2014 12

DECEMBER 2014
$5.95
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The International Journal of Motion Imaging
On Our Cover: Former test pilot Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) leads an

expedition deep into space in Interstellar, shot by Hoyte van Hoytema, FSF, NSC.
(Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon, SMPSP, courtesy of Paramount Pictures and
Warner Bros. Entertainment.)
FEATURES
38
54
68
80
Cosmic Odyssey
Hoyte van Hoytema, FSF, NSC creates a large-format
canvas for the sci-fi epic Interstellar
Backstage Drama
54
Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC captures an actors

metaphysical plight on Birdman
Rolling Thunder
Roman Vasyanov, RGC enlists for the World War II
tank drama Fury
Tragedy on the Mat
68
Greig Fraser, ASC, ACS lends atmosphere to the

true story of Foxcatcher
DEPARTMENTS
10
12
14
22
94
100
101
102
103
108
110
112
Editors Note
Presidents Desk
Short Takes: The Nostalgist
Production Slate: Rosewater The Babadook
New Products & Services
International Marketplace
Classified Ads
Ad Index
2014 AC Index
ASC Membership Roster
Clubhouse News
ASC Close-Up: Julio Macat
VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM
80
LOOK FOR MORE AT WWW.THEASC.COM
Coming soon: Podcast on Ordinary People (1980)
Bailey is this years ASC Lifetime Achievement honoree

and author of the blog Johns Bailiwick.
www.theasc.com/site/podcasts
Photos courtesy of the Margaret Herrick Library and John Bailey.
Cinematographer
John Bailey, ASC
discusses filming
Robert Redfords
directorial debut,
which won four
Academy Awards,
including Best
Picture and
Best Director.
D e c e m b e r
2 0 1 4
V o l .
9 5 ,
N o .
1 2
Visit us online at www.theasc.com
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF and PUBLISHER

Stephen Pizzello
EDITORIAL
MANAGING EDITOR Jon D. Witmer
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Andrew Fish
TECHNICAL EDITOR Christopher Probst
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Benjamin B, Douglas Bankston, John Calhoun, Mark Dillon, Michael Goldman, Simon Gray,
David Heuring, Jay Holben, Noah Kadner, Jean Oppenheimer, Iain Stasukevich, Patricia Thomson
ART & DESIGN

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Marion Kramer
PHOTO EDITOR Kelly Brinker
ONLINE
MANAGING DIRECTOR Rachael K. Bosley
PODCASTS Jim Hemphill, Iain Stasukevich, Chase Yeremian
BLOGS
Benjamin B
John Bailey, ASC
David Heuring
WEB DEVELOPER Jon Stout
ADVERTISING
ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Angie Gollmann
323-936-3769 Fax 323-936-9188 e-mail: angiegollmann@gmail.com
ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Sanja Pearce
323-952-2114 Fax 323-952-2140 e-mail: sanja@ascmag.com
CLASSIFIEDS/ADVERTISING COORDINATOR Diella Peru
323-952-2124 Fax 323-952-2140 e-mail: diella@ascmag.com
SUBSCRIPTIONS, BOOKS & PRODUCTS

CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Saul Molina
CIRCULATION MANAGER Alex Lopez
SHIPPING MANAGER Miguel Madrigal
ASC GENERAL MANAGER Brett Grauman

ASC EVENTS COORDINATOR Patricia Armacost
ASC PRESIDENTS ASSISTANT Delphine Figueras
ASC ACCOUNTING MANAGER Mila Basely
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
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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
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
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
Dean Cundey
George Spiro Dibie
Richard Edlund
Michael Goi
Matthew Leonetti
Stephen Lighthill
Daryn Okada
Michael O Shea
Lowell Peterson
Rodney Taylor
Kees van Oostrum
Haskell Wexler
ALTERNATES
Isidore Mankofsky
Karl Walter Lindenlaub
Robert Primes
Steven Fierberg
Kenneth Zunder
MUSEUM CURATOR
8
Steve Gainer
Its never easy to make a movie that conveys the

majesty and mysteries of space travel. While mounting 2001: A Space Odyssey in the late 1960s, Stanley
Kubrick and his crack team used every means at their
disposal to create a cerebral, technically stunning epic
that set the platinum standard for grandeur. Since
then, features such as Solaris, The Right Stuff, Apollo
13 and Gravity have all put their own spin on the
space opera, but director Christopher Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, FSF, NSC sought to
raise the technical bar even higher with Interstellar.
As Iain Stasukevich reports (Cosmic Odyssey,
page 38), approximately 60 to 70 minutes of the
films 170-minute run time was filmed in 15-perf
65mm Imax. The production also involved 35mm
anamorphic, 8-perf VistaVision, creative lighting
gags, miniatures, front-projection effects, and custom
body mounts that housed both the actors and Imax cameras a rig van Hoytema describes as
an Imax GoPro, which let us [capture] visceral angles that are normally only possible with a
GoPro camera, but in 15-perf 65mm!
On Fury, Roman Vasyanov, RGC was tasked with capturing many scenes in the cramped
interior of a World War II tank. As detailed in Michael Goldmans article (Rolling Thunder,
page 68), Vasyanov, director David Ayer and key crewmembers mapped out carefully devised
strategies before shooting began on sets and locations in England. We bet the farm on the
plan we came up with in prep, and Im happy to say we got the movie we came for, Ayer
submits. A lot of that is because I had so much trust in Roman, who was so efficient, and the
fact that our grips were total rock stars.
Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC dramatized a different kind of battle on the blackhumored Birdman, in which a former Hollywood action hero suffers a mental meltdown while
attempting to direct and star in a serious Broadway play. In Jean Oppenheimers piece (Backstage Drama, page 54), Lubezki, director Alejandro Irritu and members of their crew reveal
how they crafted a feature that appears to unfold in one long, continuous take. The rhythm
in comedy [comes from] great comedians but also from great editing, and to not have any cuts
was one of the craziest ideas I had ever heard, says Lubezki.
Brooding emotions also drive the drama in Foxcatcher, a feature based on the true relationship between Olympic gold-medal wrestlers Mark and Dave Schultz and their wealthy
patron, John Eleuthre du Pont. Greig Fraser, ASC, ACS and director Bennett Miller discussed
their work with Canadian correspondent Mark Dillon during the Toronto Film Festival, where
the picture drew raves (Tragedy on the Mat, page 80). Miller felt Fraser had the right sensibilities to help him tell an observational story in which the characters true feelings are
suppressed. There is an invisible perspective and voice to this film, he says, and its important that the person looking through the eyepiece is looking not just at pretty frames, nice
movement and good light, but at people lying to themselves in a way that will lead to
tragedy.
Stephen Pizzello
Editor-in-Chief and Publisher
10
Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.
Editors Note
I have been a Major League Baseball fan more specifically, a radical New York Yankee
fan for my entire life. And while detente has been reached with artificial turf, expansion
and the designated hitter, the past season introduced an annoying new trend: the proliferation of meaningless statistics and records touted by the announcers and color commentators during every broadcast. It was a practice carried out far, wide and way too often, and
on more than one occasion precipitated my clicking to another channel ... for a hockey
game, if I could find one.
Well, Pete, that marks the first time in history that a left-handed hitter has checked
his swing three consecutive times during one at-bat on a Tuesday evening after 8 p.m.
Eleven more knuckle curves and Tommy will top the all-time list for breaking pitches
on a cloudy day.
You might not know that Charlie is a distant relative of the Queen of England, which
technically makes him a Royal even though he plays for the White Sox.
Admittedly, this is a trivial thing to get wound up about. But it gains meaning when
you realize the cheapening effect it has on the game, not to mention the way it deflects
from the truly relevant things that have made the sport so special since the beginning.
A similar situation exists in our own industry with the continued expansion and complication of the technology used by cinematographers. Its just another smoke screen that
causes us all to take our eye off the ball. Obfuscating a creative process with increasingly
cumbersome and more onerous technical requirements does not help us do our jobs better or more efficiently. But why do
there seem to be so few attempts to redirect that bend in the river? How is it that the community of cinematographers
especially the younger ones arent demanding simpler, more plug-and-play solutions to image making?
Look back to those annoying goofballs in the broadcast booths of the baseball world and you just might find an
answer, one symptomatic of a whole new agenda. Among many of our manufacturers, a catastrophic loss of clarity has
pervaded what not long ago was a smart, sensible atmosphere. Time and again I hear it from my colleagues; I also see it in
my own experiences. Nothing is basic or intuitive anymore. We understand that its difficult for the makers of our gear to
keep it simple, to pursue the elementary but I have no sympathy. Anything worthwhile in life requires focus, commitment
and effort. When you dont approach it from that level, you end up with the type of mess were now forced to deal with
every day. Go out to photograph a movie or television show and what you need to pull it off recalls not so much the building of a rocket (which is bad enough) but the launching of one. Yes, the game has changed. For those without the benefit
of a few decades perspective, I assure you, its not for the better.
Another publication recently asked what technological development would be most beneficial to cinematographers
in the next decade. Only half-jokingly, I answered film. Clearly, thats never going to happen and thats okay, since digital images are finally starting to approach the potential of what we had before. Besides which, Im not a Luddite and can
hardly be described as slow-witted. I realize this is a scream into the wilderness and a wilderness it is. Sit quietly in the
desert for an hour and youll be amazed at the quick shifts in the textures and topography surrounding you. Review the tools
and practices you employed on a shoot just last month and youll experience the same sensation.
So, this being the Christmas/Hannukah season, the season of light and hope and, most familiar of all, gift-giving, I
look forward with the greatest of optimism and implore our manufacturers to stop mistaking movement for progress. If
theres one present you can give to cinematographers as we move into the future, it would be to make our tools and workflows more compatible with a direct and uncluttered mind.
Until then and until we meet again in 2015, everyone at the ASC wishes you health, happiness and nothing but the
best!
Richard P. Crudo
ASC President
12
December 2014
American Cinematographer
Photo by Douglas Kirkland.
Presidents Desk
Short Takes
Illusory Lives
By Debra Kaufman
In a futuristic city, a man and his sons carefully calibrated life

of Victorian propriety begins to fall apart when their virtual-reality
device fails, revealing the true nature of the dystopian landscape
around them. To repair the device and reinstate its illusion, the man
must venture into that decaying and dangerous world.
This is the tale told in The Nostalgist, an ambitious short film
based on a story by the well-known science-fiction author Daniel H.
Wilson. Director Giacomo Cimini loved the story and cold-called
Wilson to ask about optioning it; Cimini also sent the author The City
in the Sky, the sci-fi short hed made as his graduate project at the
London Film School. Wilson agreed to the option.
Ciminis next call was to City in the Skys cinematographer,
Gareth Munden, asking him to reteam on The Nostalgist. We are
quite different people, but we have a very similar taste in films, says
Munden. Were really into films like Blade Runner, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Alien, because we grew up [with them].
When the two met at the London Film School, Munden
already had a successful career as an advertising photographer. I
always wanted to be a cinematographer, he says. I had the lucky
chance to shoot some stills on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which reignited my love for cinematography. A course at the
London Film School, he says, gave him a head start and the push
I needed. Since then, hes shot more than a dozen short films. I
14
December 2014
find shorts to be a very good learning ground. And thats led to

commercials and music videos, which Ive been doing for the last
couple of years.
With the story optioned, Cimini and Munden began to prep
in a rather unusual way: by playing video games. Its just our way
of relaxing and talking over the shoot, says Munden. They also
talked through each scene, blocked out the action with toy figures
and spent a day walking around the location. I then made a lighting plan for all the scenes, the cinematographer notes, adding that
he and Cimini found very different inspiration for the shorts two
distinct looks. For the nice part, we looked at Victorian imagery,
still photography and paintings, he says. For the dystopian part,
we referred to sci-fi movies.
Visual effects made preproduction a more crucial stage than
it was on their previous collaboration. There are 170 visual-effects
shots in the [17-minute] movie, so we couldnt leave too much to
accident, says Munden. That was a big learning curve for me.
Fortunately, I picked up a bit along the way when I worked on the
Harry Potter film, and we also had a very good visual-effects supervisor, Jean Claude Nouchy. Nouchys credits as visual-effects technical director include John Carter, Inception and Iron Man 2.
Cimini storyboarded the film and created animatics of the
climactic fight scene. We stuck to the storyboard quite a lot, says
Munden. Although there were times, especially during the Victorian portion, where we could be a lot freer.
From the beginning, Cimini let Munden know that he
Unit photography by Michael OConnor. All images courtesy of the filmmakers.
A man and his son live in a virtual-reality world of Victorian propriety that begins to break down in the short film The Nostalgist.
wanted to shoot with a digital camera.

That was the starting point, says the cinematographer. Because we were doing a lot
of visual-effects shots and a lot of big, wide
shots, we decided to go with the Red Epic.
Giacomo [wanted the ability to do] some
zooms in post, so that ruled out anything
with less resolution than 5K. Also, the Epic
is good for [capturing] bright colors in nighttime, which is what the dystopian world
looks like. Munden says he was already
familiar with the Epic, having used it on
quite a few ads and music videos. The
Epics Redcode Raw footage was recorded
onto Redmags at a 5:1 compression ratio.
Munden reports it was also a
simple decision to shoot with anamorphic lenses, because the films we love, like
Jaws and Close Encounters, were all shot
anamorphically. The cinematographer says
the production relied on a set of Cooke Xtal
Express anamorphic primes, built by Joe
Dunton and supplied from the very helpful
Panavision in London.
Anamorphic lenses do have their
drawbacks, Munden continues. Distortion was quite an issue, and the visualeffects guys werent too happy that we
used them. But I liked the fact that these
lenses have a softness to them. They
produce really nice skin tones and they flare
very nicely and we did want some flare,
although not too much for visual-effects
shots. But having the nice skin tones was
important, especially with the close-ups of
the young boy.
Munden limited himself to the
40mm, 50mm and 75mm lenses. We had
the whole kit but we only used those
three, he says. I think it goes back to my
Top left and

middle: Inside
their virtual
Victorian home,
the father
(Lambert Wilson)
and son (Samuel
Joslin) play a
game of chess.
Bottom: The crew
readies the chess
scene.Top right:
Cinematographer
Gareth Munden
contemplates his
next move.
16
December 2014
Top: To save his father, the boy/robot must battle a militiaman (Stephen Thompson).
Middle: Director Giacomo Cimini blocks the climactic fight sequence using a pole to mark where
the robot will appear. Bottom: The father turns on his new virtual glasses hoping to
restore the illusion.
18
December 2014
stills days, when I would only have three

lenses in a kit. If you cant do a film with
three lenses, you cant really do a film.
The lighting kit was, he says, pretty
big for a short film: a full truckload.
Munden had frequently worked with lighting rental company Arri Focus for his
commercial work, so he and Cimini came
up with their wish list and approached the
company for The Nostalgist. We thought
they would say no, but they said yes, the
cinematographer says.
We mainly used tungsten [units] in
the Victorian section of the picture, says
Munden, who worked with gaffer Simon
Mills. They positioned 5K Fresnels to shine
through the windows of the Victorian house
where the father (Lambert Wilson) and son
(Samuel Joslin) live. In the [dystopian]
portion of the movie, we used a lot of Kino
Flos, spring balls [Chinese lanterns] and
Philips LEDs. These lights were often positioned as practicals in the shot.
The entire production was shot at
the Farmiloe Building in East London. (The
location has also appeared in director
Christopher Nolans Batman films, among
other productions.) The reason we wanted
to shoot there was because Giacomo felt
we would have total control, says
Munden, who notes that the Muppets took
over the facility after they left. It was British
winter, so there was a lot of snow around. It
was the coldest shoot Ive ever been on.
Part of the control Cimini sought
inside Farmiloe applied to camera moves.
The camera was often on dolly and track,
Top: The boy places the glasses upon his fathers face after learning the truth about himself.
Bottom (left to right): Grip Paul McKenna, Munden and camera operator Peter Taylor discuss a scene.
and a slider as well, so the camera could

track and slide at the same time, explains
Munden, who worked with key grip Max
MacGechan and grip Paul McKenna. It
was very rarely handheld. Giacomo likes
considered compositions. We discussed
using other ways to control the camera, but
the dolly and track worked for us.
The production team had a total of
six shooting days, with two of them
devoted to the fight scene at the end. We
did about 12 setups a day, sometimes
20
December 2014
more, Munden recalls. It was hard work,

and a lot of it. There was no on-set monitoring of visual effects We had to use
our imagination, the cinematographer
jokes but the filmmakers, including
Nouchy, did watch dailies every day at
lunch or in the evening.
For Munden, the climactic fight
sequence was the most challenging aspect
of The Nostalgist. This was the first time
Id worked with a character that wasnt
actually on-set, he says, referring to a
robot that was created digitally and

composited in post. (Nouchy did occasionally employ a green pole to mark where the
robot would ultimately appear in the shot.)
The camera had to follow characters who
werent there. But I learned that I could do
it. With preparation, it wasnt as difficult as
I thought it would be. And filming is preparation, isnt it?
The final digital grade took place at
Company 3 in London, where Munden
worked with DI producer Kira Fitzpatrick
and colorist Greg Fisher, using DaVinci
Resolve. The film was finished and output at
2K resolution.
The Nostalgist played at the Palm
Springs International ShortFest Short Film
Festival and Film Market, where it was
awarded second-place honors in the category of Best Live Action Short Over 15
Minutes. At press time, the film was also
scheduled to play at the BFI London Film
Festival in mid-October. According to
Munden, Cimini plans to distribute The
Nostalgist just as he did City in the Sky: on
iTunes. People do buy short films, he says.
The Nostalgist was a good experience for both Giacomo and me, the cinematographer concludes. We had good
resources and were well-funded. And we
were lucky to have a good crew.
Production Slate
Strength From Within

By John Calhoun
Cinematographer Bobby Bukowski has worked with his share

of first-time directors, so he was unfazed by his initial conversation
with Jon Stewart about Rosewater. I walked into his office at The
Daily Show one day and he said, What do you think about going to
Jordan during Ramadan in the middle of summer when its 100
degrees with a first-time director who doesnt know what hes
doing? recalls Bukowski, who has been behind the camera for
similar teeth-cutting by the likes of Mark Pellington, Craig Lucas and
Oren Moverman, among others. I said, Yeah, of course. That
sounds great.
Rosewater is the true story of Maziar Bahari (played here by
Gael Garca Bernal), an Iranian-born, London-based journalist
dispatched to Tehran to cover the 2009 elections and subsequent
demonstrations over the results. While there, he was interviewed for
a typically playful segment on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.
Iranian officials did not get the joke in particular, references during
the interview to Bahari being a spy. That appearance, combined with
some footage the journalist caught of a demonstrator being shot,
may have contributed to Baharis nearly four-month detention and
sometimes-brutal interrogation in an Iranian prison.
22
December 2014
Based on Baharis book Then They Came for Me (written

with Aimee Molloy), Rosewaters screenplay was penned by Stewart in an acknowledged gesture of expiation. The story is a timely
one in todays world, where journalists are increasingly caught in the
crossfire of global strife. Rosewater named for the scent Bahari
comes to associate with his chief interrogator (played by Kim
Bodnia) doesnt belabor any of this; its a focused, occasionally
sardonic description of one mans harrowing and at times absurd
experience.
It was also done with very limited resources. It was a lowbudget movie; we didnt have a lot of days to capture the film,
says Bukowski. I was allowed to bring one person with me, and
that choice is always my focus puller, Michael Burke, because I feel
like I could do almost everything else if push came to shove, but I
cant get the film in focus! Since the bulk of his Jordanian crew
was inexperienced, the director of photography did indeed find
himself doing most everything else including operating the
camera, as is his wont.
As a cinematographer, you have a job to deliver, and you
have a certain standard you want to meet, Bukowski continues.
At the same time you have to be realistic about the resources in
your hands. You have to go back to the drawing board and say,
How do I design this film in a way that it can actually be made? It
Rosewater photos by Laith Majali and Nasser Kalaji, courtesy of Open Road Films.
During the 2009

elections in
Tehran, journalist
Maziar Bahari
(Gael Garca
Bernal) was
detained and
sometimes
brutally
interrogated for
nearly four
months in an
Iranian prison.
His account
comes to life in
the feature
Rosewater.
Bahari was caught in the crossfire of global strife when dispatched to cover the elections
in Iran and the subsequent demonstrations.
can mean making the lighting much

simpler, and often literally placing instruments, flags and diffusions myself. I hadnt
been on a project since film school, or
maybe my early New York street days,
where I actually had my hands on everything.
The feature was shot with an Arri
Alexa Plus, recording 2K ProRes with Log C
encoding onto SxS cards. Bukowski says
24
December 2014
that every film hes shot since Movermans

