NOVEMBER 2016

A M E R I C A N C I N E M ATO G R A P H E R N OV E M B E R 2 0 1 6 A S H V S E V I L D E A D T H E B I RT H O F A N AT I O N T H E AC C O U N TA N T A M O N S T E R C A L L S VO L . 9 7 N O. 1 1
N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 6 V O L . 9 7 N O . 1 1

An International Publication of the ASC

On Our Cover: Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) continues his fight against the armies of
darkness in the series Ash vs Evil Dead, with the aid of cinematographers Dave Garbett
and John Cavill. (Photo by Matt Klitscher, courtesy of Starz Entertainment.)

FEATURES
30 Return of the King
Dave Garbett and John Cavill share cinematography duties
40
on the comedy-horror series Ash vs Evil Dead

40 Rising Up
Elliot Davis crafts a period palette for the true story of
The Birth of a Nation

50 Connecting the Pieces

Seamus McGarvey, ASC, BSC shoots on film for the thriller
The Accountant 50

62 A Friend in Need
scar Faura weaves fantasy into the human drama of
A Monster Calls

DEPARTMENTS
62
10 Editors Note
12 Presidents Desk
14 Short Takes: Lorne
20 Production Slate: Mr. Robot Berlin Station
72 Filmmakers Forum: On location with the Ute Mountain Youth
76 New Products & Services
80 International Marketplace
81 Classified Ads
82 Ad Index
84 In Memoriam: Frederic Goodich, ASC
86 Clubhouse News
88 ASC Close-Up: Mandy Walker

VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM
 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 6 V O L . 9 7 N O . 1 1

An International Publication of the ASC

ACCESS APPROVED
New digital outreach by American Cinematographer means more in-depth coverage for you.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE FEATURE

WESTWORLD
Paul Cameron, ASC set the tone for this ambitious HBO sci-fi
series, and here discusses his work on the pilot episode, directed
by executive producer and writer Jonathan Nolan. Based on the
1973 film written and directed by Michael Crichton, the new
series delves deeper into this Disneyland-with-blood-and-sex
world where the very rich can come to play.

Basically the structure of the series is very similar to the film,

Cameron asserts. Its a Western theme park and the robots, which are now called hosts, populate the town and interact with
the guests as they desire. We also get a lot more of the behind-the-scenes of the park in the diagnostic and manufacturing areas,
and we get to see the inner workings.

With the support of HBO and Nolan, the decision was made to shoot Westworld on 35mm film.
Fortunately, in my very first conversation with Jonathan, I asked him if he had any interest in
shooting film and he said they had already decided to do that, recalls Cameron. It was fabulous
to shoot film again; it was just a dream.
Get all this and much
more via theasc.com and our
The biggest challenge on a show like this is to give it a big, cinematic scale, the cinematographer social-media platforms.
says. There were day-to-day challenges, of course, but everyone rose to the occasion and worked
together to make this something special.

Youll find ACs complete story online at theasc.com.

www.theasc.com
 N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 6 V o l . 9 7 , N o . 1 1
An International Publication of the ASC

Visit us online at www.theasc.com

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF and PUBLISHER

Stephen Pizzello

WEB DIRECTOR and ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER
David E. Williams

EDITORIAL
MANAGING EDITOR Jon D. Witmer
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Andrew Fish
TECHNICAL EDITOR Christopher Probst
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Benjamin B, Rachael K. Bosley, Mark Dillon, Michael Goldman, Simon Gray, Jay Holben, Noah Kadner,
Debra Kaufman, Iain Marcks, Matt Mulcahey, Jean Oppenheimer, Phil Rhodes, Patricia Thomson
PODCASTS
Jim Hemphill, Iain Stasukevich, Chase Yeremian
BLOGS
Benjamin B; John Bailey, ASC; David Heuring
WEB DEVELOPER Jon Stout

ART & DESIGN
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Marion Kramer
PHOTO EDITOR Kelly Brinker

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

American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 96th year of publication, is published monthly in Hollywood by
ASC Holding Corp., 1782 N. Orange Dr., Hollywood, CA 90028, U.S.A.,
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6
 American Society of Cinematographers
The ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but
an educational, cultural and professional
organization. Membership is by invitation
to those who are actively engaged as
directors of photography and have
demonstrated outstanding ability. ASC
membership has become one of the highest
honors that can be bestowed upon a
professional cinematographer a mark
of prestige and excellence.

OFFICERS - 2016/2017
Kees van Oostrum
President
Bill Bennett
Vice President
Lowell Peterson
Vice President
Dean Cundey
Vice President
Levie Isaacks
Treasurer
David Darby
Acting Secretary
Roberto Schaefer
Sergeant-at-Arms

MEMBERS OF THE
BOARD
John Bailey
Bill Bennett
Curtis Clark
Richard Crudo
Fred Elmes
Michael Goi
Victor J. Kemper
Stephen Lighthill
Daryn Okada
Woody Omens
Robert Primes
Cynthia Pusheck
Owen Roizman
John Simmons
Kees van Oostrum

ALTERNATES
Roberto Schaefer
Mandy Walker
Karl Walter Lindenlaub
Oliver Bokelberg
Dean Cundey

MUSEUM CURATOR
Steve Gainer
8
 Editors Note The Evil Dead franchise was first unleashed upon audiences in
1981, delighting horror fans with its gonzo blend of gory
violence, outrageous humor and cartoon-like visual gags. The
original movies eccentric, ultra-kinetic camerawork (by cine-
matographer Tim Philo) launched the careers of director Sam
Raimi and lantern-jawed star Bruce Campbell (playing
resourceful Deadite-killer Ash, who has since evolved into a
chainsaw-wielding cult hero).
The Starz network brought Ash and his gruesome
antics to television viewers last season with Ash vs Evil Dead, a
series shot on location in Auckland, New Zealand. Cinematog-
raphers Dave Garbett and John Cavill shared the workload on
the 10 episodes of season one; for season two, Garbett shot
seven episodes with Kevin Riley serving as director of photography for three. Assessing the
shows style for ACs Australian correspondent, Simon Gray (Return of the King, page 30),
Garbett notes that he and Cavill set out to honor the look and feel of the original films. The
main idea John and I had for the camerawork was to always have some form of movement, a
background tremor or resonance that maintains a constant visual tension.
The Birth of a Nation treads more wrenching, historical terrain in its depiction of the 1831
slave rebellion led by Nat Turner. Director and star Nate Parker, who also co-wrote the movies
screenplay, had an ambitious plan to create a period drama on an indie budget. Helping him to
achieve this vision was cinematographer Elliot Davis, who reveals to Patricia Thomson (Rising
Up, page 40) that the movie is actually about the present reality of America. We never wanted
the audience to forget that. Furthering that goal, the filming technique is almost all handheld,
with Steadicam and the occasional dolly shot, he says. This was to ensure the feeling of
modern immediacy.
Also featured this month are projects that called for their respective cinematographers to
create cerebrally motivated but action-driven suspense (The Accountant, shot by Seamus McGar-
vey, ASC, BSC), and a fantastical blend of visual effects, 2D animation and live action (A Monster
Calls, shot by scar Faura). Veteran correspondents Mark Dillon (Connecting the Pieces, page
50) and Michael Goldman (A Friend in Need, page 62) have crafted thorough overviews of
each production.
***
This months In Memoriam (page 84), penned by managing editor Jon D. Witmer, honors
the memory of a true ASC stalwart: cinematographer Frederic Goodich, who passed away on
August 30 at age 76.
Freds passion for cinematography was equalled only by his devotion to film students and
the ASC. At the time of his passing he had recently been elected to a sixth consecutive term as
secretary of the Societys Board of Governors, while also serving as chairman of the International
Committee and as an enthusiastic member of the Spotlight Award Committee. His many other
Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.

achievements are saluted in Jons piece.

All of us here at the magazine will miss Freds boundless energy and tireless contributions
to the realm of cinematography. I also appreciated his wry humor and his eclectic taste in movies,
which led to many long and lively cineaste chats.

Stephen Pizzello
10 Editor-in-Chief and Publisher
 Presidents Desk
The Great Wall

No, Im not going to talk about the proposed wall of a certain presidential hopeful. Im referring instead to the
Great Wall of China, which expanded from its earliest incarnations to span a staggering 13,000 miles. For
centuries this wall protected the Chinese dynasties from invasion and helped shape a sense of Chinese cultural
superiority.
In the upcoming American-Chinese coproduction The Great Wall, Hollywood star Matt Damon scales and
rappels that wall with Jason Bourne empowerment. With an estimated budget of $135 million the highest
ever for a movie shot completely in China The Great Wall was directed by one of Chinas finest filmmakers,
Zhang Yimou, and photographed by Stuart Dryburgh, ASC, NZCS.
Its clear from the trailer and the PR surrounding the production that nothing but the best in action-adventure
is to be expected. The film promises eye-shattering visual effects and sweeping historical landscapes never photographed before.
Dryburgh decided to shoot the film largely with Arris Alexa 65 camera, providing incredible detail and resolution.
To put it mildly, movies are popular in China. Just this year, the countrys box office has already exceeded 30 billion yuan
($4.5 billion), and the country has produced around 660 films. The explosion in film production has been so dramatic that Hollywood
production companies are constantly being courted if not simply bought lock, stock and barrel by Chinese investors.
The Great Wall among a number of announced action-adventure films is the result of a continuing evolution of
Chinese-American coproductions. But, even though our visual-effects wizardry can take us over the Great Wall at a speed unequaled
in the landmarks 3,000-year history, the question remains: What happens when we land on the other side?
Well, we land in a cultural morass made all the more complex thanks to the enigmatic human factor. After all, in addi-
tion to our wishful fantasies of superhuman abilities, films represent an expression of our shared cultural feelings, desires and ideas.
And those cultures are fundamentally different between China and America.
Our modern cultural exchange began in 1971, when the U.S. table-tennis team was invited to visit Beijing for a friendly
pingpong game. Another historical marker was reached the next year, with President Nixons visit to China. In what is likely an apoc-
ryphal tale, Nixon misinterpreted Chairman Maos gift of a bag containing 200g of Da Hong Pao tea, and asked why he received
such a seemingly small amount. The bag constituted half of that years harvest and was exceedingly valuable. In fact, in todays
market, The Great Walls budget of $135 million would buy just 108kg of Da Hong Pao tea, if available!
Indeed, pingpong is a fitting metaphor for our relationship with China.
One can only wonder what cultural issues we might encounter in the future. How will it work when we get past the block-
buster coproductions? How will we address a shared desire to produce movies together that represent the fabric of our disparate
cultures? What will happen to the onscreen depictions of popular American culture, including music, food, literature and film not
to mention our philosophies and democratic system?
We have to acknowledge that our inherited cultures are vastly different, and we have to find the model in which content
can be produced that will be of interest to both continents. At stake are American cinematic touchstones such as Kramer vs. Kramer;
The Graduate; Taxi Driver; Brokeback Mountain; Selma; Dallas Buyers Club; The Big Lebowski; Good Night, and Good Luck; Erin
Brockovich you get my drift. Our cultures are a world apart. Where the Chinese speak proudly of their long history, Americans
tend to speak proudly of the melting pot.
Zhang Yimou has made some extraordinary Chinese films, including House of Flying Daggers and Raise the Red Lantern.
He has consistently demanded our Western attention, and it is encouraging that he was chosen to head up the making of The Great
Photo by Jacek Laskus, ASC, PSC.

Wall. He might very well be writing the next chapter in the history that began with pingpong diplomacy and the story of Nixons
Da Hong Pao tea incident. But it will probably be the often merciless judgment of our movie culture that ultimately decides whether
we are going to be able to produce movies together in the future up the Yin Yang.

Kees van Oostrum

ASC President

12 November 2016 American Cinematographer

 Short Takes
In the short Lorne, the title character (Guy Pearce) has perhaps been alone in the wild for too long.
I Campfire Tale
By Michael Wylam
The eponymous lead character (played by Guy Pearce) in the
short film Lorne has grown paranoid from his extended isolation in the
wild. After a lone traveler stumbles across his campfire, Lorne engages
the visitor in a monologue, sharing musings and memories, and
slowly resolves to face his own existential fears. Solitude will do that
to a man he remarks.
Director Jesse Leaman had been discussing the story with
Pearce for some time before I was hired as the cinematographer. We
sought a painterly look that would translate Lornes psychology into
the cinematography while still retaining a sense of dramatic realism,
and I wanted to employ subtle cues that would suggest photograph-
ically that we were being drawn into the characters world. I like to
think of a scene or an act like a symphony: Light and composition are
constantly reacting and building to serve the story. I would apply this
philosophy to the fractured landscape of Lornes mind.
We had a limited budget and only one day to shoot the movie,
working in a remote forest in Victoria, Australia. The location itself was
to be a character, and we found a clearing that gave us the right
scenery and background depth for the nighttime campfire scene,
which accounts for 13 of the shorts 15-minute run time. I was espe-
cially taken with a particular plant, Xanthorrhoea johnsonii a.k.a.
the grass tree which was prevalent in small clusters in this clear-
ing; it had a character I felt was unique and somewhat foreboding,
and it would help me in sculpting the space with light. Leaman
remarked that my British sensibilities and foreigners eye lent fresh
discovery and meaning to a familiar landscape.
14 November 2016 American Cinematographer
Just beyond the woods, we happened to find an old, aban-
doned Melbourne tram sitting solemnly in a large field. Inside stood
a warped upright piano, decaying but intact. The tram offered a
symbolism that instinctively felt right, so Leaman and Pearce master-
fully wove this second location into the beginning of the story.
We shot in the tram during the day ahead of our night shoot
in the forest. My intention was to introduce a low-key look to this
opening daytime scene with soft washes of controlled light brushing
through the trams windows, which further softened the quality of
the light, thanks to their age and dust. We shaped the natural
daylight look with an Arri M90 HMI through a 4'x4' Full Grid, 6'x6'
Half Grid and a 12'x12' Half Grid stacked in the field outside the
tram. Inside, we also rigged 2' four-bank Kino Flos with double 216
diffusion and an egg crate, giving us a soft, controlled light to
complement the M90 in specific places. We then arranged cutters
and negative fill to create subtle layers of shadow and subtraction for Photos by Matt Dunne, courtesy of the filmmakers.
Pearce to move through, lending some further character and realism
to the scene.
This additional location allowed us to expand Lornes physical
and psychological geography, and helped us give the camerawork
itself a story arc. The upcoming forest scene would comprise point-
of-view shots from the visitors perspective, so here in the tram I
sought a compositional language that would guide the viewer into
Lornes complex emotional world. A series of lingering frames punc-
tuate the opening of the film, and then the camera loosens up,
reflecting Lornes headspace as he starts to feel at ease and settles in
near the old piano.
At the sudden sound of a gunshot, Lorne flees the tram and
runs across the field. A long drone shot follows Lorne from a birds-
 eye perspective, which stands in juxtaposi-
tion to the intimacy developed in the tram.
This sense of dissociation grows as he nears
the expanse of forest and the camera tilts up
to fully reveal the landscape.
This aerial shot was expertly handled
by Jack Garnett, who used a DJI Inspire 1
drone and its integrated 4K camera, record-
ing onto MiniSD cards. Our primary camera
for the movie was a Red Epic Mysterium-X,
and we were concerned about the drone
cameras ability to match the Epics footage.
Due to the time of day and weather condi-
tions, we had to boost the drone cameras
ISO out of its comfort zone to 400, but we
were able to do a de-noise pass during post-
production to help the shot match.
My approach to our nighttime forest
scene was to light as naturally as possible
while introducing subtle permutations to
mirror Lornes mental state. This was
achieved to some degree in the grade
working with colorist Edel Rafferty at
Method Studios as we shifted from a
silvery moonlight to a more cyan look that
contrasted with the golden tones of Lornes
campfire, pushing the world into a feeling of
unease. Our budget didnt allow for the use
of helium balloons, and in fact our lighting
plan was limited by the combined 12K maxi-
mum capacity of our two 6K generators.
And, as happens, much of what we planned
during preproduction evolved during the
blocking. Working with gaffer Tom Savige
Top: Lorne finds a disused piano in an abandoned tram. Middle: The crew readies the tram and his crew, we were able to react quickly,
location. Bottom: Cinematographer Michael Wylam (center) meters the light inside the tram. without prolonging our setup time.
Our key light as Pearce approached

