
soul and jazz into the new musical genre of funk. But before
that, James Brown had to overcome an almost Dickensian

28

August 2014

childhood. Born into extreme poverty, abandoned as a child by


both his parents, growing up in the Jim Crow South and serving prison time while still a teenager, the future Godfather of
Soul propelled himself to the top through raw talent, hard
work, sheer grit and determination.
Chronicling Browns triumphs and defeats, the biopic
Get on Up stars Chadwick Boseman and marks the second
collaboration between cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt,
ASC, BSC and director Tate Taylor. Like their first film, The
Help (AC Sept. 11), Get on Up was shot entirely in Mississippi,
with Natchez and Jackson standing in for Boston, Harlem and
Paris, among other locales. We had 90 locations in 48 days,
Goldblatt tells AC from New York, where he is prepping
another picture. The film is more a kaleidoscope of the life of
James Brown than an A-to-B biopic. The storyline jumps
back-and-forth in time, covering some 60 years, and the
photography reflects the changing periods. Citing the

American Cinematographer

Unit photography by D. Stevens, courtesy of Universal Studios. Additional photos by James Shelton, courtesy of Stephen Goldblatt.

features sub-$30 million budget, he


adds, Achieving our cinematic ambitions with absolutely no financial leeway
made this one of the most challenging
and ultimately satisfying projects
of my career.
After shooting a few commercials
digitally, Goldblatt became a fan of the
Arri Alexa. Singling out how well the
camera handles skin tones, he says he
decided to stick with the camera for Get
on Up, his first digital feature. Working
as he long has with ASC associate and
Panavision vice president of worldwide
marketing Phil Radin (who has since
retired), Goldblatt selected the standard
Alexa with a 16x9 sensor and a highspeed license as his A, B and C cameras.
The movies most dazzling
sequences showcase Brown performing
during various concerts, including his
legendary 1962 Live at the Apollo
performance at Harlems Apollo
Theater and a 1971 show at Olympia
Hall in Paris. Goldblatt knew he would
need more than three cameras to
capture the concerts, but budgetary
constraints limited his options. During
preproduction, he tested Canons 4K

Opposite and this


page, top:
Chadwick
Boseman steps
into the iconic role
of James Brown in
Get on Up.
Bottom: Stephen
Goldblatt, ASC,
BSC finds a frame.

EOS-1D C DSLR and Cinema EOS


C500, and then opted to employ the
latter to expand his camera arsenal. It
looked great, he enthuses. Here was a
camera that by no means has the same
specs as the Alexa, but by doing little
tricks you could make it look as if it was
an Alexa. Those little tricks included
applying a customized LUT that
Technicolors Color Science team
created to match the looks of the
disparate cameras. (Both the Alexas
www.theasc.com

ArriRaw files and the C500s Canon


Raw files were recorded to Convergent
Design Gemini 4:4:4 recorders.)
Browns 1971 Paris concert was
re-created inside a 2,400-seat municipal
auditorium in Jackson (with the shows
visual-effects team adding a Paris
skyline for one shot). Andrew Giffin,
who specializes in lighting concert
tours, music festivals and theatrical
productions, was brought in to help
design the stage lighting. Goldblatt
August 2014

29

Funk Soul Brother

planned to use modern equipment, but


he insisted that all lighting effects be
stylistically consistent with the 1971
time period. We could have done all
sorts of rock-and-roll effects, acknowledges Goldblatt, but we didnt because
they didnt exist back then.
Andrew and I spent three days
watching Chad rehearse the numbers to
get our lighting cues, the cinematographer adds. Giffin proposed a scheme of
automated lights that could be
controlled from various locations in the
venue via the network of his
GrandMA2 consoles. Felix Lighting in
Los Angeles supplied the fixtures and
sent company vice-president Mike
McKinnon to serve as master electrician. A total of 24 Martin Mac 700
Washes provided backlight, 24 Mac 700
Profiles lit the actors and musicians, and
24 Mac 301s were used to up-light
scenic pieces, filling the role of what
would have been old strip lights,
observes Giffin. Additionally, he adds,
24 Mac 2000 Washes were used as front
and side lights that might appear oncamera because their big lenses look
like Pars or Fresnels onscreen. Instead
of gels, Giffin utilized the color-mixing
features of modern sources, which
granted flexibility but had to be carefully
constrained.

Top left and


bottom: A young,
impoverished
Brown (Jamarion
Scott) overcomes
the abandonment
of his parents. Top
right: The crew
positions bounces
and an overhead
net to aid the
lighting for
Browns childhood
shack.

30

August 2014

American Cinematographer

Top and middle:


Brown begins his
career singing
with an R&B
vocal group at
parties and
nightclubs.
Bottom: Boseman
and director Tate
Taylor discuss a
scene.

Giffin explains that he set up


faders that he manually pushed up and
down, just like an operator would have
had to do at the time. It introduced
some imperfections, which added the
analog, human element. This manually
conducted light show was recorded
through the GrandMA2 system, and
for playback during takes, everything
was triggered via SMPTE time code
because we needed the lighting to be
repeatable for continuity.
During the performances, the
crew alternated shooting with the
Steadicam, operated by Goldblatts
longtime A-camera/Steadicam operator
Will Arnot, and a 50' Technocrane,
while the B and C cameras picked off
whatever they could. The lens package
included an Angenieux Optimo 2876mm T2.6 zoom; a Panavision Primo
4:1 (17.5-75mm) T2.3, Primo 11:1
(24-275mm) T2.8 and 14.5-50mm
T2.2 Primo Macro Zoom; and Primo
primes. To take the edge off the sharpness of the digital images, all lenses were
filtered with 18 or 14 Tiffen Black ProMist throughout the shoot.
The two C500s, fitted with
Canon Cinema primes or an EF
17-40mm f/4L USM zoom, were
hidden onstage as set-and-forget
cameras. I had more fun with those
www.theasc.com

August 2014

31

Funk Soul Brother


little cameras, Goldblatt says. We got
additional angles and some very
dramatic footage.
A sixth camera was added just for
this concert: an Ikegami EC-35 video
camera with a B-mount Canon 5:1 lens.
The actual 1971 concert had been
videotaped with a Sony AVC-3400
PortaPac; when the production couldnt
find one in working condition, DIT
Nathaniel Miller suggested a vintage
Ikegami, another popular model in the
early 1970s. The footage captured with
the EC-35 by Henry Cline, the onstage
(and on-camera) operator, was edited
into the movie.
The signal from the Ikegami was
sent to an analog DigiBeta deck on set,
notes Miller. The tape was then sent to
Technicolor Hollywood, where they
created DPX files that were ingested
and treated as a digital negative. The
Ikegami tripod and the vintage musical
instruments came from prop house
History for Hire and from a private
collector.
At several points throughout the
film, including a shot at the start of the
Paris concert scene, Brown speaks
directly into the camera. Taylor explains,
I was playing with this idea that James

Brown begins
working with
manager Ben Bart
(Dan Aykroyd,
top left), who
pushes the
singers
reputation as a
tireless live
performer.

32

August 2014

American Cinematographer

Brown is narrating his own life story, as


if from the grave. In [the Paris
sequence], he is watching himself
onstage and commenting. Goldblatt
notes that the Steadicam follows Brown
as he enters the theater and walks onto
the stage from the side, with the concert
already in full swing; the musicians are
playing, Brown (played by a double) is
singing into the microphone and the
crowd is going crazy.
Camera operator Arnot picks up
the description from there: Chad walks
straight across the stage from left to
right, but his head is turned sideways so
he can talk directly into the camera,
which is [moving parallel to] him as he
walks. The band is arranged with the
drummer in the back, other musicians
and backup singers in front of the
drummer, the [ James Brown] double at
the microphone at the front of the stage
with his back to the camera, and the
audience beyond. Chad passes just in
front of the musicians. I was on the
Steadicam keeping pace with him, but
walking between the drummer and the
other musicians, so the musicians and
chorus girls are soft in the foreground
while Chad is in sharp focus. The
double in the background was also out
of focus.
Arnot explains that a twist at the
end of the shot made the Steadicam
necessary. We held Browns double at
the microphone [with his back to the
camera] for two-thirds of the shot. By
the end of Chads monologue, the
camera had moved past the double, and
then Chad suddenly sprints to the front
of the stage where the double had
been and starts singing into the
microphone. I did a 10- or 15-foot jog
behind him and ended up over his
shoulder as he sings to the crowd.
Another large production
number, the 1962 Apollo Theater
concert, was staged in a school auditorium in Natchez. The proscenium had
just enough detail similar to the Apollos
that we could branch off from there,
recounts production designer Mark
Ricker. Using architectural details from
the real Apollo, we built out from the

The production
re-created
Browns 1971
Paris concert
inside the
municipal
auditorium in
Jackson, Miss.

www.theasc.com

August 2014

33

Funk Soul Brother

Browns 1962 Apollo Theater concert was staged inside a school auditorium. The exterior was partly
constructed along a row of abandoned stores in downtown Jackson (middle) and then completed with
visual effects (bottom).

34

August 2014

American Cinematographer

proscenium, enlarging the stage, adding


audience boxes, and building a faade to
place on the front of the existing
balcony. Ricker also re-created the
Austrian-blue curtain at the back of the
stage. Goldblatts longtime gaffer, Colin
Campbell, lit it from the floor, using
dimmed-down 1,000-watt MoleRichardson Cyc Strips.
Par cans and 2K Fresnels were
hung from overhead pipes to illuminate
the main part of the stage. Multiple
colored gels were used, including Rosco
010 (Medium Yellow) and Lee 117
(Steel Blue), 122 (Fern Green), 179
(Chrome Orange) and 182 (Primary
Red). Goldblatt wanted to keep
Boseman in rim light, but a single
spotlight proved insufficient. Instead, he
deployed three separate Xenon Follow
Spots, dimming between them to
produce the effect of a single source.
Arnot explains, In order to switch
between the Follow Spots without
throwing a shadow, I wore a wireless
headset that connected me to the lamp
operators and allowed me to cue them,
hands-free, when I was about to change
direction with the Steadicam.
Hollywood Rentals and Campbells
own company, Pigtails, supplied the
lighting equipment.
The front exterior of the Apollo
was reconstructed along a row of abandoned storefronts in downtown
Jackson, and techniques that combined

Before-and-after images courtesy of Mr. X Inc.

Funk Soul Brother

The crew prepares to shoot a last man standing boxing match at the North Augusta Country Club.

production design with visual effects


completed the illusion. Ricker dressed
the stores, the door to the theater and
the sidewalk in front of it, parked a few
cars in the street, and built the Apollo
marquee, complete with neon and
incandescent globes. Visual-effects
supervisor Aaron Weintraub and his
team at Mr. X, a visual-effects studio in
Toronto, then extended the practical set
above the first floor and created a long
stretch of New Yorks 125th Street. (At
press time, Technicolor had reached an
agreement to acquire Mr. X.) We
extended the street off into the background and around the corner in the
foreground, recalls Weintraub. We
created the entire street across the road
from the theater, adding 3-D moving
cars and digital extras to bring the street
to life. The actual street in Jackson was
in such a state of disrepair that we had to
digitally replace the pavement. Falling
snow was also added to complete the
seasonal ambience.
Goldblatt notes that associate
producer and unit production manager
Robin Fisichella was a great ally in
trying to secure gear. Due to the tight
budget, the camera department initially
had to do without some of its desired
equipment, including a stabilized head
36

August 2014

for use with the Technocrane. Its


absence became especially apparent
while shooting a scene of Brown, as a
child, soliciting customers for a whorehouse. He stands at a bus stop in the
pouring rain, approaching soldiers who
are home on leave.
Ricker and his team had created
two city blocks complete with dirt roads
and horse-drawn carts. The Alexa was
on a 30' Technocrane, protected by
heavy concertina rain covers, which
added a lot of weight to the crane,
Arnot reports. That, combined with
the fact we didnt have a stabilized head,
led to a lot of unwanted camera vibration, which then had to be dealt with in
post. Witnessing the problem,
Fisichella was able to get a Scorpio
stabilized head for the second half of the
shoot.
The most shocking scene in the
movie reveals the casual racism that
marked Southern society for so much of
its history. An 8-year-old Brown, along
with some 15 other black youngsters, is
forced to engage in a boxing match
known as last man standing. The
boxing ring, with strings of bare bulbs
crisscrossed above it, sits on the lawn of
a Southern plantation. A Dixieland
band is positioned between the mansion
American Cinematographer

and the ring. The blindfolded boys have


one arm tied behind their backs and
numbers painted on their stomachs. As
wealthy white observers in fancy dress
stand on the upper balcony and lower
porch of the house, drinking cocktails
and laying bets, the boys swing blindly
at one another until only one remains
upright.
The night exterior was captured
from a number of vantage points,
including a Technocrane looking
straight down into the ring. Above the
crane, a Condor supported an 8'x8' light
box containing eight Mole-Richardson
1K nook lights, double-diffused
through Light Grid Cloth. Dimmed
way down, the soft box gave the impression that the ring was lit by the practical
string lights.
As the boys began throwing
punches, Arnot cradled one of the
C500s in his hands to get shots from
inside the ring, where a stunt coordinator carefully choreographed the fighting. The C500s are compact and can
really handle night exteriors, Arnot
enthuses. For other shots, key grip Jim
Shelton and his crew built a 270-degree
circular track around the ring so Arnot
and B-camera operator Michael
Applebaum could shoot the action with