Rampart (AC Feb. 12) has been done with
the Alexa. My choice digitally is always the
Alexa, he notes. Its a tool Ive grown
really familiar with, and as any tool, you take
what it does, and you understand what it
can and cant do, and you turn all of those
things into virtues. One thing he particularly appreciates about the Alexas image is
the digital noise I incur when working at
the very low end, like around 10 IREs at

night. Its quite analogous to film grain; its
a softer image. This can be seen, for
example, in Rosewaters early flashback
scenes of Bahari as a boy. (The bulk of the
movie was shot with lightweight Angenieux Optimo zoom lenses, with some
scenes on Arri/Zeiss Ultra Primes.)
While Stewart was inexperienced
with the technical aspects of shooting and
editing, he was very clear whenever you
asked him about where Maziar was on his
narrative path, and what the intent of a
scene was, Bukowski says. Maziar
enters this prison feeling like theres no
way out, and its a monotonous, dry, long
wait in purgatory for him. The thing from
the beginning was to depict this kind of
boredom and bleak existence inside
prison, so the camera was very locked
down, sometimes on a dolly and sometimes completely static. We were in close
with wider lenses maybe 18 or 25mm
just feeling him foreshortened with the
prison distended behind him.
As the story progresses, Bahari is
visited in his cell by the shades of his father
and sister, who are both deceased and
who both were tortured in prison. They
remind him of who he is and let him know
that what he needs to get out of there is
inside of him, says the cinematographer.
As he gets closer to finding the power to
be released, we started putting the camera
in our hands, animating it, and using more
medium lenses. The background started to
be out of focus, and we made him more
singular in the frame, as opposed to being
lost in a very wide-angle shot.
The films two key sets are Baharis
cell and his interrogation room. Before
Bukowski arrived in Amman, the production crew had scouted a location for the
prison, but the director of photography
wasnt convinced. The whole time I had
been thinking, Were going to build these
two locations, and theyre going to be
standing right next to each other on a
stage, he recalls. When he visited the
putative locations, he adds, It was a 3-by6 cell, and a room that was maybe 8-by10. What I explained to Jon right away
was, Forget about designing lighting or
designing shots. This room is dictating that
I cant use anything tighter than a 25mm
Top: Bahari
was often
blindfolded when
interrogated by
Rosewater (Kim
Bodnia). Bottom:
Bahari was
accused of being
a spy; his playful
interview on The
Daily Show With
Jon Stewart likely
contributed to
his arrest.
lens; this room is telling me thats the source

of lighting coming in through that window
there. In the end, the sets were indeed
built on a stage, adjacent to each other.
The set for Baharis cell was still
cramped, but it had wild walls for maximum
flexibility. It was a high-ceilinged set, with
one small window, built on a 4'-high platform to facilitate low-angle shooting. Jon
kept talking about wanting to see the
window, but the window was so high up
that if you had an eye-height lens and
26
December 2014
youre seeing Gael, youre not seeing the

window, Bukowski explains. The only
way you see both in the frame is if you bring
the camera very low. [Bernals] also on the
floor a lot, and we didnt want to have to
constantly shoot down on him. 1K tungsten Pars with medium lenses outside the
window provided daytime light, while a
fluorescent tube on the ceiling keyed nighttime shots.
The interrogation room was somewhat bigger and allowed for more modeled
lighting. We designed the room with a

window in the far corner opposite the door,
and thats where the interrogator sat, says
the cinematographer. Outside this window,
we were using bigger tungsten lights, 5Ks
and 10Ks to get more power, and some
nine-light Fays to bounce some light into
the set. During much of the interrogation,
Bahari is blindfolded, with his back to the
interrogator and far away from this light.
Jon talked about how the interrogator had
the luxury of sitting in the light, looking out
the window and experiencing life going on,
whereas Maziar is forced to be on the other
side of the room, deprived of that light. In
the beginning, Bukowski adds, wide lenses
18-25mm caught Bahari in the foreground of the frame and the interrogator in
the background, with a chasm between
them. As the relationship shifts, Bukowski
started employing lenses in the 35, 40 and
50mm range, so Maziar starts to occupy a
space thats more present with the interrogator, and to share the frame more
equally than before.
The production also shot scenes in
an actual Amman prison. They cleared one
hallway and let us work, the cinematographer says. We had to load in and out every
day, and every time we checked in, the
process was quite arduous, because every
Top: Bernal and writer/director Jon Stewart (right) consult with the real Maziar Bahari (center).
Bottom: Stewart and cinematographer Bobby Bukowski discuss a scene.
person had to be searched and every piece

of equipment had to be X-rayed. And they
werent really allowing us to bring in any
lights. In a particularly intense scene, the
interrogator drags Bahari out into a courtyard and holds a gun to his head. Bukowski
recalls, We never scouted that [courtyard]
at night before we shot it, and I tried to ask
the prison guards, When the lights go on at
night, are they green? Are they blue? Are
they gold? One guy was like, Oh, its very
green, and another said, Its very warm.
They all had a different story. But then
Bukowski showed one guard a picture of
28
December 2014
the light from a sodium-vapor lamp, and

he said, This is very much what it is. Luckily, he was right, and the scene is made
more striking by the harsh yellow glow of
sodium vapor.
Also in Amman, Bukowski shot a
variety of street scenes leading up to
Baharis imprisonment. For the journalists
tour of the city on the back of a motorcycle,
the director and cinematographer needed
to mask the reality that Tehran and Amman
are very different-looking cities. Tehran is
surrounded by mountains, Amman is a
desert, says Bukowski. But Stewart had
some connections in Tehran, and he found

a cameraman there to shoot scenes of the
city from a motorcycle with a Sony PD170.
These point-of-view shots were smuggled
out of Iran, and intercut with shots of Bernal
and his guide on the motorcycle. I reduced
the depth of field in the reaction shots so
the background wouldnt become so prevalent, the cinematographer says. The
difference in the [footage from the two
cameras] was fine, because often the shots
were meant to represent Maziar shooting
from the motorcycle.
Shooting night exteriors in Amman
was often very improvisational, but the
Alexa held the cinematographer in good
stead. For example, Bukowski recalls, We
were shooting a demonstration from a roof
because it was too dangerous, but we
hadnt lit for actors being on the roof looking down. The crew bounced a 1K tungsten
Par off a building half a block away, and it
was really the only light on them. Its beautiful; it completely looks like ambient street
light. The Alexa excels in those situations by
being able to capture low light levels. Its a
constant lesson of not doing too much.
Rosewaters digital grade was
conducted at Company 3 in New York,
under the supervision of DI producer
Rhonda Moore and colorist Tom Poole, who
worked with Blackmagic Designs DaVinci
Resolve. Bukowski says the DI was useful for
modeling light in some of the prison
sequences, and creating a contrast in saturation between prison and non-prison
scenes. It was this idea of deprivation, even
being deprived of the element of color,
says the cinematographer. Thats what
Maziar kept talking about the tedium
and the sameness is part of being in prison,
and that wears you down. Every day, you
have no sense of the time, and its the same,
the same, the same. And then you have the
contrast with the exterior, which pops with
color and life.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa Plus
Angenieux Optimo, Arri/Zeiss Ultra Prime
Pop-Up Horror
By Douglas Bankston
The death of her husband years ago

has left Amelia (Essie Davis) psychologically
paralyzed and her young son, Samuel
(Noah Wiseman), emotionally stunted. One
night before bed, Samuel presents his
mother with a mysterious, rather frightening pop-up book to read, titled Mr.
Babadook. Doing so doesnt just leave
Samuel sleepless with night terrors; it
unleashes a sinister presence that forces
Amelia and Samuel to confront their
anguish.
This is the premise of writer-director
Jennifer Kents stylish horror film The
Babadook, shot by cinematographer Radek
Ladczuk. Israeli director Tali Shalom-Ezer
introduced Kent to the work of her friend
Ladczuk while the two directors were in
Amsterdam developing screenplays at the
Binger Filmlab. Kent became fascinated
with Ladczuks Suicide Room, and the two
had a meeting via Skype. Soon after, the
director of photography was in Australia for
a week of preproduction meetings and,
after a short break, six more weeks of prep.
Ladczuk, who studied at the famed
National Film School in Lodz, Poland,
became a cinematographer not through
any sense of predestination he just did it.
30
December 2014
One day I passed the exam to film school,

and this adventure started, he says matterof-factly from Poland, where he was shooting the feature Princess. I dont know why!
I dont have any family connection or tradition. I just followed my emotions. It is an
amazing job.
Kent gave Ladczuk a list of some 20
features to watch, including old movies
from Georges Mlis body of work,
German Expressionism films like Murnaus
Faust, and American horror films from the
1920s and 30s. She was inspired by old
movies, Ladczuk says. She wanted to
have all effects in camera and no CGI.
In fact, Kent originally envisioned
shooting The Babadook in black-and-white,
but ultimately decided she wanted to create
something different from the old, silent
horror films. Instead, she went with a
limited color palette particularly in the
house of steel blue, burgundy and some
teal. We had an amazing Australian
production designer in Alex Holmes, says
Ladczuk. In this movie, Jennifer saw more
of a psychological story than horror, though
we added many horror elements in the
design and camerawork. We understood
that it was a mix of psychological drama and
horror. It really is a story about a woman and
her relationship with her son. Everything
came from the mothers perspective.
The production was the first feature

film to occupy the new Adelaide Studios
sound stages in South Australia. The
Babadooks main set, comprising the interiors of Amelias Victorian-style house, was
built on stage. With its muted hues, the
house reflects Amelias mental state and, on
a deeper level, serves as a metaphor for her
mind. Initially slated to shoot the project
over 30 days, the filmmakers realized that
the number of in-camera special-effects
shots caused too much of a crunch, so a
few more days were added and paid for
along with elements of the design budget
by a small, online Kickstarter campaign.
Ladczuk and camera assistant Maxx Corkindale also worked a few weekends with
Kent to shoot some additional shots in the
house for editing purposes. It was lowbudget for an Australian production, the
cinematographer says.
Ladczuk, who also served as the
camera operator, shot with a base-model
Arri Alexa with a set of Arri/Zeiss Master
Prime lenses. He recorded HD 1920x1080
ProRes 4:2:2 HQ files to SxS cards.
Kent and Ladczuk were precise in
devising the camera movements and
composition. We divided our movie into
five chapters: anxiety, fear, terror, possession
and courage, he says. Each had different
elements of camerawork. At the beginning
The Babadook photos by Matt Nettheim, SMPSP, courtesy of IFC Midnight.
Samuel (Noah
Wiseman) and his
mother, Amelia
(Essie Davis),
unleash a sinister
presence from
a mysterious
pop-up book
in the film
The Babadook.
Top:
Cinematographer
Radek Ladczuk
(operating
camera) and crew
ready a scene
inside the
bedroom set.
Bottom: Amelia
reads to Samuel
before bed.
we had a very static camera where Amelia

often was situated in the center of the
frame. Usually, we shot her on a 32mm lens
to be able to see her emotions. Then we
added a handheld style to emphasize her
emotions, and then Steadicam, which we
called floating camera. For the movies
ending, we wanted to create very chaotic
and uncoordinated movement, reflecting
the Babadooks point of view. We also used
[increasingly] wider lenses for Amelias
close-ups until finally, in one of the scenes,
we were shooting her with a 14mm lens.
32
December 2014
Everything for us was motivated by the

characters emotions.
The Babadook opens with Amelia
having a surreal dream that forces her to relive the car accident that took her husbands
life; after the dream, she falls back into bed.
For the scene, a car partial and the camera
were mounted on a rotisserie so the car and
camera could rotate in tandem. The scene
then cuts to the actor on a dolly being
wheeled toward the bed, which was
mounted vertically against a wall, for the incamera falling effect.
Other in-camera effects are sprinkled

throughout the film. We had fast-motion
and slow-motion effects, a lens out of the
mount, a Lensbaby, Ladczuk lists. All
scenes with the Babadook were stopmotion frame-by-frame. We had an animator, Michael Cusack, on set to help us with
it.
When the Babadook finally goes
after Amelia, it crawls on the ceiling toward
her on a set that was flipped, with the ceiling built on the floor. The nightmarish
figure, played by Tim Purcell, moved stepby-step as Ladczuk shot five frames at a
time. On the right-side-up version of the
set, the Babadook was lowered incrementally toward the camera and shot stopmotion style. (The cables were removed in
post.) It was very tricky and uncomfortable
for the actor, Ladczuk notes.
Mr. Babadook, the pernicious tome
that starts Amelia and her son spiraling, was
also to be filmed as a stop-motion
sequence. That was the plan, recalls
Ladczuk. The book was designed as a
pop-up with elements that you could move.
I had macro lenses for it. It was very complicated, and we didnt have the time to do a
real stop-motion animation only a few
hours so it was shot in real time.
Because black-and-white was not an
option for the film, Kent had specific ideas
A car partial
and the camera
were mounted
on a rotisserie
rig, allowing the
car and camera
to rotate in
tandem for a
car-accident
scene.
for the lighting aesthetic to complement

the desaturated colors. She doesnt like
color in light, Ladczuk says. She wanted
one color temperature. In my previous
movies, I really liked to use gels on the
lamps; to her, that is a modern light. I
34
December 2014
decided to create an old feeling through

contrast and by the level of light rather than
through color temperature. It was very
strange for me, but I treated it as a challenge.
Ladczuk focused on lighting the
actors faces rather than keeping the backgrounds lit. The resulting look pulls and
isolates the actors in the composition,
particularly within the dark and dreary
Victorian house. I wanted the light to look
natural at the beginning, he explains. The
further we got in the plot, the harder and
more surreal and expressive I wanted the
light to be, because the light was motivated
by fear. I avoided using light softeners so as
to bring more expression to an actors face,
especially in night scenes.
In lighting the house interior,
Ladczuk preferred HMI sources, such as Pars
and Fresnels ranging from 200 watts up to
a 12K, because of better color reproduction, though he had to make some exceptions. Sometimes we didnt have enough
light sources to cover our set, he says. For
example, Amelias bedroom was covered by
HMI lighting, but the hall, living room,
dining room and kitchen were covered with
tungsten lighting for night scenes. I used
windows as the main source of light, but for
all night scenes I had two huge white
sections of fabric for ceilings and used tungsten fixtures on dimmers to generate delicate, soft light from the top. I regulated the
intensity depending on circumstances, used
fill light from the floor and lit curtains from
the outside.
Ladczuk purposefully allowed the
windows to blow out during day scenes
because the production could not afford
TransLites or backdrops.
Artfully contrasting with the cold
Victorian interiors was the basement, where
Amelia keeps her dead husbands belongings and her memories of him, as best
she can manage locked away. The basement was a real location as opposed to a
constructed set, and although Ladczuk lit it
in the same manner as the house interiors,
warmer tones pervaded due to the influence of the red brick walls.
Other real locations included the
nursing home where Amelia works. We
tried to reduce the color palette, says
Ladczuk, but it was impossible to remove
all of those elements and we ended up with
pastel colors. Location always inspires, and
that is why the light is different softer
and paler. We tried to add black elements in
every frame just to create contrast. In the
doctors office, we removed all [existing]
Top: The main set,

comprising the
interiors of
Amelias home,
were shot at
Adelaide Studios in
South Australia.
Bottom: Ladczuk
(behind the
camera), writerdirector Jennifer
Kent (on the floor
to the right) and
crew shoot a scene
focused on Samuel.
elements and added some black lamps and

a black table just to have contrast.
Green also was not acceptable to
Jennifer, he adds. For example, the scene
in the city park [of Amelia and her sister on
a bench] has a very strange camera angle.
At eye level, we had a lot of green background, which she hated. Instead, the
camera angle is really high. In the end, I
grew to like it.
Postproduction facility Kojo in
Adelaide handled the color grading, with
visual-effects supervisor and DI colorist
Marty Pepper at the wheel. Originally,
Ladczuk tried to link Kojo with post houses
in Warsaw so that he could observe
36
December 2014
Peppers work onscreen. After a few days

of trying, I realized it wasnt going to
happen with the low-budget situation, so I
just bought a ticket and flew to Adelaide,
he says. For me, it is important to finish the
movie with the colorist. The contrast and
colors are very important to me, and also,
this is my work.
It turned out that the color-grading
process was relatively quick. I was
surprised with how good the colors were in
the rough cut, the cinematographer says.
In the beginning, Marty fixed contrast and
made one contrast layer, then focused on
the alabaster skin tone for Amelia. At the
end, he focused on colors like the greens
and yellows, working with keys to fix our

color palette and reduce unnecessary
colors. After three days, he had those layers.
I really like his style of work; it was
a very good experience for me, Ladczuk
continues. Before, I was more focused on
finding proper style focusing on one or
two scenes instead of the movie as a whole.
Martys work [takes into account] layers for
the whole movie, and its a very fast style.
After about five days, you can show the
final product to a producer, and if you have
more time, you can focus on details.
With a slight re-size, The Babadook
was mastered into a DCP format in 2K resolution.
The level of professionalism on this
movie was really high, Ladczuk concludes,
and I was really lucky with the amazing
Australian crew. For example, the key grip,
Mike Smith, had everything on his truck.
From a Polish perspective, that was something new for me!
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa
Arri/Zeiss Master Prime
Cosmic
Odyssey
Teaming with director
Christopher Nolan for the first time,
Hoyte van Hoytema, FSF, NSC
combines film formats for the
space- and time-spanning
Interstellar.
By Iain Stasukevich
|
38
December 2014
hot by Hoyte van Hoytema, FSF, NSC, Interstellar is the

kind of movie that also qualifies as an event a bigscreen experience that asks viewers to leave the comfort of
their homes and enter another world.
The films narrative follows a similar plot. Matthew
McConaughey stars as Cooper, a salt-of-the-earth, ex-NASA
test pilot tasked with leading a colonial expedition through a
wormhole to the far reaches of space.
Director Christopher Nolan has become known for
crafting thinking-mans blockbusters after his successes with
the Dark Knight trilogy, Inception and other ambitious productions. The director says he turned to van Hoytema a
Dutch-Swedish cinematographer whose work distinguishes
Unit photography by Melinda Sue Gordon,

SMPSP, courtesy of Paramount Pictures and
Warner Bros. Entertainment.
Ex-NASA test pilot

Cooper (Matthew
McConaughey,
opposite, left) leads
a colonial
expedition that
includes team
members Brand
(Anne Hathaway,
middle) and Romilly
(David Gyasi) in the
film Interstellar,
directed by
Christopher Nolan
(this page, middle,
left) and shot by
Hoyte van Hoytema,
FSF, NSC (behind the
camera, middle and
bottom).
such painterly films as Let the Right One

In, The Fighter (AC Jan. 11) and Tinker
Tailor Soldier Spy (AC Dec. 11)
because I really responded to the naturalism in Hoytes work. And because of
my experience with larger-scale films, I
wasnt particularly looking for someone
with large-film experience, because I
could bring that to bear myself.
Van Hoytema spent the months
prior to principal photography developing a shared visual language with Nolan
while attending rehearsals, gathering
www.theasc.com
December 2014
39
Cosmic Odyssey
Top and middle:
Cooper tends a
struggling farm
with the help of
his father-in-law,
Donald (John
Lithgow).
Bottom: Van
Hoytema hefts
the 75-pound
Imax camera
for handheld
shooting.
references, and watching such films as

Philip Kaufmans The Right Stuff and
Andrei Tarkovskys The Mirror. We
didnt want to be unnecessarily lyrical or
poetic, says van Hoytema. The viewer
needs to believe that the science behind
the story is legit, so we wanted our
approach to be matter-of-fact.
Approximately 60 to 70 minutes
of the films 170-minute run time was
filmed in 15-perf 65mm Imax, with the
remaining material a combination of
35mm anamorphic and 8-perf
VistaVision. With the understanding
that the MSM 9802 Imax cameras are
functionally similar to most other film
cameras, van Hoytema focused his
research into large-format cinematography on composition and operability.
Your principles of framing are simpler,
says the cinematographer. The Imax
image is 1.43:1, so its more of a square.
Because of the size, the experience is
more visceral than observational, so you
end up composing much more in the
center of the frame. You can stay wider
while getting the same effect as a closeup. I thought, What if we used this
extremely beautiful medium, with so
much depth and clarity and size, to do
more intimate things with close focus
and a short depth of field? Its beautiful
how the Imax lenses render faces.
Theyre like big-format still portraits.
40
December 2014
Interior shots
featuring
Donald, Cooper
and his two
children (played
by Timothe
Chalamet and
Mackenzie Foy)
were lit primarily
through the
windows.
The production was furnished

with several sets of large-format
Hasselblad lenses from Imax, and ASC
associate Dan Sasaki, Panavisions chief
optical engineer, provided two custom
lenses: a 50mm T2 with a 2' close focus,
and an 80mm T2 Mamiya hed previously made for The Dark Knight Rises
(AC Aug. 12). According to A-camera
1st AC Gregory Irwin, most of the
Imax footage was photographed with
the custom 50 and 80mm lenses.
Despite Interstellars scope, the
filmmakers envisioned an intimate story
and strove to capture its characters in
tight, handheld close-ups. Given the
wider Imax frame, +1 to +3 diopters
helped van Hoytema get as close to his
subjects as possible. A Panavision-style
dovetail accommodated handgrips and
a shoulder pad, and Sasaki shortened an
MSM 9802 viewfinder, brightening its
reflex mirror path and pushing its
mount forward on the camera body,
which allowed van Hoytema, who was
also operating, to more easily heft the
75-pound camera and 1,000' magazine.
The productions set of custom
anamorphic lenses ranged from 28mm
to 100mm, allowing a 2' minimum
focus at a T2 across the board. Each lens
was based on an existing design: a USG
28mm, a C Series 35 and 50mm, a D
Series 40mm, and an E Series 75 and
www.theasc.com
December 2014
41
Cosmic Odyssey
Cooper brings his daughter along to investigate strange happenings around the farm.
100mm. A hero 65mm T2.0 with a 9"

close focus was built entirely from
scratch. It was like a macro lens, van
Hoytema says, but there are trade-offs:
If you tweak your lenses to favor extreme
42
December 2014
close-ups, your wide shots will probably

be slightly softer.
Sasaki also tuned van Hoytemas
anamorphic lenses to create a specific
type of flare, something warmer and
fluffier than the typical hard anamorphic streaks, says the cinematographer.
Though Nolan prefers to film
with only one camera at a time, key 2nd
assistant Tulio Duenas, along with Bcamera 1st AC Philip Shanahan and Bcamera 2nd AC Dan Schroer, kept two
Panaflex Millennium XL and two Imax
bodies on standby in the event of a jam
or change in format. We made it
simple, says Irwin. A Preston [wireless
focus control was mounted] on every
camera with its own channel, and the
lenses were mapped out on my handset.
The matte box is already on, and the
Panaflex mag is rear-loaded even on a
head, because the next take might be on
Hoytes shoulders or [camera operator
Scott Sakamotos] Steadicam.
Principal photography commenced in summer 2013 with Alberta,
Canada standing in for an unspecified
heartland. Corn is the last crop to resist
a blight threatening the worlds food
supply, and Cooper tends a struggling
Van Hoytema
and his crew
ready a scene
with Cooper in
the cockpit of
the expedition
spacecraft
Endurance.
farm with the help of his father-in-law

( John Lithgow) and two children
(Mackenzie Foy and Timothe
Chalamet). For van Hoytema, the
Cooper farm is a strong metaphor for
humanitys collective home. It is a place
where you feel the elements of nature:
the dirt, the crops, the natural light and
the constantly changing weather, he
muses. So specific was the filmmakers
vision for the farm that production
designer Nathan Crowley and his art

department designed and constructed a
working farmhouse surrounded by acres
of cornfield.
Using scale-model light studies
conducted during preproduction,
Crowley built the house so the sun
would come straight in the front all day
long, and then set behind it, says van
Hoytema. Coopers daughters bedroom
window provided the cinematographer
www.theasc.com
with varying qualities of sunlight.