16 November 2016 American Cinematographer

 The paranoid
Lorne confronts
a lone traveler.
the campsite was a battery-powered Kino
Flo Celeb dimmed to 24 percent, with 216
diffusion on the barn doors and pushed
through a 4'x4' frame of 216. We rigged 14
Kino tubes, wrapped in double 250 diffu-
sion, on tree branches outside of frame to
punctuate key areas of the action and to
emulate soft moonlight spilling through the
forest canopy. A four-bank Kino Flo served
as a kicker on Pearce, which we diffused for
close-ups. We also placed one M18 HMI
deep in the background to give an edge to
the foliage, and another to rake through the
forest. Other, smaller lights reading 3-5
stops under key were placed deep in the
background for added depth in a 360-
degree move. Additionally, a Robe Fog 1500
FT smoke machine fitted with two 30m-long
and 400mm-wide lay-flat tubes provided an
even spread of subtle atmosphere.
John Sanders special-effects team
worked with the art department to dig two
flame bars into the set so I could control the
levels and placement of our firelight. This
was supplemented with gold stipple, which
Savige nimbly edged into the negative side
during each take, helping to wrap the fire-
light around Pearces face. We shot the night
exterior with three Zeiss Super Speed Mark
III primes 18mm, 50mm and 85mm
and for each focal length, we let the entire
13-minute scene play out in one complete
take. We therefore had to adjust the inten-
sity of the firelight over the course of each
take, and Sanders had to rig the gas cylin-
ders 15m away from the flame bars, which
introduced a delay in our onscreen adjust-
ments, requiring precise timing and fore-
thought.
18 November 2016
Because the forest scene is entirely
from the visitors point of view, the camera
had to be a character and, as I was operat-
ing, my performance had to include
subtle cues and reactions. Pearce and I
quickly found a rhythm with our 13-minute
takes. I enjoyed this dance, and I was
constantly impressed with 1st AC Austin
Haighs ability to keep things sharp as we
jumped over bushes and other obstacles
while reacting instinctively to Pearces perfor-
mance. I shot at a stop of T2, and we used
the shallow depth of field and occasional
dips in focus to our advantage, underscoring
the main characters loose grasp on reality.
After testing, we decided to shoot at
5K resolution and 5:1 compression, record-
ing to RedMag SSDs. We set the Epics ISO
to 1,280 for the night scene and the
cameras native 800 for the day scene. We
were amazed at how little noise we saw in
the night footage and found there was no
need to apply any de-noising in post.
We chose to frame for the 2.39:1
aspect ratio because we liked the way it
places a single character in an environment,
lending emptiness and a sense of encroach-
ing danger room for paranoia to the
frame. And we opted for spherical because
we didnt want the weight, stop limitations
and depth of field inherent to anamorphic. I
also particularly like the softness and
reduced contrast the Super Speed lenses
deliver when paired with digital formats; we
further molded character into the image
with a range of Tiffen Digital Diffusion/FX
filters, which enhanced the painterly look I
wanted.
We sought a slightly aged palette of
American Cinematographer
desaturated greens and golds, which would
ground the short in an earthy tone and place
Lorne within the environment as if he had
become part of it. We treated the footage
very lightly in the grade, as much of the look
was achieved in-camera. Working with
Blackmagic Designs DaVinci Resolve,
Rafferty delicately executed the subtle
nuances we sought. For the campfire scene,
I referenced some of Laszlo Kovacs, ASCs
work on Easy Rider, but overall the look was
inspired by a painting called The Sheepfold,
Moonlight, by Jean-Franois Millet. The
moonlight in the painting has a glowing,
pearlescent quality to it that really resonated
with me.
Although our means were limited
as they always are on a short project our
crew in all departments were exceptional,
and realizing our shared vision within our
limitations was every bit as exhilarating as it
was challenging. It was also a pleasure
collaborating with Leaman and Pearce; we
all trusted and pushed each other to find the
truth in the scene. Creativity blesses a set
when like-minded people come together to
craft a story that you hope will resonate with
an audience. I truly believe that on-set
atmosphere translates to magic in the frame.
This project had a unique vision from the
outset, and seeing it realized on the big
screen recently was an extremely rewarding
experience. It was a great honor to be a part
of.
The trailer for Lorne can be viewed at
https://vimeo.com/leamanfilms/lornetrailer.
 Production Slate
Elliot Alderson
(Rami Malek,
left) has an
exchange with
the titular
hacktivist
(Christian Slater)
in the series
Mr. Robot.
Cinematographer
Tod Campbell
often places
characters low in
the frame,
beneath an
oppressive
amount of
headroom.

I Radical Hackers
By Iain Marcks
Mr. Robot tells the story of Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), a
young cyber-security engineer who suffers from social-anxiety disor-
der and clinical depression. In the shows first season, Elliot is
recruited into a group of hacktivists led by the surly anarchist known
as Mr. Robot (Christian Slater). The group aims to erase all debts
At that point, Id only read the script for the first episode, so the look
of the show changed as we saw the story unfold. Going into season
two I was able to read all 10 scripts [prior to production], and I could
arc the photography over the course of the season because I knew
what the end of the story was. For season three, well adapt a little
more I imagine.
What are these rules that you mentioned?
Campbell: Composition is a big one. In season one we used

Mr. Robot photos by Michael Parmelee, courtesy of USA Network.

by cyber-attacking large corporations. The second season deals with
the fallout of their success. Both seasons were photographed by
cinematographer Tod Campbell, who, along with director and
showrunner Sam Esmail, set out to break as many rules of image
composition as they could. Their success has yielded one of the most
unique-looking shows on television.
American Cinematographer: Since Mr. Robot first aired,
one of the things people continue talking about is how strik-
ing the show is visually the way you short-sight the char-
acters and place them low in the frame, emphasizing isolation
and oppression with massive amounts of headroom. Having
set such a specific look, how does your visual approach evolve
from season to season?
Tod Campbell: When we started shooting season one, Sam
and I knew what we wanted to do compositionally, and we installed
some basic rules to follow because he wouldnt direct every episode.
a 32mm lens on Elliot in every single shot, including his close-ups. In
season two we decided to use a 21mm; Elliot thinks he is at his
moms house when he is actually in prison, and going to a wider lens
allowed us to change the feeling of the background while keeping
him the same size in the frame. We also try to be open-minded and
flexible thats kind of a rule in its own right.
What evolved from a technical standpoint?
Campbell: A lot of our compositions make use of straight
lines [within the frame], and that was very difficult with the wider
Cooke 5/i lenses. Right after Robot season one I shot Stranger Things
with Tim Ives, who was using Leica Summilux-C primes. When I
came back to Robot we switched to the Leicas. I like them because
theyre so beautiful, and its a flatter lens, which helped us make our
compositions a bit straighter.
Did you change the lighting?
Campbell: One of my main goals was to really tell the story
with lighting. In season two we dont use a lot of fill light with Elliot.

20 November 2016 American Cinematographer


Campbell
(second from
right),
showrunner
Sam Esmail (far
right) and crew
plan their next
move.
Sometimes you only get to see one eye.
Theres this cloudiness that surrounds him
because the truth of his environment is
obscured.
Did your crew stay the same?
Campbell: A-camera first assistant
Michael Garofalo and B-camera first Wes
Hodges have been with me for both seasons.
Theyre incredible focus pullers, considering
were never above a T2. I had the same key
grip, Richie Guinness [Jr.], and hes the person
I lean on the heaviest; he is literally my right-
hand man. I can show up to work in the
morning and everything is built and ready to
go. Rigging key William Kerwick and his team
go above and beyond. Gaffer Charlie Grubbs
and rigging gaffer John Woods also really just
blow me away.
Whats your shooting schedule
like?
Campbell: In season one we had
seven days to shoot an hour-long episode, so
we had to move very quickly, shooting seven
to nine pages a day. Going into season two
we had eight days an episode. We did the
first four episodes in one block, went on
hiatus, then came back and shot two three-
episode blocks. Some days might touch all 10
episodes if youre trying to shoot out one
location in a single day.
How involved are your camera
operators Craig Haagensen, Aaron
Medick and Brian Jackson in designing
your shots and compositions?
Campbell: When I first met with
Craig, he came in with tons of stills and video
references and we went through them all. I
told him, Look, I know youve been doing
this for almost as long as Ive been alive, so
this is going to seem very awkward and
22 November 2016
bizarre. Aaron has been the Steadicam guy
for both seasons so far, and he was also our
A-camera operator for season two, when
Brian came into the B-camera position. Both
of these guys quickly adapted to the uncon-
ventional framing, and that first episode we
did together, thats where we found it. Now
well set up a shot and Sam will either love
it or hate it or noodle with it a little bit until
we find that Robot shot.
Does the framing affect the
kinds of sets and locations you shoot
in?
Campbell: It definitely influences
our locations because were looking for
things a more conventionally photographed
show might not consider. For instance,
when we do our scouts we look at the lines
in the ceiling, which will more often than
not be in-frame. In some locations, the floor
is terrible, but we dont have to worry about
it because we know mostly well never even
see the floor.
I imagine this poses some unique
challenges for your locations managers
and production designers.
Campbell: Sam is with us on every
scout, and we decide on the locations
together. He wants to make sure everyone
is happy with the locations we choose.
Demian Resnick, the locations manager
from season one, was very aware of it and
would come to us with photos of just ceil-
ings. Anastasia White [took over as produc-
tion designer for] season two. Shed worked
with us once before as an art director. Shes
very smart and aware of whats going to be
on-camera. It was a language we were all
speaking.
How much do you rely on visual
American Cinematographer
effects to help you tell the story?
Campbell: Sams not crazy about
visual effects, so we try to keep it minimal.
Sometimes we cant get around it for things
like gunshots and blood spurts due to the
reset time [necessary for practical effects]. Any
time we have a larger shot, like the scene
where Elliot is released from prison and the
camera tilts up from the basketball court to
the sky, then back down to the prison yard, Ill
request that the supervisors come with us on
the tech scout. Theyll always be there on the
day, even for the smallest stuff.
Are they helping you design these
shots?
Campbell: I definitely look to them for
creative input. I can tell you where the suns
going to be, how the actors will be blocked,
and I can shoot greenscreen all day long, but
I cant tell you exactly what were going to
need to pull off a complicated visual-effects
shot.
Do you like to color grade on set?
Campbell: We shoot Robot in 5K
[Redcode] raw with Red Weapons, and when
Im shooting I try to get the image as close as
I possibly can to what its going to look like
when people stream it or watch it on TV. I had
the Low-Light Optimized optical low-pass
filter installed in each camera, and our LUT
starts at 10-percent desaturation, with the
blacks slightly lifted. Theres a little warmth in
there. Sometimes Sam will want to change a
shot with subtle white-balance shifts and
maybe some contrast tweaks, but largely we
do it all on set before it goes to colorist Laura
Jans Fazio at [Deluxes] Encore in Hollywood.
[Ed. note: Fazio works with a FilmLight Base-
light system and delivers 1920x1080 HD files.]
It might be slightly darker on television
because of the compression, but if you dont
go that far right away and everyone at the
studio gets used to seeing dailies look a
certain way, they freak out the minute you
change it in the grade. Our DIT, Doug Horton,
has been with us for both seasons. Hes also
my therapist when Im freaking out about
how dark the image is.
What kind of technical support did
you receive from the camera house?
Campbell: NBCUniversal has a rental
contract with Sim Digital out of Montreal; we
shoot on location in New York City, and we
used TCS in New York City as our point of
contact. Erik Schietinger is one of the owners
 there, and he comes to set every couple of
weeks just to check in on us. We started season
one with the Red Epic Dragon, then switched
to Weapons for season two. At one point we
ran into a problem, and TCS got together with
Red and had a team of techs come out to
switch our [Weapon] cameras with Epics. After
they solved the problem, they came back with
our four Weapons so we briefly had eight
camera bodies but by that time we were
already on episode seven, so I just stuck to the
Epics. Thanks to Erik and everyone at TCS, we
were able to keep going without a hiccup.
After sharing directing duties for
the first season, Sam directed every
episode of season two. Whats it like to
work with a director whos also the series
creator, showrunner and primary writer?
Campbell: Its amazing to work on set
with the guy whos in control, and who can
make last-minute creative decisions or rewrite a
scene because the light changed on us.
Because hes directing every episode, its more
like shooting a feature. From a professional
perspective, hes a perfectionist and knows
exactly what he wants. He keeps a positive atti-
tude all day, even when things get out of our
control. On a personal level, now that were
through shooting season two, I miss not hang-
ing out with him on set every day. He makes us
all laugh constantly.
It sounds like youre very close to a
lot of people on the cast and crew. How
important is it to maintain a positive
personal bond with your collaborators?
Campbell: For me, the personal rela-
tionships are just as important as the technical
ones. A lot of people have the technical under-
standing and the knowledge, but its important
to also find someone that shares a similar style
to yours, someone you can get along with or
hang out with when youre not at work. My
camera operators, my key grip and gaffer, the
DIT were friends. Its really important. Thats
one of the reasons it comes out so well. We
make a better show because everyone is happy
to be there.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.78:1
Digital Capture
Red Epic Dragon, Weapon
Cooke 5/i, Leica Summilux-C
24 November 2016
Field agent Daniel Miller (Richard Armitage) works to unearth a mole in the CIA
in the series Berlin Station.
I Spy Game
By Jon D. Witmer
Theres a mole in the CIA. Operating
under the name Thomas Shaw, he or she
has been channeling highly classified and
often damning information not to
another clandestine organization, but to the
general public. Field agent Daniel Miller
(Richard Armitage) has been assigned to the
agencys Berlin office to bring Shaw out of
the shadows, but his net of suspicion is
necessarily cast wide, and none of his fellow
operatives is privy to his mission.
The series Berlin Station began airing
on television network Epix in October. Five
directors each took the reins of two episodes
for the first season, beginning with Michal
R. Roskam who also served as an execu-
tive producer and continuing with
Christoph Schrewe, Giuseppe Capotondi,
John Coles and Joshua Marston. On for the
duration were cinematographer Hagen
Bogdanski and 2nd-unit director-cinematog-
rapher Ralph Kaechele. Although they
hadnt worked together previously, they
quickly developed a rapport that carried
throughout the Berlin-based shoot, which
began in November 2015 and lasted
through this past April.
Berlin Station marks Bogdanskis first
foray into episodic television, and for the
project he elected to work with Arri Alexa
American Cinematographer
Plus cameras, recording 2K ProRes 4:4:4
files to SxS cards. The cameras were paired
predominantly with Arri/Zeiss Ultra Primes
by the first unit, and Angenieux Optimo 45-
120mm (T2.8) and Optimo Style 16-40mm
(T2.8) zooms by the second. Kaechele also
utilized Sony a7S II and GoPro Hero4
cameras to emulate surveillance footage,
and Arris Alexa M for an underwater scene
and Alexa Mini for car interiors. Arri Media
provided dailies services during production,
and when Bogdanski and Kaechele spoke
Berlin Station photos by Stephanie Kulbach, courtesy of Epix and Paramount TV.
with AC, the first-unit cinematographer was
in the midst of the final grade at Deluxes
Encore in Hollywood, where senior colorist
Pankaj Bajpai was working with 2K files on
a FilmLight Baselight system for a final
1920x1080 HD delivery.
American Cinematographer:
How did you define the shows style?
Hagen Bogdanski: We wanted to
present a modern spy story in Berlin not
the typical Sixties, Cold War, Russians-
against-the-Americans story. The main goal
was to show Berlin as it is now, and how it
has transformed into a big, international,
cosmopolitan city.
Ralph, during production, how
often would you check in with the
main unit?
Ralph Kaechele: Whenever I had
the time I was trying to swing by the set and