Funk Soul Brother

two Alexas, one equipped with a 4:1


zoom and the other with an 11:1.
The area around the boxing ring
was lit with two Nine-light Mini
Brutes aimed through another 8'x8'
Light Grid, with a control grid in front
of it to prevent spill. A second Condor
was placed in the distance to support a
Cinemills 20K fixture, and MoleRichardson 2Ks and 5Ks were used to
illuminate other trees in the background.
The Dixieland band was lit with
two Mini Brutes, a 5K with a Chimera
and some Kino Flos, all of which were
hidden behind greenery and the bands
drums. The mansion itself was lit with
4x2 Kino Flos gelled with Half Straw.
These units were hidden behind
columns that ringed the house, lighting
the party guests on the balcony and
porch.
During the fight, Goldblatt
explains, James is knocked flat, virtually unconscious. He falls in slow
motion and his head thumps down on
the canvas. Two ringside Alexas
captured the action one set at 60 fps,
the other at 120 fps.
Arnot put one camera down on
its side, level with young James. As the

Goldblatt
expanded his
camera package
for the concert
sequences in
order to capture
the action from
an array of
vantage points.

38

August 2014

American Cinematographer

boy comes to and sits up, the camera


rolls up and over him. James pulls off
his blindfold and the music catches his
attention. We placed a blindfold
around the matte box and then pulled it
off and threw the focus back, so it
provides James POV, Goldblatt
continues. We did it on a Dutch head,
and the camera was angled to simulate
his eyesight. There is a series of shots
going to the band and back to James
eyes. Suddenly, the Dixieland music
changes to a kind of funk rhythm. Its
not real; its in James head, but it
inspires him to get up and continue
fighting. The sequence is a metaphor
that visually conveys how music was
such a powerful force in his life.
A complicated Technocrane shot
also captures that connection between
James and the music. The camera
starts over James on the mat as he looks
over at the band, Arnot explains. We
held the ropes open on one side of the
boxing ring and the telescoping arm
went through the opening, crossing to
the other side of the ring. The arm
couldnt go all the way through [the
second set of ] ropes, but they became a
kind of framing device.
Another key scene finds the adult
Brown and his band sitting inside a
Vietnam-era troop carrier that flies
them to a military base to entertain
American soldiers. While en route, the
plane is attacked from the ground, causing chaos onboard. The production
obtained an actual period plane that
they parked on a tarmac, but it never
left the ground. Goldblatt explains, In
theory, the plane is in the air, and its out
of control as the pilot tries to take
evasive action. We couldnt afford any
hydraulics, so we had to make it seem as
if the plane was bouncing around. The
AD would just yell at everyone onboard
to cower and move right so it looked as
if the plane was being buffeted!
The scene was covered three
different ways: handheld, on a
Steadicam and from a Technocrane that
sat on the tarmac outside the planes
open tailgate. For the handheld shots,
the grips attached a pulley to the wires
39

Funk Soul Brother

Camera operator Will Arnot positions a


Canon C500 for a close-quarters shot inside the
cockpit of an airplane.

40

on the carriers ceiling (normally used by


paratroopers, who would clip a cable to
pull their parachutes as they jumped out
of the plane). Arnot could then handhold an Alexa hung from the pulley as
he walked the length of the fuselage,
between the two rows of passengers
who sat facing one another; as he
carried the camera, he could rock it and
spin it up to 220 degrees in any direction.
For a shot of Brown striding to
the cockpit to talk to the pilot, Arnot,
who is 6'6" tall, had to wedge himself
into the planes dashboard. The operator
held the C500, mounted with a 14mm
lens, above his head and used a 7" monitor placed on his lap to frame the shot.
I was just able to get the pilots head
and part of his body on the right and
Brown standing with his arm resting on
the pilots seat, he explains. The
camera was maybe a foot from the pilot
and three feet from Brown.
Arnot half grimaces and half

laughs as he acknowledges, It was


extremely tight quarters. Thats another
example of where the Canon is great.
Its so compact. We never could have
achieved that shot with an Alexa body.
They used to fly those planes
with the doors open because it was so
hot, says Goldblatt. They flew only
about 500 to 1,000 feet off the ground,
which meant you could always see the
landscape. In preproduction I shot aerial
plates of misty, Vietnam-style landscapes from a helicopter in
Mississippi!
Weintraub adds, We replaced
the background with Stephens aerial
plates and CG trees. We enhanced the
plates by adding matte-painted mountains in the background, and huts and
encampments in the clearings on the
ground, tracking them into the keyed
hero foreground action. We also added
CG explosions and smoke, tracer fire
and interactive lighting on the plates to
match the CG enhancements. Other

work done at Mr. X included tiling


techniques to multiply the crowds at
several of the concerts.
In two instances, Goldblatt
sought to include brief time-lapse
sequences, one to suggest the passage of
seasons and another that would chart
light changing over the course of a day.
I needed something I could put in a
tree in the middle of a Mississippi forest
and just leave there and that would
have sufficient power to run [unattended] for up to three months, he
observes. His research led him to
Harbortronics, where he liaised with
Mark Roberts. The company supplied
two Canon EOS 1100D Rebel T3s,
each with a Canon 18-55mm f3.5-5.6
zoom lens. Each camera came in its
own [waterproof ] fiberglass housing,
with a 5-watt solar panel that provided
a sort of roof, the cinematographer
continues. The cameras took hi-res
JPEG stills at set intervals for three
months.

Goldblatt offers effusive praise


for his crew, most of whom have
worked with him for decades, while
noting that he enjoyed working for the
first time with DIT Miller and dailies
colorist Jeremy Voissem. Voissem used
Frame Logic hardware and software to
interpret Millers color decision lists and
produce dailies on location. Goldblatt
also collaborated once again with his
longtime digital colorist, ASC associate
Steve Scott, Technicolors vice president
of theatrical imaging and supervising
digital colorist. At press time, the pair
had not yet begun final grading, but
Goldblatt stressed the importance of
their ongoing partnership.
The cinematographer believes
strongly that dailies should be projected
on a large screen and that key members
of the production, both above and
below the line, should watch the
footage together. It creates a feeling of
camaraderie and amity between everybody on the show, he maintains.

Furthermore, if I want to make something darker or lighter, or to show Tate


an alternate possibility, Jeremy can do it
in 30 seconds, right then and there, and
we can then continue with the dailies. I
take my hat off to Robin Fisichella,
because when I asked for projected
dailies on this rather remote Mississippi
location, she made it happen and didnt
treat me as if I was deranged!

TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa;
Canon Cinema EOS C500,
EOS 1100D;
Ikegami EC-35
Angenieux Optimo;
Panavision Primo;
Canon Cinema, EF

41

Capturing
All 4 Seasons

Tom Stern, ASC, AFC and director


Clint Eastwood transition to digital
acquisition for the exuberant musical
Jersey Boys.
By Michael Goldman
|
42

August 2014

hen asked what director Clint Eastwood liked best


about shooting a full-length feature with a digital
camera system, the directors longtime collaborator,
cinematographer Tom Stern, ASC, AFC, retorts that
the answer should be obvious to anyone familiar with their
working methods: Eastwood grooved on the ability to shoot
longer takes for sustained periods without having to stop for
magazine changes. Finding that groove proved crucial for
Jersey Boys, Eastwoods first foray into both digital acquisition
and the musical genre.
Adapted from the hit Broadway play of the same name,

American Cinematographer

Unit photography by Keith Bernstein. Photos courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and RatPac Entertainment. Lighting diagram courtesy of Ross Dunkerley.

Jersey Boys charts the trials and tribulations of singing sensations The Four
Seasons, from their early days in 1950s
New Jersey to their 1990 induction in
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
However, instead of replicating a stage
play with spontaneous eruptions of
song and dance, the film weaves the
title characters musical performances
which were performed live during
principal photography into an otherwise dramatic biography that follows
the Broadway shows narrative more
than its form.
According to his collaborators,
Eastwoods transition to an all-digital
workflow at the age of 84, on his
33rd directorial outing in 43 years
was seamless. The switch from film to
digital was prompted by the increasing
scarcity of film labs and the discontinuation of the directors preferred Fuji film
stocks. During prep on Jersey Boys,
Eastwood asked Stern which digital
system would allow them to continue
working with their particular methodology while capturing filmic imagery
with rich, deep blacks. Having tested
digital cameras at Eastwoods behest for
years, and having used digital systems
with other directors in Europe, Stern
was well prepared for the question; he
proposed shooting Jersey Boys with an
Arri Alexa XT camera, using the 4:3
sensor to shoot in the anamorphic
2.40:1 aspect ratio while recording in
ArriRaw to onboard 512GB Codex XR
modules.
Speaking with AC during
production of American Sniper,
Eastwoods next film and second to be
shot digitally, Stern says he opted for
the Alexa after determining that the
technology was sufficiently robust for
the demanding environment we work
in. We shoot fast, and if the tools arent
robust, we wont make our schedule. It
was pretty straightforward; our goal was
to go down the list of everything that
could screw us up, and make sure it
didnt. After all, no one wants to walk
up to the Man with No Name and
explain things like latency, bandwidth
and gigaflops! He knows a lot more

Opposite (from left):


Frankie Valli (John
Lloyd Young), Bob
Gaudio (Erich Bergen),
Tommy DeVito
(Vincent Piazza) and
Nick Massi (Michael
Lomenda) put on a
show in Jersey Boys.
This page, top:
Director Clint
Eastwood works out
the scene with Bergen
and Young. Bottom:
Eastwood and
cinematographer Tom
Stern, ASC, AFC
discuss a setup.

about it than you might think, but he


doesnt want to have to think about
those things.
In particular, the cinematographer says he responded to the evolution
of the Alexa software, the integration of
the Codex [recorder in the camera
body], plus being able to shoot anamorphic on the full [4:3] sensor. The
dynamic range of the Alexa is also very
filmic although I know that is a
hackneyed word these days and basically responds as a film emulsion would.
Taken together, these things satisfied
me that it was a sleek camera that was
www.theasc.com

going to drive nails. For this project, it


was the most robust, straightforward,
simplest choice, and for the most part, it
allowed us to work in our normal way
except instead of flipping mags every
eight minutes, wed flip mags every 26
minutes, which for Clint is like
Christmas seven days a week!
The digital infrastructure
required on set was structured to be as
subtle as possible. Throughout production, digital-imaging technician Glenn
Derry was stationed at a small, unassuming cart, where he used a calibrated
HP DreamColor LP2480zx monitor to
August 2014

43

Capturing All 4 Seasons

The filmmakers embraced a period-accurate lighting style as they re-created The Four Seasons
onstage and in-studio performances.

44

August 2014

American Cinematographer

view images sent from a Cobham


Messenger 2 wireless transmitter to a
Cobham receiver. At his station, Derry
could apply a basic CDL grade to the
footage when Stern wanted to examine
the overall tones on set, but for the most
part, Derry says neither Eastwood nor
Stern were particularly interested in onset color grading. The methodology on
set, Derry says, was to be light, tight
and efficient.
Derry also handled the data
transfer from the Codex XR mags to
G-Raid hard drives, and he created
PDFs with shot names and corresponding thumbnail images for use in editorial. The hard drives were delivered
nightly to the Motion Picture Imaging
facility on the Warner Bros. lot in
Burbank. MPI processed the dailies and
delivered Avid media files for editorial;
Stern and Eastwood generally waited to
view footage until they visited editors
Joel Cox and Gary Roach in the

Eastwood (below)
takes a seat next
to Lomenda for a
bar-interior scene.
The director
prefers to be
beside
his actors while
filming, and he
keeps tabs on the
framing with a
portable monitor.