Whatever nature gave us, we greedily
took, he remarks.
Gaffer Harold Skinner and
Alberta gaffer Martin Keough ran 800'
of double 4/0 cable connected to three
in-line 1,500-amp generators from the
cornfield to the house, where all of the
outlets and switches were connected to a
dimmer cave in the basement. When a
day interior called for film lighting, van
December 2014
43
Cosmic Odyssey
Nolan, van
Hoytema and
crew shoot a
scene in
which the
Endurances
lander sets
down in
the water.
Hoytema opted to light primarily from

the windows. Outside of [the daughters] room we had one of our six 18K
HMIs on a Condor pushing through
the window behind a 6-by-6 or 12-by12 Light Grid frame, says Skinner.
Overcast skies were augmented by
bouncing into a Light Grid or Full Grid
eyebrow over the window exterior. The
gaffer adds, Inside wed use one of my
custom 4-foot 2K soft lights [with four
500-watt ECT globes and Half CTB]
or a BBS Lighting Area 48 [LED] to
wrap the light around in wider shots.
Natural daylight was accentuated
with 12 or 18 CTO on 4'x4' frames in
front of lights, and HMIs with 14 Plus
Green to emulate the bounce that
natural light gets from all the plants or
trees, says van Hoytema. Adding that
he eschewed precise contrast ratios, he
explains, I would rather get something
thats less perfect but more real. Inside
the kitchen, the big windows burn out
and the soft light sort of streams into
the room but doesnt reach very far.
Inconsistency is a defining trait of
Alberta weather. From one moment to
the next, the sky would storm with
black clouds or give you a beautiful, low
sun, van Hoytema recalls. The rule of
44
December 2014
thumb was to accept the beautiful and

the extreme. It was not always dramatic.
It could be very gray and dull, and we
wanted to capture those moments, too.
NDs and polarizers helped maintain a
shallow T2.8/T4 at ISO 50, though
some action scenes pushed the stop as
high as T5.6.
Normally we used a 12-by-12
Ultrabounce, and sometimes a little
overhead action, says Skinner. The
wind really kicks up in Calgary, so our
key grip, Herb Ault, also used perforated bounces. When we did light, it
was the standard two 18Ks through a
12-by-12 frame of Full Grid. Most of
the time we would just wait for the sun
to come back.
Its beautiful how the

Imax lenses rendered
faces. Theyre like
big-format still
portraits.
For a sequence that takes place in

an underground facility, the filmmakers
combined exterior locations in
Canmore, Alberta, with a number of
interiors, including a parking garage in
Torrance, Calif.; the Bonaventure Hotel
in Los Angeles; and sets built on Stage
26 at the Sony lot in Culver City, Calif.
The filmmakers adopted a utilitarian
approach to combine these disparate
locations into a single environment.
Everything from the light sources to
the furniture to the technology was
meant to seem familiar and was
constructed according to its function,
van Hoytema remarks.
On stage at Sony, the facilitys
large boardroom was connected to the
roomy office where Professor Brand
(Michael Caine) and Murph ( Jessica
Chastain) work out some of the films

deep science. Practical T8 fluorescent
tubes in the ceiling were warmed with
18 CTO to create an ambient light
level. The actors were augmented with a
2x2 Kino Flo and wrapped with a handheld panel of VHO 120 LiteRibbon
strips diffused with Lee 129 Heavy
Frost. The LED housings were
designed for practical use on the spaceship sets, but we ended up using them
on every set because they were batterypowered and I could run around with
Hoyte and hold one next to the camera
as an eyelight, says Skinner.
Coopers experience as a test pilot
lands him a potentially one-way ticket
on the expedition spacecraft Endurance,
where he joins Brands daughter (Anne
Hathaway) and scientists Doyle (Wes
Bentley) and Romilly (David Gyasi).
Sonys Stage 30 housed the main
Cosmic Odyssey
Endurance set and two vertically
oriented sections for zero-gravity
work; full-sized versions of the
Endurances ranger and lander spacecrafts, which were mounted to a
hydraulic gimbal by special-effects
coordinator Scott Fisher and his crew,
were built on Stages 26 and 27.
Van Hoytema lit the Endurance
interior to a T2.8/T4 using practical
LiteRibbon and fluorescent fixtures
based on a Kino Flo egg-crate louver.
The honeycomb [design] looked functional and also gave us control over the
light, he says. We wanted to get away
from typical movie spaceship aesthetics. A big part of our language in the
ship was inspired by Imax NASA
footage. We were thinking of something more like an Amtrak train, or the
inside of a tank. We tried to emulate the
claustrophobia by tightening our sets
and making them 100-percent real
no walls could be removed. This is
another reason why we customized our
lenses: We never would have been able
to shoot in these cramped spaces with
normal anamorphic lenses.
However, the filmmakers did
take a number of cues from 2001: A
Space Odyssey, such as the way the
Endurance generates artificial gravity
through centrifugal force. To create the
impression that the Endurance was
rotating in the light of a bright star,
electricians moved six boxed-in Mole
20K Fresnels across the sets windows;
Los Angeles board operator Josh
Thatcher doused the lamps with
DMX-controlled shutters until they
were panned back and reset.
Sometimes [the light] was four or five
stops over, Skinner recalls. We looked
at reference footage from the
International Space Station, and its
very dark in there, so the light of the sun
coming in would be very bright. (For
one sequence, the illusion of an out-ofcontrol spiral was created with 4' spinning bowtie shutters in front of the
20Ks.)
Van Hoytema and Nolan tested a
multitude of lighting gags and special
effects to create a sense of actual space
Top and middle:

After the
astronauts land
on a strange
planet, Brand
struggles
through the
water. Bottom:
Cooper explores
the new terrain.
46
December 2014
outside the Endurance. We tested

cutouts, models and TransLites, if for no
other reason than it would be difficult to
composite something behind the dirty
spaceship windows, says the cinematographer. After visual-effects
embellishment, some of these experiments even made it into the film.
In one scene, the Endurance does
a flyby of a massive black hole, which,
according to van Hoytemas research
with executive producer and theoretical
physicist Kip Thorne, should resemble a
bright ring of light. We built a blackhole practical for our actors to react to,
says van Hoytema, describing the black
metal disc that was mounted in front of
We wanted all of the

effects shots to feel
as if Hoyte just filmed
what youre seeing on
the screen.
one of the 20Ks. We wanted to capture
the physicality of the light and the way
it refracted through the spaceship
windows.
Light from the practical gags
tended to reveal imperfections along the
surface of the spacecraft windows,
making it extremely difficult for the
filmmakers to obtain clean background
composites through the glass. However,
while making Inception (AC July 10),
Nolan had raised the possibility of front
projection as an alternative to digital
compositing, and by the time Interstellar
started filming, visual-effects supervisor
Paul Franklin felt that the technology
had advanced to the point where projection on a large scale was possible.
To cover all of the windows on
the Endurances main set, the filmmakers
needed an 80'x300' cyclorama of white-
painted muslin. Los Angeles-based

Background Images operated two
Barco 2K xenon projectors, which were
mounted to a pan-and-tilt head on a
large forklift 30' to 50' away from the
screen. A software suite called
Watchout controlled both projectors,
simultaneously feeding dual or separate
image streams from a timeline of multiple sequences. Franklin and co-supervisor Andrew Lockley delivered content
from a workstation tucked beneath the

Endurance set. Within minutes of that
contents arrival from the visual-effects
artists at the London facility Double
Negative, new digital elements were up
on the screen for Nolans approval.
We wanted it to look like the
video footage from the International
Space Station, with the Earth in full,
unfiltered sunlight, says Franklin. We
didnt want that beautiful but very
Cosmic Odyssey
A large office set was constructed for Murph (Jessica Chastain, top) to work out some
of the films deep science.
contrived look where you can see single

details in the clouds and the planet
surface.
The two 40,000-lumen projectors were positioned according to the
48
December 2014
cameras field of view. A Wi-Fi connection and Watchouts keystoning feature

allowed Nolan and van Hoytema to
rough in the background perspective on
a laptop from their positions behind the
camera. Identical images from the two

projectors were converged into one on
the cyclorama in order to achieve an
acceptable exposure level through the
windows of the spacecraft.
Unlike a TransLite, front-projection content can be animated to correlate with the position of the sun, set
rotation and camera angle. We have
sequences where the spacecraft dips
toward a planet, and we could move the
content dynamically outside the
windows while rotating the light
coming through the windows, says van
Hoytema. Projection elements were
improved and fine-tuned over the
course of production, and though most
of these elements were still enhanced
with visual effects in post, van Hoytema
notes that theres always the ambition
to make it as good as we can in front of
the camera.
Everything proceeded from
Hoytes photography, Franklin explains. We wanted all of the effects
shots to feel as if he just went out there
with the camera and filmed what youre
Cosmic Odyssey
Top: Tom (Casey Affleck) and Murph converse at the site of a cornfield fire.
Bottom: Murph investigates the scene.
seeing on the screen.

Much of Interstellars fantastic
imagery was actually photographed with
miniatures. We saved digital for the
stuff we could not do any other way, like
50
December 2014
a wormhole or a 4,000-foot mountain

of water, says Franklin. Miniatures
were fabricated by and filmed at New
Deal Studios in Sylmar, Calif.
Cinematographer
Tim
Angulo
photographed the elements against a

black background in 8-perf VistaVision,
and then digital artists at Double
Negative used luminance keys and
hand-rotoscoping to isolate the miniature elements from the rig. A detailed
digital model was used for minor
touchups and repairs.
Save for a single shot toward the
end of the film, no greenscreen was used
for any of the composites in Interstellar.
One of the reasons we shot against
black was that wed often flare the lens
right across the miniature and the background, Franklin notes. Wed keep
those [flares] and hide the key light with
whatever is comped in the background.
However, a number of shots were
achieved onstage with the full-sized
spacecraft, frequently with the camera
hard-mounted on the ship as it was
shaken on a gimbal. The idea was that
the jitter imposed on a solid, hardmounted camera would give a visceral
sense of the ships speed and G forces
without always having to resort to
impersonal [camera] angles, says van
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Cosmic Odyssey
A full-sized version of the lander spacecraft was mounted to a hydraulic gimbal by

special-effects coordinator Scott Fisher and his crew.
Hoytema. We stay with the vessels and

the astronauts.
The filmmakers also devised a
method of hard-mounting the Imax
camera directly to the actors, as if the

actor had a small camera mounted to
[his or her] head, van Hoytema
explains. We built body mounts that
were either suspended or placed on a

pivoting rig, housing both the actor and
the Imax camera. The whole rig could
then descend on cables through the
zero-G sets. The cinematographer
refers to the rig as an Imax GoPro. It
let us [capture] visceral angles that are
normally only possible with a GoPro
camera, but in 15-perf 65mm!
Interstellars post workflow closely
mirrored the one developed by returning postproduction supervisor David E.
Hall and associate editor John Lee for
The Dark Knight Rises. Two paths were
taken to arrive at the 35mm and Imax
deliverables. David Keighley at DKP
70mm handled all of the Imax 70mm
film work, producing a 65mm negative
comprised of 15-perf 65mm Imax original camera negative, 6K visual-effects
elements filmed out at 5.6K to a 65mm
digital negative, and 6K Imax digital
blowups from a 35mm anamorphic IP.
(Theatrical Imax prints preserve the
1.43:1 and 2.40:1 aspect ratios; 4K digi-
tal Imax presentation is 1.90:1 and

2.40:1.) FotoKem produced the 35mm
Scope film prints, which consisted of
the 35mm Scope camera negative, 4K
visual-effects elements (filmouts) from
Scope and VistaVision that was
scanned at Warner Bros. MPI in
Burbank, digital Scope extractions from
8K Imax scans, and optical Scope
extractions directly from the 65mm
negative to a 35mm IP/IN. FotoKem
also created the 2.40:1 flat 4K DCPs
from 6K/4K over-scans of the 35mm
color-timed IP.
ASC associate member Mato
Der Avanessian performed the shows
photochemical color grade at FotoKem.
He and van Hoytema tested a variety of
different looks and processes, but we
didnt want to enforce a look, says van
Hoytema. We were more into finding
the core of the negative.
Even his preference in film stocks
was predicated more on function than
on achieving a particular style. Kodak
stocks are very consistent, the cinematographer notes. If you do exteriors

with a lot of sun, you shoot with 50D; if
youre inside [with] daylight, you go to
the 250D. For interiors [with] tungsten
and on stage, you shoot 500T. The
negative wants to register the light in its
purest form, so I was pretty conservative
with my exposures and processing.
The adjective unromantic
comes up throughout van Hoytemas
conversation with AC. Its not always
the prettiest or most polished way of
doing things, he observes, but it gets
us closer to the truth.
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1 and 1.43:1 Imax
65mm and 35mm Anamorphic
Imax MSM 9802;
Panavision Millennium XL;
Beaucam
Mamiya; Hasselblad;
Panavision Custom, C Series,
D Series, E Series, High Speed
Kodak Vision3 500T 5219,
250D 5207, 50D 5203
53
Backstage
Drama
Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC
and his collaborators create the
illusion of one long, unbroken take
for director Alejandro G. Irritus
darkly comic Birdman.
By Jean Oppenheimer
|
54
December 2014
irdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) revolves

around Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton), a
Hollywood has-been whose fame rests on a series of
superhero movies in which he portrayed a masked,
Batman-like crime-fighter, with wings instead of a cape. In an
effort to resurrect his career and earn some respect as a
serious actor Riggan decides to adapt, direct and star in a
Broadway play based on the Raymond Carver short story
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. As
opening night approaches and personal and professional pressures mount, Riggan experiences a total mental meltdown.
Emmanuel Chivo Lubezki, ASC, AMC who
earned both a 2014 Academy Award and an ASC Award for
his work on Gravity (AC Nov. 13) read the script and
found himself completely absorbed by its unexpected
emotional and psychological currents: what it said about
Unit photography by Alison Rosa, courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures.
personal relationships, parenthood, ego

and success, as well as ones relationship
to a chosen art and craft. However, the
cinematographer was mystified by
director Alejandro G. Irritus desire to
shoot the comedy in what appears to be
one continuous take. The common
wisdom is that cuts are very important
in comedy, remarks Lubezki, who also
received ASC Awards for his work on
The Tree of Life (AC Aug. 11) and
Children of Men (AC Dec. 06). The
rhythm in comedy [comes from] great
comedians but also from great editing,
and to not have any cuts was one of the
craziest ideas I had ever heard.
Irritu explained that he wanted
to immerse audiences in Riggans world
so they would feel what the character is
going through as his life unravels all
around him. I thought [connecting all
the spaces] would serve the dramatic
tension and put the audience in this
guys shoes in a radical way, the director told AC at the 2014 Telluride Film
Festival, where Birdman had its North
American premiere.
The film glides between Riggans
point of view and objective shots in
which he is a participant. Although he
wanted to create the illusion that the
Riggan Thomson
(Michael Keaton,
opposite and above,
left) teeters on the
brink of mental collapse
while attempting to
mount a Broadway play
in Birdman. Middle:
Cinematographer
Emmanuel Lubezki,
ASC, AMC (holding
camera) confers with
director Alejandro G.
Irritu. Bottom:
Riggan attempts to
connect with his
daughter, Sam
(Emma Stone).
www.theasc.com
December 2014
55
Backstage Drama
Right: Riggan
struggles to rein in
his co-star Mike
(Edward Norton).
Below: Riggans
producer, Jake
(Zach Galifianakis),
tries to buoy
spirits around the
theater. The films
backstage area
was built as a twoand-a-half-story
set at Kaufman
Astoria Studios in
New York.
film was one long, unbroken shot,

Irritu always knew that some transitions would be necessary to get the
actors from the set, built at Kaufman
Astoria Studios in Queens, to the stage
at New Yorks St. James Theatre; to
indicate the passage of time between
night and day; and for other, strictly
technical reasons. As to the actual
56
December 2014
number of transitions in the movie

and where they occur the director
demurs: I would prefer to keep the
rabbit in the hat.
According to Lubezki, the most
complex task was figuring out how to
block scenes in a way that both
supported the concept of a single,
continuous take and reflected Riggans
gradual emotional disintegration.

Preproduction began in Los Angeles,
where Lubezki, Irritu and production
designer Kevin Thompson crafted a
floor plan out of chalk, tape, C-stands
and canvas on a studio soundstage. As
they blocked the movie, they were
continually redrawing the lines on the
floor and rewriting the script, with each
activity informing the other. Once the
production secured the use of
Broadways historic St. James Theatre,
its measurements were added to the
diagram.
Rehearsals eventually moved to
New York, where the blocking was
further refined as furniture, props, lights
and finally actors were added (replacing
stand-ins who had learned and recited
the dialogue during earlier rehearsals).
Thompson designed a set at Kaufman
Astoria Studios that served as the
theaters backstage area, which included
dressing rooms, a maze of corridors,
multiple staircases and a wardrobe room
in the basement. The two-and-a-halfstory set extended to, but did not
include, the wings of the theaters stage,
as everything on the stage and in the
Steadicam
operator Chris
Haarhoff (top,
second from left)
maneuvers around
Keaton in Riggans
dressing room.
The crew placed
three 20Ks outside
of the room to
simulate daylight
coming in through
the window.
wings would be shot inside the actual

St. James.
The camera was in constant
motion, executing dozens of 360-degree
moves, with Lubezki following characters or pedaling backwards in front of
them, scaling catwalks and descending
to the stage. A good part of the movie
was shot handheld. Lubezki operated
an Arri Alexa M with a 4:3 sensor rated
at 1,250 ASA and framed for a 1.85:1
release; the rest was shot on a
Steadicam, with operator Chris
Haarhoff wearing an Alexa XT. Only
two lenses were used: an 18mm Leica
Summilux-C (T1.4) and a 14mm
Arri/Zeiss Master Prime (T1.3). Arri
CSC in New Jersey provided the
camera gear.
When we got into very tight
spaces, we favored handheld, says
Haarhoff. The M could get closer to
the faces than the Steadicam and
brought a real intimacy to the shots. We
kept the profiles of both cameras really
low no matte boxes, no filters so
we could get as close as possible to the
actors. Some scenes were shot with
both Steadicam and handheld, and
Irritu decided which version to use

during editing.
One of the hardest things for me
was being able to hand-hold the camera
for such long periods, acknowledges
Lubezki, who was usually holding the
Alexa M at arms length to get it as close
as possible to the actors. The filmmakers
considered handing off the camera from
www.theasc.com
one operator to the other, but it looked

awkward in playback and they scratched
the idea.
Lubezki says he specifically chose
the M because it offers a separate head
and body that, for Birdman, were tethered via a 15' fiber-optic cable. He held
the lens and sensor housing, while 1st
AC Gregor Tavenner carried the
December 2014
57
Backstage Drama
Top: Tensions boil over between Riggan and Mike. Bottom: Haarhoff notes that the crew
eschewed matte boxes on the cameras so we could get as close as possible to the actors.
camera body, the batteries, the Codex S

recorder and a wireless transmitter in a
backpack. Lubezki emphatically adds,
This film could not have existed without Gregor. Everything was always in
58
December 2014
flux, which is a nightmare for a focus

puller. Gregor had no way of putting
down marks or gauging distances other
than by relying on his inner sensibilities.
Both cameras recorded ArriRaw,

the Alexa M to the Codex S and the
Alexa XT to its internal Codex XR
recording module. Lynn Gus
Gustafson, Arri CSCs camera-rental
manager, notes that CSC also provided
a Codex Vault for the on-set workflow.
The Vault essentially takes the negative
or the Codex XR drive, in this case
and copies the ArriRaw material into
its internal storage, creating an immediate backup on set and allowing [the
filmmakers] to duplicate the information and put it on external hard drives,
which can then be sent to the postproduction facility. Once the transfer has
been confirmed, the XR drives can then
be reused on set. It was crucial for [this
production] to be able to keep up with
all the data that was coming out [of the
cameras], especially with the long takes
they were doing.
Lubezki would often position
himself between two actors, panning
from one to the other and holding the
Ms lens a mere 8" from their faces.
Wide-angle lenses allow viewers to feel

they are right there with the characters
and feel the context they are in, the
cinematographer observes. The filmmakers pursued a sense of elasticity, he
adds, where the perspective can shift
from an objective angle to a specific
characters point of view. For example,
on several occasions the camera travels
down a corridor as though its capturing
Riggans subjective perspective; as it
arrives at Riggans destination, the
camera pans to take in the drama in
front of him, and then Riggan steps into
the frame and becomes a participant in
the action.
Irritu says he wanted Riggans
dressing room to be a kind of refuge for
the character, while the expansive stage
was where he hoped to find success.
The hallways served as areas of uncertainty, transferring him from one place
to the other, the director notes. As
Riggan becomes more and more
unhinged, the corridors become
increasingly claustrophobic: They get
narrower, and the color of the light
becomes dirtier and sulfuric. At times,
the 14mm lens replaced the 18mm to
further accentuate Riggans anxiety.
If blocking the movie was a challenge, lighting it proved even more hairraising. With the exception of three
20Ks positioned outside the large
window in Riggans dressing room
(built at Kaufman Astoria) to simulate
sky light, the interiors were lit solely by
practicals hundreds of them. Gaffer
Robert Sciretta and Lubezki spent
weeks designing a lighting plan that
would work with a continually moving
camera. One obvious solution overhead lighting was quickly rejected.
We wanted the movie to feel as realistic as possible, the cinematographer
says.
We told Kevin, You are the one
really lighting this movie, Lubezki
adds, only half in jest. Indeed,
Thompson and art director Stephen H.
Carter were responsible for finding the
hundreds of tungsten and fluorescent
practicals that were used, many of
which dated back to 1927, when the St.
James opened. The majority of the

fixtures came from New York lighting
house City Knickerbocker, Inc.
In order to control the lights
intensity, shape and contrast as the
camera moved through the shots, every
fixture in the movie had to be on a
dimmer, and the dimmer operators had
to hit their cues perfectly, Lubezki
emphasizes. Any mistake and we would
see it on camera. Because of the
number of lights, two dimmer-board

operators were required at both the
Kaufman Astoria set (Fred Young and
John Luton) and the St. James ( John
Wooding and Luton).
Not all fluorescents and practicals are made to be on dimmers,
however, points out Sciretta, who
turned for help to Los Angeles-based
lighting company LiteGear. Sciretta
adds that LiteGear makes dimmable
Backstage Drama
Top: Riggan and another co-star, Lesley (Naomi Watts), try to convince each other that the play is
on sure footing. Bottom: With Lubezki looking over his shoulder, Irritu plans a shot with
Watts and Andrea Riseborough.
ballasts for fluorescents that are very

smooth and can go down almost to zero
without any flickering effects. If fluorescents dont have these special ballasts,
they will flicker at a certain point.
LiteGear also custom-built
60
December 2014
dimmable LED fixtures for us that

could mimic tungstens and fluorescents, the gaffer continues. These were
used in locations where we couldnt fit
real fluorescents the art department
built boxes around them so they looked
like fluorescent fixtures. We used them

both at the St. James Theatre and on the
Kaufman set. Sciretta is especially
appreciative of the technical assistance
offered by gaffer Michael Bauman.
Lubezki worked with Tonywinning lighting designer Peter
Kaczorowski to create a traditional
theater-lighting setup on the St. James
stage, so that the audience feels they are
watching something real, he says.
To add supplemental ambient
light, Lubezki drew from his experience
on Gravity and placed Pixled F-11
LED walls procured from XL Video
above the stage. We didnt want to
use movie lights, and LEDs are much
more versatile than any other light,
Lubezki submits. We hung the panels
almost, but not quite, straight above the
actors; otherwise, the light would have
been too toppy. The LED wall emits
what feels like theater lighting, which
we wanted, and it looked like it was part
of the stage design. Chris Herman
from Catalyst LED was brought in to
program the LED wall.
Yet another tech, Kelly Britt, was
on hand to tweak the dimmer modules
so theyd have the smoothest dimming
Backstage Drama
Sam and Mike rendezvous atop the St. James Theatre.
curves without any flicker. Some of the

modules were dedicated to LEDs and
some to fluorescents. The ones
LiteGear made for us were outboards,
and each one had a remote by the fixture
itself, reports Sciretta. The dimmer
tech tweaked the electronic profiles of
62
December 2014
both the outboards and the racks. All

fixtures, whether they were fluorescent,
LED or tungsten, exhibited specific
behaviors as they were dimmed. Flicker
and color shift were two of the main
concerns; these needed to be controlled
so that they all worked smoothly
together in the same shot. It was an

issue we dealt with every single day;
Kelly Britt and his team were in charge
of that task.
Shadows were another headache.
For instance, Riggans dressing-room
mirror is framed with a dozen 60-watt
bulbs. When he stands up, grabs his suit
and goes into the hallway, Lubezki
explains, the camera pans 180 degrees,
and the vanity lights create a shadow of
the camera on his face. We couldnt just
dim down the lights. Instead, grip
Tristan Allen carefully slid a frame of
diffusion [in front of the mirror] as I
moved around Michael. The diffusion
made the light so soft that it seemed like
ambient light. It eliminated the shadows
on Michael and allowed the camera to
pan as Riggan exits the room.
Key grip Mitch Lillian made an
assortment of lightweight diffusion
frames out of aluminum. They were
fitted with various densities and hidden
around the set behind a couch, on
top of a cabinet or handed to Allen
by another grip in mid-shot. It was
Backstage Drama
Top: Riggan takes to the streets, haunted by his erstwhile onscreen alter ego, Birdman.
Bottom: Keaton, Irritu and Lubezki work through a bar-interior scene.
daunting, confesses Allen. The frames

were just inches from the actors and
inches from the camera. Hallway lighting was particularly harsh there were
practicals on the walls and in the ceiling.
64
December 2014
We used an 18-by-48 frame there.