Station chief Steven Frost (Richard Jenkins) finds himself in deep water
during a nightmare sequence.
look at what the director and Hagen were
doing. Even if it was on a set I was pretty sure
I wasnt going to shoot on, it helped to get
deeper into the style and how the directors
would work. Id send out emails at night with
specific questions for Hagen or the directors,
and sometimes they would swing by [the
second units] set. If I had a lighting question,
I had my gaffers Andr Poser and Axel Scholz
contact the main units gaffer, Janosch Voss,
or the rigging gaffer, Stephan Rother.
[Throughout the production] I was involved in
all the head-of-department meetings, where
we went through the script and addressed all
the needs for every department that was
crucial. We also had a great digital cloud-
dailies system, where I could watch main
units footage and they could watch my
footage.
Bogdanski: In modern filmmaking,
the workload is so big and the actors sched-
ules are so limited that you cannot work with-
out a full additional-photography unit
anymore. You need a second-unit cinematog-
rapher and director to understand the visuals
of the whole show and what the director
wants. That requires a lot of meetings, a lot of
time, a lot of work, but without it I think it
would be impossible to shoot a show like this
on schedule.
How did your interaction with
showrunner Bradford Winters and
creator Olen Steinhauer compare with
your interaction with the episode direc-
tors?
26 November 2016
Bogdanski: Olen and Brad gave
their input, but on a very subtle note. They
were looking out for the dialogue, and
whenever the actors had questions about
their characters past, then Olen or Brad
would step in. Not what the actors had to
do now this is the directors job but
more about the context and where they
came from. The director was really running
the set.
Kaechele: Olen and Brad would
sometimes split up, and one of them would
be on the main-unit set and the other
would come over to my set. They would be
there to advise on how things should feel
and what they thought were important
beats, but leave all the rest up to the direc-
tor and cinematographer. Michal Roskam
was the driving force of the style of the
show. When I talked to him, it really became
obvious that he favors the 32mm lens, and
he likes to keep the camera low, and he
likes to set everything up in long takes.
Were the four directors who
succeeded Roskam primarily following
his blueprint?
Bogdanski: Every director brought
his own energy and his own view to the
show, but still they were very accepting [of
what had already been established]. We
tried to give every director as much freedom
as possible while still maintaining the look.
We had five directors, but we didnt want it
to look like five different films.
Ralph, did your work evolve over
American Cinematographer
the 10 episodes to mirror the differing
sensibilities of the main-unit directors?
Kaechele: The job evolved quite a
bit. I always tried to put myself in the differ-
ent directors heads. It was really interesting
to observe and to translate their work into
what I had to do and to make it seamless.
The second units goal is to be completely
invisible.
For the first two episodes it was actu-
ally fairly traditional second-unit work:
establishing shots, inserts, driving shots,
camera vehicles. The main unit had 11 to 12
shoot days, and we had four to five for
second unit. That all changed with the
beginning of the third episode. Main unit
had a few days less per episode, which were
added onto my schedule I was handed
entire scenes to direct and shoot.
Bogdanski: Because Ralph did such
a great job, his job became more and more
important. It evolved, and I dont think it
was second unit anymore it was an addi-
tional unit that really supported the story
and supported every individual director. Im
sure it became more interesting for Ralph,
and it definitely became more important for
us as the first unit.
Hagen, by the time you came
onto the show, was production
designer Marco Bittner Rosser already
constructing the sets?
Bogdanski: He and Michal were
on board already when I came in, which is
typical. But the main set, the CIA headquar-
ters, was not built yet, so they asked me,
What do you think? How do we want to
incorporate the lighting fixtures? I was
happy they were building it in the studio [at
Studio Babelsberg]. Ninety percent of the
show was on location, because we wanted
to show Berlin and therefore we had to go
out into the city.
The CIA station was a completely
self-lit set. We bought industrial LEDs that
we incorporated into the set on a dimmer
board. It was programmed for different
lighting setups, but there were no tradi-
tional fixtures no HMIs, not even any
traditional LED fixtures from any big brands.
We were not able to dim the LEDs down
properly, so we had to build in three stripes
and, instead of dimming, we switched them
off or on individually. But we could walk in,
hit the button, and off we went. The work-
 Left: Main-unit cinematographer Hagen Bogdanski considers a setup on location in Berlin. Right: Second-unit director-cinematographer Ralph
Kaechele (center, wearing knit cap) orchestrates a driving scene that involved the closure of the main boulevard in front of the Brandenburg Gate.
load was so heavy in the studio we had
nine to 12 pages a day, and sometimes 15
pages, so there was no time to relight.
Theres an underwater scene in
which the office of station chief Steven
Frost [Richard Jenkins] is flooded. How
did you adapt this lighting approach for
that scene?
Kaechele: Its a scene where he has
a nightmarish vision: The ceiling bursts
open, water comes gushing down on him,
and as the water level rises, he gets stuck
inside the office. The office and hallway
were built into the water tank on stage, and
we basically mimicked the lighting from the
regular set. It was really important to have
the practicals in the frame in the water, so
they had to be waterproofed and sealed.
We had underwater specialist Jens Winkler
encase the same LED lights that were used
in the original set, and we also used some
underwater 1,200-watt HMIs.
The underwater scene was a lot of
fun to coordinate. That scene was prepped
for four weeks, and then it was executed in
three days. Raising the water level, main-
taining the chemicals, maintaining the
temperature, and making sure that the set
wouldnt fall apart all of that had to be
precisely planned by the unit managers.
Michael Herbell and, in particular, Tristan
Hume did a fantastic job on that.
Did you have a favorite scene or
sequence from the show?
Bogdanski: My favorite scenes are
always about the actors. I want scenes with
great dialogue, great acting. Thats what I
love. And we had so many good scenes on
28 November 2016
this show. Whenever Richard Jenkins or
Rhys Ifans or Richard Armitage are on the
set, thats what I want.
Kaechele: I think my favorite scene
was shooting three CIA SUVs racing down
the main boulevard in front of the Branden-
burg Gate which is right next to the real
U.S. Embassy honking and chasing away
all of the regular traffic. It was scheduled
for the fourth episode, with director
Christoph Schrewe. MCC supplied all the
camera vehicles for us in Berlin, and they
had their own version of a Russian Arm, the
X2 Arm. It was a remote-controlled arm
with a stabilized head mounted on a
Mercedes vehicle, and we used that to cover
this whole scene, which I choreographed
with the stunt drivers and extra cars. We
shut down that boulevard in front of the
Brandenburg Gate for four or five hours on
a cold, beautiful Saturday morning. We did
the approach seven or eight times, covering
all the angles that we needed.
You both had about a week of
shooting in the Canary Islands. Was
that the last thing you did during prin-
cipal photography?
Bogdanski: Nearly. We went back
to Berlin for another six or seven days of
shooting, and then it was over.
Kaechele: Second unit had a couple
more days after that. At the very end of the
show it was really nice that Hagen was able
to join me for four or five shooting days
we finally got to work together!
Bogdanski: I didnt want to destroy
the workflow of the second unit; I just
wanted to see how they did it and support
American Cinematographer
Ralph as much as possible to bring this ship
safely into the harbor. It was fewer people
than the main unit, so it was a more inti-
mate workflow.
Kaechele: Sometimes we scaled up
to 40, 50 people, and sometimes we were
only 18 people. But the core crew did
almost the entire show with me, so we
became really tight. When Hagen came by
at the end, we would both comment on
where the camera would be, what lens we
would use, how we would do the lighting.
And while he was finessing that, I could
focus on performance and experiment a
little bit more. It was a lot of fun.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.78:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa Plus, M, Mini; Sony a7S II;
GoPro Hero4
Arri/Zeiss Ultra Prime; Angenieux Optimo,
Optimo Style
Erratum
The table of contents in the September
issue incorrectly places the sets for Kubo
and the Two Strings in Vancouver. In fact,
the stop-motion feature was shot at anima-
tion studio Laikas facility in Hillsboro, Ore.
Return of the
King
30 November 2016
Cinematographers Dave Garbett and John Cavill
help lend stylized realism to the horror-comedy
series Ash vs Evil Dead.

American Cinematographer
By Simon Gray
|
 O
nce upon a time, in a cabin in the
woods, a group of college students
awoke an ancient evil that contin-
ues to run rampant through a now
35-year-old horror franchise. Created by
Sam Raimi, the Evil Dead films The
Evil Dead (1981), Evil Dead II and
Army of Darkness were part scares,
part comedy and all blood-and-guts, and
they made an icon of actor Bruce
Campbell, whose performance as the
chainsaw-wielding antihero Ash
Williams left fans clamoring for more.
That wish was granted when, in 2015,
the television network Starz debuted the
series Ash vs Evil Dead, which began
airing its second season in October.
The series rejoins Ash decades
after his last encounter with demon-
possessed Deadites. Having traded his
gore-soaked chainsaw for a set of false
teeth, Ash spends his days as an incom-
petent clerk at the Value Stop, then
squeezes into a girdle before trying to
impress the female patrons of late-night
bars. In a drug-addled attempt to win
over one of those women, Ash reads
from the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, a.k.a.
the Book of the Dead, thereby reawaken-
ing the ancient evil and leaving himself
no choice but to charge back into battle
against the hordes of frenzied Deadites
and their demonic masters.
Cinematographers Dave Garbett
and John Cavill shared the 10 episodes
of season one; for season two, Garbett
Unit photography by Matt Klitscher, courtesy of Starz Entertainment, LLC.

shot seven episodes with Kevin Riley

serving as director of photography for
three. The series is produced in
Auckland, New Zealand, and principal
photography for the first season
commenced in spring of 2015, with the
cinematographers sharing a camera
package that included two Arri Alexa
XTs and a Sony CineAlta PMW-F55;
all cameras were rated at 800 ISO. The
different look of the F55 made things a
bit tricky in the timing, Garbett notes,
but its a lot of camera in a lightweight
package, making it perfect for Movi
shots and when we wanted to just throw
the camera around.
Season ones first episode titled
El Jefe was recorded in ArriRaw,
after which the workflow switched over
Opposite: Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) returns to battle the Deadite hordes and their demonic masters
on the Starz series Ash vs Evil Dead. This page, top: Cinematographer John Cavill (right) preps the
lighting inside Ashs bedroom for a season-two episode. Bottom: Cinematographer Dave Garbett (second
from left, holding camera) eyes a close-up of Campbell.
to Apple ProRes 4:4:4:4 XQ, usually on other projects when the
2048x1152. Season two continued with episodes are finished. I try to at least have
ProRes 4:4:4:4 XQ but upped the reso- a conversation with him prior. He has
lution to 3840x2160. With the excep- done a great job using his own judgment
tion of El Jefe, every episode has been based on original LUTs in polish-
color-graded at Auckland-based ing the series.
Digipost, where Gerard Ward works On-set timing from the cameras
with FilmLights Baselight Two, utiliz- Log C feed was done with Pomforts
ing the latest gen-four software, LiveGrade and Fujifilm IS-minis,
Garbett says. Gerard Ward was the outlines digital-imaging technician
colorist for both seasons after episode Christian Gower. The resulting LUTs
one of season one. Gerard must often fly were passed all the way down the post
solo through the final grade, as were pipeline, so dailies and editorial cuts