Malpaso production companys editorial offices, which are also located on the
Warner Bros. lot.
Although Eastwood has never
been interested in video playback, or in
using a monitor to judge color, light or
focus, he has used a standard-definition
handheld monitor since Mystic River
(AC Dec. 03) to keep an eye on framing
and performances. With Jersey Boys, the
crew decided to try to send a high-definition signal to a handheld HD monitor for the director. Clint believes the
place of the director is right beside the
actors, and the 7-inch monitor is in his
hands simply to show him the framing,
explains Liz Radley, Eastwoods video
and computer-graphics supervisor.
Every HD system has its advantages and drawbacks, but we were not
able to find one that had close to zero
latency, with good and predictable
range, that was also very lightweight
and had ultra-quick recovery from
interruption of signal, Radley continues. An ideal portable system for Clint
wouldnt be affected when both the
transmitter on the camera and the
receiver on Clints monitor are moving,

or when we dont have line-of-sight


[between the transmitter and receiver],
as is frequently the case when Clint
follows his actors on set. Latency was a
significant issue, since Clint was always
next to the actors, and any observable
delay in the picture would throw the
image out of sync with the voices, which
was quite distracting.
Stern notes that he and Eastwood
sought to shoot Jersey Boys with the
www.theasc.com

same tried and true Panavision C


Series primes they have used for years.
However, the filmmakers discovered
that the Alexa sensor is so sensitive, it
can bring out any flaws in older glass
and the [C Series] glass is almost 50
years old now! says 1st AC Bill Coe.
Therefore, those lenses had to be optimized for digital cameras in order to
work for us.
ASC associate Dan Sasaki,
August 2014

45

Capturing All 4 Seasons

Top: Valli and


Gaudio seal
their
partnership
with a
handshake.
Bottom: Stern
meters the
diner interior.

Panavisions vice president of optical


engineering, handled glass optimization
for the production. During testing, he
explains, we saw aberrations on the
outer periphery of the frame that we had
not seen with the same lenses when they
were used on [a film camera]. We were
able to attribute the falloff to the additional optics within the digital camera.
In order to offset the aberration effects,
we re-spaced some of the anamorphic
46

August 2014

and spherical elements to balance the


performance of the lens. The final product created a system that worked very
well with digital cameras and preserved
the look [the filmmakers] were accustomed to seeing with their familiar C
Series lenses.
Prior to Jersey Boys, Coe had
worked with anamorphic lenses and an
Alexa camera system on Godzilla (shot
by Seamus McGarvey, ASC, BSC; AC
American Cinematographer

June 14). I was surprised how little


depth-of-field there was, Coe recalls.
I discussed that experience with Tom,
because I was concerned about the way
Clint likes to work, with one take or
maybe two if youre lucky, and sometimes even shooting rehearsals.
Selfishly, as the focus puller, I felt that
increasing the shooting stop would
help me get what Clint wanted the first
time around, so we wouldnt have to
slow down or change our methodology.
Tom accommodated my request and
brought up the light level, which
helped a lot, especially because we did
so much Steadicam work.
As Stern points out, The nature
of The Four Seasons music is up, to
say the least, so it seemed quite appropriate and obvious to us from the outset
that we would use a fluid camera
Steadicam, Technocrane and so on
during virtually all of the performances.
Befitting such up-tempo musical
numbers, Jersey Boys lighting scheme is
brighter than most of Eastwoods
recent work, in which our mantra has

been, Protect the blacks at all costs,


says gaffer Ross Dunkerley. In the
photochemical world, this is usually
achieved by creating a fat negative. Due
to the fact that digital sensors arent as
forgiving in the [highlights], we had to
fight our decades-long habit of overexposing by two-thirds of a stop. This is
also Clints first film in a long time in
which color is a major character.
Having done a number of films in
which we all but eliminated color, we
embraced the opposite end of the spectrum on this picture.
The production shot a large
swath of the performance material in
various Los Angeles venues including the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and
the Orpheum and Belasco theaters
over the course of just a few weeks.
During preproduction, Dunkerley
collaborated with the art department to
choose 15 gel colors that could be used
on the lights in different combinations
during the performance pieces
throughout the movie. We would rig
[the sets] a day or two in advance, and
my rigging gaffer, Jason Fitzgerald,
would send me photos of how each
stage was taking shape, Dunkerley
explains. Armed with this information,
Id select a few gels from our palette that
seemed appropriate to the environment. This all happened lightning-fast
via text messages or emails, as we shot
in [different] venues in rapid succession.
Stern adds, It was quite a bizarre
schedule at times, an interesting challenge. In many cases, the schedule
required the crew to make their lighting
decisions before they knew exactly how
the performances would be choreographed. The solution, Stern notes, was
to strategically set stuff up all over
each of the venues. Fortunately, I
started my checkered career doing
music films [as a gaffer] in the 1970s,
and I had a lot of experience lighting for
a number of groups. It was all fairly
straightforward back then lots of Par
lights!
We turned the Dorothy
Chandler Pavilion into the Roostertail

Top: A camera is
rigged to the
front of a car for
a robbery scene.
Middle and
bottom:
Projections were
used for a driving
sequence filmed
on a soundstage.

www.theasc.com

August 2014

47

Capturing All 4 Seasons

Valli sings at the


Roostertail
nightclub in
Detroit.
Opposite: This
diagram
illustrates the
lighting for the
Roostertail set,
which was built
inside the
Dorothy
Chandler
Pavilion.

in Detroit. Another old theater nearby


became the stage for The Ed Sullivan
Show, and a third became a club in Las
Vegas, the cinematographer continues.
Due to the period nature of the performances, the crew religiously avoided
modern rock-and-roll lighting techniques such as moving LEDs. Echoing
Sterns sentiments, Dunkerley notes,
In the old days, it was pretty much just
Par cans. For every different color you
wanted, you needed a different battery
of lights. You might need 20 lights of
one color, but then if you wanted four
colors, you needed 80 lights, which
meant more generators and cables.
Even though you might think the
period look would be simpler, we actually had to put in a lot more lights and
cables than a modern touring band
would use.
The quest for period-accurate
lighting frequently required Stern and
Dunkerley to work against their
impulses. As an example, the gaffer
points to a sequence in which The Four
Seasons perform on the American
Bandstand television show for the first
time. Dunkerley says his research into
48

August 2014

the shows lighting made it clear that


for the most part, the series had
featured some of the most appallingly
flat, ugly lighting, with sloppily rigged
cables and lights everywhere.
Collectively, we decided to embrace
this look.
I encouraged [Fitzgerald] to
help us go for it, and we found some of
the oldest theatrical lights around
Pars, Fresnels, ellipsoidals and so on,
Dunkerley continues. We had to dig
deep just to find some of them. I was
proud of Jason when I came to set
the day we shot the scene, I saw two
old chicken-coop lights hanging about
20 feet above the other lights. I never
requested those units, so I asked Jason
what their purpose was and he
responded that they were there to light
all the vintage fixtures and the rats
nest of cables. Thats when I knew we
were completely on the same page. I
loved doing that scene the challenge of making something look
authentic.
According to A-camera/Steadicam operator Stephen Campanelli,
shooting
digitally
encouraged
American Cinematographer

Eastwood to fully embrace his love for


extended takes with the camera on the
Steadicam, even beyond the musical
performances. As a particular highlight
of the job, Campanelli describes an
epic, three-take Steadicam scene in
which The Four Seasons attend a
raucous party. The scene involved six
pages of dialogue and was originally
slated for an entire day of shooting, to
begin with a 45-second Steadicam shot
of the characters as they enter the room
and head to the bar.
Recognizing that the situation
was ripe for Eastwood to experiment,
Stern and his crew lit the set with soft
light all around, using practicals built
into the set as well as 6K space lights
overhead, to permit 360-degree coverage. As it turned out, this was the
perfect approach, because Eastwood
unleashed Campanelli, wearing the
Steadicam, to roll without stopping.
They finished the entire scene in just a
few hours.
Clint never called cut, so we
just kept shooting, Campanelli recalls.
As usual, he trusted me to find some
really cool shots and angles while the

www.theasc.com

August 2014

49

Capturing All 4 Seasons

The full cast comes together on a New York City street set to sing December, 1963
(Oh, What a Night) for the films grand finale.

50

August 2014

American Cinematographer

actors kept acting. There were about 50


extras on the set, and I maneuvered
through them, telling the story with
the Steadicam. We shot for nine
minutes straight, without cutting,
which was the longest take I could
recall on a Clint Eastwood movie
or, as a matter of fact, in my entire
career. But then we did the entire thing
again, and I shot from different angles
so Clint could cut the scene. Take two
lasted almost 10 minutes, and then take
three went for 11 minutes straight.
Whats in the movie, of course, are
[pieces] of the three takes cut together.
The end result is incredible.
The movies finale gave the filmmakers the opportunity to depart from
the dramatic narrative and step into the
stage world for a major performance,
which they shot with a fluid camera and
lit with modern stage fixtures, including
Chroma-Q Color Force LED light
strips, Philips Vari-Lite moving lights
and Brite Box Xenon Follow Spots.

Capturing All 4 Seasons

Valli leaves his home and family for another show on the road.

Eastwood conceived the upbeat finale


after production was already underway,
and decided to close the onscreen festivities with every cast member gathered
on a New York City street, where they
sing and dance to the tune of
December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night).
Shot on the Warner Bros. back
lot, the sequence called for some craneto-Steadicam-to-crane gymnastics that

52

were executed in one long take.


Campanelli enthuses that the result
which took six takes to perfect is one
of my favorite shots I have ever done in
my career.
It was a kind of Bollywood
number that Clint came up with, the
operator continues. It started with me
on a Titan crane looking down on the
four boys, who were singing under a

streetlamp. As the crane dropped me


onto the street, I stepped off and continued with the Steadicam around and in
front of them. Then I started drifting
backwards up the street. As the boys
broke into a great musical number they
were joined by every cast member in the
movie dancing, singing and laughing
along three blocks. At the end of the
street, I stepped back onto the Titan
crane, which had been driven around
the set so I could climb back onto it, and
I rose back into the air to frame the
entire group in a big, wide shot. The
song comes to a great grand finale,
ending as everyone freezes in place.
The filmmakers kept Jersey Boys
in-house at Warner Bros. MPI for the
final digital grade, during which they
worked with colorist Maxine Gervais,
who had also supervised the productions dailies. Gervais used a FlimLight
Baselight Eight system, working in the
native Arri anamorphic (2880x2160)
format for a final 2K finish. The DI

was done in a week-and-a-half or two


weeks, Gervais reports. Having seen
all the dailies, I knew what was coming;
Tom and I were in sync and we worked
really fast. He and Clint are lovely
people, easy to work with. They give
notes, they know what they want, but
they also trust one another. Although it
was my first time working with them, it
felt like they included me in that same
manner very rapidly.
Despite the fact that Jersey Boys
was Eastwoods first digital feature,
Stern says the grade followed the same
process we have grown accustomed to
since Eastwood first used the DI for
Flags of Our Fathers (AC Nov. 06).
Given the pace at which Eastwood
shoots, Stern says he has come to
routinely evaluate, during the shooting
day, where he can rely on tools within
the DI suite to address specific issues
and save time on set. There are a
number of heavy-lifting things I used to
do physically, but many of them I can

now do digitally, which is quicker and


more economical, Stern says. For
instance, if were shooting and theres a
house across the way, in the past we
might have put up a big flyswatter, like a
20-by-20 silk on a Condor, to shadow
the house. Now, we can do that digitally
in about 10 seconds. Im fortunate in
that I always go for the entire DI, and I
work in an environment where Clint
trusts me. We have become quite
comfortable using the DI in this way.
Its the same with visual effects,
the cinematographer continues. In the
first shot of Jersey Boys, when Tommy
DeVito [Vincent Piazza] walks across a
street in New Jersey in the 1950s, I liked
how the shot falls off, with the
Manhattan skyline in the background
New Jersey is in the shadow of the
golden city of New York. Of course, you
cant use todays Manhattan [to represent] the 1950s. So the skyline [in the
final shot] is a pastiche of synthetic
elements created for us by [visual-effects

supervisor Michael Owens]. Using


these digital tools economically for little
things that help sustain the story is
something we now do routinely.

TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Digital Anamorphic
Arri Alexa XT
Panavision C Series

53

Bad Blood
B

Four cinematographers lend their


talents to The Strain, an eerie series
about a vampire virus run rampant
in New York.
By Mark Dillon
|
54

August 2014

ased on the trilogy of vampire novels co-written by Ben


Hogan and director Guillermo Del Toro, the FX
Network series The Strain begins with a viral outbreak in
New York. Dr. Ephraim Goodweather (Corey Stoll), Dr.
Nora Martinez (Ma Maestro) and the Center for Disease
Controls Canary Team attempt to combat the spreading sickness, which is revealed to be a parasitic form of ancient
vampirism. Uninfected citizens band together to fight the
infected, waging a battle for mankinds future.
Behind the scenes, four cinematographers Checco
Varese, ASC; Miroslaw Baszak; Gabriel Beristain, ASC,

American Cinematographer

Unit photography by Michael Gibson, courtesy of FX Networks. Visual-effects sequences courtesy of Mr. X Inc. Lighting diagram courtesy of Checco Varese, ASC.

BSC; and Colin Hoult joined executive producer Del Toro to help infuse the
first seasons 13 episodes with eerie,
cinematic flair. My hope is that if youre
scanning your TV and you see this show,
youll say, Oh my God what is this?
says Varese, who, sitting alongside chief
lighting technician Scotti Phillips, spoke
with AC in a Toronto restaurant the day
after wrapping principal photography.
Its very dark and different from what
you see every day.
Varese was initially set to alternate
episodes with Toronto-based cinematographer Baszak, but after he
finished work on the pilot, Varese was
called away to shoot the feature The 33
for a director he couldnt refuse: his wife,
Patricia Riggen. Baszak then logged five
episodes, and Beristain handled four.
Hoult, who frequently tackled 2nd-unit
cinematography duties when an
episodes 1st-unit director of photography was unable to shoot that material
himself, also photographed one episode
before Varese returned to Toronto to
shoot episodes 11 and 13.
Varese whose credits also
include pilots for the series The Unit,
Life, True Blood, Melrose Place (2009)
and Reign notes that he got the job in
part because Del Toro liked his work in
the American crime drama Night at the
Golden Eagle and the Argentine thriller
The Aura. Hailing from Lima, Peru, the
cinematographer launched his career in
the early 80s as a camera assistant on
National Geographic documentaries
before working as a CNN cameraman
and war correspondent for various
broadcasters in some of the worlds
deadliest locales. After transitioning into
Steadicam operating, his collaborators
included Del Toros frequent cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, ASC.
Varese provided additional photography
for Navarro and Del Toro on Pacific Rim
(AC Aug. 13), which also shot in
Toronto, and he jumped at the chance to
work on The Strain with Del Toro and
showrunner Carlton Cuse.
Varese began prepping the pilot in
mid-August 2013. Principal photography for the first episode began in late

Opposite: Dr.
Nora Martinez
(Ma Maestro,
left) combats a
parasitic form of
vampirism in
The Strain. This
page, from top:
Cinematographers
Checco Varese,
ASC (left, with
gaffer Scotti
Phillips); Gabriel
Beristain, ASC,
BSC (second from
left); Miroslaw
Baszak (right);
and Colin Hoult
(far left).

www.theasc.com

August 2014

55

Bad Blood

September and required 22 shooting


days, plus five additional days of
reshoots that lasted into early
November. (New York exteriors were
shot by a New York-based unit on the
weekends.) Del Toro co-wrote and
directed the pilot, then kept tabs on the
rest of the season as executive producer
while directing the horror feature
Crimson Peak. Varese stresses that Del
Toros influence was felt in all departments throughout production. He
designs everything down to perfection,
the cinematographer says.
Describing the series visual style,
Varese offers, This is a world thats
about to end. The vampires are taking
over, so nothing is pretty; everything is a
bit gritty, sordid and disturbing. The
series is dark, but each scene has a signature color or two: The Master, a merciless creature with grandly sinister
ambitions, brings cyan into his environments; the basement of the pawnshop
owned by vampire hunter Abraham
Setrakian (David Bradley) is heavy on
green and warm tones; and the office of
Goodweathers marriage counselor is
amber.
Working with production
designer Tamara Deverell, Varese says
he and Del Toro gave each set a specific
look based on the story and what we
56

August 2014

wanted the audience to feel. Once we


established our bases, the shorthand was
simple. For skin tones, [non-vampires]
are usually lit with regular light so you
can recognize that theyre human. But
everything else has a twist.
Varese gathered his lighting notes
in a look book that provided easy
aesthetic reference for the other cinematographers and the crew. For example, scenes involving The Master
required Rosco Storaro VS Amber and
VS Cyan lighting gels. Indeed, Varese
and Phillips spent a lot of time testing
gels, which were used throughout the
series. We used many different saturations of cyan, Phillips notes. If you
start getting into saturation thats too
heavy on the faces, you lose the skin
tone and facial structure.
Early on, the decision was made
to shoot with Red Epic MX cameras,
recording Redcode Raw in 4K with a
5:1 compression ratio to 128GB or
256GB Redmag SSD cards; the Epics
ASA setting was kept at 800. Varese
explains, This project lent itself to the
Epic. Guillermo was very comfortable
using that camera on Pacific Rim, and
the Epic is well suited to the saturated
colors we employ in the series.
The pilot was shot predominantly
with the camera mounted on a
American Cinematographer

Steadicam operated by Gilles Corbeil,


another veteran of Pacific Rim. (Later in
the series, when Corbeil left to work on
Crimson Peak, he was succeeded by Rudy
Katkic.) Guillermo wanted to establish a
very fluid camera, says Varese. Its
moving constantly. And the CDC guys
are always on the move. Whether theyre
chasing something mysterious or
running from it, theyre never static.
Sim Digital provided the shows
camera and lens package, which also
consisted of four Angenieux Optimo
zooms 24-290mm T2.8, 15-40mm
T2.6, 17-80mm T2.2 and 28-76mm
T2.6 and two sets of Arri/Zeiss Ultra
Primes. The crew worked mostly in the
20-50mm range. For Guillermo, a closeup is 50mm, Varese notes. Thats how
he sees the world. In his coverage, nothing is too close or too tight. Per Vareses
look book, close-ups of the vampires
would also incorporate a Chocolate 1 or
filter to enhance the leathery quality
of their skin, and to produce a more vivid
effect on the decay of their skin tones and
the violet of their veins.
True to the tradition of vampire
lore, the creatures are susceptible to
sunlight. To help set the appropriate
tone, the entire 72-minute pilot takes
place at night. The action begins as a
Boeing 767 prepares to land at John F.

LRX photo by Doug Black, courtesy of Scotti Phillips.

Left: The pilot episodes airport tarmac set was staged at the Toronto Pearson International Airport.
Right: One of the LRX Mobile Robotic Lighting Systems used on the tarmac. Opposite: This lighting
diagram illustrates how Varese and Phillips approached the airport set.

www.theasc.com

August 2014

57

Bad Blood

This visual-effects sequence charts the creation of the Boeing 767s descent into New York, from
the photographed plate (top) to the finished frame (bottom).

58

August 2014

American Cinematographer

Kennedy International Airport in


Queens. A pair of flight attendants
detect something moving in the cargo
hold, and The Master soon bursts
through the hatch. Air traffic control
loses contact with the plane, which
somehow lands, cold, without power
and with no immediate signs of life
among its 210 passengers. Perplexed
airport authorities call in the CDCs
response team, headed by Goodweather.
In creating the sequence, the
production had access to a seldom-used
section of the Toronto Pearson
International Airport. They did two
nights of exterior work on the tarmac,
where they positioned the authorities
vehicles and the CDCs biohazard tents,
and one night inside the terminal, for a
scene in which passengers anxious families and friends are restrained by police.
Varese estimates that the tarmac
required lighting for 1.5 million square
feet; his research involved asking a
Department of Homeland Security
rescue team how it would respond to a
potentially hostile plane on the ground.
He was told that during a terrorist
threat, the team would surround the
plane with blinding lights so the people
on board couldnt see what was happening outside.
Del Toro likes to be able to shoot
scenes in a range of at least 270 degrees,
and Varese wanted to be able to turn
around in no more than 20 minutes. To
meet these demands, Phillips, rigging
gaffer Nikki Holmes and the electrical
team spent five days pre-rigging the
airport and brought in a couple of LRX
Mobile Robotic Lighting Systems,
which can rotate lights 360 degrees.
The plane was positioned at the
tarmacs east end, facing west. For the
main shooting angle, one LRX crane
was placed at the north end with four
12K HMI heads (gelled with Plus
Green and CTS) deployed to create a
moonlight source; two 12K tungsten
units gelled with Rosco Industrial Vapor
were used to match the airport lights.
Meanwhile, a crane at the south end
carried six 12K HMIs gelled with
Plus Green. The crew was restricted

from raising the cranes any higher than


65' for fear of blinding the facilitys
actual air-traffic controllers.
To re-create the rotating light of
an airport tower, the crew placed two
Martin Mac III Profile moving lights on
a Condor to the side of the plane. One
[light] swept through the scene while
the other was resetting, says Phillips.
Once dimmer-board operator Desiree
Lidon programmed the movements, she
could let it run all night.
Meanwhile, a Condor carrying
two Nine-light Maxi-Brutes, each
gelled with Industrial Vapor, was placed
in front of the planes nose, and four
construction cranes with four 1K metalhalide lamps were scattered around the
tarmac to provide backlight and to play
in the frame. They looked like tarmac
lights, Varese says. They belonged.
The crew also set up a 600' row of L&E
MR-16 Mini-Strips, gelled with VS
Yellow, on the north side of the plane to
represent runway lights that Lidon
programmed to provide a sense of
movement.
To suggest the menacing presence
aboard the dormant aircraft, Del Toro
wanted the planes underbelly to be illuminated with a pulsing heartbeat light.
The effect was achieved with 20 1K

Top left: Pilot director and series executive producer Guillermo Del Toro steps in front
of the camera to assist with an autopsy. Right, top to bottom: Through visual effects,
the victims heart is permeated with parasitic worms as another doctor examines it.

www.theasc.com

August 2014

59

Bad Blood

This visual-effects sequence illustrates how visual-effects company Mr. X helped


realize a close-up shot of a medical examiner extracting a parasite from his wrist.

60

August 2014

American Cinematographer

tungsten Arri Mini-Cycs gelled with


Industrial Vapor and Opal Frost, along
with eight Chroma-Q Color Force 12
LED units that Lidon programmed to
pulse and change color.
The pilot episode alone required
some 200 visual-effects shots, which
were handled by the Toronto-based
company Mr. X. (Recently acquired by
Technicolor, the effects facility had
previously worked on the horror film
Mama, which Del Toro executiveproduced, and on designs and previs for
Pacific Rim.) Two or three members of
the Mr. X crew were always present on
the set of The Strain to assist with shots
that would require digital elements, such
as the 5'-long stinger tongue the
vampires use to drain their victims
blood. Varese recalls, We had to give
[the Mr. X crew] camera lens and height
information, and to minimize the post
work, we would put tracking marks on
the characters when the effects were
more complex.
Mr. X animated the pilots opening shot, in which an image of what
appears to be a bloodstream dissolves
into an urban landscape, with the
Boeing 767 flying in from the top of
frame. The companys most bloodcurdling work, however, reveals The
Master in all his malevolent horror. On
set, the character was played by 6'10"
actor Robert Maillet, who wore a dark
hood and cloak fashioned by costume
designer Luis Sequeira, and prosthetics
created by creature and makeup-effects
supervisor Sean Sansom. However, as
Mr. X president Dennis Berardi
explains, Guillermo wanted The
Master to have a spider-like walk, with
tentacles reaching out of him. We
created a digital double and used a
hybrid approach, where the close-ups
are practical and the wide shots in which
he moves are digital.
We did a physical 3-D cyberscan
of The Master in full wardrobe,
Berardi continues. This captured the
real-world form and dimension of the
character and was the basis of our 3-D
model and textures, allowing us to create
a very accurate digital double.

Bad Blood

Top: Actor Robert Maillet donned a dark hood and cloak to portray The Master on set.
Middle and Bottom: Mr. X added visual effects to show the vampire draining a victims
blood with a 5'-long stinger tongue.