Maintaining a proper aperture
was another ongoing concern.
Normally when you light a shot, you
have one consistent stop because things
arent really changing very much, says

Lubezki. On Birdman, however, the
camera rarely stopped moving. Riggan
would go from a dark room into a bright
hallway, and suddenly we would have
two more stops of light. When Chris
was operating the Steadicam, I manipulated the iris; when I was operating,
DIT Abby Levine did the same for me.
Using wireless communication,
Lubezki and Levine worked out the
stop pulls during rehearsals. I would tell
Abby, This looks good at 2.8, and when
I go into the bathroom, you go to 5.6,
and so on. He did a fantastic job. With
a laugh, Levine recalls asking Lubezki
how much of the show would need to be
wireless: When Chivo said, All of it, I
should have turned and run!
The production schedule was a
mere 30 days long. The filmmakers tried
to shoot chronologically, but it wasnt
always possible. We usually rehearsed a
scene for six to eight hours before we
tried to shoot it, recalls Tavenner. We
tended to hit our stride at about 17 or 20
takes. Laughing, Haarhoff recalls,
Most days we would leave work

completely shell-shocked exhausted
but happy.
Everything required absolute
precision. Transitions brought extra
demands, since the tail end of one shot
had to perfectly match the front end of
the next in terms of lighting, the height
and angle of the camera, and the
position of the actors. The transitions
were beautifully conceptualized and
rehearsed, says Tavenner. That was
part of Chivo and Alejandros brilliance.
On the final night of principal
photography, the crew tackled a
sequence in Times Square, in which
Riggan accidentally locks himself out
of the theaters side door during a
performance and has to run through
the streets in nothing but his underwear to get into the theaters front
entrance. The production couldnt
afford to close down Times Square and
hire thousands of extras, so the scene
was shot while the regular Friday-night
crowds swarmed the area. A few dozen
extras were privy to what was going on
and stayed close to Keaton. Operating
the Steadicam as grips cleared a path
for him, Haarhoff raced down the sidewalk, at times parallel to and at other
times leading Keaton, who zigged and
zagged his way through the masses. It
was actually one of the easier segments
to shoot, reveals Haarhoff. Two takes
and they were done.
Lubezki knew all along that
Birdman would require a great deal of
time in the final digital grade because
of the movies single-shot approach.
The picture was color timed at
Technicolor in Los Angeles, where
Lubezki worked once again with ASC
associate and supervising digital
colorist Steven J. Scott, who had previously graded Gravity and Children of
Men with the cinematographer.
(Birdmans visual effects were handled
by Montreal-based Rodeo FX.)
Chivo and Alejandro often
want to do a dozen different things in
any particular scene, or section of a
scene, says Scott, who worked with
Backstage Drama
After locking himself out of the theater during a performance, Riggan dashes through Times Square
toward the theaters front door, in nothing but his Skivvies.
Autodesks Lustre color-correction

system, but how do you do that in the
course of a reel with many different
scenes that dont necessarily correspond
with the few existing editorial cuts, and
with only a limited number of secon-
66
daries at your disposal? Any time the

camera pans or the camera angle
changes, it settles on a different scene.
What we needed was a way to bridge
the many color, animation and window
changes seamlessly between those
scenes across entire reels.

The dearth of production editorial cuts in the film meant that Scott and
his team werent going to be color
timing traditionally from one shot to
the next, but rather within a single long
continuum. After consulting with my
fellow colorist Charles Bunnag; our DI
technical director, Juan Flores; and with
our DI editor, Bob Schneider, about the
unique challenges of Birdman, we realized that we didnt have to be
constrained by the production editorial
cuts or transitions contained in the film.
Bob helped us figure out a way we could
ignore the existing editorial cut and
generate a separate DI cut based solely
on our DI needs. The existing editorial
cut ultimately ended up having little
bearing on our color timing, unless
production editorial replaced a shot
after that piece had been graded, in
which case we would have to conform
to the new material, says Scott who,
along with senior producer Mike
Dillon, spent several hours walking AC

through the process.
Lets say the camera starts out
on Michael Keaton and Zach
Galifianakis talking in the hallway,
Scott continues. As Zach exits, the
camera pans with Keaton as he goes
into his dressing room. We would do a
DI cut in the middle of that pan and
dissolve from the start of the pan to
where the camera settles on Michael. In
effect, we are making our own shots or
edits throughout the entire movie
based on where the camera settles,
although they were neither shots nor
edits in the traditional sense.
If you are in the middle of a pan
that has a lot of motion blur, you can get
away with a lot in a transition from one
color setup to the next, Scott adds. Say
it takes 25 frames to get from looking
left to looking right. My dissolve will be
25 frames long, during which time we
will be fading out of one color setup and
into the next. Were not fading out of
the shot, because its all just one long

shot, but fading out of a particular
timing, animation and window setup,
and into the next setup without having
to worry about the mechanics of how to
transition the various timings and
windows. That speeds things up
tremendously, and allows the cinematographer to keep the DI process
intuitive and free-flowing.
Birdman proved to be a case of
leaping into the unknown for all
involved. Looking back at the experience months later, Lubezki notes, We
arrived on the set every morning and we
never stopped working. The problems
we encountered were so specific to this
film that there was nobody I could call
to seek advice. We had to discover all of
it ourselves.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa M, Alexa XT
Leica Summilux-C,
Arri/Zeiss Master Prime
67
Rolling
Thunder
W
Roman Vasyanov, RGC, films the

graphic World War II tank drama
Fury the hard way for director
David Ayer.
By Michael Goldman
|
68
December 2014
hen screenwriter/director David Ayer and cinematographer Roman Vasyanov, RGC reunited to start planning the gritty World War II tank drama Fury, they
quickly realized it would be an exceedingly difficult
movie to shoot. The filmmakers were committed to using
authentic tanks, which are inherently unfriendly to the filmmaking process. Furthermore, they would have to spend most
of their 62 days of principal photography mired in muddy
fields on location in Hertfordshire and Oxfordshire, England,
where they would face ongoing struggles to stabilize their
cameras and match the constantly shifting British skies.
Unit photography by Giles Keyte, courtesy of Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc.
Fury tells the story of a five-man

American tank crew commanded by a
battle-scarred veteran nicknamed
Wardaddy (Brad Pitt). After the crew
becomes separated from fellow U.S.
troops fighting their way toward Berlin,
they vow to leave their mark for the
Allies and make a final stand against
nearly impossible odds.
Ayers screenplay and preferences
made it clear that the director and cinematographer would break away from
the handheld, multi-format, digital
approach of their first collaboration
the police drama End of Watch (AC Oct.
12) in favor of more classical filmmaking. This movie could not be more
traditionally shot as far as workflow and
equipment was concerned, totally
swinging the opposite way from what
we did before, Ayer remarks. And
Roman was the guy I wanted to get it
done. He showed me some Soviet
movies that never screened in the U.S.,
and the photography in them was brilliant, with a naturalistic feel, all done by
using sticks and dollies and fluid heads
and track, with simple setups to yield
complex images. Those films were a
great inspiration for us.
We wanted a different kind of
documentary feeling from what we
usually see in Hollywood war movies,
Vasyanov explains. We wanted lots of
cameras with long lenses, watching [the
action] almost from around the corner,
so to speak. If you watch World War II
[combat footage], as opposed to the still
photography, the cameramen were
shooting with long lenses through
multiple layers, like fences or walls. That
is where I got the idea of using lots of
long lenses up to 1,000mm.
After extensive testing, the filmmakers also agreed that Fury should be
shot on film in 35mm anamorphic
rather than digitally. Vasyanov says
filmed tests sealed the deal not only
with Ayer, but with studio executives as
well, because the imagery was so much
richer in the restricted palette we had
with the uniforms and the gray skies.
Once we started shooting and the
dailies came in, there was no more
This page:
Wardaddy (Brad
Pitt, top left)
commands an
American tank
crew in the
World War II
drama Fury,
directed by David
Ayer (middle,
right) and shot
by Roman
Vasyanov, RGC
(bottom).
www.theasc.com
December 2014
69
Rolling Thunder
Interior tank
scenes, including
gunner action
featuring Norman
Ellison (Logan
Lerman, top left)
and Trini Gordo
Garcia (Michael
Pea, right), were
filmed on a set
built under a tent
adjacent to the
exterior locations.
discussion about it everyone was in

agreement. And besides, we were
shooting in fields, sometimes with five
or six cameras running simultaneously,
in hard weather conditions, in rain and
puddles and mud. We needed tripods,
not cables and DITs and monitors. So,
from a practical point of view as well,
film was a better choice.
Vasyanov selected two Kodak
Vision3 stocks: 500T 5219 for night
work, which he generally pushed one
stop, and 250D 5207 for day exteriors,
sometimes slightly underexposed to
make the blacks milky. He relied exclusively on Panaflex Millennium XL2s
because he needed the smallest possible
cameras in order to work efficiently
inside actual tanks and the productions
cramped tank-interior set. In the field,
he relied on his operators, video assist,
and light meter to confirm that he was
capturing what he needed, and then iDailies in London processed the
footage and sent scanned images to
EFilm in Los Angeles, where supervising digital colorist Yvan Lucas set basic
looks each day via remote collaboration
with Vasyanov.
Vasyanov and 1st AC Julian
Bucknall picked Panavision G Series
anamorphic prime lenses and two
70
December 2014
anamorphic zooms, the 40-80mm

AWZ2 (T2.8) and the 70-200mm
ATZ (T3.5). Some people feel the G
Series is too sharp when shooting
anamorphic with digital cameras, but, of
course, we were shooting film, and quite
often I underexpose the film so we can
get grain and a kind of softness, the
cinematographer explains. I chose
sharper lenses for that reason. The other
concern was minimum focus. We were
shooting in the interior of a tank, which
can be a total nightmare. How close
could we get to the actors and still have
them in focus on that small a set? The G
Series lenses did a fantastic job helping
me solve that problem. For the longlens action moments he sought to
achieve, the cinematographer also
employed
Panavision Telephoto
Anamorphic lenses, such as the
1,000mm T5.6.
Both Ayer and Vasyanov agree
that Furys most vexing challenge was
finding a methodology for shooting in,
on and around the tanks in action. The
production relied on five main tanks to
represent the hero tank (which, in the
story, has been christened Fury by its
crew) and four sister tanks. All were
working versions of authentic World
War II-era M4 Sherman tanks. Crucial
scenes inside Fury were shot on an interior set, which production designer
Multiple camera rigs were used to capture

the exterior tank scenes.
Andrew Menzies and his crew built

under a tent with aluminum decking, in
a field adjacent to the exterior location
to mitigate company moves. For shots
of close action taking place on the tanks
outer shell, the production designed a
vehicle from scratch.
Vasyanov says the project
demanded especially hard gripping
and innovative solutions from both his
www.theasc.com
grip and lighting crews. Yet because

gaffer Lee Walters and key grip Kevin
Fraser werent scheduled to come aboard
until just three weeks before production,
Vasyanov had a lot to prepare on his
own. The cinematographer explains, I
worked really closely with Andrew
Menzies and his team, who gave me
their [3D SketchUp] models of the sets.
I put those into my computer in order to
December 2014
71
Rolling Thunder
find the best angles for the camera and

lighting [using 3D and CAD design
software]. Shooting inside a tank is like
brain surgery, and once we got started
and had five [actors] inside, we would
not have any chance to adjust, so I
needed to create 3D models and
animatics myself to find the right angles
ahead of time. That work really helped,
because once Lee Walters came aboard,
we knew exactly what we wanted to
order and mount inside the set.
Their approach had to provide
the exposure needed for the anamorphic
format, and also give the impression
that the light inside the tank was nothing more than what was seeping
through the tanks five periscopes and
the tiny windows just above the captains
hatch at the top of the vehicle. With
technical expertise and support from
Panalux, we developed an LED lighting
and computerized control system for all
the tank [set] interiors, Walters
explains. Using true, color-corrected
daylight and hybrid [daylight and tungsten] LEDs, we were able to light a
cramped and tight set without the need
for traditional film lights. The LEDs we
used were flexible in their application,
For sequences
involving parallel
shots of moving
tanks (top), the
filmmakers
worked with
Chapman UK
to build a
specialized
tracking vehicle
(bottom) from a
pickup truck
modified and
fitted with four
individual tank
tracks.
72
December 2014
and could be cut down or soldered

together into any size or shape required.
In particular, the periscopes in the tank
proved to be quite a challenge for the
practical team. But getting several
different LED circuits inside such a
tight space allowed us to imitate explosions, gunfire and other events outside
the tank, and to show the effects on our
actors faces.
We also developed an acrylic
floor made by sandwiching LEDs
between two layers of Perspex material,
Walters continues. This offered a
strong, stable floor on which the actors
could work, while providing a discrete,
soft light in a cramped environment.
LEDs have come a long way in recent
years [for this kind of work].
Ayer notes that the ability to fit
intricately shaped LEDs into little
nooks and crannies of the set was
augmented by the design of the Fury
interior, which featured a series of
removable wall panels on each side.
This convenience allowed Vasyanovs
team to strategically insert cameras into
various sections of the tank sets two
levels via a 20' Chapman Hydrascope
crane outfitted with a Libra head for
key sequences. A-camera operator Des
Whelan says this methodology gave the
production the consistent ability to
bring the audience right inside the
claustrophobic world of a World War II
tank, where so much of the characters
struggle unfolds.
The entire set was built on a
gimbal platform about 1.5 meters off
the ground to simulate the motion of a
tank and the recoil of its cannon.
Whelan says the Hydrascope was
crucial to find our camera position
without being connected to the body of
the vibrating tank. The B camera would
often be on a slider so we could poke it
through the sometimes very small
openings we would make in breakaway
sections of the set. We didnt move the
camera much, because Roman was very
sure of what he wanted visually, with
classic framing and headroom. The
camera was an invisible observer, never
to be noticed. So we did very few
camera moves on the tank interior,

which most of the time was vibrating or
shaking on the gimbal. And if the tank
was static, then so were we.
The production was particularly
hard-pressed to keep shots stable when
filming on the tank exterior, or directly
next to it as it maneuvered through
muddy fields the thunderous vibration of a real tank is simply not
conducive to mounting a film camera.
A certain degree of vibration was

required for realism, but a large degree of
stability was also required in order to
preserve the classic framing the filmmakers sought. In the end, the director
says Frasers grip team solved the problem by creating a process vehicle that
permitted efficient exterior shooting
atop the moving tank. Designing the
vehicle required a few days of testing
with a wide range of heads, isolators and
Rolling Thunder
Top and middle: Wardaddy and his team find themselves stranded when the Fury hits a land
mine. Bottom: Norman races to warn the others of approaching SS troops.
74
December 2014
various other rigging concepts.

The movement and noise of a
tank vehicle is totally different than a
rubber-tire wheeled vehicle, and the
tank has a constant, jerky motion to it,
[with] constant rattling, Ayer says. It
was really important to zero out a lot of
that noise and movement. It was rough,
but the grip work was unbelievable.
Their main solution for close-up
photography of the tank crew was to
build a Sherman tank superstructure on
top of a British military armored
personnel carrier, with steel dance floors
all around it. That design allowed us to
run a crane with a Libra head and minimize the shake that hit the camera.
Vasyanov adds, We built it so the
driver could sit in front, very low so that
he would not be in any shots. Then we
put the 20-foot Hydrascope up with a
Scorpio head, while B camera was on
the Libra head on a slider. This [configuration] gave us the ability to easily
change the position of the cameras to
shoot our tank crew in their positions on
the tank the drivers in the drive
hatches and, higher up, on the turret,
the gunners. And we could do it without spending too much time rigging the
camera.
Whelan notes that his typical
method for shooting on the process
vehicle was to avoid looking at a monitor. Instead, he used a specialized electronic eyepiece from an old Genesis
camera (adapted for him by Panavision
several years ago) while operating the
remote head. We would find our shots
on the crane, and then Kevin Fraser
would secure the crane arm to the tank
body via aluminum [scaffolding] pipe,
which he had pre-cut and prepped for
all the camera positions we knew we
would use, Whelan says. It was very
efficient.
However, other sequences
required parallel shots of tanks in choreographed movement, such as a big
battle in which a group of American
tanks confronts a technically superior
Nazi Tiger. Certain shots required a
tracking vehicle, and Frasers team had
to devise a solution in this case, a
Rolling Thunder
vehicle that would allow them to mount

sufficiently stabilized cameras to film
the tanks in action while driving
through muddy fields.
I had never previously seen any
vehicle that could do what was being
asked in the conditions we were about
to face, Fraser maintains. So, working
from Romans specifications, we built a
tracking vehicle. Chapman UK sourced
and purchased a big 4-by-4 pickup
76
December 2014
truck and imported four individual tank

tracks, which were then modified and
fitted to the vehicle. They also incorporated a self-leveling column, which we
were then able to mount and operate as
a fixed-length camera crane arm. This
vehicle is now known as the Chapman
UK Dually. It was able to match the
tanks across any terrain. We discovered
that no matter how muddy it got, or
how bad the weather became, we were
able to achieve everything that was

asked of us.
We used [the Dually] in every
situation possible, Fraser continues.
But the one situation that stands out
was working with the real Tiger tank
that is featured in battle with four
Sherman tanks, including the hero Fury
tank. The battle sequence was shot on a
location that had ruts all over it that
were about 1-feet deep. The more the
tanks had run across the location, the
deeper the ruts became, and this was
really the time our vehicle came into its
own.
This whole film was about
shooting on short days with weather
obstacles, and almost every shot
[required] a camera rig on a tank, a
crane on the process tank, a crane at a
location, or a dolly and tracking shot
there was no handheld and no
Steadicam, the key grip reflects. This
was truly a film that was suited to grip
work. I remember one day of shooting
when we laid 1,500 feet of dolly track in
a field in the worst conditions possible,
while also shooting from multiple
camera rigs and cranes.
The crew was also tasked with
achieving consistency under uneven
skies while shooting extensive day-exte-
Bottom photo by Taylor Tulip-Close, courtesy of Lee Walters.
The final battle

sequence was
shot over seven
nights using four
cameras, with fire
serving as the
main light source.
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Rolling Thunder
Vasyanov uses model tanks to plan the shots for a battle sequence.
rior sequences on their U.K. locations.