www.theasc.com November 2016 31

 Return of the King
Top: Decades after his last encounter with the Deadites, Ash spends his days working as a clerk
at the Value Stop alongside Pablo (Ray Santiago). Bottom: After Ash unleashes an ancient evil by
reading from the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, a.k.a. the Book of the Dead, Pablo and Kelly (Dana
DeLorenzo) battle alongside their chainsaw-enhanced co-worker.
matched exactly what Dave, John and
Kevin had created on-set.
For the first season, the cine-
matographers worked with a Leica
Summilux-C lens package, carrying
18mm, 25mm, 35mm, 50mm, 75mm
and 100mm (all T1.4) focal lengths.
Garbett recalls, Episode one featured a
lot of torchlight, and I had found during
testing that the Leicas had interesting
flare characteristics a lovely blue tone
evident through concentric circles.
Theyre also fast, beautifully made and
very compact. [We combined] these
with Angenieux Optimo 15-40mm
32 November 2016
[T2.6] and 24-290mm [T2.8] zoom
lenses.
Season twos camera and lens
package changed to comprise Arri
Amira and Alexa Mini cameras and
Panavision Primo Primes, as well as
17.5-75mm (T2.3), 19-90mm (T2.8)
and 24-275mm (T2.8) Primo Zooms. I
had been missing the Primos, Garbett
acknowledges. Those lenses have an
interesting something that is hard to
intellectualize. It was also easier to
obtain two full kits, from a 14.5mm up
to a 150mm, with every step in
between. The production also used a
American Cinematographer
small set of Ultra Speeds 24mm,
35mm and 50mm for lightweight
work on rigs such as the Movi M15.
The camera kit was provided by
Paul Lake and his team at Panavision
[New Zealand], Garbett says. They
were hugely supportive of me and very
accommodating of my copious requests
during both seasons, and in particular
during the testing phases.
Raimi directed the first episode,
establishing many of the series stylistic
cornerstones. It was Sams idea to use
kinetic lighting to inject energy into a
shot whenever the Evil Force is present,
notes Garbett. When police detective
Amanda Fisher [ Jill Marie Jones] and
her partner investigate a reported distur-
bance in a country house, they slowly
move through the dark, foreboding house
to an upstairs room, where they
encounter a [young woman] they mistake
as a victim. There are hard shadows
throughout the room, maintaining antic-
ipation and trepidation. Then, when the
Deadite possessing the girl reveals itself
to the detectives, a wind comes from
nowhere and whips the curtains, venetian
blinds and plastic furniture-coverings
helter-skelter. One of the detectives drops
a [flashlight] that spins for much longer
than it should, throwing moving shadows
across the room as bulbs flicker and light-
ning flashes. A sequence that started as
quietly ominous is immediately energized
into something quite crazy. We used this
technique throughout the series to great
dramatic effect.
This lighting motif is comple-
mented with aggressively mobile camer-
awork in particular the wide-angle,
high-speed Evil Force point-of-view
shots that will look familiar to fans of
the Evil Dead films. On those features,
Raimi and his collaborators achieved the
effect with several well-documented DIY
solutions. While Cavill and Garbett had
more modern technology at their
disposal, they nevertheless embraced the
spirit of Raimis earlier methods. There
was no particular rule [to how the effect
was achieved], says Garbett. It just had
to feel Evil Force POV.
For a scene in which Ashs boss,
Mr. Roper (Damien Garvey), is
possessed outside the Value Stop, Garbett
used several techniques to send the
camera careening over, under and
through cars in the locations large park-
ing lot. Moving shots underneath parked
vehicles were achieved with the F55
mounted on a remote-controlled car,
while a more elaborate shot hurtling
across the lot, up and over shopping carts
and into a close-up of the screaming
Garvey was done with the F55 on the
Movi mounted via a quick-release mech-
anism to a Technocrane; the arm brought
the camera low over the ground and up
over the carts before the operator
detached and ran with the Movi to
complete the shot.
Each subsequent director brought
a slightly different approach, Garbett
explains. Rick Jacobson is a big fan of
having the camera on the shoulder. He
likes to shoot at a quick pace, with a lot of
freedom; this is particularly reflected in
action-oriented episodes that have a lot of
cuts and high visual energy. Tony Tilse
and Mark Beesley liked using the 30-foot
Technocrane in season one and the 23-
foot Scorpio throughout season two. The
one thing everyone had in common is the
desire to keep the camera moving. The
Technocrane and Scorpio were run
expertly by key grip Kayne Asher.
The main idea John and I had for
the camerawork was to always have some
form of movement, a background tremor
or resonance that maintains a constant While investigating a country home, police detective Amanda Fisher (Jill Marie Jones, bottom)
comes face to face with Lucy (Marissa Stott), who is possessed by a Deadite.
visual tension, Garbett continues. We
also used moments of emphasis and
punctuation. For example, when some- nation of previous experience and keep- Dead franchise is about.
one runs into frame from around a corner ing my fingers crossed! We didnt over-stylize the visu-
or enters a room, theres a quick push-in Cavill notes, It was instantly als, because the subject matter is already
to a close-up. apparent if the effect had succeeded or so outrageous and insane, explains
Ash vs Evil Dead has achieved not, and we had an amazing special- Garbett. The world had to be visually
many of its imaginatively gory effects in- effects and prosthetics team that could convincing. No matter how insane
camera, but the vagaries of a television make any necessary adjustments on the things get, it should feel grounded, as if
schedule meant there was little time for spot. Its such a good way to work, for these things could possibly be happen-
testing. The special-effects and pros- crew and cast. Even if the effect itself is ing just next door.
thetics departments regularly sent completely absurd, achieving it in- Production designer Nick Bassett
through videos showing us what they camera with Bruce and the others really agrees. Designing a show with a heavy
were working on, but we often didnt see reacting to being hit with gallons of fake use of prosthetics, demonic creatures,
the final prosthetic or effect until the day blood, bits of gore and heaven knows wire work and hyper-violent action, it
it was to be shot, says Garbett. what else was always gold and very was important to keep the sets naturalis-
Laughing, he adds, I relied on a combi- funny pretty much what the Evil tic, he says. Ash vs Evil Dead is horror,

www.theasc.com November 2016 33

 Return of the King
but it is also a comedy, so a lot of effort
was put into making the sets as believable
as possible while maintaining a slightly
whimsical comedic tone. They were
designed so that one establishing shot
told you everything you needed to know
about the space and who inhabited it.
Our scenic team did a great job of surface
texturing and aging. The attention to
detail is a credit to all departments.
The sets also had to accommodate
the shows bouts of dismemberment and
skewering. They had to come apart for
camera and stunt access, Bassett notes.
In Ashs trailer there were wire-rig points
and breakaway cabinets and windows,
while other sets had soft floors and flyable
ceiling pieces. We also had to consider the
many gallons of blood that get dumped
on the sets. Everything has to be sealed
up so the sets dont turn red over the
course of the shoot.
Cavill and Garbett worked with
Bassett and the art department to
prelight each set with domestic practicals,
including tungsten, fluorescent and LED
sources, embracing the flaws of each.
We could walk onto a set with the base
exposure pretty much in the right place,
explains Garbett. Bassett adds, The sets
were plug-and-play 90 percent lit by
practicals. We didnt overthink the color
Above: Demon temperatures, so there is a great mix of
Spawn surround light that gives a kind of 1980s look, espe-
Ruby (Lucy
Lawless) as she cially with atmosphere layered in. Prior to
clutches the Ash vs Evil Dead I had worked on a
Necronomicon succession of shows set before the advent
Ex-Mortis. Right:
The crew of electricity, so the chance to use neon
captures a shot and fluorescent lighting was really excit-
of a Demon ing, and a lot of effort was put into choos-
Spawn attacking
Ruby. ing and building our own practicals.
The cinematographers tended to
maintain a shooting stop of T2.8, and on
sets where space was at a premium, the
actors were typically keyed by either 650-
watt lamps bounced off of calico sheets,
LiteGear LiteMat 1 LED units or
most commonly China balls. For
broader soft key lights, the crew turned to
5Ks or Source Fours again bounced off
thick calico sheets; they also used this
combination as fill in situations when
20Ks were employed to create sunlight or
strong moonlight.
34 November 2016 American Cinematographer
 Return of the King
The crew readies a car-crash scene.
Beyond Ash himself, the charac-
ters 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 has
become an icon of the franchise. At the
beginning of season ones second
episode, Bait, the spacious ride plays
host to a freewheeling fight scene
between Ash, Pablo (Ray Santiago) and
the Deadite-possessed Mr. Roper, even
as the car tows Ashs Airstream trailer
down a country road. For background
plates as well as the location exteriors of
the car, the production chose a length of
road almost a mile long, lined on one
side with 23 sodium-vapor streetlights.
We changed those to mercury lights
that emitted a cool white light, Cavill
notes, and we shot our backgrounds
specific to the angles we were going to be
shooting in the car on the rear-screen
set: out both sides, and from the front
looking through the back window at the
trailer.
At the speed the car and trailer
were traveling, Cavill tested and found
he would need to create the effect of a
streetlight moving across the vehicles
every six seconds to match the lighting
on the backgrounds. So, onstage, Cavill
rigged three 6' Chroma-Q Color Force
72 LED battens in a shallow U shape
lengthwise over the car, with a slight bias
to the drivers side. Another Color Force
72 provided an unmotivated
36 November 2016
amber/sodium traveling light from the
passenger side, recalls Cavill. On loca-
tion there were no streetlights on that
side. There was nothing but paddocks,
but I occasionally needed something
between the streetlights on the fill side,
and the amber light was a good fit.
To further help illuminate the
cars interior when there were no street-
lights, the cinematographer adds, I
pushed a bit of a cold 12 CTB, ambient
base light into the car, using a T12
through a heavily baffled 12-by-12 Full
Silk to create a sourceless night-light; I
ran cutters through it occasionally to
match the sim trav feel. I also used a
thin layer of atmosphere through fans
across the car, which I believe helped
make the backgrounds more credible. I
like to use atmosphere on set. Its moody
and it carries the light; I also like the way
it reaches into the blacks its almost
like free lighting.
Testing had previously revealed
that the 16'x9' rear-projection screens
used onstage which employed 15K
and 20K Christie projectors did not
offer a high level of output, so consider-
able attention had to be paid to eliminat-
ing spill onto the screens. The screens
were giving us a base of T2.0 for day
exteriors, but for night it was more like
T1.0 at 800 ASA, notes Cavill. I shot
American Cinematographer
the night [footage] at 1,280 ASA. The
LEDs put out a lot of light, but it sprays
everywhere. It was an elaborate process,
eliminating all that spill with deep,
baffled snoots on the lamps; blacking out
every surface of the car that wasnt seen
[on camera]; and blacking out the studio
from the camera [and] back.
A Christie 20K projector was
mounted from above on a 45' JLG
knuckle boom and aimed straight down
into a 25'x18' screen positioned over the
car in order to create reflections on the
front windshield. We had shot plates
looking up and forward at the mercury
streetlights so that back in the studio,
shooting through the front of Ashs
Oldsmobile, we could play the reflec-
tions of the streetlights passing over the
windscreen, details Cavill. It was a
finicky undertaking because the Delta is
an old car with a lot of curves. The wind-
screen itself has quite a pronounced curve
as it comes into the pillar; it acted as a
convex mirror, which meant the reflec-
tion screen ended up having to be
lowered until it was virtually touching the
car.
Garbett gives due credit to our
fantastic second-unit cinematographer,
Andrew McGeorge, and his excellent
crew. They did an amazing job over both
seasons supporting us, shooting many
incredible stunts, action, Evil Force
POVs, and often shooting entire
sequences.
In the season-one episode Fire in
the Hole shot by Cavill and directed
by Michael Hurst Ash and Amanda
fall foul of militia survivalists who believe
their friend Lem (Peter Feeney) is the
victim of government chemical testing
and that the duo are agents. Of course,
Lem is in fact a demonically possessed
Deadite, and the handcuffed Ash and
Amanda are the survivalists best hope at
dispatching the demon. Not understand-
ing any of this, the survivalists throw the
pair into their bunker.
Michael embraced the idea that
the survivalists would have emergency
lighting sodium-vapor-colored practi-
cals set into bulkhead fixtures in the set,
says Cavill. It gave great justification for
 Return of the King
Ash finds himself back at the cabin in the woods.
keeping [the set] dark and moody. The
cinematographer brought out back-
ground details with ambient light
created by several 5Ks gelled with 12
CTB and 12 Plus Green. The set did
not have a complete ceiling, so I bounced
38
the lamps off the industrial-foil lining on
the ceiling of our converted-warehouse
studio, recalls Cavill.
Moving downward through the
labyrinthine bunker, Ash and Amanda
reach the bottom level only to find the
possessed Lem waiting for them. A fight
to the death ensues, and Lem attempts
to burn the handcuffed pair by spitting
fuel ignited by flares taken from the
survivalists stockpile. Cavill details, An
overhead industrial fluorescent supplied
by the art department, gelled with
Chrome Orange and 14 Plus Green,
gave a sodium-vapor ambience, and the
key lights were practical flares specially
made for us. Each flare was timed to
burn for 30 seconds and generated a
great magenta light we went through
more than 40 of them. It was a great
system; once we had set the ambience
and created some highlights with more
sodium bulkheads in the deep back-
ground, all we had to do was light a flare
and call action!
Season one of Ash vs Evil Dead
reaches its climax when Ash finds
himself back where it all began, at the
foreboding cabin in the remote northern
Michigan woods. The cabin and the
woods [are the setting for] the last three
episodes of season one, so we decided
the best approach was to build every-
thing, rather than go to location, says
Bassett. The woods and cabin exterior
were constructed in an old equestrian
center, a large space approximately 144
feet by 260 feet, with the major advan-
tage of having a dirt floor, which allowed
us to dig and shape the terrain. We built
three and a half sides of the cabin, with a
partial interior; the tool shed; and the
forest, which was made up of 120 trees
and many, many trailer-loads of ground
cover and windfall that our greens
department set up in record time. The
interior of the cabin and its cellar were
constructed on other stages.
Appropriately for the genre, Ash
arrives at the cabin as the daylight wanes.
Gaffer Tony Blackwood explains, A
20K with Full CTS on a boom lift
provided our sun [source], playing over
and to either side of the cabin and cast-
ing a single shadow, suggesting the cabin
itself is an ominous entity. We then posi-
tioned T12s with Full CTS to rake
through the trees.
Sourceless night-light in the
woods was provided by a combination of
10 T12s and 20 5Ks, positioned on two
gantries that ran parallel down each side
of the equestrian center. The lamps were
skimmed across 12 20'x20' squares of
bleached-cotton bounces, six on each
side, that were held into the pitched ceil-
ing by wires. Not a lot of level was
required from this soft source,
Blackwood continues. We often only
used one side of the bounces to get some
subtle direction. Having the large surface
area of bounced light gives lovely reflec-
tions on the actors skin.
The actors were often keyed by a
10-by-10-foot sheet of calico suspended
on a T-bar and hit with 5Ks or T12s,
depending on the level we were after,
says Blackwood. The sides were flagged
to control [the bounce]. They were
called white sticks, with black sticks
being the negative-fill version. Its a
dead-simple, basic tool that worked very
effectively.
The infamous cabin was an
important set to get right for the fans,
Bassett stresses. It was a direct replica of
the Evil Dead II set, with every prop and
furnishing lovingly re-created. Bruce
Campbell got totally nostalgic walking
into the space. It was a great way to end
the first season, in the very space where
it all began 30-plus years ago.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.78:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa XT, Mini, Amira;
Sony CineAlta PMW-F55
Leica Summilux-C;
Panavision Primo, Ultra Speed
39
 Rising Up
Cinematographer Elliot Davis
takes on The Birth of a Nation
with bold workflow choices and
innovative lighting.
By Patricia Thomson
| from the Middle East who exposed me to another world-
T
he year was 1831, three decades before the Civil War.
Tensions were rising between abolitionists and slavehold-
ers. A drought furthered the stress. Both a slave and an
impassioned Baptist preacher, Nat Turner witnessed
unspeakable brutality that curdled his conscience, and he rose
up to lead a 48-hour slave rebellion that left approximately 60
whites dead. In retribution, mobs and militias killed between
100 and 200 slaves and freed blacks and Turner himself was
tried, convicted and executed. The revolt reverberated all the
way to the Virginia legislature, where ending slavery was
considered and rejected. It would take many more years for this
peculiar institution to be abolished, but the debate had begun.
Like most Americans, actor Nate Parker wasnt taught
this piece of history in school, and when he did learn of it, the
story became a passion project that consumed his life for seven
years. After co-writing the script and workshopping it at the
40 November 2016 American Cinematographer
Sundance Institute Feature Film lab, Parker co-produced,
directed, and starred in the film he called The Birth of a Nation.
For director of photography Elliot Davis, the film was a
natural fit. Davis was trained as an architect, so I have all that
social consciousness that architecture brings for housing
and social responsibility, says the Berkeley-based cinematog-
rapher, who has alternated between major features and inde-
pendent films throughout his four-decade career. When I
went to UCLA grad school for film, I fell in with a group of
people mostly from out of the country Africans and people
view; they really taught me about the social/political power of
film. I said to myself, If I ever get into the Hollywood struc-
ture, I want to take what I learned and apply it to films that
otherwise would never have that expertise films that are
trying to promote social consciousness. Thats really what Ive
built my artistic life on.
Davis projects range from Spike Lees Get on the Bus
(AC Nov. 96), Charles Burnetts The Glass Shield and Haile
Gerimas Harvest: 3,000 Years; to collaborations with Steven
Soderbergh (Out of Sight, King of the Hill [1993], The
Underneath [1995], Grays Anatomy) and Catherine Hardwicke
(Twilight, Thirteen [AC Aug. 03], Lords of Dogtown [AC June
05], Miss You Already); to prestige films like Phyllida Lloyds
The Iron Lady and mainstream fare like Jessie Nelsons Love the
Coopers.
For The Birth of a Nation, Davis says, I handpicked all
my head people. I really questioned them to make sure they
were going to be there for the right reasons. The production
 Opposite: After
witnessing
unspeakable brutality,
slave and Baptist
preacher Nat Turner
(director/producer/co-
writer Nate Parker)
orchestrates an
uprising in 1831, in
hopes of leading his
people to freedom in
the feature The Birth
of a Nation. This
page, left: Slave-
patrol captain
Raymond Cobb
(Jackie Earle Haley)
searches for Turners
escaped father.
Below: Parker
discusses a scene with
cinematographer
Elliot Davis.