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August 2014

American Cinematographer

The digital version of The


Master was modeled and animated in
Autodesks Maya. Mr. X also developed
a procedural cloth simulation to create
movement in the characters cowl that
matched his particular walk; this system
was built using Side Effects Softwares
Houdini, with rendering accomplished
in Chaos Groups V-Ray and compositing done in The Foundrys Nuke.
Guillermo had the foresight to say,
Lets build this system, because were
going to need it in later episodes,
Berardi recalls. Now, The Master exists
as a digital asset and Guillermos given
us a bible on how he moves, how hes lit
and how hes to be rendered. Its starting
to be plug-and-play. Mr. X also
animated the parasitic worms The
Master deploys to turn people into
vampires, as well as CSI-style atomiclevel shots of victims blood being
infected.
When Varese had to step away
from the production, he tapped
Beristain as his replacement. This
pleased Del Toro, since the two had
previously collaborated on the feature
Blade II. However, prepping the second
episode proved a daunting task. It was
only eight or nine days of shooting, and
it was a Guillermo project, so the ambition behind it was huge, Beristain
reflects. The pilot takes place entirely at
night, but my first script took place in
the daytime. I had to follow the style of
the pilot, but it was difficult to introduce
color in all this daylight, and I also had
to think of how to make daylight look
ominous, interesting and satisfactory to
Guillermos vision.
I didnt want to desaturate the
image or go too far with a digital look,
but rather work with shadow and light
and the elements I had, he continues. I
used very little fill. Interiors were very
silhouetted, and the characters would
walk through shadow areas. I was trying
to expose for the highlights so my
shadow areas would go down, but not so
dark that I would lose detail.
Episodes five and six feature a
solar eclipse, a phenomenon Beristain
once witnessed in Baja California,

Mexico. During the real eclipse, he


recalls, the light was very sharp and
concentrated, and then it went into
dusk with a 360-degree sunset. Its an
extraordinary look.
One sequence that transpires
beneath the dusky sky finds
Goodweather stuck in traffic as masses
of people head to Times Square to view
the eclipse. Meanwhile, episode ones
airplane pilot, now a vampire, has
escaped the authorities and with the
sun blocked, hes ready to binge.
The sequence was shot in
Hamilton, a one-hour drive from
Toronto, during the coldest winter in 20
years. The crew shot during the day, so
Beristains approach was to underexpose
by two stops and have the sky further
darkened in post. In an effort to avoid
contrast from direct sunlight, the
production chose a street with buildings
tall enough to block out light from the
road. However, when sunlight hit the
buildings on the far side of the street,
Beristain had to fill the shadows. I
couldnt have gigantic lights because Id
get specular reflections on the cars, the
cinematographer explains. Scotti and I
decided to go with more compact,
punchy fixtures. In this case, the main
light was an Arri M40, but the crew
also employed a few M18s and a
Cinemills Par-Nel.
Baszak (whose credits include
the feature Land of the Dead and the
series The Firm) stepped in beginning
with episode four, after shooting 2ndunit material alongside Del Toro for the
pilot so he could get a feel for The
Strains visual language. Hes enthused
to report that Del Toro afforded
creative freedoms to each of the series
directors. They each had their choices
and preferences, and the nature of each
episode is different, he says. In the
end, theres what was required to maintain the look of the show, and theres
what each director brought. That was
exciting; I worked with very good directors who were so different [from one
another], including Peter Weller, Keith
Gordon, Charlotte Sieling and John

Dahl.

A digital version of The Master was created to match Del Toros vision of the malevolent character,
who, Mr. X President Dennis Berardi explains, moves with a spider-like walk, with tentacles
reaching out of him.

www.theasc.com

August 2014

63

Bad Blood

Dr. Ephraim Goodweather (Corey Stoll, right) and the Center for Disease Controls Canary Team
investigate the quarantined airplane.

Like Beristain, Baszak was


tasked with imbuing day exteriors and
bright interiors with tension and
atmosphere. In episode seven, Roger

64

Luss (Aaron Douglas) hurriedly enters


his house after fending off a number of
vampires, only to discover that his wife,
Joan (Leslie Hope) one of the

airplane passengers from the pilot


has also become one. The night interior
was shot on location in a predominantly
white, modern, multi-level house with
large windows, not your typical scary
house where vampires dwell, Baszak
notes. I relied on graphic compositions
with wide-angle lenses, negative space,
silhouettes and reflections of the characters in mirrors and glass to create a sense
of entrapment and panic. He lit
Douglas with a 5K tungsten Fresnel
backlight, gelled with Industrial Vapor
and shining through a transparent door,
and a Kino Celeb LED, similarly gelled
and positioned through a window to
light the actors face. Hope, meanwhile,
begins the scene in shadow before
entering the colored light.
The next morning, a nanny
brings the couples children to the
house, thinking it safe, and hides them
in the wine cellar. Given vampires aversion to the sun, Baszak closed the blinds
most of the way for the day interior, only

allowing light to creep in from the


bottom of the windows. The crew
placed 6K HMI Pars and an 18K HMI
outside the house, and also used a
Source Four to simulate hits of sunlight
inside. For additional accents, they positioned four Kino Celeb 200 DMX
LEDs and a half-dozen 150-watt and
300-watt tungsten Fresnel fixtures.
Throughout the seasons production, the cinematographers monitored
their images on set without applying
any special LUTs. As digital-imaging
technician Chris Dover explains, They
felt that using Reds version of Rec. 709
was a good enough starting point. I
would then work from the raw data to
[adjust] the picture to their desired
tastes. Dover worked with Blackmagic
Designs DaVinci Resolve 9 and a Sony
PVM-2541 OLED monitor, and the
cinematographers provided their feedback throughout the shooting day.
At the end of each day, Dover
sent his work to Technicolor Toronto,

where Rob Evans timed the dailies,


which were then distributed on hard
drives. Evans also handled the final
color correction, first grading the
supplied DPX files in DaVinci Resolve
before the visual effects were added.
Once Del Toro approved the effects,
Evans would finalize the grade and
obtain Del Toros ultimate sign-off.
Evans frequently visited the set to
get a better sense of how the cinematographers wanted the images to
look. The recurring theme is to saturate and accentuate both the yellow and
blue tones, and to create vivid, eyepopping colors while retaining a fairly
dark and spooky feeling, Evans says.
The color palette has been carefully
selected in set design and lighting,
which allows me to enhance the desired
look rather than try to create it.
Aspiring to feature-film quality
on a television schedule and budget has
come with its stresses, but all of the
cinematographers recall their work with

enthusiasm and hope the show will earn


a second season. Its probably one of
my most beautiful works, says Varese,
and thats because its Guillermos
vision, which is very unique.

TECHNICAL SPECS
1.78:1
Digital Capture
Red Epic MX
Angenieux Optimo,
Arri/Zeiss Ultra Prime

65

Shaking aFamilys

Foundation
P
Cinematographer Ben Richardson
shoots Super 16mm on the indie
film Happy Christmas.
By Noah Kadner
|

66

August 2014

rolific director Joe Swanberg has helped pioneer the


micro-budget mumblecore genre, which emphasizes
largely improvised scripts, non-professional actors and
naturalistic, informal cinematography. Last year,
Swanberg dipped a toe into slightly larger budgets with the
comedy Drinking Buddies, digitally shot on a Red Scarlet by
cinematographer Ben Richardson (Beasts of the Southern Wild;
AC April 12). For his latest project, Happy Christmas, which
premiered at this years Sundance Film Festival, Swanberg
reunited with Richardson for their first collaboration on

American Cinematographer

Frame grabs courtesy of Magnolia Pictures. All other images courtesy of the filmmakers.

Opposite: Life
abruptly changes
for Jeff (Joe
Swanberg, left)
and his wife,
Kelly (Melanie
Lansky, right),
when his sister,
Jenny (Anna
Kendrick), moves
into their home
in the film Happy
Christmas. This
page, top:
Swanberg, who
also directed the
feature, cast his
son, Jude, as his
onscreen scion.
Bottom:
Cinematographer
Ben Richardson.

Super 16mm film stock.


Shot over three weeks in
December 2012 on location in Chicago
mostly in Swanbergs house Happy
Christmas tells the story of a young
couple: budding novelist Kelly (Melanie
Lansky) and her filmmaker husband,
Jeff (Swanberg). Their peaceful but
somewhat static life abruptly shifts
when Jeff s capricious younger sister,
Jenny (Anna Kendrick), moves into
their basement. The small cast also
features Swanbergs two-year-old son,
Jude, in the role of Jeff and Kellys
toddler.
Despite the limited budget, the
filmmakers both felt film was the right
fit for the material. It was a mutual
decision, says Richardson. Super
16mm was my first love, and we didnt
know how much longer we would have
the option to shoot movies on film. Our
main concern was the run time of the
film mag, but on Drinking Buddies I saw
that Joe could achieve the kind of
improvised material he wanted very efficiently, so I felt shooting film was viable.
Theres a certain validity to actually rolling celluloid [through the
camera] that focuses the cast and crew,
heightening the moment, the cine-

matographer continues. When film


represents a substantial portion of a
tight budget, each take is precious. We
got some magic moments because of
that focus.
Swanberg adds, I studied filmmaking at Southern Illinois University,
which was a very rigorous, old-school
program. My education was shooting
on 16mm, cutting on a Steenbeck,
www.theasc.com

conforming my own negative and


finishing a film print. Happy Christmas
felt like the point in my career where
shooting film was a financially viable
option again. I also felt some fear that if
we didnt do this now, I might miss the
opportunity to ever work on film again.
Fletcher Chicago supplied the
production with a single Arri 416 Plus
camera for the shoot, along with a set of
August 2014

67

Shaking a Familys Foundation

Richardson embraced a naturalistic lighting style for the film. We would never tell the actors
exactly where to stand, he says, but we might position the camera to shoot three-quarters to
a specific window, which would give them a natural tendency to land in the area that was lit
most interestingly.

68

August 2014

American Cinematographer

Arri/Zeiss Ultra 16 prime lenses. The


416 is a dead-reliable, beautiful camera
that I had used on Beasts of the Southern
Wild, says Richardson. In looking for
that intimate, handheld, documentary
feel within the main house location, we
shot mostly on the 12mm and 16mm
lenses. The longest lens we had was a
50mm, which rarely came out. We used
a 25mm once in a while for locked-off
shots.
In crafting the films visual style,
Richardson and Swanberg drew inspiration from the imagery of documentary photographers Helen Levitt and
Nan Goldin. Its been my experience
that if you frame and work around practical, existing lights with perhaps a
few supplements you can get very
beautiful images through blocking
alone, the cinematographer observes.
We would never tell the actors exactly
where to stand, but we might position
the camera to shoot three-quarters to a
specific window, which would give
them a natural tendency to land in the
area that was lit most interestingly.
After opting for Super 16mm,
Swanberg recalls, Ben and I first
considered shooting on reversal stock to
get a hyper-saturated, high-contrast,
1970s-style warm-orange-and-yellow
look. We realized only one Kodak
color-reversal stock was still available
[Ektachrome 100D 7285, which has
since been discontinued], and we would
really have had to light the hell out of it,
[which wouldnt have been appropriate
for] the kind of small crew and cast intimacy I wanted. So we needed to figure
out how to get that reversal look using
negative film stock.
Working with Alpha Cine Labs
in Seattle, the production conducted
tests to attain a one-light look-up table
that approximated the desired reversal
look and could be applied to the dailies
throughout principal photography. We
shipped out negative about every
second day to help keep costs down,
notes Richardson. Alpha Cine transferred our footage to Cineon spec in log
through the LUT and then sent dailies
back as ProRes 1080p QuickTime files

Top: Jeff and


Jenny have a
chat in the
basement tiki
room. Middle
and bottom:
Tensions rise as
Jenny repeatedly
returns home
drunk.

on hard drives. I didnt grow up with


digital; Im all about lighting and metering for contrast ratios and doing my
work in front of the lens, so the delay
didnt worry me. Im a bit of a pragmatist when it comes to dailies. As long as
Im seeing basically the right results, I
dont need to see them projected to be
confident about what Im getting.
Happy Christmas ended up being
one of Alpha Cines final projects before
the lab shuttered in November 2013.
They were such a champion for film
for so long, Swanberg laments. Ben
had worked with them on Beasts of the
Southern Wild and they were an integral
part of making Happy Christmas. It was
really a bummer when we found out
they were closing. They had historically
bent over backwards to make sure independent filmmakers could realize their
vision, and its one less option now for
people who want to shoot film.
Richardson elected to work with
Kodak Vision3 500T 7219 film stock
for the entire shoot. Normally Id use
both 200T 7213 and 500T, he says,
but since I already knew wed need the
500 for the darker night interiors, I did
some quick tests with the reversal LUT
and found that the only real difference
between the two stocks was a subtle
www.theasc.com

August 2014

69

Shaking a Familys Foundation

variation in grain quality. We could have


managed that with digital grain reduction in post, but we decided to stick
with one stock to avoid this [variation]
and also to simplify stock management,
since [1st AC] Eon Mora was the one
person handling film for the whole
production.
The scale of this shoot was tiny,
the cinematographer continues. The
entire cast and crew could fit into two
minivans, which meant that we were
incredibly agile and could keep the
environment all about performance and
story.
Although his films dialogue is
largely improvised while shooting,
Swanberg prefers to eschew multicamera coverage. Joe has made almost
20 movies and has a very strong singlecamera mentality, says Richardson.
Hes not looking for traditional coverage, but rather a real connection
between two actors with natural
responses and reactions. If we need to
give ourselves a little escape valve after a
long take, well typically look for one
other angle to cut away to, and then
well get out.
Ben and I tend to agree on this

Top: Jenny and


her friend Carson
(Lena Dunham)
help Kelly
brainstorm a
novel she hopes
to write. For this
scene and others,
high-wattage bulbs
were placed in
practical lights
with low-intensity
bounce fill
to maintain the
films observational
feel. Bottom:
Richardson meters
the supplemental
lighting in the
basement.