Vasyanov calls this one of the hardest
parts of the shoot, because the sun was
in and the sun was out. We tried our
best to follow the sun and our lighting
78
positions to keep everything consistent

on our schedule, but thats a lot harder
to do when youre filming tanks. When
youre just filming people running
around on the ground, you can use huge
butterflies above them to diffuse the

sun, but with moving tanks, that doesnt
work, especially because you are so high
up and can see the whole horizon for
miles.
Ayer credits their success to
Vasyanovs balancing efforts and
Walters strategy of utilizing 40'x20'
graded vintage silks rigged on cranes
and Genie booms to provide as much
daylight control as possible. But the
director also admits that, occasionally,
the only real solution was simply to wait
for the sun to reappear. He says numerous adjustments to uneven sunlight
issues were achieved later at EFilm,
during the DI process with Lucas and
colorist Tom Reiser.
Still, the most complex location
work took place at night when the filmmakers shot the movies climactic battle,
a sequence in which the Fury tank
disabled and unable to maneuver after
its tracks are blown off by a mine in
front of an abandoned sawmill
encounters a column of hundreds of

Nazi SS troops. Stranded at a crossroads, the Furys crew must hold the
enemy at bay without any backup.
The sequence was shot over seven
nights with four cameras. The crew
fires on the sawmill and sets it ablaze,
Vasyanov explains. Basically that is the
only lighting source in the entire scene,
along with some signal flares and
machine-gun fire. Inside the tank, that
little bit of light comes in flickering and
flaring through the periscopes and those
little hatch windows. I intentionally did
not want to use any moonlight or backlight, [which] would have felt artificial
and very Hollywood. Instead, we built
a huge top-light soft box on a construction crane, which gave us the fire effect
to fill in shadows a bit.
To achieve the effect, Walters
team built a 40'x40' soft box containing
25 space lights and 48 Par cans; this rig
was suspended over the center of the set
from a 200-ton lifting crane. Another
large Dino and Wendy rig on another

lifting crane provided our main backlight, and a third crane rig held a 70K
Lightning Strikes and 20 [Panalux]
daylight FloBanks, which emphasized
flares going off in sight of the camera,
Walters details. Then, for close-up
work around the camera, we deployed
Sunstrips and made our own firelights
to complement our main rigs. These
firelights had hundreds of bulbs all
wired randomly across 36 circuits.
Along with the large rigs, these were all
powered using an electronic dimmer, so
full control and safe fire effects were
possible.
Such innovative uses of cranes,
remote heads and hard-core gripping
and lighting solutions were a hallmark
of the Fury production. There was no
safety net, Ayer submits. Whatever
our inbound plan was, it had to be
pretty darn on point, and thats what
made me the most nervous. We bet the
farm on the plan we came up with in
prep, and Im happy to say we got the

movie we came for. A lot of that is
because I had so much trust in Roman,
who was so efficient, and the fact that
our grips were total rock stars.
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
35mm Anamorphic
Panaflex Millennium XL2
Panavision G Series, Telephoto,
ATZ, AWZ2
Kodak Vision3 250D 5207,
500T 5219
Digital Intermediate
79
Tragedy
on the
Mat
Greig Fraser, ASC, ACS and

director Bennett Miller adopt a
restrained style for Foxcatcher, the
dark, true story of the wrestling
Schultz brothers and multimillionaire
John du Pont.
By Mark Dillon
|
80
December 2014
nspired by actual events, Foxcatcher recounts the relationship between brothers Mark and Dave Schultz both
Olympic gold-medal wrestlers and John Eleuthre du
Pont of the wealthy du Pont chemical-company clan. Du
Ponts love of the sport led him to sponsor Mark ahead of the
1988 Seoul Olympics and open a training facility at his
Foxcatcher Farm estate near Philadelphia.
As the movie depicts, the brothers are products of a
broken home, and older brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo) has
adopted a fatherly role toward Mark (Channing Tatum).
While Mark always relies on Dave to keep him grounded, he
also resents living in his brothers shadow, and thus is more
than a little flattered when du Pont (Steve Carell) calls him
Unit photography by Scott Garfield, SMPSP, courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics. Additional images courtesy of Greig Fraser, ASC, ACS.
out of the blue to offer a lucrative sponsorship and a stately location for training.
Driven to win the approval of his
aloof mother, Jean (Vanessa Redgrave),
the paranoid and substance-abusing
multimillionaire proves to be a toxic
influence on Mark, and gradually forms
a more lasting bond with Dave. Du
Pont invites Dave to join Mark at
Foxcatcher Farm, but Dave initially
declines, unwilling to uproot his wife,
Nancy (Sienna Miller), and children.
Once Dave finally agrees to relocate and
run the training camp, a cauldron of
deep-rooted familial emotion boils over,
with tragic results.
Director Bennett Miller began
developing the project in between
production of Capote and Moneyball
after receiving an unsolicited envelope
of newspaper clippings about the story.
It had a chemistry of characters in
worlds where they did not belong,
[with] relationships that dont make
sense on the surface but somehow made
Wanting to
escape the
shadow of his
older brother,
Dave (Mark
Ruffalo, top,
right), Mark
Schultz
(Channing Tatum,
top, left) accepts
a wrestling
sponsorship from
multimillionaire
John du Pont
(Steve Carell,
opposite, right)
that ultimately
ends in tragedy
in the feature
Foxcatcher.
Bottom:
Cinematographer
Greig Fraser, ASC,
ACS.
sense in that moment, Miller told AC

at the Toronto International Film
Festival, where the movie screened in
September. (A few months earlier,
Foxcatcher had earned Miller the Best
Director prize at Cannes.)
www.theasc.com
To help re-create the dark tale,

Miller tapped Australian-born, Los
Angeles-based director of photography
Greig Fraser, ASC, ACS. Miller had
already shot a commercial with Fraser,
whose work on director Jane Campions
December 2014
81
Tragedy on the Mat

Bright Star (AC Oct. 09) initially caught
his eye. Greig displays incredible diversity with his choices, from Zero Dark
Thirty to Snow White and the Huntsman
to films hed shot in Australia in a vrit
style, Miller reflects. Coming from a
photography background, he is topshelf technically. He is also open and
engaged. There is an invisible perspective and voice to this film, and its
important that the person looking
through the eyepiece is looking not just
at pretty frames, nice movement and
good light, but at people lying to themselves in a way that will lead to tragedy.
Fraser acknowledges his own
fondness for dark drama, and says he
found the talent involved in Foxcatcher
to be irresistible. When you put a
director such as Bennett with actors like
Carell, Tatum and Ruffalo, the whole
thing is even greater than the sum of its
parts youve got something explosive, Fraser says by phone from
Calcutta, where he is prepping the
Australian drama Lion with director
Garth Davis. That combination [of
actors], in such a dark story, was a dream
to photograph.
Miller recalls that when they sat
down for prep in September 2012, he
and Fraser planned an austere style that
would observe the story rather than
narrate dramatic points more directly.
We talked about an approach that
would communicate the subtleties of
whats not being explicitly expressed,
the director says. Theres so much
going on, yet the exhibition is so
restrained that if the filmmaking doesnt
sensitize you to it, its going to pass you
by. Theres not one shot more than is
needed. Theres a kind of haiku mandate
that the camera doesnt move more or
faster than needed.
The production began 40 days of
principal photography in October 2012,
in and around Pittsburgh. The crew also
went out of state to the Westmoreland
Davis Mansion in Leesburg, Va., to
shoot exteriors for the palatial du Pont
property.
Video of the real-life du Pont and
Schultz brothers in their respective and
Top: Mark awaits

his initial meeting
with du Pont.
Middle and
bottom: Shooting
film and using
older lenses helped
smooth Carells
prosthetic facial
enhancements.
82
December 2014
overlapping environments served as a

bible for Jess Gonchors production
design and the actors performances.
Fraser notes that he, Gonchor and
costume designer Kasia WalickaMaimone rode a fine line between
authenticity and aesthetics in designing
the color palette. Kasia was true to the
[blue, yellow and red] uniforms and the
clothes that are recorded, but we didnt
want to get too gaudy, either, he says.
The colors of the Foxcatcher gym also
are primary, which normally I try to
avoid because theyre so garish. Trying
to come up with a balance of what felt
true to the period, without seeming
garish, was the hardest part.
To further sell Foxcatchers 1980s
timeframe, the filmmakers shot on 3perf 35mm, using three Kodak stocks:
500T 5230, and Vision3 50D 5203 and
250D 5207. They primarily shot with a
Panavision Millennium XL2 camera,
although an Arriflex 235 was called
upon for handheld, non-sync and
second-unit work.
Fraser had just come off shooting
Zero Dark Thirty (AC Feb. 13) on the
Arri Alexa; he believes different movies
are best suited to different formats. A
period movie on film is a good thing,
he says. You have to help the audience
believe the story is occurring in the
Eighties, and doing anything to reduce
their suspension of disbelief such as
shooting on digital or with lenses that
are too sharp or resolved might tip
the audience over the edge [and cause
them] to not believe what theyre
seeing.
The cinematographer was also
tasked with making Carells transformation into du Pont convincing a challenge partially aided by a prosthetic nose
and layers of makeup that gave the
performer paler skin. Camera tests
helped determine what size proboscis
would work best. Shooting film and
[using] slightly older lenses helps to sell
the prosthetics, Fraser submits.
The crew used a combination of
Panavision Primo and Ultra Speed
prime lenses. The Ultra Speeds
provided an overall softness, not only to
Windows motivated the lighting for several scenes inside du Ponts mansion.
smooth Carells facial enhancements,

but also to provide a warmer, more inviting look for scenes in which things seem
to be going well for protagonist Mark
Schultz. Fraser employed ND and
polarizing filters, but no color filters.
The crew usually shot with
40mm or 50mm lenses. Something
slightly longer than a 35mm seemed
fitting on this project, Fraser says,
www.theasc.com
adding that he tried to maintain a stop

of T2.8. The idea was to not have too
much depth of field, because we wanted
to focus the audience on the drama.
Sometimes if theres too much depth of
field, its hard for the viewer to know
what to settle their gaze upon.
Fraser found a couple of ideal
angles to light Carell, such as positioning fixtures 45 degrees behind him and
December 2014
83
Tragedy on the Mat
raking light across one side of his face.

In several of the mansion scenes, the
light is motivated by a window. I
sculpted the light around his face as it
came through, the cinematographer
says. As we pushed in HMI light, we
brought in 4-by-4, 6-by-6 or 8-by-8
diffusion frames, depending on what
was most suitable. But if you soften the
light too much, you start to feel the
hand of the cinematographer.
Early scenes provide a fly-onthe-wall view of Marks solitary life,
spent largely in his apartment. Day interiors were lit with Arrimax 18/12 and
Arri M40 fixtures illuminating bounces
that were elevated to the second-story
location. The night Mark is unexpectedly called by du Pont, his room is dimly
lit by existing practicals and a single
lightbulb that was shaped with black
wrap and wired to a dimmer.
Frasers philosophy was to light as
unobtrusively as possible. If we could
light practically we would, but we
primarily lit through windows to
augment the ambience, he says.
Lighting each shot from inside the
room wasnt going to allow Bennett and
the actors the time and space to do what
Top: Fraser and

his crew ready an
exterior scene
with Tatum.
Bottom: Mark
goes for a run in
the woods.
84
December 2014
they needed to do.

A scene in the du Pont mansion
library, where Mark waits to meet du
Pont for the first time, presented one of
the most complicated setups. The
bright, spacious, decorative room offers
a distinct counterpoint to Marks dark,
cramped quarters, symbolizing an
upswing in his fortunes. Thats a real
tonal shift, Miller says. We wanted to
experience the room, to fill it out and
give it that Barry Lyndon style of seeing
every detail in the wallpaper.
Shot at the historic Wilpen Hall
mansion, the setup was pre-rigged in
prep. In the interests of efficiency and to
avoid unmotivated shafts of light, the
crew relied on bounces. Each window
had as large an Ultrabounce as space
would allow, lit with Arrimax 18/12
fixtures aimed from one direction and
18K HMI Fresnels from the other.
Smaller windows and doors were similarly lit with Arri M18 and M40 lights.
One directional, slightly warmer
Arrimax was introduced, digging deep
Top: Du Pont
walks through
the fog. Bottom:
Focus puller
Keith B. Davis
(left) and
camera operator
Bela Trutz
capture the
scene.
into the room and shaped selectively to

add contrast and drama, details gaffer
Jay Kemp, who had previously collaborated with Fraser on Let Me In (AC Oct.
10) and Killing Them Softly (AC Oct.
12).
The first wrestling scene in the
www.theasc.com
film involves the Schultz brothers

engaging in a practice session in their
training gym at the University of
Wisconsin, where their workout
progresses from friendly grappling to an
increasingly aggressive and personal
struggle. The fluorescent-lit gym has a
December 2014
85
Tragedy on the Mat

dingy look that seems unworthy of
gold-medal athletes. The performers,
distant from the camera, were captured
on a 75mm lens. Its observational,
Miller notes. I didnt want [viewers] to
feel the presence of the camera. This
set was built in an old gymnasium at the
defunct West Mifflin Middle School,
outside of Pittsburgh.
The trick with the wrestling
scenes was finding the correct angle,
adds Fraser, who studied wrestling
coverage with second-unit cinematographer Adam Kimmel, ASC. Often in
drama you cover yourself by shooting
multiple angles and then cutting. In this
case we happened upon the angle that
solved that scene and ran with it, so that
Bennett was able to hold on that fight
as it turns and shows darker undertones
in the brothers relationship.
For du Ponts state-of-the-art
wrestling facility, the production used
the same location as the University of
Wisconsin gym, redesigning it based on
reference footage of the real Foxcatcher
gym. The crew projected 18K HMI
Fresnels with Plus Green gels at a steep
angle directly through the narrow
windows around the room. The ceiling
was rigged with Kino Flo 4' four-bank
fixtures fitted with Cool White tubes. A
simple switching system was used to
selectively control these fixtures,
depending on a scenes time of day and
how many characters were in the room.
To create some eye light, Fraser and
Kemp used a 1x1 Creamsource Mini
LED fixture fitted with a Chimera soft
box and gelled with Plus Green.
Fraser exposed the Foxcatcher
facility to be a half-stop brighter than
the Wisconsin gym. Those rooms
both would have been fluorescent-lit
just like an office, but with mats on the
floor, he notes. To get fancy with the
lighting seemed inappropriate, but we
could create negative fill, bounce and a
more blooming light which,
combined with production design,
differentiates Foxcatcher as a great place
to be versus the dull, dark, spotty place
in Wisconsin.
Much bigger were the tourna-
Director
Bennett Miller
(left) discusses
the hotel-room
scene with
Tatum, who
completed the
scene in
one take.
86
December 2014
Tragedy on the Mat

ment venues the production had to recreate for scenes depicting the World
Championships and Olympics. For the
Worlds shot at California University
of Pennsylvania the wrestling floor,
which was toplit with two SourceMaker
12'x24' 30K Tungsten Cubes, is far
brighter than the stands. The arena was
encircled with Par cans to provide
crosslight and bring out as much of the
crowd as the filmmakers wanted. For
the Olympics shot at the University
of Pittsburgh Peterson Center the
crew used tubular SourceMaker 12'x26'
balloons filled with metal-halide
fixtures.
In a particularly harsh scene,
Mark who has spiraled into the role
of du Ponts self-loathing, drug-addled,
out-of-shape playmate loses a match
and retreats to his hotel room, which he
proceeds to trash. That scene was done
in one take, Miller recalls.
Considering the mood in which
Channing showed up that day, I
suspected there might not be a take
two. Tatum was given some parameters: He would have a meltdown, wreck
the room and smash a mirror made of
breakaway glass although he was not
instructed to put his head right through
the mirror and wall and hit the stud
underneath, which is what happened in
the heat of the performance.
The scene was shot in a secondfloor hotel room Fraser describes as
insanely small. It broke down filmmaking to its most elemental parts: there
was a camera and a person in front of it.
Fraser operated the scene using an
Easyrig camera support.
The movies main operator was
Bela Trutz, who employed a Steadicam
for a sequence in which Mark goes for a
run in the woods, but for most scenes,
the camera sat on a dolly and was
limited to judicious lateral movements.
The strategy of keeping the camera
mostly static was intended to build
tension that would be released in more
manic scenes, such as Marks hotelroom freakout.
Outside the hotel room, the crew
reflected natural light on a 12'x20'
Top and bottom:

Du Pont and Dave
coach Mark
through the
Olympics
competition.
Middle: Miller
(right) reviews a
scene with Carell,
Ruffalo and
Tatum.
88
December 2014
Tragedy on the Mat
After competing in
the 1988 Olympics
with his brother
by his side (top),
Mark eventually
moves on to the
Ultimate Fighting
Championship
league. Bottom:
The UFC ring and
grandstand were
built for the film.
Ultrabounce in a flyswatter configuration, and inside the main room and

bathroom they turned on a couple of
practical lamps. We needed to find the
perfect angle of the bounce to illuminate the room without it feeling like we
were lighting anything, the director of
photography says. Luckily, the film
90
December 2014
stocks were tolerant of bright highlights

from the window, allowing us to blow
that out a bit and pull back in the [digital intermediate] so we could maintain a
bit of exposure in the darker areas.
Fraser got some unexpected help
while shooting a scene in which Mark
and du Pont take a helicopter ride to
Washington, D.C., where the latter is

being fted at a dinner. To get primed
for the event, du Pont introduces Mark
to cocaine. The very last part of the
scene was shot in a helicopter flying over
the nations capital, taking advantage of
the symbolic value inherent to the
Washington Monument and other
prominent landmarks. However, the
helicopters passenger area had only two
rows of two seats. Fraser operated and
sat opposite Miller; Tatum was positioned diagonally opposite Fraser, and
seated beside the cameraman was a
Secret Service agent who had to be
present for security reasons. (Carells
shots had to be filmed separately.) Fraser
handled his own mag changes and
focus-pulling, but says the agent
provided invaluable assistance by keeping his film rolls and light meter ready.
It was a very surreal experience, I must
say, recalls the cinematographer, who lit
the sequence with small LEDs and a
Mini-Flo kit.
Later in the movie, when Mark
Bottom photo by Steve Cohagan, courtesy of Jay Kemp.
is washed up as a freestyle wrestler,

he makes his debut in the
Ultimate Fighting Championship
league. The filmmakers staged the
mixed martial-arts match in a way that
suggests a somewhat tawdry atmosphere. Gonchor had a UFC ring and
grandstand built from scratch at an
event center, and Fraser based his
approach on UFC footage from the
mid-90s, incorporating plenty of smoke
as a stage effect.
Kemp explains that the crew
rigged a cluster of Par 64 cans to create
a unified source that could be controlled
Theres a kind
of haiku mandate
that the camera
doesnt move more
or faster than
needed.
to reduce camera-side exposure. The

Par cans carved out the crowd. We
programmed a [Philips] Vari-Lite with
simple functions that might have been
used during that period. Vari-Lites were
also used on the perimeter of the space
to give some movement to the background during the fight. Tatum entered
through truss arches that were rigged
with Vari-Lites performing a repeatable
sequence, a system that was also primitive relative to todays standards, Kemp
adds.
Miller and Fraser evaluated
images on set via an NTSC video tap.
During takes, Miller would get closer to
the action with his own tiny monitor.
The SD feed was a step down from the
HD monitor Fraser had employed on
Zero Dark Thirty. I went home worry-
Tragedy on the Mat
Day interior scenes in Marks apartment were lit with Arrimax 18/12 and Arri M40 fixtures
illuminating bounces that were elevated to the second-story location.
92
ing about exposure and this and that,

the cinematographer says. Until you get
the dailies back, youre naturally
concerned.
Processing began out of New
York but was sidetracked by Hurricane
Sandy and moved to Deluxe
Laboratories in Los Angeles. Dailies
were graded by Company 3s Shane
Harris, a longtime collaborator of
Frasers whom the cinematographer
credits for his influential contributions
to Foxcatchers overall color scheme.
Fraser would grade stills and then email them to Harris, aiming more or less
for the middle ground in terms of
contrast and saturation as he and Miller
refined the look throughout the shoot
and dailies process.
Harris, who graded the movie
with DaVinci Resolve 9 software,
describes the general direction as
moody, down in the mid-tones with
the blacks a bit up not crushing the
blacks, but keeping them inky and at the
same time not clipping out any highlights. Its not an overly stylized movie
given the circumstances the characters
find themselves in. The only really
colorful part is inside the Foxcatcher
gym. Everything else is slightly desaturated and creamy-looking. Dailies were
provided to the filmmakers on secure
drives.
The shoot had stretched to
January 2013 with breaks taken for holidays. In hindsight, Fraser now views
those breaks as fortuitous, as they
allowed the filmmakers to take advantage of disparate landscapes that
progressed from fall colors to desolate
winter hues. This also provided an area
of focus for the DIs final pass,
performed by Tom Poole at Company 3
in New York. Poole worked in DaVinci
Resolve 10 after the negative was
scanned at 2K with an Arriscan, and an
Arrilaser then recorded the 2K filmout.
Bennett considers each scene to
be a chapter in the story, intricately
interconnected with all the others,

Poole says. Even after establishing a
look scene-by-scene, we were constantly
going back to make sure all the scenes
tied together. We wanted to convey a
mood in every scene through color. This
[approach] lent itself to many of the
darker scenes, but we wanted to avoid
too much contrast with the moodier
look to keep it feeling more naturalistic.
Fraser reveals that the gutwrenching story of Foxcatcher made for
a sometimes grueling shoot, but feels
that all the effort paid off. Often, I
want people to walk out of a film Ive
shot with a different outlook on life, he
says. Bennett is a fantastic director and
it was a pleasure to work with him on
this project. Its tough, dark subject
matter, but Im really proud to have
been involved.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
3-perf Super 35mm
Panavision Millennium XL2,
Arriflex 235
Panavision Primo, Ultra Speed
Kodak 500T 5230;
Vision3 50D 5203, 250D 5207
Digital Intermediate
93
New Products & Services