would be low budget around $8

million for a period costume drama with
battle scenes. It had a brutal schedule: 27
days for principal photography in
Savannah, Ga., and about five weeks for
prep. There would be no overtime, no
frills, not even a rigging crew. But on the
strength of the script, Davis was able to
draft a formidable team of longtime
collaborators, including gaffer Dan
Riffel, key grip Richard Mall, and fellow
camera operator George Billinger.
They all jumped on this film, says
Unit photography by Jahi Chikwendiu, courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.

Davis.
While crewing up, Davis insisted
upon and got one extra position: an on-
set colorist. As an artist, Davis says, the
DI is the most important instrument I
have. Its more important to me than
light, than lenses, than anything. Its
where the emotional look of the film is
made. For that reason, he strives to set
the look as early as possible and get it
firmly planted in everyones mind at the
dailies stage. Hes taken this approach
since 2013s Man of Tai Chi, when he
and director Keanu Reeves went to
China with a then-new Alexa Studio
camera package. This film made
history by being the first film in the
world to shoot full-resolution ArriRaw,
with anamorphic lenses Hawks
utilizing the cameras 4:3 sensor, Davis
says. There was so much data, the
Chinese couldnt handle it. They
brought in a DIT from Australia,
Michael Taylor, and trained a Chinese
colorist to do on-set dailies. [We] had
full DI capability, including windowing
and secondary color control, Davis says.
Color-corrected dailies would be
handed over to Reeves on an iPad. Ive
continued that technique in all my digi-
tal movies since, Davis says.
Both he and Parker wanted a
modern look for The Birth of a Nation,
underscoring the continuing relevance
of the movies issues. As the director
says, I was not interested in a film with
contemporary themes that feels like it
can only exist in the 19th century. I
wanted to use temperature to describe a
lack of passion or empathy, but also to
wink at 2016 and show parallels
between what you were seeing then and
what youre seeing now.
Basically, Davis elaborates, the
overall look was cool and desaturated,
with high contrast and pushed whites.
Ive done movies with that kind of look
before, though not applied to a period
film. That look, for me, was a modern
look, a more tech look. It was really
good to separate it from more conven-
tional historical pictures, which are
either very normal-looking or shift
towards the warm side, like somebodys
idea of what old is supposed to look
like. In reality, The Birth of a Nation is
about the present reality of America. We
never wanted the audience to forget
that.
The 2.39:1 aspect ratio was like-

www.theasc.com November 2016 41

 Rising Up
Above: The
Savannah, Ga.,
property chosen
for the Turner
plantation was
the productions
main shooting
location. Right:
The crew preps
a dinner scene
inside the
Turner
plantation
home.
wise a nod to modern sensibilities. In
addition to accommodating more
people in the frame, the widescreen
aspect ratio is the modern graphic,
Davis states. If you go back to 1.33, you
could say its the oldest compositional
framework we have, while 2.40 is the
newest framework. On top of that, the
filming technique is almost all handheld,
with Steadicam and the occasional dolly
shot. This was to ensure the feeling of
modern immediacy.
The crew deployed two cameras
whenever possible, mostly handheld,
operated by Davis and Billinger.
Cineverse in Atlanta supplied two Arri
Alexa XT Plus cameras, which shot
ArriRaw 2880x1620 in 4:3 sensor mode
and recorded to internal Codex XR
42 November 2016
Capture Drives, as well as a lighter-
weight Red Epic Dragon, which shot
Redcode Raw 5120x2700 and recorded
to RedMag 1.8" SSDs. I wanted to
save George Billingers back! says
Davis. The Epic wound up staying
mounted on the Steadicam for quick
access, and also came out for a few high-
speed shots.
I distilled the lens package down
into less is more and less is faster,
Davis says. We had a set of lenses for
each camera, which included three
workhorse Angenieux Optimo zooms:
15-40mm (T2.6), 28-76mm (T2.6) and
45-120mm (T2.8). Also included in the
total package were a 12:1 Angenieux
Optimo 24-290mm (T2.8), and Cooke
S4/i 14mm and 27mm primes. This
American Cinematographer
allowed maximum flexibility for
Steadicam, handheld and formal shoot-
ing, says Davis.
The dailies workflow began with
DIT Nick Pasquariello creating a base
look and generating an ASC CDL. He
also managed media, backing up with a
Pomfort Silverstack to the on-set RAID
and OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual shut-
tle drives. Raw footage, sound files, CDLs
and reports were sent to the dailies suite in
the production office, where on-set colorist
Steven Sherrick had set up a Blackmagic
Design DaVinci Resolve suite outfitted
with a 24.5" Flanders Scientific CM250
OLED monitor. We had full desktop-
level color grading, Sherrick says.
Working in Resolve allowed me to do all
the really specific things that Elliot
wanted: get into secondary colors, power
windows that needed to be tracked, and
skin softening. Thats stuff you cant do in
[normal DIT apps]. Secondaries can be
performed in a tool like Pomfort
LiveGrade to a limited extent, but not
with the control of Resolve, and in this
particular scenario we needed the full-
blown toolset.
Once Sherrick received the shuttle
drives, he backed up data onto a 64TB
Maxx Digital ThunderRAID2, which
stored the entire movie through the dura-
tion, as well as a 12TB OWC Mercury
Elite Pro Dual drive for insurance. Media
was also backed up to LTO tape; once the
tape backup was verified, the 12TB drive
was wiped clean.
Sherrick color-graded each and
every take so all would be available for the
Avid edit. After finishing that work,
Resolve generated what he calls an inter-
mediate file in ProRes 1080p, which
would go into FotoKems NextLab dailies
software, together with sound files. From
there, Sherrick says, I would sync sound
and generate deliverables, which were Avid
DNxHD 115 files for editorial, as well as
compressed H.264 QuickTimes for online
viewing for the producers and director,
who used Scenic Drives online dailies
viewing system. I also used those files for
Nate Parkers iPad. Finally, drives
containing Avid DNxHD 115, sound
files, H.264s and dailies reports were
shipped to editorial in Los Angeles. Once
it got into the dailies, it was the typical
workflow, Sherrick says. It was the
preceding part that was a little unusual.
[The reason] we did the multiple
steps, and why we didnt stay in Resolve
the whole way, came down to four things,
Sherrick elaborates. First, syncing sound
is much easier in NextLab. Second, the
editor required very specific window burns,
which FotoKem tweaked for me and were
not possible to do in Resolve. Third, at the
time, Resolve was unable to export the
display name column via ALE so scene-
take would [show] up in the Avid; I
worked with Blackmagic to fix this, and as
of version 12.5.2, it does it. Fourth, LTO
support in NextLab is very robust. They
even wrote a tweak for the MLogic
MTape Thunderbolt LTO drive we were
using.
Each night, Davis would head to
the color suite to spend an hour or two
with Sherrick. My day was 15 hours long,
but it was worth it to me because I was
implementing the directors look, the
cinematographer says. And it was very
good for Nate, because he was able to cut
together his film out of the Avid to show
to investors. They probably thought the
film looked finished, and that probably
helped him raise money and instill confi-
dence.
On-set color grading not only
previewed the look, it helped Davis test
workarounds for shortfalls in time and
budget. They didnt have enough money
to own the clothes, to color and age them
the way they wanted, says Davis, who
instead used power windows to lend
costumes an aged patina. Likewise, the art
department was miniscule, he says. If
they did get lucky and were able to paint an
interior, Id be able to grad down the walls
with the DI, instead of having an on-set
painter do it.
Given the large multiracial cast, skin
tones ran the gamut, and each face
reflected light and responded to desatura-
tion differently. Here again, Sherrick and
Davis went in with power windows and
tracking, actor by actor. If you have multi- Top: The camera frames Turner working the cotton fields. Middle: Davis lines up a shot while
ple white skin tones, some will be affected Parker looks on. Bottom: Parker discusses a scene with actors Aunjanue Ellis and Tony Espinosa.
by magenta levels that react differently to