70

August 2014

American Cinematographer

Richardson put all of his lights into service for


a scene in which Jenny, Kelly and Carson talk
over drinks in the tiki room.

philosophically, the director adds. You


want all of your emphasis and focus on
one main point of view. I edit my own
movies, and as an editor Ive always
appreciated the challenge and creative
thinking that comes out of marrying
different takes. Theres a really different
vibe to cutting between multiple
cameras on the same take [as opposed
to] trying to match two different takes
and make them seamless. Also, from a
photographic standpoint, Ben can really
get everything he wants from that one
camera rather than compromising the
lighting in order to accommodate and
shoot around a second camera.
Complementing the pared down,
single-camera approach within real
locations, Richardson kept his lighting
package to a minimum. We mostly

used small units like covered wagons,


China balls, and small HMIs bounced
off 273 Soft Silver to simulate outdoor
ambience [filtering in through
windows], Richardson reveals. The
rest was a lot of practical sources,
switching out bulbs for higher wattages
[up to 150 watts], low-intensity
bounced fill, and letting practicals play
hot and bright. He feels this lighting
style helps give the movie a more
observational feel.
One of Richardsons largest
setups for Happy Christmas was a scene
in which Jenny, Kelly and Carson (Lena
Dunham) chat over drinks in the basement, which is styled like a tiki room,
replete with wet bar. A few days prior,
wed had a beautiful, soft cool push of
natural light through the windows, the
www.theasc.com

cinematographer recalls. But on the


shoot day, it was heavily overcast and
grey, so we had to have every lamp in
play. [Gaffer] Christian Hins placed a
1.2K HMI Par outside the main
window, through a 6-by-6 Grid Cloth
to soften it up. Inside, we switched out
some of the practicals, which we supplemented with a tungsten bulb in a skirted
China ball positioned down the corridor. Then we had a covered wagon
gelled with Full CTB tucked just below
the window frame to create a little
supplement to the natural bounce.
We ran one take on the 25mm
lens and then swung to the 50mm as a
roving single, following the three
women talking, Richardson continues.
We ran two mags on that conversation,
and as the scene developed, I knew Joe
could edit the scene with the rhythm
[the actors] got into. Its a fun process as
an operator as well as a cinematographer, knowing I can stay responsive and
August 2014

71

Shaking a Familys Foundation

The household awakens to smoke after an inebriated Jenny severely overcooks a frozen pizza.

72

August 2014

American Cinematographer

try to bring an intentionality to the


camera without having to tag every line.
I can really just enjoy the moment and
watch the actors bring their different
points of view to life organically.
Another notable scene features an
inebriated Jenny haphazardly cooking a
pizza in the oven, resulting in a small fire
with lots of smoke that wakes up the
entire household. That was fun,
Richardson enthuses. We played up all
the practicals, hung a couple of Peppers
and 300-watt units to backlight the
smoke, [and positioned] some gelled 1K
open-face units through the windows to
bring in the feel of the street. We did
two takes of that scene and were done in
about an hour.
As Happy Christmas brisk shoot
progressed, Swanberg began editing the
film, working with Alpha Cines 1080p
QuickTime dailies in Final Cut Pro 7
on a MacBook Pro. I could not believe
how rich and different the footage
looked compared to my digital projects,
says Swanberg. With all the tricks for
getting video to look like film, when you
actually look at 16mm footage, [digital]
just doesnt come close.
Swanberg continued editing
while attending festivals and other
events to promote Drinking Buddies.
When Happy Christmas was invited to
premiere at Sundance, he exported an
EDL from Final Cut Pro for Nolo
Digital Film in Chicago to use as a

guide in creating the final version for


exhibition. Nolo re-scanned the original Super 16mm negative at 3K resolution with an Arriscan film scanner.
Weve been using the Arriscan since
we opened our company and its proven
to give consistently high-quality
results, says Boris Seagraves, a technical partner at Nolo. Super 16mm
scanned on our machine has always
impressed, giving great resolution and
dynamic range.
Ben wanted an Ektachrome
look, so we first shot charts with
Ektachrome reversal stock and also
with 7219, and then created the LUT
via those samples, Seagraves continues.
We then graded with the reversal
LUT using FilmLight Baselights
color-correction system. Using digital
printer lights kept the results truer to
how a print would look if timed traditionally in a lab, and kept the color relationship between shadows, midtones
and highlights truer to a photochemical
process.
The timeframe, when condensed together, was about three
weeks, Seagraves adds. A feature typically takes approximately one to two
weeks to scan and another two to five
days to clean up any dirt, dust or debris
that made its way onto the film incamera, either during processing or
from handling afterwards. The color
grade went quickly for a feature.
Colorist Mike Matusek worked
directly with Swanberg and Richardson
to achieve their desired finish over a
three-day session, and another few days
were spent on minor visual-effects fixes.
Mikes a really wonderful colorist, says
Richardson. He built on and refined
what wed originally photographed.
Nolo also refined the LUT we were
using so it really drew out all those
beautiful reversal-stock characteristics.
Beyond that, we just did simple but
bold color-timing corrections without a
lot of contrast changes or localized
work.
During production, Ben was
making contrast and color decisions
that were finally realized in post, says

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73

Shaking a Familys Foundation

Kelly and Jeff celebrate Christmas morning with their toddler.

Swanberg. The grading process was


really fun for me because I was seeing
the movie he and I had first talked
about. It was thrilling to be in the room
and finally see that vision up there on
the screen.
During production, Richardson
framed with a 1.85:1 theatrical aspect
ratio in mind, but he says he doesnt
consider himself dogmatic about
specific framing. I like to compose in
broad strokes, but I also like the frame
to fill the given format, he explains.
The Blu-rays will be struck at 16:9
because Id rather create the best viewing experience for each medium.
Nolo converted the final graded
DPX frames to a 2K DCP file and a
1080p HDCam SR tape to cover the
needs of both theatrical and festival
distribution. Indie film presentation
doesnt really demand a 35mm print,
and I dont know if I entirely mind,
remarks Richardson. I once attended a
35mm screening of Days of Heaven
[shot by Nstor Almendros, ASC] that
74

August 2014

was projected with the wrong gate size


and a badly damaged print. Despite all
the love I have for film as a shooting
format, I feel you typically get a more
consistent viewing experience with
well-calibrated digital projection.
Looking back on the completed
project, Richardson cites flexibility as a
key to working with Swanbergs
production style. When a day goes
differently than youd hoped and youve
got 45 minutes to shoot something that
should have taken four hours, you
might be tempted to throw your arms in
the air and say, It cant be done, the
cinematographer reflects. My attitude
at that point is to say, Lets just have a
go, because you never know what might
happen. Frequently in that situation,
you find that something really beautiful
does happen.
People Ive worked with in a
more traditional way are always interested to hear how [Swanbergs] process
works, Richardson continues. While
Joe definitely has a lot of experience
American Cinematographer

getting the whole scene in a single take,


there are also many scenes that are more
traditionally covered. Its not just about
the oner, its about embracing the unexpected and enjoying keeping up. Im
grateful to have had that experience
both with Joe and with [director] Benh
Zeitlin on Beasts of the Southern Wild.
Its given me confidence on other
projects to say, Lets see what happens.

TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
Super 16mm
Arri 416 Plus
Arri/Zeiss Ultra 16
Kodak Vision3 500T 7219
Digital Intermediate

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Live Play 3 features ultra-fast navigation through a media pool
of thumbnail frame grabs. Users can easily choose among automatically tagged scenes and shoot days, quickly filtering thousands of clips
to find specific media. An active tagging feature applies metadata
tags to multiple clips at a time, enabling search by an unlimited
number of fields including circle, camera, actor and location, as well
as custom tags. Live Play 3 also relies on 256-bit TLS encryption, so
released dailies and associated metadata are stored securely in a
cloud-based hub that can be accessed by the production team, editorial, visual effects and other creative collaborators.
Live Play 3 also enables real-time streaming of camera feeds
from remote locations. Cioni notes, With Live Play 3s unique livestream cloud architecture, we can empower directors with a new
creative tool: the ability to collaborate with other production units in
real time.
Light Iron is uniquely positioned to offer the community a
vertically integrated system for creating, managing and delivering
creative assets from the set through final delivery, Cioni continues.
Our popular Outpost system for on-set dailies creation, the new Live
Play 3, and our digital-intermediate services work in tandem to
enhance collaboration and ensure efficiency throughout the entire
creative process.
For additional information, visit www.lightiron.com/liveplay.
Red Giant Opens Universe
Red Giant has unveiled Red Giant Universe, which offers
access to an ever-expanding library of tools and effects for filmmakers and motion-graphic artists. Immediately available are 50 free and
premium visual-effects plug-ins built on the new Supernova platform.
76

August 2014

SUBMISSION INFORMATION
Please e-mail New Products/Services releases to
newproducts@ascmag.com and include full contact
information and product images. Photos must be
TIFF or JPEG files of at least 300dpi.

A free membership in
Red Giant Universe includes
the use of 31 effects and transitions, including blurs, glows,
distortion, generators and 3-D
transitions. Standout tools in
the free membership include
the Swish Pan and 3D Shutter
transitions, as well as Glo-Fi,
which creates pulsating,
multi-hued glows for titling.
Access to the free tools never
expires.
Premium membership includes an additional 19 tools, including updated favorites such as Knoll Light Factory EZ, Holomatrix,
ToonIt (powered by Toonamation) and Retrograde (from CrumplePop and Red Giant).
Built on the Supernova platform, Red Giant Universe is able
to deliver tools incredibly fast thanks to a simple scripting system that
unites the power of Javascript and a GPU framework. Developers are
able to fulfill the desires of the Universe community in a matter of
hours instead of days or weeks.
All the tools in Red Giant Universe exploit the power of
modern GPUs to render most effects in near-real time. The platform
is also scalable, working across small and light laptops such as
Macbook Air with modern Intel graphics processors (HD4000 or
later) up to high-end workstation GPUs from AMD and Nvidia. All
effects render with floating-point quality for feature-film-ready
output.
Another aspect of Red Giant Universe is Labs, which allows
members to vote on the visual effects they want to see next. The tool
that wins the Labs voting round goes directly into Universe. Red
Giant is committed to frequent updates throughout the year.
The Red Giant Universe premium membership is available for
$10/month, $99/year or $399 for a lifetime license that will never
expire and includes all future Universe updates and upgrades.
For additional information, visit www.redgiant.com/universe.
Fujifilm Builds IS-Tower
Adding to its Image Processing System lineup, Fujifilm North
America Corp.s Imaging Division has introduced the IS-Tower imaging system.
The system includes Fujifilms IS-Tower software, which,
when used with the IS-100 processor, provides an extremely fast and
easy way to apply looks to any number of chosen cameras in an
instant, or to quickly create and save new looks on the fly. Designed
for multiple camera broadcasts with ACES color management, the
IS-Tower can accept live feeds from a mixture of digital cinema and