Arri Unveils Alexa 65
Arri Rental has unveiled
the Alexa 65 camera
system, a scaled-up version
of the Alexa XT with a
sensor larger than a 5-perf
65mm film frame, enabling
the capture of uncompressed ArriRaw 65mm
imagery.
ASC associate Franz
Kraus, Arris managing director, says, Following the success of
the Alexa, we wanted to build a camera for the most demanding applications in filmmaking, and envisioned a true 65mmformat camera [that would share] as many of the technology
and imaging attributes of Alexa as possible. The dynamic range
and colorimetry are retained, but to these is added a far greater
capacity for capturing fine detail.
The Alexa 65 system incorporates custom-designed
prime and zoom lenses, and fast and efficient workflow tools.
Utilizing high-performance optics from Hasselblad, the 50110mm Zoom 65 and the eight Prime 65 lenses (ranging from
24mm to 300mm) are housed in robust lens barrels co-developed with IB/E Optics. Equipped with Arris Lens Data System,
the lenses allow frame-accurate metadata about focus, iris and
zoom settings to be recorded with the image stream, aiding
both on-set shooting and visual-effects tasks in post.
Additionally, Arri Rental has worked closely with Codex
during the development of the Alexa 65 in order to create a
seamless new workflow that is unique to the camera and is
capable of processing full-resolution ArriRaw 65mm-format
images while concurrently generating high-quality ProRes
4:4:4:4 HD dailies masters in real time.
The Alexa 65 system is available exclusively through Arri
Rentals global network of rental facilities. For more information, visit www.arrirentalgroup.com.
Codex Records Alexa
65 Footage
Codex has collaborated
with Arri to develop the
recording and workflow
system for Arris Alexa 65
large-format digital-camera
system. The result of the close
collaboration is a high-performance, built-in camera
recorder as well as an on-set
94
December 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.
and near-set data-management system, the Vault Lab 65, to

deliver a streamlined camera-to-post workflow.
The Alexa 65 camera incorporates a Codex recording
engine, similar to the system that is built into the Alexa XT
camera. Existing Alexa XR Capture Drives support recording
from the Alexa 65 at up to 24 fps, and a 512GB media card will
record around 10 minutes in full open-gate mode. Next-generation Capture Drives developed by Codex will offer 2TB of
recording capacity and be capable of 20 Gb/s data rates,
enabling recording times over 45 minutes.
The Vault Lab 65 includes an enhanced Codex Vault S,
GPU processing and 8TB solid-state Transfer Drives to support
around three hours of open-gate Alexa 65 footage. Housed on
a Codex on-set cart, the Codex Vault S creates safety copies and
allows for playback, image review and color correction. The
Codex Vault XL, which includes 24 processing cores, is used
near set for dailies, editorial deliverables, camera original archive
to LTO, look creation, syncing sound and other postproduction
work. Codex 8TB Transfer Drives are used to transport data
between on-set and near-set or production and post. The Vault
XL also supports high-speed networking and file-transfer to
allow for integration with other production workflows.
For additional information, visit www.codexdigital.com.
Hive Redesigns Wasp Par
Hive Lighting has redesigned its
flagship product, the Wasp Plasma
Par, to make it more versatile, lightweight and cost-effective while still
delivering the same high output and
low power draw.
The redesigned Wasp Plasma
Par features a tight, powerful 10degree beam and can work in a
modular, customizable system. With
each Par running off of just 276
watts, it is possible to plug as many as
12 lamps into house power without the need for generators or
extra cabling; a 6-Light Killer Maxi, which incorporates the
redesigned Wasp Plasma Par, produces an output equivalent to
a 4,000-watt HMI and plugs into a single wall socket.
Each Wasp Plasma Par and Killer Maxi array features
Hives Daylight Dial, which offers fully tunable color temperature
from 4,800K-7,000K. The dial is calibrated to prevent any
green/magenta shift with virtually no dimming, and offers the
ability to shift all the way to a deep-blue moonlight look.
For additional flexibility, the Wasp Par can be combined
with a variety of standard accessories, including lenses and soft
boxes. The Wasp Par is also compatible

with ETC Source Four lens barrels, which
can be mounted directly on the front of
the lamp to create a daylight spot.
The Hive family of products utilizes
plasma lighting technology to run on 5090-percent less energy than conventional
studio fixtures. Hives lamps use a single
plasma source that produces flicker-free,
full- and even-spectrum, daylightbalanced light with a CRI of 94. Each of
Hives universal orientation bulbs lasts for
10,000+ hours and generates little to no
heat.
For additional information, visit
www.hivelighting.com.
Rotolight Illuminates Neo,
Enhances Anova
Rotolight has introduced the Neo
on-camera LED light. Featuring bi-color
LED technology with excellent color
rendering, the Neo offers accurate electronic color-temperature display to enable
easily tunable color. The fixture delivers
1,077 lux at 3' while providing a soft ringlight effect.
The Rotolight Neos 120 LEDs offer
full-spectrum
color reproduction they can
be dialed from
3,150K
to
6,300K in 10degree steps
with an overall
CRI of 95. The
fixture boasts an
intuitive dualrotary encoder
control system
for rapid brightness and colortemperature adjustment, and Dynamic
Drift Compensation for smooth dimming
from 100-0 percent with no color shift.
Drawing only 9 watts at full power, the
Neo can be powered by six AA batteries,
an AC adapter or D-tap cable.
Rotolight has also upgraded its
Anova EcoFlood family of LED fixtures
with the introduction of the Anova V2
fixtures. The Anova V2 EcoFlood LED
Floodlight boasts enhanced color render-
ing with an overall CRI of 95 and a skintone CRI of 98; the unit also delivers a
significantly brighter output than earlier
Anova units. The Anova V2 family also
includes the Anova Bi-Color V2 and
Anova Solo single-color floodlights; the
latter are available in 5,600K or 3,200K.
The complete range of Anova products
are available with either an UltraWide
100-degree beam angle or Standard 50degree beam angle.
Incorporating Rotolights constant
current dimming control system, all
Anova V2 models are totally flicker-free
and have been extensively tested with
Vision Research Phantom Flex cameras
rolling at speeds up to 7,000 fps. Drawing only 41 watts of power, the Anova
fixtures can be powered by a standard VLock or Gold Mount battery for up to
four hours.
www.rotolight.com.
PrimeTime Highlights
SLED Series
PrimeTime Lighting Systems, Inc.
has introduced the SLED series of LED
fixtures. The SLED range currently
comprises two fixtures, the 1SLED and
the MSLED, both of which feature singleshadow rendering with a consistent softlight output, top-quality LEDs with a
50,000-hour rated lifetime, a high CRI,
flicker-free performance, local dimming,
remote dimming via optional DMX512
signal decoders, and all-aluminum
construction. The lights are built by hand
in the United States.
Based on PrimeTimes 1SL fixture,
the 1SLED can be used as key, fill or
backlight in a variety of applications. The
MSLED, based on PrimeTimes MSL
95
The C-200 lights feature a ball-head

mounting bracket, and the C-300 lights
incorporate a mounting yoke for a light
stand. Each FlapJack comes with a
custom-fitted hard case and is backed by
Fotodioxs two-year warranty.
www.fotodioxpro.com.
fixture, is ideally suited for low-ceiling
environments.
www.primetimelighting.com.
Fotodiox Cooks up
FlapJack LEDs
Fotodiox Pro has introduced the
FlapJack LED Edgelight series. Lightweight, portable and easy to set up, the
FlapJacks produce soft, even light. The
fixtures interior diffusion materials eliminate the need for additional soft boxes,
and each of the four models can easily fit
into a messenger or camera bag.
Rather than using forward-facing
LEDs, the FlapJack fixtures LEDs are
mounted around the outer edge and
aimed inward at layers of diffusion material. Instead of a direct beam, this
produces a soft bounced light with even
glow and no hot spots. Additionally, each
FlapJack measures less than " at its
thinnest point, making it easy to position
them anywhere; the lightweight fixtures
can even be rigged with Velcro, cord or
tape.
FlapJacks are available in two
circular models (the
7"-diameter C-200R
and the 10"-diameter
C-300R) and two
rectangular models
(the 8"x5" C-200S
and the 11"x4.25" C200L). All FlapJacks are
fully dimmable from 10-100
percent, with no change in
color temperature, and can
run on either AC power or
an NP-F-style rechargeable battery; a backlit
LCD
indicator
displays both
light level and
battery-life status.
96
December 2014
Versa-Flex Protects Tripods

Versa-Flex, a designer and manufacturer of cases and bags for the professional video, film, photo and audio
markets, has introduced the VT-0842.08
Video Tripod Bag.
This heavy-duty bag offers an
array of features, including an
adjustable/removable head plate, a
removable foot plate, an adjustable/removable head strap and side plate

pouch, a 10" handle on 3" heavy-duty
webbing, 1,000-denier nylon on the
exterior and interior with dense
webbing, a self healing zipper,
zippered pockets on both sides, a travel
ID window on the exterior, and steel
rings for an optional padded shoulder
strap. Weighing 6 pounds, the bag
measures 9"x9"x45", with 8"x8"x42"
of available interior space.
Based outside of Cleveland, Ohio,
Versa-Flex manufactures all of its products in the U.S. For additional information, visit www.versa-flex.com.
Zacuto Expands Product
Offerings
Zacuto has introduced the Gratical
HD and LT electronic viewfinder, and the
VCT Universal Baseplate.
More than a year in the making,
the Gratical HD and LT Micro-OLED EVFs
use an extremely powerful FPGA dualcore processor and the latest Micro-OLED
displays to provide a significantly
expanded contrast range. The 0.61"diagonal Gratical HD boasts a full display

resolution of 1280x1024 with 5.4 million
pixels spaced at 2,687.21 pixels per inch.
The 0.39"-diagonal Gratical LT features a
full display resolution of 1044x768 with
3.3 million pixels spaced at 1,718.1 pixels
per inch. Both EVFs feature 24-bit RGB
color depth with 16.7 million colors, a
50/60Hz refresh rate and a 10,000:1
contrast ratio.
The VCT Universal Baseplate incorporates sleek lines, a long track for
camera placement, and a comfortable
gel-polymer shoulder pad for excellent
balance that takes into account the
smaller form factor and heavier lenses
used by modern ENG crews. The rod
mount is set further back than on other
VCT-style base plates to provide the
essential room for accessories beneath
the
camera
lens.
Measuring
13.5"x4.25"x1.75" and weighing 2
pounds with 6.5" rods (included), the
VCT Universal Baseplate features 32mm
of vertical adjustment, an adjustable tail
hook to accommodate different tripod
plates, two threaded rod ports in the
back, and one "-20 and one "-16
removable screw. The Universal Baseplate

can be mounted via a V-wedge-style
tripod connector, or a tripod plate can be
mounted via "-20 and "-16 threaded
holes; "-20 holes along the side allow
for further accessory mounting.
www.zacuto.com.
16x9 Distributes
Movcam Accessories
16x9 Inc. has announced the availability of the Movcam A7S Cage and
Cage Kit. The lightweight cage was
produced for the Sony A7S mirrorless
full-frame camera. The A7S Cage Kit
comes ready to work

with the recent
Movcam Universal
Lightweight Support
System, and includes
the LWS Base Plate
and Riser for the
A7S. All items and
accessories
are
made of high-grade
aluminum.
16x9 has also begun distribution
of the Movcam Power Bracket for the
Odyssey 7 and 7Q from Convergent
Design. The Bracket is available for either
V-lock (model 306-0216) or Gold Mount
(306-0127) batteries; a third option (3060218) features a strong base-plate
system without additional power
options, but incorporates mounting
threads for standard battery plates such
as V-mount or Gold Mount. All three
Power Bracket iterations are manufactured from lightweight, high-grade
aluminum and offer an array of mount-
online sharing feature to stream or

upload content directly from the device.
Approximately the size of a baseball, the Bublcam is portable and lightweight, and features real-time image
stitching, self-calibration and image
stabilization, a four-camera, tetrahedral
design for zero blind spots, and live video
streaming. Additional features include
ing accessories, including optional AntiSkid Handgrips that attach using the
included industry-standard rosette rod
clamps. The plates feature multiple -20
female threads and plenty of venting to
keep the Odyssey cool.
www.16x9inc.com.
professional controls, such as HDR, white

balance, contrast and gamma.
Bubls current collaboration with
Google allows anyone with a Bublcam to
upload spherical photos directly to
Google Maps, StreetView and Google+.
By utilizing the Bubl API and SDK, others
can create software applications that can
fully control the Bublcam and develop
features on top of the current app to
enable more features, such as facial and
image recognition, interactive touch
points, motion tracking, cloud-based
storage connectivity and integration to
other virtual-reality devices.
Bubls software applications will
allow for iOS, Android, Oculus VR,
Windows 8, Chromecast, PS4, Amazon
Fire and Avegant integration.
www.bublcam.com.
Bubl Camera Shoots

Spherically
Bubl has introduced the Bublcam,
a fully spherical consumer camera
backed by forward-looking software to
provide users with the ability to capture
and share spherical photos and videos.
Bublcam takes digital storytelling
to the next level with zero blind spots
and a fully spherical experience, says
Sean Ramsay, CEO of Bubl. Bublcam
enables consumers to pan anywhere in a
given shot and then incorporates an
Fraunhofer Continues
to Innovate
The Fraunhofer Digital Cinema
Alliance, a provider of future-oriented
solutions for an enhanced digital media
and digital cinema workflow, has introduced easyDCP 3.0. This latest version of
the digital cinema package creation,
playback and encryption software suite
developed by Fraunhofer IIS
includes support for the Interoperable
Master Format. IMF is a file-based solution to store high-quality image and
97
audio data, as well as subtitles, in a

uniform format, the Interoperable Master
Package, which is suitable for exchanging
film material independently of manufacturers and devices, and is intended to
save both time and money by using filebased work steps only. IMP is used as a
master/source package for generating a
wide range of various distribution
formats; IMF is intended particularly for
data exchange between various postproduction companies for optimization of
internal exchange.
The Alliance has also introduced a
new Light Field plug-in for Avid Media
Composer. Developed by Fraunhofer IIS,
Light Field technology allows the use of
intelligent algorithms and multi-camera
systems that can provide multiple simultaneous views in order to open new postproduction possibilities. The new plug-in
allows the integration of this functionality within an existing software.
Light Field technology incorporates a multi-camera system in order to
capture several different views in a single
recording. The different views can then
be used in post to recover the creative
opportunities that sometimes go missing
on set.
The processing of Light Field data
provides editing flexibility during post
and mitigates the need for expensive
retakes or additional filming. Previously,
the processing and testing of this data
was only possible with proprietary
programs that werent conducive to most
fast-paced post workflows. In an effort to
make the technology more accessible,
Fraunhofer IIS has been developing an
auto-calibration method that can correct
geometric distortions in the camera position without test charts, calibration
patterns or special markers.
Depth maps of high pixel density
are calculated based on the scene, and
these depth maps can be used to generate new high-quality views for 2D, 3D or
multi-view displays. In practice, this
means that by intelligent processing of
different views, change in sharpness,
change of perspective, 3D effects or
camera movement in all spatial directions
can be calculated, which in turn allows as
many additional views as necessary to be
98
December 2014
generated from the existing views.

The Fraunhofer Digital Cinema
Alliance consists of Fraunhofer IIS,
Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute HHI,
Fraunhofer IDMT and Fraunhofer
FOKUS. The alliance provides a network
of deep expertise and intelligence for
the development of scalable technologies and international standards.
www.iis.fraunhofer.de.
ProMax Goes Portable
ProMax Systems has introduced
the Platform Portable, a portable server
that enables mobile collaborative workflows for on-set video production and
postproduction. Platform Portable
allows creative groups to connect their
existing attached storage devices and
transform them into a simple yet
sophisticated shared editing environment.
Answering a call for a shared
editing system with supreme mobility
for easy travel from studio to location,
Platform Portable is able to make use of
existing attached storage devices to
become a powerful shared-storage
system. Workflow-acceleration features
include built-in asset-management
search for groups of up to six users.
Platform Portable offers a versatile,
affordable bridge between attached
storage and more extensive sharedstorage systems.
Measuring 18"x12"x2.5", Platform Portable is lightweight and small
enough to easily take on a plane or in a
car to anywhere the production
demands. The systems rugged steel
construction, with anti-shock braces, is
designed to perform in tough outdoor
environments. Every Platform Portable
comes with a shock-absorbent protective travel bag.
Platform Portable is cross-platform compatible (OSX, Windows,
Linux) and supports all common sharedstorage interfaces, including Thunderbolt, USB, FireWire, SAS and eSATA.
Portable also reads all common file
systems, including HFS+, FAT32 and
NTFS. Network connections include up
to 6x 1GbE or 10GbE ports to connect
clients,
2x
onboard Gigabit LAN
controllers, and Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac.
Storage expansion ports include 2x Thunderbolt 2.0 (optional), 8x USB 3.0, 4x
USB 2.0, 2x FireWire 800 (optional) and
2x eSATA. The system can also be configured with an optional built-in 2TB SSD
storage module featuring 2x 1TB drives in
RAID-0 for fast access to media.
www.promax.com.
FilmLight Shines with Daylight
FilmLight has introduced the
Daylight near-set color-grading tool, new
products for the Baselight Editions range,
and new functionality for the companys
flagship Baselight color-grading system.
Daylight is designed as a compact,
powerful grading-decision tool to help
cinematographers and directors establish
looks and visualize what they have shot
on set or on location. Key features of
Daylight include AJA SDI output, shot
filtering and sorting, HTML report generation, Red GPU decoding, media consolidation tools and multi-format deliverables.
Baselight Editions, which provide
color within professional editing and
visual-effect packages, now includes
Baselight for Nuke. This Edition allows
users working with The Foundrys Nuke
visual-effects software to interpret and
modify fully featured Baselight grades.
Baselight 4.4, the latest release of
FilmLights high-end 4K grading and
finishing system, includes a host of new
features, including Apple-certified ProRes
and support for the ProRes 4:4:4:4 XQ
codec. A project-consolidation feature
makes managing media easier, and the
new system is also ready to take on
UltraHD monitoring. Baselight 4.4 also
provides faster GPU decoding of Red
camera files as part of the implementation of the Red SDK, and provides full
support to work in high-dynamic-range
color space using Dolby Vision.
www.filmlight.ltd.uk.
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.
International Marketplace
100
December 2014
Classifieds
CLASSIFIED AD RATES
All classifications are $4.50 per word. Words
set in bold face or all capitals are $5.00 per
word. First word of ad and advertisers name
can be set in capitals without extra charge. No
agency commission or discounts on classified
advertising.PAYMENT MUST ACCOMPANY ORDER.
VISA, Mastercard, AmEx and Discover card are
accepted. Send ad to Classified Advertising,
American Cinematographer, P.O. Box
2230, Hollywood, CA 90078. Or FAX (323)
876-4973. Deadline for payment and copy must
be in the office by 15th of second month
preceding publication. Subject matter is limited
to items and services pertaining to filmmaking
and video production. Words used are subject
to magazine style abbreviation. Minimum
amount per ad: $45
EQUIPMENT FOR SALE

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www.theasc.com
December 2014
101
Advertisers Index
AC 91
Adorama 33, 63
AJA Video Systems, Inc. 66
Alan Gordon Enterprises 100
Arri CSC 29
ASC Film Manual 99
ASC Master Class 111
Aura Productions 8
Backstage Equipment, Inc.
8
Barger-Lite 91
Blackmagic Design, Inc. 27
Cam-a-lot Audio Visual 61
Cammate 8
Cavision Enterprises 100
Chapman/Leonard Studio
Equipment Inc. 77
Cinematography
Electronics 65
Cinekinetic 100
Cooke Optics 31
Denecke 101
Duclos Lenses 49
Eastman Kodak C4
Filmotechnic USA 93
Focus Features 11
Fox Searchlight Pictures 7,
17, 23
Friends of the ASC 89
Glidecam Industries C3
Hasselblad Bron, Inc. 78
Hertz Corporation 35
Schneider Optics 2
Sony Pictures Classics
53, 67
Super16, Inc. 100
Jod Soraci 8
Technocrane 75
Teradek, LLC 51
Tiffen Company 47
Kingfilm USA 101

Kino Flo 79
Kowa Optimed, Inc. 91
UMPEQ TV 92
University of North Carolina
73
Lights! Action! Co. 100

Lowel 47
Visionary Forces 101
Maccam 95
Manfrotto 45
Movcam Tech. Co., Ltd. 37
Movie Tech AG 100, 101
M.M. Mukhi & Sons 100
Music Box Films 59
NBC Universal Pictures 9
Osram 65
Ovide Broadcast Services 97
Panasonic System
Communication Company
25
Panther Gmbh 52
Paralinx 87
Pille Filmgeraeteverleih
Gmbh 100
Pro8mm 100
102
Red Digital Cinema C2-1