www.theasc.com November 2016 43

 Rising Up
Above: Samuel
Turner (Armie
Hammer) and Nat
Turner were
boyhood friends
until the former
became
plantation
master. Right:
Davis captures an
insert of Samuel
Turner receiving
money. Producer
Kevin Turen
assists.
the desaturation process, says Sherrick.
Significant time was spent pulling
magenta out of the skin tones, which
kept the image in the bandwidth of a
cool, desaturated look. Even a little
magenta shift was noticeable and
distracted from the look. With the
darker skin tones, Elliot had a specific
tone he was going for, Sherrick adds.
We were just trying to create that
desaturated look without removing the
life.
On-set color grading also played a
big role in the numerous night exteriors,
always the Achilles heel of low-budget
features. I didnt have time for the grip
work required, says Davis, but I knew
when I was lighting the scene, what I
could manipulate in post shading
them with grads, knocking them down,
windowing them to make them brighter
or darker, altering contrast, color, etc.
so I would let things go in production.
That allowed me to be fast. Instead of
44 November 2016
putting a flag on a condor at night,
which is difficult and time-consuming,
or having to put a flag on somebodys
clothes to make them darker, I knew I
could do that in the DI.
He would also define layers
through color and contrast, as in the
campfire scenes. I could isolate the fire
and make it brighter and warmer, but
still keep the background behind it cool
and desaturated and all the while
controlling the faces precisely, Davis
says. There were so many things I could
do.
However, theres a big hole in the
workflow right now, Davis states, and
thats the fact that none of the metadata
related to the secondary color work gets
inscribed in the CDL and transported
down the line. This is something that
really needs to be fixed, the cinematog-
rapher stresses. If you go in there with a
DaVinci mobile or equivalent, the
corrections that Steve made should be
American Cinematographer
seen by the DI colorist, and he should be
able to build those in. If he could start right
from there, that would put the DI at about
80 to 90 percent complete. But its not like
that now. Instead, the DI colorist must re-
create that work, relying on dailies, export
stills or QuickTime references.
The challenge, says Sherrick, is
figuring out a way to streamline that in the
future, so this additional work with secon-
daries could translate down the line. The
hope is that there is continued evolution of
the ASC Color Decision List framework.
As it stands now, it supports the inter-
change of basic RGB color-correction
information, which is fine for a lot of jobs
where you are just trying to set a basic look,
but when you want to do a more complex
grade, it would be great if there were a
framework that at least supported
secondary corrections. The key would be
finding a way to standardize this across a
multitude of color tools. By implementing
this, cinematographers would be able to
get closer to the look they are trying to
achieve and have the look travel along to
other parts of the post process, such as
visual effects. The colorist could also use it
as a starting point or simply as a reference
for intent. There may be some hurdles to
get over in the short term, but perhaps in a
few years this will be second nature. In the
meantime, well be using workarounds.
The final grade took place at
Headquarters in Burbank, where Davis
spent 100 hours working with senior
colorist Richard Garibaldi after DI
conform editors Scott Bradbury and Toby
Rogers had conformed the ArriRaw and
5K Epic files. (Following Fox Searchlights
acquisition, a further touch-up was done at
Technicolor, which Davis was unable to
attend.) Garibaldi watched four films that
Parker had singled out as visual touch-
stones: The Assassination of Jesse James by the
Coward Robert Ford [AC, Oct.07], Valhalla
Rising, and Davis Iron Lady and Man of
Tai Chi. He then watched the Avid edit in
Rec 709 together with the director and
cinematographer; after lengthy discus-
sions, he created a custom LUT that trans-
lated the key parameters of the raw dailies
in P3. Garibaldi graded in a 2K DPX DCI
workflow on an Autodesk Lustre platform
 Rising Up
Top: The crew readies a nighttime discussion by a bonfire between Nat Turner and other slaves.
Bottom: The crew frames Nat Turner and his army charging into action against a large militia.
with a calibrated NEC 2K projector.
The grading process was layered
and iterative, says the DI colorist. Elliot
and I started by focusing on the look of
significant individual shots, then
bloomed out from there, grading the
surrounding shots for continuity. When
we were satisfied with a sequence or a
reel, wed put it down for a while, work on
another sequence, and then come back
with fresh eyes. As we got closer to the
finished look with visual effects in place,
we screened the entire film with Nate.
This was a great opportunity to assess the
overall presentation and to discover any
continuity issues. Sometimes you just
46 November 2016
have to watch the film at speed and with
sound. From that screening came addi-
tional shot-level notes. There were two
final reviews with the filmmakers,
Garibaldi says, one when we were ready
for final delivery for the Sundance Film
Festival, and a final review at Dolbys
screening room after they created the
DCP with the final audio for the festi-
val.
The DI is the most critical part
of the production process for the cine-
matographer, Davis attests. It is, in
reality, an extension of the shooting
process, and where the integrity of the
look is finalized. It is at this stage of the
American Cinematographer
production that cinematographers must
maintain their control.
During principal photography, the
need for speed governed numerous deci-
sions. The first was the property chosen as
the Turner plantation the productions
main location. It abutted a piece of land
where the crew could build the slave quar-
ters, a corral, and the barn where Nat
Turner first preached. For us as a little
movie, it worked out really well, Davis
says. That whole area became like a
studio. Davis and production designer
Geoffrey Kirkland strategically placed
windows in the slave cabins and opened
slates in the barn walls to accommodate
outside lights. Inside the manor, they
jointly selected wall colors. On a white
skin tone, I always keep my background
two to three stops darker, and I applied the
same principle to African Americans, says
Davis. That is what I get from old master
Renaissance paintings. It allows the actors
to come forward. Otherwise, its about the
wall and not the actor.
Fast and flexible lighting was para-
mount. Literally, we were shooting a shot
every 10 or 15 minutes, Davis says.
Thats staging actors, getting the camera
there, lighting and rolling camera. So I had
to come up with the ability to light that
quickly.
A first step was controlling the sun
around the plantation. Production was in
May and June, when the light in Georgia
stands up like at 12 noon pretty much all
the time, Davis says. Line producer Mark
Moran approved two 80' condors, one
straight and one articulating. He under-
stood the importance of controlling the
light, because that affected how quickly we
could shoot. During the day, those
condors became flyswatters with 20'x20'
frames of Light Grid, married on top to
make a 20'x40'.
At night, the condors each carried
the films workhorse backlight: a Par-bar
array with 36 fixtures. We could aim them
out in different directions spots and
floods and things like that, says Davis.
Riffel adds, The Par bars were great
because we could just stack however many
we wanted in a particular spot. It didnt
take the full array most of the time. The
 Rising Up
The crew
prepares a
large exterior
set on location
in Georgia.
foliage was so thick on those plantations
that you really had to calculate how far
away from it you wanted to get before all
of [the light] was soaked up by the
greenery you were fighting through.
Davis would use the Pars to get a
rim light on dark figures at night and to
backlight mist. If you light the mist, you
light the woods. People can silhouette
48
against that, he says. Its also homoge-
neous with rim light. You feel like theres
a source. I did let areas go dark or let
people go dark and play them very
silhouettey, to the point where they
almost became abstract like the slave
hunters when they find Nats father in
the road; thats a very painterly, beautiful
shot. It was simply one of those big
condor arrays of Par lights at the end of the
road with a bit of mist, some edge light on
the actors, and a little bit of fill, and that
was it. Thats basically how I had to do the
night scenes.
For soft fill, Riffel brought four
special items made by a friend Jay
Yowler, who is a fellow gaffer and one of
four partners at Quasar Science, Riffel
says. We nicknamed [the units]
Lumenatti: a metal box with four LED
tubes that change color very easily, with 90-
degree directional crates. That was one of
the things that helped us move along. If
you needed to add a little warmth to match
the Par backlight, which was 12 CTB on
tungsten, you could blend it very easily
without having to wait for a piece of gel to
come in. The LED world has made things
very efficient.
The Lumenatti were particularly
useful when Davis lit with units close to or
directly on the ground, a technique in line
with the cinematographers interest in light
that appears to be reflected off of surfaces.
Riffel notes, You could literally line up
four Lumenatti the length of a dolly
shot and walk through them.
The units contained Quasar Science
LED tubes, which Riffel found to be
wildly versatile. The tubes work great on
their own or in Kino fixtures as well and
not having the time or funding for a
dimmer system, we made up some LED
hand dimmers; a switch on each tube
would set it to 5,500 or 3,200 degrees. No
ballast needed, so they plug and play very
quickly.
An example of their adaptability was
the placement of bare tubes on the laps of
actors with the tubes being obscured by
the people and furniture immediately in
front of them for shots inside the barn
during the preaching scenes. And with
their relative light weight, the tubes were
also taped behind pews and in other places
where hiding lights posed a challenge.
Additionally, when used as a broad, soft
source either as fill or key the tubes
functioned within their housings and were
either directed through large Grid
frames or bounced off surfaces wherever
needed. They worked everywhere,
Riffel enthuses.
Another innovative solution
involved the productions onscreen
lanterns. In the 1830s, lanterns were
typically lit by candles rather than gas.
Here again, LEDs were the source, in
this case 2" LiteGear X6 LiteRibbons.
The clincher, though, was the companys
new controller, which was small enough
to fit inside the lantern base and gener-
ate flicker. You could take a little bit of
LED pad, stripe it with some CTOs
and fire-color to add a little warmth, and
the controller and battery would fit in
the bottom of these lanterns that the
actor was holding, says Riffel. Those
little flicker gags worked very, very well.
Im a firm believer in the proverb,
With a bad foundation, the whole
house falls down, Davis says. Thats
maybe from my architecture back-
ground. In Parker, he found a dedi-
cated, participating collaborator, the
cinematographer describes, who came
armed with a detailed blueprint. Having
thought about the project for years, the
director arrived with clear ideas and
hundreds of images illustrating the films
DNA, which helped in the productions
race against time.
As Davis concludes, I was
exhausted every day, because it was like
running sprints, then going to the color-
ing after that. Parker was duly apprecia-
tive. Elliot did the impossible, he says,
and he did it daily.
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.39:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa XT Plus,
Red Epic Dragon
Angenieux Optimo, Cooke S4/i
49
 Connecting the Pieces
D
Seamus McGarvey, ASC, BSC and
director Gavin OConnor build
suspense on Super 35mm for the
thriller The Accountant.
By Mark Dillon
| childhood. Wolff secretly tracks down stolen money for
50 November 2016
o you like puzzles? Treasury agent Ray King ( J.K.
Simmons) asks a colleague in the Gavin
OConnor-directed thriller The Accountant.
Though King is referring to the enigmatic activities
of protagonist Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck), he may as well
be talking about the movie itself, which keeps viewers guess-
ing until the end.
To the outside world, Wolff is a CPA, but hes also an
autistic math savant and social misfit haunted by a troubled
dangerous international clients, including drug cartels, arms
American Cinematographer
 Opposite: Math
savant Christian
Wolff (Ben Affleck)
clandestinely tracks
down money for
dangerous clients in
the feature The
Accountant. This
page, top and
middle: Wolff takes
on legitimate client
Lamar Black (John
Lithgow) and
befriends
accounting clerk
Dana Cummings
(Anna Kendrick).
Bottom:
Cinematographer
Seamus McGarvey,
ASC, BSC (looking
through finder) gets
an angle on the
action.

brokers and assassins and his services

run perhaps darker still. True to the
company Wolff keeps, he stashes away
guns, cash and gold bullion in his
tricked-out Airstream trailer.
His latest client is Lamar Black
( John Lithgow), a philanthropist who
manufactures robotic limbs for
amputees, and who wants Wolff to
investigate discrepancies in his
companys books. Along the way Wolff
befriends Dana (Anna Kendrick), a
fellow accountant in Blacks employ
who gets entangled in the shady
goings-on, while mob accountant
Unit photography by Chuck Zlotnick, courtesy of Warner Bros. Entertainment.

Francis Silverberg ( Jeffrey Tambor)

cautions Wolff about the path hes
treading. Indeed, the closer Wolff gets
to cracking the numbers, the more he
finds himself in danger and soon its
not only the Feds that are on his tail.
The Accountant marks the first
collaboration between two-time ASC
and Academy Award-nominated direc-
tor of photography Seamus McGarvey,
ASC, BSC and OConnor. I got the
call from Gavin, read the script [by Bill
Dubuque] and loved it, McGarvey
recalls on the line from London after a
day of shooting the sci-fi thriller Life
with director Daniel Espinosa. I
couldnt quite grasp its complexities
because I have no idea about accoun-
tancy or math. Nonetheless, the script
makes you feel that although Wolff is

www.theasc.com November 2016 51

 Connecting the Pieces
Top: Wolff methodically places documents on the table in Blacks boardroom. Bottom: The crew
readies the scene, which was shot on location at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
doing complex and difficult stuff, you
dont have to understand it completely
or make those calculations yourself.
The filmmakers had what the
Irish cameraman characterizes as a
short but intense five weeks of prep
that got underway ahead of approxi-
mately 50 days of principal photogra-
phy, spanning January to March 2015,
in and around Atlanta, Ga. We went
through every aspect of the film with
production designer Keith Cunning-
ham and had a very clear idea of what
we were going for, McGarvey says.
52 November 2016
Keith was great to talk to about finding
locations, weaving them in and working
out what we would shoot in studio and
blending that with real exteriors, partic-
ularly for a nighttime gun battle filmed
largely in semi-darkness.
The filmmakers were adamant
about shooting on Kodak Vision3 500T
5219 stock. We knew we were going to
start the movie with a matter-of-fact-
ness about the photography before it
ramps up to being basically an action
movie, McGarvey offers. And much
of it was going to be told in a nocturnal
American Cinematographer
environment. I wanted the teeth,
contrast and grain I knew I could get
from the 5219 stock, which we often
pushed a stop to achieve.
Whereas OConnor has origi-
nated all his features on film, McGarvey
captured digitally on The Avengers (AC
June 12), Godzilla (AC June 14), Fifty
Shades of Grey (AC March 15) and Pan,
and is currently shooting Life on Arris
Alexa 65. The cinematographer has
rolled plenty of film, however, most
recently on the Chlo Sevigny-directed
short Kitty, and on director Tom
Fords forthcoming thriller adaptation
Nocturnal Animals. In the case of The
Accountant, capturing on film required
some convincing. The producers
wanted us to shoot digitally,
McGarvey says. That was part of their
budget and workflow. But Gavin and I
felt strongly that film was the way to go,
and we assured them we wouldnt blow
the budget on endless takes. Gavin
knows when hes got a shot and just
moves on.
The crew rolled a pair of
Panavision Millennium XL2 cameras,
with Dave Emmerichs handling A
camera and Steadicam. McGarvey had
recently worked with Emmerichs on a
Gucci commercial, and extended the
invite knowing the operators strength
with Steadicam and handheld work.
Donal Steinberg came on board as A-
camera 1st AC, and Bob Gorelick oper-
ated the B camera with Mary
Stankiewicz as his 1st AC. Bob would
be on the zoom on a longer lens for
two-camera setups, which werent that
frequent, McGarvey says. We did that
for news-conference scenarios, [as well
as] scenes with Ray in his office due to
J.K. Simmons availability. We had to
shoot very fast with him; he was in the
thick of Academy Award season, so he
was back and forth to L.A. (As it
turned out, Simmons promotional
efforts paid off with a best supporting
actor win for Whiplash, shot by Sharone
Meir; see AC Nov. 14.)
McGarveys crew was otherwise
largely local and new to him. They
were really solid, he notes. Gaffer
Gary Holmes and key grip Eddie
Evans came as a team off The Walking
Dead, and understood our time
constraints which were major in
terms of making our days and moving
between disparate locations. They were
great at being creative but fast.
When shooting digitally,
McGarvey enjoys huddling with the
director by a monitor, but finds looking
at the video-tap from a film camera
dispiriting. So, in this case, he
watched the action from beside the
camera.
Framing for widescreen 2.39:1
felt right, with spherical lenses and the
3-perf Super 35mm format deemed
best for the night-heavy shoot.
Anamorphic lenses do not perform
well wide-open at night on the edge of
exposure, McGarvey opines. With a
chuckle, he adds, Its just not fair to
the focus puller, either.
Though the crew made use of
Panavisions 24-275mm Primo Zoom
(T2.8), and for crane work would
throw on a 19-90mm (T2.8)
Panavision Primo Compact Zoom,
The Accountant was shot primarily on
Primo Primes. I wanted the precision,
contrast and resolution I knew they
would bring, McGarvey says. This
sense of physical order helped empha-
size Wolff s obsessive-compulsive
personality seen, for example, in
overhead shots depicting the exacting
way he stores his cutlery and prepares
and eats his meals.
Shooting Life now, Im either
extremely wide or long, McGarvey
notes. But The Accountant needed a
sobriety to it, so it was the 21mm, Cast and crew work in and around the set for Wolffs Airstream trailer.
27mm, 75mm and 100mm. It was
quite straightforward. content, but it gradually unravels. style, he says. It had to feel true.
Im not fastidious about shoot- Toward the end we went low-key and The most pronounced looks
ing with one stop, the cinematogra- underexposed dramatically by three or come in flashbacks to Wolff s child-
pher continues. I dont have to shoot a four stops. hood, when a young Chris (Seth Lee)
picture all at T4. If I want to shoot If theres one aspect of and his brother are shuffled around the
wide-open for effect, Ill do it, and the McGarveys style he sees as consistent globe with their military father (Robert
contrary for shooting deeper. The start through most of his work, its a C. Treveiler). Among these sequences
of this film is quite conservative. We penchant for naturalism, achieved in a are vignettes about Chris psychological
were going for a photographic recti- minimalistic yet highly controlled assessment, his martial-arts training in
tude to show nothing was awry; every- manner. This is a film that did not Thailand, a funeral, and his fathers
thing was in place. That matched the require bombast in terms of lighting driving him to confront bullies in