American Cinematographer

broadcast cameras.
The IS-Tower system also includes ISTower hardware, which comprises a small
rack-mounted unit with multiple camera
inputs and outputs for easy connection to
the IS-100 on-set live color-grading system.
The IS-Tower hardware, which is made to
order, features a fan-less design with eight
3G HD-SDI ins and outs, eight Ethernet ports
and redundant internal power supply for reliability in a 19"x3.5"x14" case.
Capable of supporting 4K workflows,
the IS-Tower system was developed in cooperation with Wowow, Inc., a major Japanese
broadcaster, and has been successfully field
tested on more than six live television broadcasts in Japan and the U.S.
For additional information, visit
www.fujifilm.com/products/motion_picture/.
AVS 4Kase Enables On-Set Dailies
Advantage Video Systems has introduced the 4Kase mobile postproduction and
editing system for use on set.
Based on a high-performance Mac
Pro workstation, 4Kase offers the ability to
input and output 4K data from most popular digital cinema cameras and performs
such tasks as dailies processing, media
backup, color management and editing, all
from a fully integrated system small enough
to fit in the trunk of a car.
4Kase replaces rack-mount DIT carts
that are bulky, costly to ship and difficult to
operate, says AVS principal Jeffrey Stansfield. It is smaller, faster and lighter, and can
be configured to meet the needs of individual production workflows. 4Kase provides a
streamlined workflow that carries the
creative intent of directors and [cinematographers] from the set through final post.
4Kase supports the latest cameras

Telecine &
Color Grading
Jod is a true artist with
a great passion for his craft.
John W. Simmons, ASC

Contact Jod @ 310-713-8388


Jod@apt-4.com

77

from Sony, Arri, Red, Canon and Blackmagic


Design. Key features include a built-in highresolution monitor, up to 16TB of onboard
storage, two LTO-6 drives, SAS RAID-5, a
multi-cam reader, Thunderbolt expansion
slots, and cooling and power-management
tools. All of that is custom-fitted into a
rugged transport case designed to stand up
to the rigors of location production.
AVSs development partners include
Apple, HP, Magma, Red, Tolis Group, SKB
Corp. and Blackmagic Design.
For additional information, visit
www.advantagevideosystems.com.

Freakshow HD Gets SuperFreak-y


Los Angeles-based Freakshow HD, a
professional video-equipment rental
company, has announced the SuperFreak
feature-rich matrix controller for video assist,
digital-imaging technicians and other video
professionals.
The SuperFreak is the culmination
of over 50 years of combined on-set experience and provides an operator with
unprecedented efficiency and flexibility to
meet the increasingly demanding requirements of a digital production environment,
says Alex Cacciarelli, Freakshow HDs chief
technical officer.
The SuperFreaks features include
support for six inputs/cameras and six playback devices; a single Lemo connector
monitor cabling that houses two 3G HD-SDI
signals, AC power, amplified speaker-level
audio and two-way intercom; support for
eight monitors vial multi-pin Lemo monitor
cables; four additional cloned BNC monitor
outs; one additional camera loop-through
output for each camera; a Microsoft Surface
Pro tablet interface with custom software;
complete matrix switcher and routing
control of all input/cameras, playback
devices and monitor outputs; camera/input
confidence lights that indicate an HD-SDI
signal is present; individual intercom talkback level control for each monitor output;
and 4K upgradeability.
78

August 2014

Additionally, Freakshow HD
provides complete integration services for
customers current devices and can create
custom turnkey solutions. The SuperFreak
sells for $14,869 and is available directly
from Freakshow HD or its retail partners,
including Abel Cine, Markertek and
Nebtek.
For additional information, visit
www.freakshowhd.com.
Imagineer Systems,
CoreMelt Power TrackX
Imagineer Systems, creators of the
Academy Award-winning Mocha Planar
Tracking technology, and CoreMelt, a
provider of advanced video plug-in effects,
have released TrackX powered by Mocha.
The latest Apple Final Cut Pro X plug-in to
come out of the strategic partnership
between Imagineer Systems and CoreMelt,
TrackX powered by Mocha leverages the
Planar Tracking technology to precisely
track camera motion, objects and people
for seamless visual effects and screen
composites.
Ideal for creating realistic screen
inserts, set extensions and sky replacements, TrackX lets FCP X editors easily track
and replace objects within a video such
as an image on a cell phone, TV screen or
sign as well as add graphics and text,
including lower-thirds, to follow objects in
motion. TrackXs customizable parameters
provide FCP X editors with controls to finetune translation, scale, rotation and
perspective motion of text and video, eliminating the need to do manual key framing. Designed to manage the most difficult
tracking challenges, Mocha technology
stays locked on through shaky, grainy and
motion-blurred video.
TrackX powered by Mocha is available now for $99. For additional information, visit www.imagineersystems.com
/products/SliceX_TrackX/ and www.core
melt.com/trackx/.
SpectraCal Calibrates with
DLC LUTs
SpectraCal, Inc., a provider of
display-calibration software, has announced a significant technological
advance in the process used to correct the
color performance of professional referAmerican Cinematographer

ence monitors. Called Dynamic Linearity


Correction, the new software algorithms
added to SpectraCals CalMan Studio software help enable the widespread adoption
of monitor correction with three-dimensional look-up tables.
Derek Smith, SpectraCals founder
and CTO, notes, When profiling a monitor
took four hours, many postproduction
companies would tell us they just couldnt
afford to have the monitor out of use that
long. He says the DLC technology allows
monitors to be accurately profiled in less
than an hour.
Correcting a monitor with a 3-D LUT
allows much more precise conformance to
standards than relying on just the monitors
built-in controls, but the complexity and cost
of the process long put 3-D LUT correction
out of reach for most users. Previous generations of profiling tools required users to
make elaborate hand optimizations of the
pattern set and the LUT. User communities
would band together and experiment to
figure out the best set of patches for a given
monitor. We owe those pioneers a debt of
gratitude, says Joel Barsotti, SpectraCals
director of software development and principal developer of DLC. But the hand-optimization method was never going to allow
mainstream adoption.
Live and in real time, CalMans DLC
automatically determines unique nonlinearities in the displays performance and inserts
more calibration points in those areas of
nonlinear behavior. The resulting LUT is
better, but it doesnt take more time to
produce, says Barsotti.
CalMan Studio 5.3.5, the first version
to include DLC technology, is currently in
beta. SpectraCal has released a white paper
detailing the theory and methodology
behind Dynamic Linearity Correction; the
white
paper
is
available
at
http://studio.spectracal.com/display-profil
ing-solutions.
For additional information, visit

www.spectracal.com.

International Marketplace

80

August 2014

American Cinematographer

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90078. Or FAX (323) 876-4973. Deadline for payment and copy must be in the office by 15th of second month
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August 2014

81

Advertisers Index
AC 77
Adorama 11, 51
AJA Video Systems, Inc. C3
Alan Gordon 80
Arri 7
ASC 64, 85
Backstage Equipment, Inc.
73
Birns & Sawyer 80
Blackmagic Design, Inc. 5
Cavision Enterprises 80
Chapman/Leonard Studio
Equipment Inc. 19
Cinematography
Electronics 73
Cinekinetic 80
Cineverse 15
Cooke Optics 9

Denecke 81

Red Digital Cinema C2-1

Eastman Kodak C4

Schneider Optics 2
Siggraph 83
Sim Video 61
Super16, Inc. 80

Film Gear (International), Ltd.


39
Filmotechnic USA 65
Formatt-Hightech USA 23
Friends of the ASC 8
Glidecam Industries 17
Hertz Corporation 13
Jod Soraci 77

UCFTI Expo/US China Film


& TV Industry Expo 37

Kingfilm USA 81
Kino Flo 41

Vantage Gmbh 21

Lights! Action! Co. 80


Matthews Studio
Equipment/MSE 77
Next Video Conference +
Expo 79
P+S Technik 80
Parasol Systems 81
Pille Filmgeraeteverleih
Gmbh 80
Power Gems Limited 53
Pro8mm 80

82

Technicolor 35
Technocrane 25
Teradek, LLC 27
Toland App 75

Willys Widgets 80
www.theasc.com 39, 40,
73, 80, 81, 82
Yes Watches 52

In Memoriam
Gordon Willis, ASC died on
May 18 from complications with
cancer. He was 82.
Willis was born on May 28,
1931 in Astoria, Queens, New York
City. His parents had been dancers in
Broadway theater before his father
became a makeup man at Warner
Bros. in Brooklyn during the depression. In his youth, Willis considered a
career in acting, but after performing
in some summer-stock productions
during his teens, he became more
interested in stagecraft and lighting.
Willis served in the U.S. Air
Force during the Korean War, initially
working for the military air-transport
service before managing to join the Air
Force Photographic and Charting
Service in a motion-picture unit, where
he spent several years doing documentary work. After earning an
honorable discharge, Willis joined the
cameramans union as an assistant,
progressing from second assistant to first
assistant over the course of 14 years.
After shooting commercials and
working on a number of jobs at MPO Television Films, Willis got the chance to shoot his
first feature when he was hired by director
Aram Avakian to shoot the surreal 1970
drama End of the Road. Then, in 1972,
Willis got the break that would define his
career when director Francis Ford Coppola
tapped him to shoot The Godfather. Willis
readily conceded, Francis and I did have a
lot of disagreements while we were shooting the movie, but if it werent for him and
his vision of what the movie should be, it
never would have happened at the right
level.
Willis also forged an enduring collaboration with director Alan Pakula, for whom
he shot six films: Klute (1971), The Parallax
View (1974), All the Presidents Men (1976),
Comes a Horseman (1978), Presumed Innocent (1990) and The Devils Own (1997), the
final movie on which Willis served as director
of photography. Pakula, who died in 1998,
recalled his impressions of the cinematogra84

August 2014

pher for a 1978 profile of Willis penned by


James Stevenson for The New Yorker.
Theres no better cinematographer than
Gordon. Working with him is collaboration
at its best. Its a joy, its fun, its camaraderie
like being kids and playing after school.
They say about certain film editors that they
have gifted fingers. Gordon has that kind
of eye. The thought is all in the work. Hes
embarrassed talking about it; hes very
private about it, and I love that. Hell talk as
long as you can talk specifics, but he has a
gifted ear for crap. He doesnt give respect
easily.
In the late Seventies, Willis began
another landmark collaboration when he
first teamed with writer-director Woody
Allen on Annie Hall (1977). In Eric Laxs
definitive 1991 biography of Allen, the
director enthused, Gordons is a very
American style. Its wonderful. He would
have been sensational working with John
Ford or someone like that. His shots are
superbly lit. I mean like Rembrandt. He just
loves to paint with light.
Likewise, Willis found Allen to be an
ideal collaborator whose temperament and
American Cinematographer

working style mirrored and complemented his own approach to filmmaking. I always enjoyed dealing with
Woody as a person, Willis said. I
probably enjoyed him a lot more than
he enjoyed me, because Im Mr. Get It
Done. When youre collaborating with
Woody, its like working with your
hands in your pockets; its a very easygoing atmosphere.
Willis joined the ASC in 1975,
after having been recommended for
membership by Society member
Howard Schwartz. In 1995, the ASC
presented Willis with its Lifetime
Achievement Award. Additionally, in
2009, the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences awarded Willis an
honorary Academy Award for his lifetime achievements in cinematography
after nominating him two prior times
for competitive Oscars to recognize his
work on Zelig (1983) and The Godfather Part III (1990).
Its common knowledge among
the informed that [Willis] stands beside Griffith, Welles, Ford and maybe a few others
as one of the industrys great originators,
says ASC President Richard P. Crudo. Just
as those men did before him, he not only
changed the way movies look, he changed
the way we look at movies. Its impossible to
overstate his influence over the past 40
years.
This is a momentous loss, one that
the world should take serious note of,
Crudo continues. If its safe to say there
will never be another Rembrandt, I have an
even safer bet for you: There will never be
another Gordon Willis.
Willis is survived by his wife of nearly
six decades, Helen; two sons, Gordon Jr.
and Tim; a daughter, Susan; and five grandchildren. Donations in his memory can be
made to the library at Perkins School for the
Blind, 175 N. Beacon St., Watertown, MA
02472.
Ed. Note: The October issue will
feature a full tribute to Willis life and career.

Photo by John Seakwood.