Roadside Attractions 15
Walt Disney Studios 19

Warner Bros. 5, 13, 21
Willys Widgets 100
www.theasc.com 89, 91,
100, 101, 102
2014 Index
by Cinematographer, Project Title, Format, Subject and Author
Compiled by Christopher Probst
3D
Amazing Spider-Man 2,
The, June p. 54
James Camerons
Deepsea Challenge
3D, Sept. p. 30
Need for Speed,
April p. 50
Pompeii, March p. 24
24: Live Another Day,
Sept. p. 22
35MM (SUPER 35MM LISTED
SEPARATELY)
Inside Llewyn Davis,
Jan. p. 36
Secret Life of Walter
Mitty, The, Jan. p. 50
65MM
Interstellar, Dec. p. 38
Actress, Oct. p. 28
Aguirresarobe, ASC,
AEC, Javier, Feb. p. 92
Alexander, Harper,
Oct. p. 14
The, June p. 54
American Hustle,
Jan. p. 30
Americans, The,
March p. 54
ANAMORPHIC
The, June p. 54
Cavemen, Feb. p. 80
Coward, March p. 16
Divergent, April p. 62
Drunk History, July p. 20
Edge of Tomorrow,
July p. 60
Fury, Dec. p. 68
Girl Walks Home Alone
at Night, A,
April p. 86
Godzilla, June p. 34
Grand Budapest Hotel,
The, March p. 30
Guardians of the
Galaxy, Sept. p. 38
Immigrant, The,
June p. 72
Invisible Woman, The,
Jan. p. 64
Jersey Boys, Aug. p. 42
Locke, May p. 20
Monuments Men, The,
Feb. p. 34
Nostalgist, The,
Dec. p. 14
Tracks, Oct. p. 90
Transcendence,
May p. 30
And Uneasy Lies the
Mind, Aug. p. 20
Arbogast, AFC, Thierry,
Sept. p. 54
ASC CLOSE-UP
Aguirresarobe, Javier,
Feb. p. 92
Bonvillain, Michael,
Jan. p. 96
Chressanthis, James,
June p. 120
Deakins, Roger,
April p. 108
Freeman, Jonathan,
Oct. p. 116
Funke, Alex, July p. 92
Kelsch, Ken, Nov. p. 100
Macat, Julio,
Dec. p. 112
Metz, Rexford,
March p. 80
Mooradian, George,
May p. 92
Morgenthau, Kramer,
Aug. p. 88
Zunder, Kenneth,
Sept. p. 124
Babadook, The, Dec. p. 30
Bailey, ASC, John,
April p. 106, Oct. p. 114,
Dec. p. 110
Ballhaus, ASC, Florian,
Jan. p. 22
Balms, Thomas, April p. 76
Baszak, Miroslaw,
Aug. p. 54
Bear Hands, Giants,
Aug. p. 14
Beebe, ASC, ACS, Dion,
July p. 60
Beristain, ASC, BSC,
Gabriel, Aug. p. 54
Bernfeld, Nina, April p. 76
Berry, Graham, Feb. p. 30
Birdman, Dec. p. 54
BLACK-AND-WHITE
Drunk History,
July p. 20
at Night, A,
April p. 86
Ida, May p. 54
Visitors, Feb. p. 30
Blake, Matthew, Oct. p. 15
Blauvelt, Christopher,
July p. 26
Blended, June p. 28
Blood Pulls a Gun,
Sept. p. 14
Blue Ruin, April p. 80
Bobbitt, BSC, Sean,
Nov. p. 64
Body, The, Feb. p. 16
Bokelberg, ASC, BVK,
Oliver, April p. 30
Bolter, Eben, Feb. p. 16
Bonvillain, ASC, Michael,
Jan. p. 96
Book Thief, The,
Jan. p. 22
Braier, ADF, Natasha,
July p. 70
Bukowski, Bobby,
Dec. p. 22
Buono, Alex, March p. 62
Calahan, ASC, Sharon,
April p. 106
Cavemen, Feb. p. 80
Chediak, ASC, Enrique,
Oct. p. 82
Chressanthis, ASC, James,
April p. 106,
June p. 120
Coward, March p. 16
Cronenweth, ASC, Jeff,
Nov. p. 36
Cundey, ASC, Dean,
Feb. p. 44
Davis, BSC, Ben,
Sept. p. 38
Deakins, ASC, BSC, Roger,
April p. 108
Delbonnel, ASC, AFC,
Bruno, Jan. 36
Deschanel, ASC, Caleb,
July p. 90
www.theasc.com
DIGITAL ACQUISITION
Sept. p. 22
Actress, Oct. p. 28
Americans, The,
March p. 54
And Uneasy Lies the
Mind, Aug. p. 20
Babadook, The,
Dec. p. 30
Bear Hands, Giants,
Aug. p. 16
Birdman, Dec. p. 54
Blended, June p. 28
Blood Pulls a Gun,
Sept. p. 16
Blue Ruin, April p. 80
Body, The, Feb. p. 16
Book Thief, The,
Jan. p. 22
Cavemen, Feb. p. 80
Dirty Laundry, Oct. p. 16
Dom Hemingway,
April p. 24
Drop, The, Oct. p. 22
Forest Keepers,
Oct. p. 16
Get on Up, Aug. p. 28
at Night, A, April p. 86
Gone Girl, Nov. p. 36
The, March p. 30
Guardians of the Galaxy,
Sept. p. 38
Hannibal, June p. 86
Happiness, April p. 76
Her, Jan. p. 76
Homesman, The,
Nov. p. 50
Ida, May p. 54
I Origins, Sept. p. 70
James Camerons
Deepsea Challenge
3D, Sept. p. 30
Kill the Messenger,
Nov. p. 64
Locke, May p. 20
Lone Survivor,
March p. 44
December 2014
103
Lu, Jan. p. 16
Lucy, Sept. p. 54
Lunchbox, The,
April p. 83
Maleficent, July p. 32
Maze Runner, The,
Oct. p. 82
Me + Her, May p. 14
Million Dollar Arm,
June p. 20
Monuments Men, The,
Feb. p. 34
Need for Speed,
April p. 50
Nightcrawler, Nov. p. 22
Night Flowers, Neverlands, April p. 16
Night Moves, July p. 26
Noah, April p. 36
Nostalgist, The,
Dec. p. 14
Peter Pan Bakery,
July p. 14
Random Stop,
June p. 16
Revenge, March p. 58
Rich Hill, April p. 90
Rosewater, Dec. p. 22
Saturday Night Live Film
Unit, March p. 62
Scandal, April p. 30
Starlight, Oct. p. 14
Strain, The, Aug. p. 54
Thousand Times Good
Night, A, Sept. p. 82
Tims Vermeer, Feb. p. 24
Transcendence,
May p. 30
Under the Skin,
May p. 44
Whiplash, Nov. p. 30
X-Men: Days of Future
Past, July p. 46
DIRECTORS INTERVIEWED
Allen, Woody, Oct. p. 50
Amirpour, Ana Lily,
April p. 86
Anderson, Paul W.S.,
March p. 24
Ayer, David, Dec. p. 68
Ball, Wes, Oct. p. 82
Balms, Thomas,
April p. 76
Batra, Ritesh,
April p. 83
Besson, Luc, Sept. p. 54
Burger, Neil, April p. 62
104
December 2014
Cameron, James,
Sept. p. 30
Cassar, Jon, Sept. p. 22
Cholodenko, Lisa,
Nov. p. 76
Coppola, Francis Ford,
Oct. p. 48
Coraci, Frank,
June p. 28
Cuesta, Michael,
Nov. p. 64
Davis, Paul, Feb. p. 16
Droz Palermo, Andrew,
April p. 90
Edwards, Gareth,
June p. 34
Fiennes, Ralph,
Jan. p. 64
Fincher, David,
Nov. p. 36
Gillespie, Craig,
June p. 20
Gray, James, June p. 72
Green, Robert,
Oct. p. 28
Haas, Peter J.,
July p. 14
Irritu, Alejandro G.,
Dec. p. 54
Jonze, Spike, Jan. p. 76
Lin, Jiaqi, Nov. p. 14
Michd, David,
July p. 70
Miller, Bennett,
Dec. p. 80
Nolan, Christopher,
Dec. p. 38
Oxford, Joseph,
May p. 14
Pawlikowski, Pawel,
May p. 54
Pellington, Mark,
Aug. p. 14
Pfister, ASC, Wally,
May p. 30
Poppe, Erik, Sept. p. 82
Reggio, Godfrey,
Feb. p. 30
Reichardt, Kelly,
July p. 26
Roberts, Keif, July p. 14
Roskam, Michal R.,
Oct. p. 22
Russell, David O.,
Jan. p. 30
Saulnier, Jeremy,
April p. 80
Shepard, Richard,
April p. 24
Soderbergh, Steven,
Oct. p. 52
Stiller, Ben, Jan. p. 50
Swanberg, Joe,
Aug. p. 66
Webb, Marc, June p. 54
Dirty Laundry, Oct. p. 18
DOCUMENTARIES
Actress, Oct. p. 28
Forest Keepers,
Oct. p. 16
James Camerons
Deepsea Challenge
3D, Sept. p. 30
Peter Pan Bakery,
July p. 14
Tims Vermeer,
Feb. p. 24
Dom Hemingway,
April p. 24
Drop, The, Oct. p. 22
Droz Palermo, Andrew,
April p. 90
Dryburgh, ASC, NZCS,
Stuart, Jan. p. 50
Dykstra, ASC, John,
May p. 90
Edge of Tomorrow,
July p. 60
Edlund, ASC, Richard,
Aug. p. 87
Elmes, ASC, Fred,
Nov. p. 76
Elswit, ASC, Robert,
Nov. p. 22
FILMMAKERS' FORUM
Shooting a Bromance
on a Budget,
Feb. p. 80
Frderer, Markus,
Sept. p. 70
Forest Keepers, Oct. p. 16
Fosheim, Ricky, Aug. p. 20
Foxcatcher, Dec. p. 80
Fraser, ASC, ACS, Greig,
March p. 78, Dec. p. 80
Freeman, ASC, Jonathan,
Oct. p. 116
Funke, ASC, Alex,
July p. 92
Fury, Dec. p. 68
Galt, Alexander, April p. 16
Get on Up, Aug. p. 28
at Night, A, April p. 86
Goldblatt, ASC, BSC,
Stephen, Aug. p. 28
Goodich, ASC, Frederic,
Feb. p. 91
Goodman, ASC, Nathaniel,
Aug. p. 86
Govoni, Trish, Feb. p. 30
The, March p. 30
Green, Robert, Oct. p. 28
Guardians of the Galaxy,
Sept. p. 38
Haas, Peter J., July p. 14
Hall, BSC, Jess, May p. 30
Happy Christmas,
Aug. p. 66
Hardy, BSC, Rob, Jan. p. 64
Hawkinson, James,
June p. 86
Her, Jan. p. 76
Homesman, The,
Nov. p. 50
Hoult, Colin, Aug. p. 54
Hughen, ASC, Paul,
July p. 90
Hurlbut, ASC, Shane,
April p. 50, Aug. p. 87,
Nov. p. 98
Ida, May p. 54
IMAX
Immigrant, The,
June p. 72
IN MEMORIA
Willis, ASC, Gordon,
Aug. p. 84
Inside Llewyn Davis,
Jan. p. 36
INSTRUCTIONAL
Learning From the
Masters, Feb. p. 74
Shared Experience,
Oct. p. 100
Invisible Woman, The,
Jan. p. 64
I Origins, Sept. p. 70
James Camerons
Deepsea Challenge
3D, Sept. p. 30
Karakatsanis, Nicolas,
Oct. p. 22
Kelly, Shane F., Feb. p. 24
Kelsch, ASC, Ken,
Nov. p. 100
Khondji, ASC, AFC, Darius,

June p. 72
Kill the Messenger,
Nov. p. 64
Kchler, BSC, Alwin,
April p. 62
Kuras, ASC, Ellen,
July p. 90
Lachman, ASC, Ed,
March p. 79
Ladczuk, Radek, Dec. p. 30
Landin, BSC, Daniel,
May p. 44
Lenczewski, PSC, Ryszard,
May p. 54
Lenoir, ASC, AFC, Denis,
Feb. p. 91
Lesnie, ASC, ACS, Andrew,
June p. 118
Libatique, ASC, Matthew,
April p. 36, July p. 90
LIGHTING DIAGRAMS
Edge of Tomorrow,
July p. 60
Guardians of the
Galaxy, Sept. p. 38
Lucy, Sept. p. 54
Monuments Men, The,
Feb. p. 34
Thousand Times Good
Past, July p. 46
Locke, May p. 20
Lone Survivor,
March p. 44
Lowe, Tom, Feb. p. 30
Lu, Jan. p. 16
Lubezki, ASC, AMC,
Emmanuel, Dec. p. 54
Lucy, Sept. p. 54
Lunchbox, The,
April p. 83
Macat, Julio, June p. 28,
Dec. p. 112
MacPherson, ASC, CSC,
Glen, March p. 24
Madsen, Kay, Jan. p. 16
Maleficent, July p. 32
Maze Runner, The,
Oct. p. 82
McClure, Blake, July p. 20
McGarvey, ASC, BSC,
Seamus, April p. 106,
June p. 34
Me + Her, May p. 14
Meir, Sharone, Nov. p. 30
Menges, ASC, BSC, Chris,
Dec. p. 110
Metz, ASC, Rexford,
March p. 80
Million Dollar Arm,
June p. 20
Mindel, ASC, BSC, Dan,
June p. 54
Monuments Men, The,
Feb. p. 34
Mooradian, ASC, George,
May p. 92
Morgan, ASC, Donald M.,
Nov. p. 14
Morgenthau, ASC, Kramer,
Jan. p. 95, Aug. p. 88
Moxness, ASC, CSC, David,
Oct. p. 114
Munden, Gareth, Dec. p. 14
Murphy, Stephen,
March p. 16
MUSIC VIDEOS
Bear Hands, Giants,
Aug. p. 14
Mygatt, Jeffrey, Sept. p. 22
Navarro, ASC, Guillermo,
Jan. p. 95
Need for Speed,
April p. 50
NEW ASC ASSOCIATES
Bogacz, Joe,
Sept. p. 122
Bogehegn, Jens,
March p. 78
Brown, Terry, Nov. p. 98
Cioni, Michael,
Nov. p. 98
Heinzle, Fritz,
Sept. p. 122
Iltsopoulos-Borys, Zo,
Sept. p. 122
Johnston, Eric,
Oct. p. 114
Killam, Lori,
March p. 78
Klein, Scott, May p. 90
Mandle, Gary,
July p. 90
Mansouri, Michael,
Nov. p. 98
Marsico, Frank,
Feb. p. 90
Russo, Chris,
Dec. p. 110
Weiss, Steve,
March p. 78
Wengert, Alex,
Sept. p. 122
NEW ASC MEMBERS
Calahan, Sharon,
April p. 106
Fraser, Greig,
March p. 78
Goodman, Nathaniel,
Aug. p. 86
Hughen, Paul, July p. 90
Moxness, David,
Oct. p. 114
Pearson, Brian,
Aug. p. 86
Squires, Buddy,
March p. 78
Szalay, Attila, Jan. p. 95
Van der Veken, Stijin,
March p. 78
Nightcrawler, Nov. p. 22
Night Moves, July p. 26
Noah, April p. 36
Nostalgist, The,
Dec. p. 14
Nuttgens, BSC, Giles,
April p. 24
Olive Kitteridge,
Nov. p. 76
OLoughlin, ACS, Jules,
Sept. p. 30
Pados, HSC, Gyula,
June p. 20
Papamichael, ASC, Phedon,
Feb. pp. 34, 91;
April p. 106
Pearson, ASC, Brian,
Aug. p. 86
Perkinson, Justin,
June p. 14
Pescasio, Michael,
Aug. p. 14
Peter Pan Bakery,
July p. 14
Pooles, Guy, Oct. p. 18
POSTPRODUCTION
HPA Honors 2013
Achievements,
Jan. p. 86
Restoring My Fair Lady
in Loverly Fashion,
Sept. p. 98
PRESERVATION/RESTORATION
My Fair Lady,
Sept. p. 98
Prieto, ASC, AMC, Rodrigo,
Nov. p. 50
www.theasc.com
Pusheck, ASC, Cynthia,

March p. 58
Random Stop, June p. 14
Rawlings Jr., ASC, Richard,
Feb. p. 64
Red House, The,
Nov. p. 14
Richardson, Ben, Aug. p. 66
Roberts, Keif, July p. 14
Rosenlund, FNF, John
Christian, Sept. p. 82
Rosewater, Dec. p. 22
Rouse, Jeremy, Sept. p. 14
Rover, The, July p. 70
Rutkowski, Richard,
March p. 54
Sadler, Nic, Feb. p. 80
Sandgren, FSF, Linus,
Jan. p. 30
Saturday Night Live Film
Unit, March p. 62
Saulnier, Jeremy, April p. 80
Schliessler, ASC, Tobias,
March p. 44
Schreiber, ASC, Nancy,
April p. 106
Semler, ASC, ACS, Dean,
July p. 32
Serra, ASC, AFC, Eduardo,
Feb. p. 54
Sigel, ASC, Newton
Thomas, July p. 46
Simmonds, Michael,
April p. 83
Smith, John, March p. 58
SPECIALIZED CINEMATOGRAPHY
James Camerons
Deepsea Challenge
3D, Sept. p. 30
Me + Her, May p. 14
Squires, ASC, Buddy,
March p. 78
Starlight, Oct. p. 14
Stern, ASC, AFC, Tom,
Aug. p. 42
Stokes, ACS, John,
Sept. p. 30
Stonesifer, Bradley,
May p. 14
Storaro, ASC, AIC, Vittorio,
Aug. p. 87
December 2014
105
Stump, ASC, David,

Sept. p. 122
SUPER 16MM
Happy Christmas,
Aug. p. 66
Kill the Messenger,
Nov. p. 64
SUPER 35MM
American Hustle,
Jan. p. 30
Bear Hands, Giants,
Aug. p. 16
Foxcatcher, Dec. p. 80
Homesman, The,
Nov. p. 50
Kill the Messenger,
Nov. p. 64
Million Dollar Arm,
June p. 20
Nightcrawler,
Nov. p. 22
Noah, April p. 36
Olive Kitteridge,
Nov. p. 76
Red House, The,
Nov. p. 14
Rover, The, July p. 70
Szalay, ASC, CSC, HSC,
Attila, Jan. p. 95
TELEVISION
Sept. p. 22
Americans, The,
March p. 54
Drunk History,
July p. 20
Hannibal, June p. 86
Olive Kitteridge,
Nov. p. 76
Saturday Night Live
Film Unit,
March p. 62
Thousand Times Good
Tims Vermeer, Feb. p. 24
Tovoli, ASC, AIC, Luciano,
Sept. p. 123
Tracks, Oct. p. 90
Transcendence,
May p. 30
Under the Skin,
May p. 44
Van der Veken, ASC, SBC,
Stijin, March p. 78
106
December 2014
Van Hoytema, FSF, NSC,

Hoyte, Jan. p. 76,
Dec. p. 38
Varese, ASC, Checco,
Aug. p. 54
Vasyanov, RGC, Roman,
Dec. p. 68
Vincent, Lyle, April p. 86
Walker, ASC, ACS, Mandy,
Oct. p. 90
Wexler, ASC, Haskell,
June p. 118,
Sept. p. 122
Whiplash, Nov. p. 30
Williams, Sean Price,
Oct. p. 28
Willis, ASC, Gordon,
Aug. p. 84, Oct. p. 34
Woolsey, ASC, Ralph,
March p. 79
Past, July p. 46
Yeoman, ASC, Robert,
March p. 30
Zal, PSC, Lukasz, May p. 54
Zambarloukos, BSC, Haris,
May p. 20
Zsigmond, ASC, Vilmos,
Aug. p. 86
Zunder, ASC, Kenneth,
Sept. p. 124
Index by Author
Bankston, Douglas,
A Fight to the Death,
March p. 44
Infinite Kills,
July p. 60
Multiple Formats on
the Fly, Aug. p. 14
Pop-Up Horror,
Dec. p. 30
Space Cases,
Sept. p. 38
Spinning a Wider
Web, June p. 54
Subjective Nonfiction,
Oct. p. 28
Bergery, Benjamin,
Across the Heartland,
Nov. p. 50
Brain Power,
Sept. p. 54
Divine Purpose,
May p. 54
Folk Implosion,
Jan. p. 36
Birchard, Robert S.,

Restoring My Fair
Lady in Loverly
Fashion, Sept. p. 98
Boorstin, Jon,
A Remembrance,
Oct. p. 74
Bosley, Rachael K.,
5 Park City Standouts,
April p. 76
A Curious Camera,
Jan. p. 64
Calhoun, John,
Espionage, Payback
and Laughs,
March p. 54
Refined Savagery,
June p. 86
Strength From
Within, Dec. p. 22
Tasty Treats That
Never Get Old,
July p. 14
Crudo, ASC, Richard,
Dispatches From a
Grenade Factory,
Oct. p. 76
Dillon, Mark,
A 1st-Century Disaster
in 3-D, March p. 24
Allies of Art,
Feb. p. 34
Bad Blood, Aug. p. 54
A Black-and-White
Reverie, Feb. p. 30
A Cardboard Drama
with Heart,
May p. 14
A Colorful Crook,
April p. 24
Dark Messenger,
Nov. p. 64
Deadly Moves,
July p. 26
Framing a Family
Conflict, Sept. p. 82
The Sting of the 70s
Jan. p. 30
Tragedy on the Mat,
Dec. p. 80
Fish, Andrew,
Remembering Gordy,
Oct. p. 42
Fosheim, Ricky,
Shooting a Feature on
an iPhone,
Aug. p. 20
Goldman, Michael,
24 Returns,
Sept. p. 22
And She Was,

Jan. p. 76
Capturing All 4
Seasons, Aug. p. 42
Outcast Power,
April p. 62
Questionable Circumstance, Nov. p. 36
Rolling Thunder,
Dec. p. 68
Scouring India for
Baseball Talent,
June p. 20
Time Benders,
July p. 46
Gray, Simon,
Dark Majesty,
July p. 32
Fugitive Motel,
Sept. p. 14
Off the Beaten Path,
Oct. p. 90
Heuring, David,
Second Life,
May p. 30
Holben, Jay,
ASC Shines at SciTech Awards,
May p. 64
Exotic Entanglements, June p. 28
Top Gear, April p. 50
Windows to the Soul,
Sept. p. 70
Hope-Jones, Mark,
Serving the Story, with
Style, Feb. p. 54
Kadner, Noah,
Cultural Liberation,
Nov. p. 14
Shaking a Familys
Foundation,
Aug. p. 66
Twists and Turns,
Oct. p. 82
Kaufman, Debra,
ASC Salutes Heritage
Award Recipients,
Oct. p. 14
Illusory Lives,
Dec. p. 14
Shared Experience,
Oct. p. 100
Oppenheimer, Jean,
Backstage Drama,
Dec. p. 54
Behind the Bar,
Oct. p. 22
Calm, Cool, Creative,
Feb. p. 44
Cockeyed Chronicles,
July p. 20
A Dark Chapter in
German History,
Jan. p. 22
A Drummers Downbeats, Nov. p. 30
Espionage, Payback
and Laughs,
March p. 58
Funk Soul Brother,
Aug. p. 28
A High-Profile Fixer,
April p. 30
Remembering Gordy,
Oct. p. 42
Pelzel, Scott,
A First-Person
Tragedy, June p. 14
Pizzello, Stephen,
A Meeting With the
Don, Oct. p. 60
Remembering Gordy,
Oct. p. 42
Supervising a Set,
Oct. p. 66
Sadler, Nic,
Shooting a Bromance
on a Budget,
Feb. p. 80
Sickel, Julie,
HPA Honors 2013
Achievements,
Jan. p. 86
Learning from the
Masters, Feb. p. 74
Silberg, Jon,
Distinguished
Service, Feb. p. 64
Remembering Gordy,
Oct. p. 42
Stasukevich, Iain,
5-Star Service,
March p. 30
Alien Ways,
May p. 44
Cosmic Odyssey,
Dec. p. 38
Daydream Believer,
Jan. p. 50
Deepest-Sea Explorers, Sept. p. 30
Killer Visuals,
Feb. p. 16
Libertys Injustice,
June p. 72
Neverlands Showcases Arri Alexa XT
B+W, April p. 16
Raging Waters,
April p. 36
Remembering Gordy,
Oct. p. 42
Thomson, Patricia,
April pp. 83, 86, 90
Espionage, Payback
and Laughs,
March p. 62
Mirroring a Master,
Feb. p. 24
A Road Through Ruin,
July p. 70
Trials and Tribulations, Nov. p. 76
Tonguette, Peter,
Casualty of War,
Jan. p. 16
Williams, David E.,
King of the Monsters,
June p. 34
Witmer, Jon D.,
April p. 80
Breaking the News,
Nov. p. 22
Coward on the Front
Line, March p. 16
Remembering Gordy,
Oct. p. 42
Road Work,
May p. 20
STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP,
MANAGEMENT AND CIRCULATION
Title of publication:
AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER
Publication no. 0002-7928
Date of filing: October 10, 2014
Frequency of issue: Monthly
Annual subscription price: $50
Number of issues published annually: 12
Location of known office of publication:
1782 N. Orange Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90028.
Location of the headquarters or general business offices of the
publishers: Same as above.
Names and address of publisher: ASC Holding Corp., 1782 N. Orange
Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90028; Editor-in-Chief and Publisher, Stephen Pizzello,
1782 N. Orange Dr., Hollywood, CA 90028. Owner: ASC Holding Corp.
Known bondholders, mortgages, and other security holders owning
or holding 1 per cent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages or
other securities: same as above.
Extent and nature of circulation: Total numbers of copies printed (net
press run): average number of copies each issue during preceding 12
months, 34,584; actual number copies of single issue published nearest to
filing date, 36,000.
Paid and/or requested circulation: Paid/Requested Outside-County Mail
Subscriptions stated on Form 3541: average number of copies each issue
during preceding 12 months, 32,400; actual number of copies of single issue
published nearest to filing date, 34,200.
Paid and/or requested circulation: Sales through dealers and carriers,
street vendors and counter sales, and other non-USPS paid distribution:
average number copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 6,190;
actual number of copies single issue published nearest to filing date, 4,800.
Total paid and/or requested circulation: average number copies each
issue during preceding 12 months, 32,400; actual number copies of single
issue published nearest to filing date, 34,200.
Free distribution by mail (samples, complimentary and other free
copies): average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months,
1,796; actual number copies of single issue published nearest to filing date,
1,250.
Total free distributions: average number of copies each issue during
preceding 12 months, 1,535; actual number copies of single issue published
nearest to filing date, 1,800.
Total distribution: average number of copies each issue during preceding
12 months, 34,196; actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 35,450.
Copies not distributed (office use, left over, unaccounted, spoiled
after printing): average number of copies each issue during preceding 12
months, 388; actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to
filing date, 550.
Total: average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months,
34,584; actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing
date, 36,000.
Percent Paid and/or Requested Circulation: average number of copies
each issue during preceding 12 months, 95%; actual number of copies of
single issue published nearest to filing date, 96%.
I certify that the statements made by me above are correct and complete.
Brett Grauman, General Manager
www.theasc.com
December 2014
107
American Society of Cinematographers Roster