www.theasc.com November 2016 53

 | Details in the Dark
G iven projects often overlapping
schedules, a successful collabora-
tion is sometimes more about having
faith in your colleagues than working
with them side-by-side. Such was the
case for The Accountant cinematogra-
pher Seamus McGarvey, ASC, BSC
and ASC associate and Technicolor
digital-intermediate colorist Mike
Sowa. Due to his commitments on
Pan, McGarvey came in before the
official start of The Accountants DI
and worked alongside ASC associate
and Technicolor supervising finishing
artist Steve Scott with whom he
had collaborated on The Avengers,
Godzilla (2014) and Fifty Shades of
Grey to set looks for various frames
across several reels. I wanted to get in
the ballpark in some areas I was
concerned about, McGarvey says.
Steve set the look and Mike followed
through.
Sowa began the grade a week
later. Since Seamus couldnt sit with me
through the entire DI, I was thankful
for the roadmap, he says. Director
Gavin OConnor was available, but he
also had to spend time on the mix and
visual effects, and editor Rick Pearson
was even still cutting. So I went through
the movie by myself and pulled it all to
the reference frames.
When McGarvey returned to
Los Angeles, he came in to screen
Sowas first pass. He wanted to make
sure I was true to what they did on set,
Sowa says. Its one thing to come in
and set a frame, and another to apply
that look over a whole scene. So I did
some tweaks and ran them by him; he
asked for some others, and then Gavin
came in and asked for a bunch. Its
collaborative. You hope to have every-
body in the room on the same day, but
often that cant happen so you just
prepare for the ride.
McGarvey reports that they
played significantly with contrast and
color and applied a look, albeit a largely
54 November 2016
|
Technicolor DI colorist and ASC associate Mike Sowa.
unobtrusive one. We were aiming for a
naturalistic look, but to achieve that,
Mike did a lot of work, the cinematog-
rapher says. He really got into it and
applied many windows.
The colorist is at the mercy of the
footage, especially when its film-origi-
nated and even more so when there
are bold low-light choices, as in the
darkened house interior for the movies
reel-long shootout and fight scene.
Sowa credits McGarvey for his full
control on set. The whole interior is
one big shadow except where ambient
moonlight would come through a
window, the colorist explains. That
calls for selective windowing on my
part, which could look sketchy if the
footage isnt properly exposed.
Fortunately, Seamus gave us a fat nega-
tive with all kinds of room. I was able to
set levels that were dark but still
comfortable.
As it turned out, however, the
shows studio execs were not quite
comfortable enough, so McGarvey
made sure to be on hand to work on the
night scene. They were worried, he
American Cinematographer
acknowledges. I had to assuage their
fears. They wanted detail, and for the
audience to see the actors. But at the
same time, we wanted to create a sense
of obscurity and atmosphere.
Sowa adds, They didnt want
the low-light areas so heavy black, so I
gave it a little lift and made sure it
worked throughout the scene without
hurting the storytelling. It kept the
dark interior but relieved it a little.
Seamus, Gavin and the studio were
happy. Theres no noise, no grain,
because were not lifting it beyond the
negatives exposure level.
The filmmakers also rode a fine
line between what to reveal and what
to keep hidden in a scene in which
Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck)
approaches an apartment building as a
familiar-looking man walks out. Wolff
then follows him. A massive light
engulfs the front of the building, and
when the character exits hes bathed in
this light, Sowa explains. But we dont
want to identify that character it was
a main storyline. So, in the DI, I was
able to put a window on that and adjust
the light, bringing it down to a silhou-
ette. Until we got into the DI, they
didnt know how it was going to
appear.
Sowa and OConnor pushed
forward on the DI in McGarveys
absence, reviewing the footage as the
editing was refined and visual effects
were incorporated.
McGarvey and Sowa agree that
the heaviest looks applied in the DI
were for Wolff s childhood flashbacks.
We created a kind of halation on the
highlights a slight diffusion of the
blacks and a slight amount of desatura-
tion, the cinematographer says. For
Photo courtesy of Technicolor.
some of the earlier flashbacks we also
added some grain, even though we
were shooting 5219 and sometimes
pushing the stock. We went a bit
further and we had fun doing that.
Mark Dillon
 Connecting the Pieces
France. Some of these scenes were illu- tural practicals such as recessed can going with practical flashes supplied by
minated with hotter key lights, as was lights with spot bulbs, Holmes notes the special-effects department,
the case for a high wide shot of the provided additional glow. Holmes recalls. They were functioning
assessment facility, which has a warm, McGarvey explains, I created high- prop guns.
woody feel and a rainbow of colors in lights in there. I would light a wall a The scenes low-light style neces-
its production design, suggestive of stop under, but the foreground was sitated a couple of days of additional
childhood. This is juxtaposed with virtually silhouette. photography. In our handheld chaos
flashbacks of a funeral, which have a Then there was the matter of which was essential to shooting the
ghostly, desaturated look amplified by creating the muzzle flash from the scene the audience couldnt always
Tiffen Glimmerglass 1 and 2 diffusion guns. We tried a couple of different figure out what was happening,
filters. things, including strobes, but wound up McGarvey explains. Our editor, Rick
In the French flashback, Chris
dad parks their Peugeot in the rain and
Chris gets out of the car to fight his
tormentors under a bridge. The down-
beat scene has an overriding cold-blue
look, which McGarvey recalls as a
nightmare to accomplish, given it was
shot on a sunny winter day. The scene
was staged in an old train depot below
street level, and the crew reduced the
sunlight with silks that were carefully
placed relative to the rain machine. For
the dialogue exchange inside the car,
Holmes recalls, we used an 8-by-8
Light Grid frame with an 18K [aimed]
into it, and a 4K through a 4-by-4
frame of diffusion for an edge light.
For the exterior action they used
12'x12' black Duvetyn to curb the
bounce of sunlight off buildings and
create some contrast. Fortunately, the
sun eventually disappeared behind a
nearby building.
The aforementioned gun battle
transpires at Blacks home, as Wolff
pursues a mysterious adversary ( Jon
Bernthal). The latter shuts off the
house lights to keep hidden, leaving
moonlight and gunfire as the principal
lighting motivations. The exterior wide
shots for this sequence were captured in
an affluent lakefront neighborhood
outside the city, while interiors and
tighter exteriors were handled in a
warehouse studio.
The cyan moonlight, which the
crew pushed inside the house through
windows, was produced by a half-dozen
tungsten soft boxes diffused with Full
Grid and directed with egg crates. Each
soft box was rigged with a pair of Arri
T12s gelled with 12 Blue and 14 Plus
Green. A number of exterior architec-
 Connecting the Pieces
Pearson, said that he wished he had
clearer shots of a few bits and pieces.
So we picked up some inserts that
hammered home little plot points.
Characters movements
throughout the house are tracked via
security cameras. This footage was
initially captured on iPhone cameras
with the Flir One thermal-imaging
attachment, as well as on Canon EOS
5D Mark IIIs fitted with Canon EF
16-35mm (f2.8) zooms. One of each
camera was placed side-by-side in the
corners of rooms, but as the cine-
matographer notes, In postproduction
the Flir material seemed too abstract,
so we decided to go with the footage
we shot with the Canon 5Ds. They
gave a slightly clearer image but still
one we could shoot in that low light.
The filmmakers shot other surveil-
lance footage with the XL2 with an
IR attachment mounted on the
Primos but OConnor found the
image too indistinct and grainy, so
again the Canon cameras got the nod.
On stage, the exterior front of
the house was lit by 5Ks with
Chimeras and the moonlight gel pack
12 Blue and 14 Plus Green. On
location, when the crew set up a wide
shot in which a group of armed merce-
naries arrives and surrounds the house,
McGarvey reports that they shot dusk
for night so at least the silhouette of
the house would be defined by a
lighter sky that I could pull down in
the grade. Here, moonlight was
created by gelled 12-light Maxi-Brutes
each fitted with alternating flood
and spot globes mounted on a pair
of condors down the street, with two
Maxi-Brutes per condor. It was quite
an inaccessible location, and there were
only a couple of places we could actu-
ally put lights, the cinematographer
notes. I needed maximum throw, so I
had to use harder sources. I didnt
diffuse at all.
The front of the house was
Top: McGarvey lines up a low-angle shot for an action scene with Affleck.
further illuminated by two rows of
Middle: The cinematographer and crew prep the lighting for a sequence on a stage-built recessed spots [along the walkway],
interior set of Blacks house. Bottom: The crew works on a scene in which a group of armed Holmes says, as well as 1K black Par
mercenaries surrounds the home.
cans which were patched into a

56 November 2016 American Cinematographer

 Connecting the Pieces
dimmer system lighting the trees.
The gaffer calls this setup as low-tech
as it gets.
Another key location was the
Georgia Institute of Technology, where
the crew set up for a week toward the
end of the shoot, and which provided
the exterior pedestrian walkways and
interior lab settings for Blacks robotics
facility. Its one of those locations you
just have to get into and adapt for your
own purposes, McGarvey says.
Theyre tricky when youre on a
timescale and have to shoot day and
night in one spot, and either control
ambient daylight or create daylight
when [the sun disappears].
A montage sequence shot at
Georgia Tech shows Wolff in a mono-
chromatic boardroom, methodically
laying out boxes of documents on a
long black table, poring over the
companys accounts, and writing out his
calculations on a glass wall. OConnor
wanted quick cuts as Wolff puts the
pieces together. Lighting options were
limited, as the space had only 9' ceil-
ings. There were pin spots in the ceil-
ing, but no actor would want to see
themselves lit with those, so Keith
Cunningham designed soft boxes that
felt like real practical lights, McGarvey
recalls, adding that they were designed
for on-screen use and can be seen
clearly in many shots.
The three soft boxes employed in
the sequence were each approximately
8'x4', and contained rows of LiteGear
Hybrid LED VHO Pro LiteRibbon
that were spaced 4" apart and situated
above a milk Plexiglas bottom. That
created this fantastic ambient soft key
over the table, the cinematographer
adds. Those lights are controllable and
dimmable, so we could intensify them
when we had to fight the daylight or
dim them down when it was a lower-
key scenario.
Whiteboards at opposite ends of
Top: Director Gavin OConnor (kneeling at table) discusses a scene with Affleck and actor Jeffrey
the room were lit from behind with 4'
Tambor (portraying Francis Silverberg). Middle: Affleck, Tambor and crew film another scene set Kino Flo tubes to provide definition
in a correctional facility. Bottom: McGarvey studies the scene as OConnor discusses the action between the boards and white walls. A
with actors J.K. Simmons (second from left, portraying Ray King) and Cynthia Addai-Robinson
(seated at right, portraying Marybeth Medina).
foyer outside the boardroom had a huge
window, and the light penetrating it

58 November 2016 American Cinematographer

 Connecting the Pieces
McGarvey,
Kendrick,
Affleck and
OConnor
discuss a scene
as the crew
prepares for
action.
reached through one of the board-
rooms glass walls. To be able to
continue shooting after sunset
which comes early in an Atlanta winter
the art department blacked out the
top of the window and applied frosted
diffuser panels on the rest. The crew
then blew out the window from the
outside with an 18K for consistent
ambient daylight. So for this big scene
we could just decide, This shots day,
that shots night, and light appropri-
ately, McGarvey says. That saved a lot
of time, gave us flexibility and saved the
production a lot of money.
If the crew needed additional fill
for close-ups in this sequence, they
turned to 500-watt Lowel Rifa fixtures
diffused with Soft Grid. The filmmak-
ers captured the scene from numerous
angles, including a wide shot of the
glassed-in room from the large robotics
lab it overlooks. For that shot the crew
flew an HMI balloon containing four
4K bulbs, providing further ambient
light in the boardroom. The lab below
had six Mole-Richardson 5K Par
fixtures rigged in the ceiling, forming
pools of light.
Back in the boardroom, the crew
made use of a jib arm, with the camera
suspended on a Libra stabilized remote
head. In one shot the camera moves in
across the table over a row of docu-
ments, ending with the visual button of
Wolff blowing on his fingers his
signature OCD move. Gavin wanted a
symphonic feel, McGarvey says. He
wanted to build up the movement. We
start with static frames, and then with
the realization that Christians getting

60
close to discovering whats going on,
Gavin wanted the camera to suddenly
soar a bit and float.
The camera also floats toward
Christian in a scene in his trailer. He
sits meditatively on his bed,
surrounded by his valuable art collec-
tion, and lost in thoughts of his task at
hand and whether he can embark on a
romantic relationship with Dana. The
trailer interior was constructed on the
soundstage, and was a tight squeeze for
this dolly shot. We made the track
narrow-gauge and skinnied up the
dolly, McGarvey says. Steadicam is
often good for tracking at speed and
going forward or back, but when you
need precision and have a lot of verti-
cals or horizontals, youre worried
about the step, the roll or the tilt. We
wanted an absolutely precise, symmet-
rical push-in.
Camera negative was processed
at FotoKem. Technicolor scanned the
footage at 2K on a Spirit4K system, and
processed all digital dailies deliverables
and archival copies. Shots requested for
visual effects were re-scanned on an
Arri unit to ensure proper pin registra-
tion. Dailies colorist Eric Haase used
Colorfront On-Set Dailies and
Technicolor Dailies software, guided by
reference stills. Avid DNxHD 36 files
were generated for editorial and H.264
QuickTime files for dailies viewing via
Pix. McGarvey evaluated dailies on his
computer.
Digital-intermediate colorist and
ASC associate Mike Sowa spent three
weeks working on the film at
Technicolors Seward facility in
Hollywood, grading with Autodesk
Lustre (see sidebar, page 54).
McGarvey came in to set up some
looks before leaving for London to
shoot additional photography on Pan,
and participated in the DI when he
returned to Los Angeles to prep
Nocturnal Animals. The filmout was
performed at 2048x1168 resolution
with an Arrilaser recorder.
As much as McGarvey has
wholeheartedly embraced digital
shooting, he enjoyed returning to the
photochemical realm on The
Accountant. Were in a period where
cinematographers have the choice, he
says. Its a great position to be in to
have different media and tools and
entirely different ways of telling
stories.
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.39:1
3-perf Super 35mm
Panavision Millennium XL2,
Canon EOS 5D Mark III
Panavision Primo, Canon
Digital Intermediate
61
 A Friend in Need
scar Faura teams with director
J.A. Bayona to shoot a
coming-of-age drama in a fantastical
framework for A Monster Calls.
By Michael Goldman
| project.
S
truggling to come to grips with his mothers illness, a lonely,
bullied British boy named Conor (Lewis MacDougall)
inadvertently summons a fantastical guardian an ancient
yew tree come to life (performed via motion capture and
voiced by Liam Neeson). Depending on ones interpretation of
A Monster Calls, Conor is either tormented or assisted by his
nightmarish companion, whose very existence is up for debate.
Adapted by Patrick Ness from his novel, which was based on
an original idea by Siobhan Dowd, A Monster Calls represents
the third feature collaboration between director J.A. Bayona
and cinematographer scar Faura.
62 November 2016 American Cinematographer
Although Faura and Bayona began their professional
careers side by side, the cinematographer reports that he still
finds himself challenged and driven to face something that
you havent experienced before every time they work together.
The two were classmates at ESCAC Escola Superior de
Cinematografia i Audiovisuals de Catalunya in Barcelona,
and shot short films, music videos and commercials together
for years. Faura went on to shoot Bayonas first two features
The Orphanage and The Impossible before tackling this latest
The production of A Monster Calls required stylized 2D
animated sequences and numerous visual-effects shots to be
woven into a delicately choreographed live-action drama.
Under the watchful eye of visual-effects supervisor Flix
Bergs, several facilities contributed elements to the CG crea-
ture. Fauras first feature-length foray into digital acquisition,
the production employed Alexa XT Studio cameras outfitted
primarily with Vantage Film Hawk V-Lite Vintage 74
anamorphic prime lenses to capture imagery in 2.39:1 anamor-
phic. (See sidebar, page 66.)
Digital-imaging technician Pablo Lago notes that image
data was captured to onboard Codex XR Capture Drives, and
then ported to two Mac Pro DIT stations that he managed on