Gordon Willis, ASC, 1931-2014

The highly anticipated


10th Edition of the
American Cinematographer Manual
is now available!
Known as the lmmakers bible for several
generations, this invaluable resource is more
comprehensive than ever moving into digital
image capture. The 10th AC Manual was edited
by Michael Goi, ASC, a former president of the
Society. He is a key speaker on technology
and the history of cinema.
Completely re-imagined to reect the
sweeping technological changes our
industry has experienced since the
last edition, the 10th AC Manual is
vibrant and essential reading, as well
as an invaluable eld resource. Subjects
include:

6" x 9", Full Color


Hardbound edition 998 pages
Two-Volume Paperback
Volume One 500 pages
Volume Two 566 pages
iPad ebook
Kindle ebook

www.theasc.com

Digital capture and workow terminology


The explosion of prosumer cameras in
professional use
Previsualization
3-D capture
LED lighting
The Academy Color Encoding Specication
(ACES)
Digital camera prep
and more!
The AC Manual is available in a hardbound
edition, iPad and Kindle editions, and a twovolume print-on-demand paperback.

Clubhouse News

From top: Brian Pearson, ASC; Nathaniel Goodman,


ASC; Pierre Andurand (left) and Catherine Deneuve
present the ExcelLens in Cinematography Award
to Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC.

ASC Elects Officers, Board


Richard Crudo has been re-elected
ASC president for the 2014-2015 term. The
other officers are vice presidents Owen
Roizman, Kees van Oostrum and Lowell
Peterson; treasurer Matthew Leonetti;
secretary Fred Goodich; and sergeant-atarms Isidore Mankofsky.
86

August 2014

Society Welcomes Pearson,


Goodman
New active member Brian Pearson,
ASC began his career as a 2nd AC on
commercials, music videos, series and
features. Within a few years Pearson began
working as a camera operator and soon
moved up to cinematographer on a variety
of projects ranging from short films and
music videos to commercials and features.
Pearson works as a 1st-unit and 2ndunit cinematographer, frequently collaborating with such ASC members as Tobias
Schliessler, Steven Poster, Enrique Chediak,
Clark Mathis, Jack Green, Andrew Lesnie,
Paul Cameron and Newton Thomas Sigel.
His recent credits include Into the Storm,
Step Up: All In, Total Recall (2nd unit) and
Drive Angry.
Nathaniel Goodman, ASC began
pursuing an interest in camerawork during
his studies at Brown University. After acceptance into the film-production MFA
program at the University of California Los
Angeles, Goodman found hands-on experience in the camera departments of numerous independent productions, and eventually landed a job as a 2nd AC for Jost
American Cinematographer

Vacano, ASC on 52 Pick-Up.


Goodman continued to work as a
camera operator and 2nd-unit cinematographer under the mentorship of several ASC
members, including Jerzy Zielinski, Ueli
Steiger and Adam Kane. Goodmans most
recent cinematography credits include The
100, Falling Skies and Torchwood.
Angnieux Honors Zsigmond
Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC received the
second annual Pierre Angnieux ExcelLens in
Cinematography Award during this years
Cannes Film Festival. During the award ceremony, actress Catherine Deneuve and Thales
Angnieux CEO Pierre Andurand presented
Zsigmond with a new, specially engraved
Angnieux anamorphic zoom lens.
J.L. Fisher Hosts Open House
J.L. Fisher recently hosted its eighth
annual mixer and barbecue lunch with the
ASC, the Society of Camera Operators and
the International Cinematographers Guild.
Held at Fishers Burbank facility, the event
included a lively Dialogue with ASC Cinematographers. Moderated by George
Spiro Dibie, ASC, the panel comprised Society members Bill Bennett, Oliver Bokelberg, Christopher Chomyn, Richard
Crudo, David Darby, Frederic Goodich,
Michael Goi, Karl Walter Lindenlaub,
Paul Maibaum, Cynthia Pusheck and
Checco Varese. The audience presented the
panel with a variety of topics, ranging from
skills that have been lost in the digital transition to how someone actually goes about
hiring a director of photography.
ASC Participates in Cine Gear
Weekend
The 2014 Cine Gear Expo recently
took place in Hollywood. Kicking off the
weekends events, the ASC hosted a Sponsors Breakfast at the Societys Clubhouse,
and the Mole-Richardson Co. held an open
house and barbecue dinner.
A number of ASC members partici-

Photo of Clubhouse by Isidore Mankofsky, ASC; lighting by Donald M. Morgan, ASC.


Zsigmond photo courtesy of Thales Angnieux.

Also elected to the Board of Governors were John Bailey, Bill Bennett,
Curtis Clark, Dean Cundey, George
Spiro Dibie, Richard Edlund, Michael
Goi, Matthew Leonetti, Stephen
Lighthill, Daryn Okada, Michael OShea,
Lowell Peterson, Rodney Taylor, Kees
van Oostrum and Haskell Wexler. The
alternates are Isidore Mankofsky, Karl
Walter Lindenlaub, Robert Primes,
Steven Fierberg and Kenneth Zunder.
Im profoundly humbled that my
colleagues have once again chosen me to
serve in this position, says Crudo. The
ASC is stronger than ever, and we look
forward to continuing our mission of
promoting the role of the cinematographer.
To be part of that in even a small way is both
an honor and a privilege.

J.L. Fisher and Cine Gear photos by Alex Lopez. Edlund portrait by Owen Roizman, ASC.

Clockwise from top left: ASC members speak at J.L. Fisher; Juliane Grosso Kresser (second from left)
and associate members Karl Kresser (far left) and Otto Nemenz (far right) present the Cine Gear Expo
Cinematography Lifetime Achievement Award to Adam Greenberg, ASC; Richard Edlund, ASC.

pated in speaking engagements and sponsored events throughout Cine Gear. Society
members Shane Hurlbut, Steven Poster
and Sam Nicholson joined fellow cinematographer Dallas Sterling for the Canon
session 4K, 2K or HD: Leading Cinematographers Try to Resolve the Resolution
Debate. Poster also joined Paul Cameron,
ASC for the discussion titled New Workflow Choices and the Director of Photography. Daryn Okada, ASC detailed his work
with Sonys F55 camera on the features Lets
Be Cops and Dolphin Tale 2, and Richard
Edlund, ASC led a session on digital/virtual
production sponsored by the Visual Effects
Society.
Jon Fauer, ASC moderated an Arrisponsored conversation with Buddy
Squires, ASC about the Amira camera, and
Curtis Clark, ASC moderated Three
Colorists and Two Cinematographers, a
conversation presented by Sony that also
included Bill Dill, ASC.
George Spiro Dibie, ASC moderated a lively session titled Dialogue with
ASC Cinematographers. After Dibie
encouraged the audience that we are here
to answer all your questions, the panel
comprising ASC members Bill Bennett,
Christopher Chomyn, Michael Goi, Tom
Houghton, Paul Maibaum, Guillermo
Navarro, Daniel Pearl, Cynthia Pusheck
and Nancy Schreiber tackled such
topics as grading their own images and
whether digital cameras have resulted in
smaller lighting packages. Isidore Mankofsky, ASC contributed additional questions
from his seat in the audience.
Over the course of the two-day
expo, Jacek Laskus, ASC, PSC; David
Stump, ASC and associate member
Douglas Kirkland each spent time at the
Societys booth, signing their recently

published books and conversing with attendees.


Following the close of the second
day, the Society held a festive barbecue at
the Clubhouse, during which guests
mingled over food, drinks, music and the
Stanley Cup Final. The following day, after
the expo had wrapped, Mole-Richardson
hosted a Cine Gear Master Class seminar
with ASC members Roy Wagner, Christopher Chomyn and Adam Greenberg;
Greenberg also received the Cine Gear Expo
Cinematography Lifetime Achievement
Award earlier in the weekend. During the
three-hour workshop, the cinematographers discussed their careers, changes to the
industry and how best to work with directors and actors, among other topics.
Storaro Screens The Conformist
Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC recently
appeared at the AFI Silver Theatre and
Cultural Center in Maryland for a Q&A
session following a screening of The
Conformist. During the session, Storaro
discussed the making of the feature and
shared behind-the-scenes anecdotes from a
number of his other films. The event was
presented by the AFI Silver Theatre in partnership with the Georgetown University Italian Research Institute, the Italian Embassy
and the Italian Cultural Institute.

Devil & Demon Appoints Edlund


to Board
Devil & Demon Strategy, a manufacturer of super-fast computers, recently
appointed Richard Edlund, ASC to its
board of directors. Edlund brings his wealth
of experience in visual effects to the
company and will consult on the development of products to meet the needs of digital artists and studios.
Devil & Demon technology is blazing a disruptive trail by empowering digital
artists to be more interactive with the
creative aesthetics on a project, while using
the dramatic time and cost savings to put
better images on screen, whether thats HD,
2K, 4K or beyond, said Edlund. I look
forward to working with the Devil & Demon
team to deliver the creative and economic
benefits of their technology to creative digital artists and facility owners.

Hurlbut Encourages Versatility


in Filmmaking
Revolution Cinema Rentals and Hurlbut Visuals recently presented the Versatility in Filmmaking education and demonstration festival. During the event, Shane
Hurlbut, ASC presented a workshop titled
Tools of Immersion for Cinematographers.

Society Hosts Anamorphic


Lens Day
The ASC recently presented an
Anamorphic Lens Day at its Clubhouse in
Hollywood. The event offered members an
informal, close-up look at the latest
anamorphic lenses available from leading
manufacturers such as Arri, Zeiss, Cooke,
Angnieux, Hawk and Panavision.

www.theasc.com

August 2014

87

Kramer Morgenthau, ASC

When you were a child, what film made the strongest


impression on you?
My father produced documentaries for PBS, so from a very early age
I was aware of the power of moving pictures and visual storytelling.

What has been your most satisfying moment on a project?


I love the feeling of a great day on set. When everyone is in sync, all
the planning and hard work comes together and a bit of magic
happens. Its a little like dancing or playing jazz.

Which cinematographers, past or present, do you


most admire?
Gregg Toland [ASC], for his brilliant expressionistic lighting and
composition; Conrad Hall [ASC], for combining expressionism and
realism; Chris Menges [ASC,
BSC], for, among other things, his
sophisticated use of color; Nstor
Almendros [ASC], for his naturalistic lighting approach; and
Christopher Doyle [HKSC], for
reminding us that there are still
many things yet to be explored.

Have you made any memorable blunders?


Early in my career, I was so focused on light that I was not always
sensitive enough to the actors process and how delicate that can be.
Simple things like standing in the actors eyeline, blocking his or her
eyeline with equipment, or
asking actors to do illogical
things are some of the many
mistakes Ive made.

What sparked your interest in


photography?
Ive always sought nonverbal,
right-brained means of expressing my creativity. For me, it was
first through music. I discovered
photography later.
Where did you train and/or study?
I studied film in college at the University of Rochester. After I graduated, I moved to New York City and just started working on any films
I could get. I worked in the grip and electrical department on indie
movies and shot short films for film students. I learned to tell a story
with a camera on my shoulder while shooting documentaries.
Who were your early teachers or mentors?
I am mostly an autodidact. I have tremendous respect for the apprenticeship system. It just wasnt in my cards.
What are some of your key artistic influences?
Caravaggio may be obvious but is a huge influence for me. Ive made
pilgrimages to churches and museums all over to see his work. For
each project, its different, but looking at ways great artists have used
light and color is always inspiring and gives me courage to take a
visual stand on a project. I also love music, especially jazz and the
blues; I think rhythm and improvisation play a strong role in my work,
and some of that comes from feeling the material in a musical way.
How did you get your first break in the business?
There was no single event that occurred. It took several people believing in me and giving me opportunities to shoot and gather a reel.

88

August 2014

What is the best professional


advice youve ever received?
In this business, if you arent
early, you are late.
What recent books, films or
artworks have inspired you?
Gravity is a beautiful piece of
filmmaking. It feels very much
like what the future of our art
form might look like. I was very inspired by James Turrells light sculptures in his recent LACMA exhibit. Another inspiration is Todd Hidos
book Outskirts.
Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like
to try?
Id love to shoot a Western or a musical. In general, my favorite
scripts move the audience in a profound way and perhaps have
social, historical or political resonance.
If you werent a cinematographer, what might you be
doing instead?
Id be a landscape architect or a chef.
Which ASC cinematographers recommended
for membership?
Owen Roizman, Amy Vincent and Matthew Libatique.

you

How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?


Its a huge honor. I feel proud every time I go to the Clubhouse. Its
also really helpful to have a network of peers to talk to about work
and the changing technology. Being in the ASC has given me a
sense of accomplishment. I never imagined having those letters after

my name when I started out.

American Cinematographer

Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon, SMPSP.

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