OFFICERS 2014-15
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
Dean Cundey
George Spiro Dibie
Richard Edlund
Michael Goi
Matthew Leonetti
Stephen Lighthill
Daryn Okada
Michael O Shea
Lowell Peterson
Rodney Taylor
Kees van Oostrum
Haskell Wexler
ALTERNATES
Isidore Mankofsky
Robert Primes
Steven Fierberg
Kenneth Zunder
108
December 2014
ACTIVE MEMBERS
Thomas Ackerman
Lance Acord
Marshall Adams
Javier Aguirresarobe
Lloyd Ahern II
Russ Alsobrook
Howard A. Anderson III
Howard A. Anderson Jr.
James Anderson
Peter Anderson
Tony Askins
Christopher Baffa
James Bagdonas
King Baggot
John Bailey
Florian Ballhaus
Michael Ballhaus
Andrzej Bartkowiak
John Bartley
Bojan Bazelli
Frank Beascoechea
Affonso Beato
Mat Beck
Dion Beebe
Bill Bennett
Andres Berenguer
Carl Berger
Gabriel Beristain
Steven Bernstein
Ross Berryman
Josh Bleibtreu
Oliver Bokelberg
Michael Bonvillain
Richard Bowen
David Boyd
Russell Boyd
Uta Briesewitz
Jonathan Brown
Don Burgess
Stephen H. Burum
Bill Butler
Frank B. Byers
Bobby Byrne
Patrick Cady
Sharon Calahan
Antonio Calvache
Paul Cameron
Russell P. Carpenter
James L. Carter
Alan Caso
Vanja ernjul
Michael Chapman
Rodney Charters
Enrique Chediak
Christopher Chomyn
James A. Chressanthis
T.C. Christensen
Joan Churchill
Curtis Clark
Peter L. Collister
Jack Cooperman
Jack Couffer
Vincent G. Cox
Jeff Cronenweth
Richard Crudo
Dean R. Cundey
Stefan Czapsky
David Darby
Allen Daviau
Roger Deakins
Jan DeBont
Thomas Del Ruth
Bruno Delbonnel
Peter Deming
Jim Denault
Caleb Deschanel
Ron Dexter
Craig Di Bona
George Spiro Dibie
Ernest Dickerson
Billy Dickson
Bill Dill
Anthony Dod Mantle
Stuart Dryburgh
Bert Dunk
Lex DuPont
John Dykstra
Richard Edlund
Eagle Egilsson
Frederick Elmes
Robert Elswit
Scott Farrar
Jon Fauer
Don E. FauntLeRoy
Gerald Feil
Cort Fey
Steven Fierberg
Mauro Fiore
John C. Flinn III
Anna Foerster
Larry Fong
Ron Fortunato
Greig Fraser
Jonathan Freeman
Tak Fujimoto
Alex Funke
Steve Gainer
Robert Gantz
Ron Garcia
David Geddes
Dejan Georgevich
Michael Goi
Stephen Goldblatt
Paul Goldsmith
Frederic Goodich
Nathaniel Goodman
Victor Goss
Jack Green
Adam Greenberg
Robbie Greenberg
Xavier Grobet
Alexander Gruszynski
Changwei Gu
Rick Gunter
Rob Hahn
Gerald Hirschfeld
Henner Hofmann
Adam Holender
Ernie Holzman
John C. Hora
Tom Houghton
Gil Hubbs
Paul Hughen
Shane Hurlbut
Tom Hurwitz
Judy Irola
Mark Irwin
Levie Isaacks
Peter James
Johnny E. Jensen
Matthew Jensen
Jon Joffin
Frank Johnson
Shelly Johnson
Jeffrey Jur
Adam Kane
Stephen M. Katz
Ken Kelsch
Victor J. Kemper
Wayne Kennan
Francis Kenny
Glenn Kershaw
Darius Khondji
Gary Kibbe
Jan Kiesser
Jeffrey L. Kimball
Adam Kimmel
Alar Kivilo
David Klein
Richard Kline
George Koblasa
Fred J. Koenekamp
Lajos Koltai
Pete Kozachik
Neil Krepela
Willy Kurant
Ellen M. Kuras
George La Fountaine
Edward Lachman
Jacek Laskus
Rob Legato
Denis Lenoir
John R. Leonetti
Matthew Leonetti
Andrew Lesnie
Peter Levy
Matthew Libatique
Charlie Lieberman
Stephen Lighthill
John Lindley
Robert F. Liu
Walt Lloyd
Bruce Logan
Gordon Lonsdale
Emmanuel Lubezki
Julio G. Macat
Glen MacPherson
Paul Maibaum
Constantine Makris
Denis Maloney
Isidore Mankofsky
Christopher Manley
Michael D. Margulies
Barry Markowitz
Steve Mason
Clark Mathis
Don McAlpine
Don McCuaig
Michael McDonough
Seamus McGarvey
Robert McLachlan
Geary McLeod
Greg McMurry
Steve McNutt
Terry K. Meade
Suki Medencevic
Chris Menges
Rexford Metz
Anastas Michos
David Miller
Douglas Milsome
Dan Mindel
Charles Minsky
Claudio Miranda
George Mooradian
Reed Morano
Donald A. Morgan
Donald M. Morgan
Kramer Morgenthau
Peter Moss
David Moxness
M. David Mullen
Dennis Muren
Fred Murphy
Hiro Narita
Guillermo Navarro
Michael B. Negrin
Sol Negrin
Bill Neil
Alex Nepomniaschy
John Newby
Yuri Neyman
Sam Nicholson
Crescenzo Notarile
David B. Nowell
Rene Ohashi
Daryn Okada
Thomas Olgeirsson
Woody Omens
Miroslav Ondricek
Michael D. OShea
Vince Pace
Anthony Palmieri
Phedon Papamichael
Daniel Pearl
Brian Pearson
D E C E M B E R
Edward J. Pei
James Pergola
Dave Perkal
Lowell Peterson
Wally Pfister
Sean MacLeod Phillips
Bill Pope
Steven Poster
Tom Priestley Jr.
Rodrigo Prieto
Robert Primes
Frank Prinzi
Cynthia Pusheck
Richard Quinlan
Declan Quinn
Earl Rath
Richard Rawlings Jr.
Frank Raymond
Tami Reiker
Robert Richardson
Anthony B. Richmond
Tom Richmond
Bill Roe
Owen Roizman
Pete Romano
Charles Rosher Jr.
Giuseppe Rotunno
Philippe Rousselot
Juan Ruiz-Anchia
Marvin Rush
Paul Ryan
Eric Saarinen
Alik Sakharov
Mikael Salomon
Paul Sarossy
Roberto Schaefer
Tobias Schliessler
Aaron Schneider
Nancy Schreiber
Fred Schuler
John Schwartzman
John Seale
Christian Sebaldt
Dean Semler
Ben Seresin
Eduardo Serra
Steven Shaw
Lawrence Sher
Richard Shore
Newton Thomas Sigel
Steven V. Silver
John Simmons
Sandi Sissel
Santosh Sivan
Bradley B. Six
Michael Slovis
Dennis L. Smith
Roland Ozzie Smith
Reed Smoot
Bing Sokolsky
Peter Sova
Dante Spinotti
2 0 1 4
Buddy Squires
Terry Stacey
Eric Steelberg
Ueli Steiger
Peter Stein
Tom Stern
Robert M. Stevens
David Stockton
Rogier Stoffers
Vittorio Storaro
Harry Stradling Jr.
David Stump
Tim Suhrstedt
Peter Suschitzky
Attila Szalay
Jonathan Taylor
Rodney Taylor
William Taylor
Don Thorin Sr.
Romeo Tirone
John Toll
Mario Tosi
Salvatore Totino
Luciano Tovoli
Jost Vacano
Stijn van der Veken
Theo van de Sande
Eric van Haren Noman
Kees van Oostrum
Checco Varese
Ron Vargas
Mark Vargo
Amelia Vincent
William Wages
Roy H. Wagner
Mandy Walker
Michael Watkins
Michael Weaver
William Billy Webb
Jonathan West
Haskell Wexler
Jack Whitman
Lisa Wiegand
Dariusz Wolski
Ralph Woolsey
Peter Wunstorf
Robert Yeoman
Richard Yuricich
Jerzy Zielinski
Vilmos Zsigmond
Kenneth Zunder
ASSOCIATE MEMBERS
Pete Abel
Rich Abel
Alan Albert
Richard Aschman
Kay Baker
Joseph J. Ball
Amnon Band
Carly M. Barber
Craig Barron
Thomas M. Barron
Larry Barton
Wolfgang Baumler
Bob Beitcher
Mark Bender
Bruce Berke
Bob Bianco
Steven A. Blakely
Joseph Bogacz
Jill Bogdanowicz
Mitchell Bogdanowicz
Jens Bogehegn
Michael Bravin
Simon Broad
William Brodersen
Garrett Brown
Terry Brown
Reid Burns
Vincent Carabello
Jim Carter
Leonard Chapman
Mark Chiolis
Michael Cioni
Denny Clairmont
Adam Clark
Cary Clayton
Dave Cole
Michael Condon
Grover Crisp
Peter Crithary
Daniel Curry
Marc Dando
Ross Danielson
Carlos D. DeMattos
Gary Demos
Mato Der Avanessian
Kevin Dillon
David Dodson
Judith Doherty
Peter Doyle
Cyril Drabinsky
Jesse Dylan
Jonathan Erland
Ray Feeney
William Feightner
Phil Feiner
Jimmy Fisher
Scott Fleischer
Thomas Fletcher
Claude Gagnon
Salvatore Giarratano
Richard B. Glickman
John A. Gresch
Jim Hannafin
Bill Hansard Jr.
Lisa Harp
Richard Hart
Robert Harvey
Michael Hatzer
Josh Haynie
Fritz Heinzle
Charles Herzfeld
Larry Hezzelwood
Frieder Hochheim
Bob Hoffman
Vinny Hogan
Cliff Hsui
Robert C. Hummel
Zo Iltsopoulos-Borys
Roy Isaia
Jim Jannard
George Joblove
Joel Johnson
Eric Johnston
John Johnston
Mike Kanfer
Marker Karahadian
Frank Kay
Debbie Kennard
Glenn Kennel
Milton Keslow
Robert Keslow
Lori Killam
Douglas Kirkland
Mark Kirkland
Scott Klein
Timothy J. Knapp
Franz Kraus
Karl Kresser
Chet Kucinski
Jarred Land
Chuck Lee
Doug Leighton
Lou Levinson
Suzanne Lezotte
Grant Loucks
Howard Lukk
Andy Maltz
Gary Mandle
Steven E. Manios Jr.
Steven E. Manios Sr.
Chris Mankofsky
Michael Mansouri
Frank Marsico
Peter Martin
Robert Mastronardi
Joe Matza
Albert Mayer Jr.
Bill McDonald
Karen McHugh
Andy McIntyre
Stan Miller
Walter H. Mills
George Milton
Mike Mimaki
Michael Morelli
Dash Morrison
Nolan Murdock
Dan Muscarella
Iain A. Neil
Otto Nemenz
Ernst Nettmann
Tony Ngai
Jeff Okun
www.theasc.com
Marty Oppenheimer
Walt Ordway
Ahmad Ouri
Michael Parker
Dhanendra Patel
Elliot Peck
Kristin Petrovich
Ed Phillips
Nick Phillips
Tyler Phillips
Joshua Pines
Carl Porcello
Sherri Potter
Howard Preston
Sarah Priestnall
David Pringle
Phil Radin
David Reisner
Christopher Reyna
Colin Ritchie
Eric G. Rodli
Domenic Rom
Andy Romanoff
Frederic Rose
Daniel Rosen
Dana Ross
Bill Russell
Chris Russo
Kish Sadhvani
David Samuelson
Dan Sasaki
Steve Schklair
Peter K. Schnitzler
Walter Schonfeld
Wayne Schulman
Alexander Schwarz
Juergen Schwinzer
Steven Scott
Alec Shapiro
Don Shapiro
Milton R. Shefter
Leon Silverman
Garrett Smith
Timothy E. Smith
Kimberly Snyder
Stefan Sonnenfeld
John L. Sprung
Joseph N. Tawil
Ira Tiffen
Steve Tiffen
Arthur Tostado
Jeffrey Treanor
Bill Turner
Stephan Ukas-Bradley
Mark Van Horne
Richard Vetter
Dedo Weigert
Steve Weiss
Alex Wengert
Evans Wetmore
Franz Wieser
Beverly Wood
Jan Yarbrough
Hoyt Yeatman
Irwin M. Young
Michael Zacharia
Bob Zahn
Nazir Zaidi
Michael Zakula
Les Zellan
HONORARY MEMBERS
Col. Edwin E. Aldrin Jr.
Col. Michael Collins
Bob Fisher
David MacDonald
Cpt. Bruce McCandless II
Larry Parker
D. Brian Spruill
Marek Zydowicz
December 2014
109
Clubhouse News
Russo Named Associate

New associate member Chris Russo
is the western region technical sales
manager, camera, for Arri, Inc. Along with
her responsibilities in camera product sales,
Russo evaluates market and technology
requirements for existing and potential
camera equipment in North America, and
provides an important link to Arris researchand-development team in Munich in regard
to product performance. Russo previously
worked for the Eastman Kodak Co. and as a
postproduction supervisor on feature films.
She has also directed and produced shorts,
music videos, Web series and corporate
projects. Russo holds a bachelors degree in
photography from the University of Buffalo
and a masters degree in film from the Visual
Studies Workshop in Rochester, N.Y.
Panasonic Demos VariCam 35
Panasonic recently held an event at
the ASC Clubhouse in Hollywood, where
representatives from the company demonstrated the capabilities of the new VariCam
35 4K-capable camera (see New Products
and Services, AC May 14). ASC active and
associate members were able to get handson with the camera, which has been
designed to support feature, episodic,
commercial and documentary productions.
Among other offerings, the camera incorpo110
December 2014
rates a newly developed 17:9 Super 35mm

4K MOS image sensor that boasts 14-plus
stops of latitude; the camera can record
from 1 to 120 fps in 4K and allows incamera color grading. The event was punctuated with comments from three speakers: ASC associate Doug Leighton, senior
partner sales manager for Panasonic;
Takahiro Mitsui, the lead VariCam engineer
for Panasonic Imaging Network Business
Division; and ASC associate Michael Cioni,
the CEO of Light Iron.
Technicolor Showcases
Latest Innovations
Technicolor recently presented a
Showcase Night at the ASC Clubhouse,
during which company representatives
pulled back the curtain on new innovations
for on- or near-set location services and
dailies, color finishing, and high-dynamicrange strategies. Following dinner and
lively conversations on the Clubhouse
lawn, ASC associate Sherri Potter
welcomed attendees inside, where ASC
associate Bob Hoffman helped direct the
crowd between the various stations, at
which fellow associates Joshua Pines and
Steven Scott among other Technicolor
representatives detailed the companys
latest offerings.
Menges Receives Golden Camera

Lifetime Achievement Award
The Manaki Brothers International
Cinematographers Film Festival presented
Academy Award- and BAFTA Awardwinning cinematographer Chris Menges,
ASC, BSC with the Golden Camera 300
Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2014
festival held in Bitola, Macedonia. The festival also featured the Camera 300 competition, which awarded Golden, Silver and
Bronze Camera 300 awards in recognition
of recent feature-film cinematography.
Bailey Joins Academy Council
John Bailey, ASC recently accepted
an invitation to join the Science and Technology Council of the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences. Bailey joined the
Academy in 1981 and is currently a governor representing the cinematographers
branch. He was elected to a vice-president
post earlier this year.
Erratum
The October issue included an
announcement of upcoming ASC Master
Class dates. Since that issue went to press,
the May session has been rescheduled and
will now take place May 11-15, 2015.
Photo of Clubhouse by Isidore Mankofsky, ASC; lighting by Donald M. Morgan, ASC.

Menges photo courtesy of Manaki Brothers.
Left: Associate member Chris Russo. Right: Chris Menges, ASC, BSC.
Julio G. Macat, ASC
When you were a child, what film made the strongest impression on you?
101 Dalmatians. According to my mom, I wouldnt leave the theater
until I could watch it again. Also, Sullivans Travels showed me truthful and heartfelt moments in comedy.
this looks great! to compliment the art department, I realized I was

in the wrong side of the building at a real funeral home, where
a service was in progress. Every single mourner turned around to see
who the idiot yelling was; I just answered, My bad. Sorry. Carry on
so sorry.
Which cinematographers, past or present, do you most

admire?
Gabriel Figueroa, Nstor Almendros [ASC], Allen Daviau [ASC], Caleb
Deschanel [ASC].
What is the best professional advice youve ever received?

When you shoot, take chances; dont play it safe; push the envelope
into that scary and dangerous place; do not settle for mediocre
work. There is always room for improvement. Be original; do ordinary things in an extraordinary
way. Dont forget you are
telling a story so what does
each shot say? Shoot images
that you would enjoy watching.
What sparked your interest

in photography?
Being able to freeze a moment
in time and examine it was
fascinating to me.
What recent books, films or

artworks have inspired you?
The light in Tuscany, and the
book Magnum Cinema in
the same way we study history
to understand our place as
contributors to our craft, that
book is an inspiration to excel.
Where did you train and/or

study?
By watching veterans at work. I
spent two years at UCLAs film
school, but I dropped out
because I had a chance to be
on a set and observe.
Who were your early teachers or mentors?
Michael Joyce, who shot Family Affair and other TV shows; he owned
Arri BL cameras and I maintained the gear. Also Haskell Wexler [ASC],
who wrote me back when I was 19, and Allen Daviau, who took my
call when I was 20.
What are some of your key artistic influences?
Italian films like Amarcord and La Dolce Vita. Living in Florence for a
year. The fear of failure.
How did you get your first break in the business?
I filled in for a friend driving an equipment truck on a second-unit
shoot for the series How the West Was Won. They let me out to help
set up the tripods and heads. Eventually, I learned the rest of the
equipment and got to go out on shoots as a second assistant.
What has been your most satisfying moment on a project?
Seeing the reaction from children after the first screening of Home
Alone. They were empowered!
Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like to

try?
Dramas with appropriate, darker photography.
If you werent a cinematographer, what might you be doing
instead?
Id be a chef or a watchmaker.
Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for
membership?
Allen Daviau, Steven Poster, Russ Carpenter.
How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?
It has built long-lasting friendships and relationships. Its as if there is
an extended family that knows you well and cares about you. There
is comfort and camaraderie in sharing an artistic spirit and a place to
compare notes from this odd role of being a cinematographer. Its
like talking with your kinfolk. Its helped all of us get our ducks in a
row so we can help guide our craft in a positive direction. Its made
me feel accomplished and proud.
Have you made any memorable blunders?

Yes, many, but the most memorable was: I arrived late to a location
in Chicago where we were shooting a funeral scene. I rushed inside
and noticed how far along the preparations were, and how impeccable the set looked, including the extras! After happily yelling, Guys,
112
December 2014
Photo by David Bloomer, courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.
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2014 12

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DECEMBER 2014

The International Journal of Motion Imaging

On Our Cover: Former test pilot Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) leads an

Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC captures an actors

Tragedy on the Mat

Greig Fraser, ASC, ACS lends atmosphere to the

The International Journal of Motion Imaging

LOOK FOR MORE AT WWW.THEASC.COM

Coming soon: Podcast on Ordinary People (1980)

Bailey is this years ASC Lifetime Achievement honoree

Photos courtesy of the Margaret Herrick Library and John Bailey.

The International Journal of Motion Imaging

Visit us online at www.theasc.com

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF and PUBLISHER

ART & DESIGN

SUBSCRIPTIONS, BOOKS & PRODUCTS

ASC GENERAL MANAGER Brett Grauman

American Society of Cinematographers

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The ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but

Contact Jod @ 310-713-8388

Kees van Oostrum

Its never easy to make a movie that conveys the

Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.

Photo by Douglas Kirkland.

In a futuristic city, a man and his sons carefully calibrated life

find shorts to be a very good learning ground. And thats led to

Unit photography by Michael OConnor. All images courtesy of the filmmakers.

wanted to shoot with a digital camera.

Top left and

stills days, when I would only have three

and a slider as well, so the camera could

more, Munden recalls. It was hard work,

robot that was created digitally and

Strength From Within

Cinematographer Bobby Bukowski has worked with his share

Based on Baharis book Then They Came for Me (written

During the 2009

can mean making the lighting much

that every film hes shot since Movermans

the very low end, like around 10 IREs at

lens; this room is telling me thats the source

youre seeing Gael, youre not seeing the

lighting. We designed the room with a

person had to be searched and every piece

the light from a sodium-vapor lamp, and

some connections in Tehran, and he found

The death of her husband years ago

One day I passed the exam to film school,

The production was the first feature

The Babadook photos by Matt Nettheim, SMPSP, courtesy of IFC Midnight.

we had a very static camera where Amelia

Everything for us was motivated by the

Other in-camera effects are sprinkled

for the lighting aesthetic to complement

decided to create an old feeling through

Top: The main set,

elements and added some black lamps and

Peppers work onscreen. After a few days

and yellows, working with keys to fix our

hot by Hoyte van Hoytema, FSF, NSC, Interstellar is the

Unit photography by Melinda Sue Gordon,

Ex-NASA test pilot

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