set. Once the cameras were reloaded
with new [drives], he elaborates, we
used the two DIT stations to offload the
footage and create production copies in
two different kinds of drives: 21TB
RAID 5 drives for the production
company, and JBOD transfer drives to
Unit photography by Quim Vives, courtesy of Focus Features.
deliver the footage to Deluxe Barcelona,
where an additional LTO-6 copy of the
whole footage was created. The purpose
of having two DIT stations was to
manage A and B cameras separately,
which most of the time ran simultane-
ously, particularly during the [portions of
the shoot captured in] Manchester
[England]. Also, in the event of having
additional units, we could split the tasks
and be more effective.
These stations were also used by
Lagos data team to produce on-set
dailies with Assimilate Scratch. The
dailies LUT was applied during shoot-
ing with the aid of Blackmagic Design
HDLink Pro and Pomfort LiveGrade
Pro software. Dailies were graded and
transcoded in a number of different
formats and uploaded to the produc-
tions private cloud system for viewing
by the filmmakers and producers in a
variety of viewing platforms.
Despite the movies menacing
elements, A Monster Calls is a poignant
coming-of-age drama about a boy expe-
riencing profound emotions. As such,
Bayona had strict creative and technical
demands for the project, and routinely
tossed complex challenges Fauras way.
The cinematographer recently chatted
with AC to discuss the production in
depth.
American Cinematographer:
When you first sat down with Bayona,
what was the overall mission state-
ment he gave you for the movies visu-
als?
www.theasc.com
Opposite: Conor
(Lewis MacDougall)
inadvertently
summons a
fantastical guardian
(voiced by Liam
Neeson) in the
coming-of-age
drama A Monster
Calls. This page, top:
Conor shares a
moment with his ill
mother (Felicity
Jones). Bottom:
Cinematographer
scar Faura (right)
finds a frame.
scar Faura: The first thing he
said was that he wanted to be free to
shoot any angle with two cameras at any
time. He was concerned about having a
young actor restricted by technical
requirements. We got to [have that lati-
tude] at certain moments, but all the
scenes involving the Monster were
absolutely previsualized [by The Third
Floor in London], and we ended up
following a strict breakdown for those
sequences.
We started to see the challenges
of the movie progressively, because the
film had a long preparation. I spent
almost six months involved in the
project before we started shooting. The
previs was the working base for all
departments, and as it advanced, we
were able to see what areas were going
to be the hot spots of each Monster
scene. In my case, I saw clearly that
shooting a dark wooden monster facing
November 2016 63
 A Friend in Need
Top: Conor looks for a distraction from the mounting pressures at home and at school. Bottom: Faura
checks the on-camera monitor as the crew lines up a shot with MacDougall.
the sky at night was going to be tricky.
You have suggested that Bayona
wanted a fluid, moving camera, and
that camera movement was crucial in
telling the story. Can you elaborate on
that?
Faura: We wanted to show
Conors state of mind with the camera.
The story is entirely based on Conors
experience, but Conor is a passive hero
he doesnt take the lead. There is a lot
going on around him, but he is just a kid
trying to manage the storm, so we tried
64 November 2016
to link the camera to his mood.
[Operator] Albert Carreras has collabo-
rated with [Bayona] on all his movies, so
they have a fluent relationship on set.
There were scenes where the camera-
work was absolutely defined in advance,
and some others where we had an orig-
inal plan but we changed it after seeing
a rehearsal. Its kind of an organic
construction.
Dolly and handheld were the
most [prominent] methods of camera
movement. I would say that handheld
American Cinematographer
was reserved to emphasize dynamism.
An example would be the [climactic]
nightmare scene at the cemetery. After
an intense dramatic scene with his
mother [Felicity Jones] at the hospital
room, Conor runs away to the cemetery,
where the yew tree waits for him. The
dialogue scene was shot static, and then
the frantic runaway was shot using
different camera supports: an electric
tracking vehicle, a Steadicam, a
[Supertechno 30], and sometimes
handheld, which helped us to travel the
camera and increase the tempo in the
scene. Once the boy is in front of the
Monster, the camera narrative slows
down while they are arguing. Here, we
again combined several camera
supports, this time due to location,
because we shot part of the scene in an
actual cemetery full of real tombstones
that we had to overfly to be able to move
the camera. During their argument, the
camera moves in a fluid way, and then
when Conor sees his mother, the
camera starts to shake violently.
Tell us your reasoning behind
shooting A Monster Calls with Arri
Alexa XT Studio cameras.
Faura: [Shooting digitally] was a
difficult decision, and the conclusion
came after doing several comparison
tests and a lot of research. Our original
preference was to shoot film, but we had
to consider very seriously all the visual-
effects departments demands. One of
our main characters was a digital crea-
ture, and we got his performance on a
motion-capture stage. One of the main
reasons to consider the digital-camera
option was that we wanted to have a
real-time [SolidTrack] tracking system
to allow us to see Liam Neesons perfor-
mance interacting with the kid on the
monitor while we were shooting.
During the first test, we used film
and digital cameras in parallel in order
to find an alternative aesthetic to film.
We shot in a simplified version of
Conors room with a bunch of cameras
and lenses of all classes and manufactur-
ers. After watching the tests, we selected
our favorite options, and then did a
second test. This time, we shot a
 From left: Jones, MacDougall and director J.A. Bayona discuss Conors nightmare scene
on a greenscreen-lined cemetery set.
complicated Monster scene at night in
the backyard of a house. We realized
that the integrated video of the film
camera wasnt bright enough to deliver a
good-quality image suitable to be
processed by the tracking-system soft-
ware. A black monster in front of the
dark night sky is an extreme condition,
and that was going to be a very common
situation for us because in this story the
Monster [typically] appears at night.
Considering all the input we got from
the tests, we decided to shoot with the
Alexa XT Studio.
What was your general lighting
approach?
Faura: The lighting style has a
naturalistic motivation, and always tries
to respect the atmosphere of the north-
ern England weather. During prepara-
tion, I dreamed about getting overcast
skies and a gray ambience, and when we
spent three weeks in Manchester in
October 2014, we got what we wanted
clouds. I have to say we were lucky,
especially shooting the nightmare scene
at the cemetery near the church, where
we had three continuous cloudy shoot-
ing days with almost no rain. The chal-
lenge came when we moved to Spain,
and we had to continue shooting the
most technically difficult part of the
scene during two more weeks while
avoiding the direct sun. The exteriors
were shot using primarily natural light.
We had more work subtracting light
using big, black frames as negative fill
than adding [any direct lighting].
For day-interior scenes, we
followed the [mandate] of soft, dim
light coming from windows. All the day
scenes were lit this way. Sometimes it is
tempting to use a bright beam of
sunlight coming from a window to
shoot a day scene, as you see in many
movies, but I preferred to create a
believable atmosphere by connecting
interiors and exteriors. There are just
two exceptions in this movie. One is the
[cafeteria] scene at the school. There,
the director and the previs department
had the idea of making the Monster
appear at the [cafeteria] using his grow-
ing shadow. That broke my orthodox
plan of gloomy days, but the idea was so
good that I accepted it. The other sunny
scene is the last one. I thought that it
was appropriate, ending the story with a
bright and shiny scene as a relief after all
that suffering the beginning of a new
stage.
We also followed the rule of never
having practical lights on in houses
during day scenes. That was a way to
65
 | Shooting for Realism
W e didnt want a fairy-tale
atmosphere, says cinematog-
rapher scar Faura. Despite its fantasti-
cal elements, a realistic look was
paramount for director J.A. Bayonas A
Monster Calls. Central to achieving this
goal were lighting and lens-package
choices made in collaboration with
gaffer Jos Luis Rodrguez and 1st AC
Guillem Huertas, respectively.
Huertas explains that Vantage
Films Hawk V-Lite Vintage 74
anamorphic primes comprising
45mm-110mm focal lengths were
selected as the main lens set because of
their unique visual properties, which
Faura felt would add texture to digitally
acquired imagery. This particular lens
set has a special coating [that re-creates
that of 1970s lenses], Huertas notes.
The director and scar loved the aber-
rations and imperfections that they
provided.
The movie [also] had a lot of
visual effects that we needed to comple-
ment with a set of lenses with fewer
artifacts, Huertas continues. That is
why we combined [the Vintage] lenses
with regular Hawk V-Lite anamorphic
lenses. Then we also had the [45-90mm
(T2.8) and 80-180mm (T2.8) V-Plus
Front Anamorphic] Zooms for our B
camera and cranes. During our tests, we
learned how we could minimize the
difference between the sets by using the
Tiffen Glimmerglass 2 filter.
Huertas adds that the filmmakers
mainly used Vintage 74 lenses for
daylight scenes, except when we went
wider than a 45mm, and when we were
facing directly toward a character with a
very bright background, like the sky.
Then we felt we got too much flare in
faces. For night scenes, we used the
regular V-Lite set [comprising 28mm-
140mm focal lengths] to prioritize the
definition [while] shooting at wider T-
stops. At night, we also used the
Glimmerglass filter less, and depending
on particular conditions, we used
[higher or lower strengths of the diffu-
sion filter].
We also combined the Vintage
74 with the V-Plus Zooms while
66 November 2016
shooting with two cameras at the same
time when we needed to go tighter than
110mm, he continues. The V-Plus
Zooms [are] similar to the V-Lites, but
due to their minimum T-stop, we used
them mostly in daylight conditions. We
also had a reduced set of spherical lenses
[16mm-25mm] Arri/Zeiss Master
Primes which were used mainly for
complex visual-effects shots, and some-
times to guarantee the definition of the
widest night shots if we needed to go
wider than T2.8.
The camera assistant adds, We
used Vantage Slide Diopters in many
scenes for inserts, but also for handheld
shots following the boy. We even used
them in a Steadicam shot. The restricted
focus depth that the diopters provided
made some shots extremely difficult for
me. I had to learn how to follow focus by
using a monitor without any mark,
moving the knob by feeling. But we
didnt use the diopters just to get a closer
minimum focus it was a matter of the
camera style that [Bayona] loved for the
boy.
Meanwhile, Rodriguez reports
that one of his primary missions was to
achieve a British atmosphere, an
absence of direct sunlight, and to have
very soft light. For interiors, to achieve
lighting streaming in through windows,
the gaffer notes that his team used vari-
ous Maxi-Brute fixtures filtered with
Full Grid Cloth and 12 CTB which
were running on batteries, and were
configured in a line on motorized trusses
in order to vary height and offer control
of individual lamps. This allowed us to
manipulate light intensity without
affecting color temperature, he says,
because we were able to individually
turn on and off [individual bulbs] with-
out having to go down in intensity for all
of them together.
He adds that, thanks to the
movable walls and folding roofs built
into the sets, We could [often] project
fill light from the same direction and
almost the same angle as the main light,
creating a more realistic sensation with-
out disturbing the set in which the
action was taking place.
American Cinematographer
|
Rodriguez further offers that the
four separate stages at Parc Audiovisual
de Catalunya in Terrassa, Barcelona
where the production built exterior
sets, were each ruled by a networked
lighting system designed by board tech-
nician Ral Pea. Ral created a wire-
less network in each studio,
programmed [to be controlled by an
iPad], so I could manipulate all sets, the
gaffer explains. I could be in the video
village with scar and manipulate the
lights instantly per his requests, adjust-
ing the light effects more precisely.
A significant challenge involved
determining ways to match lighting
from the Manchester locations in the
U.K. to the stages in Spain. Rodriguez
explains, The weather we had in
Manchester was extremely volatile
rain, wind, sun when it was not desired.
We had to use large diffusers to [soften]
the sun on many occasions and on
others we had to use several Arrimax
18K units to [simulate] sun in order to
keep continuity. But once we got to the
studios [in Spain], scar chose the
orientation of the outdoor sets very well,
and then we could re-create the light of
Manchester without much difficulty.
Rodriguez adds that LED lights
were important tools on the show. His
team frequently relied on DMX-
controlled Kino Flo Celeb panels, and
for close-ups and in small sets, they
utilized thin, custom-built 4'x4' screens
with 300-watt LED hybrids, also DMX
controlled.
He suggests that perhaps the
most complicated setup on the movie
was a scene near the end, in which
Conor and his grandmother (Sigourney
Weaver) sit in the latters idle car.
There, he explains, we had to place a
45-meter crane, out of frame, [to lift] a
soft box with four 12-light Maxi-Brutes
bounced back from white
[Ultrabounce] and exiting through Full
Grid Cloth to create overhead light
directly on the car.
Michael Goldman
 A Friend in Need
more evidently differentiate day scenes
from night scenes, especially when we
didnt have any window in frame.
Related to your need for unre-
strained camera movement, how
would you characterize your collabo-
ration with production designer
Eugenio Caballero, who designed sets
and portions of sets with folding or
swinging walls that could instantly
move out of the camera operators way?
Faura: Working with Eugenio
and his team was great. They designed
sets in a way that everything was move-
able, detachable or foldable. Walls were
mounted over guides, and ceilings were
prepared to swing over hinges to get
opened. It was even possible to move a
huge staircase by simply pushing it.
I had some previous experience
with this kind of construction design,
but the difference this time was that it
was designed to be ready for very fast
maneuvers. Most of the story happens
inside two typical English homes,
which were [shot on sets] built on stage
at PAC Parc Audiovisual de
Catalunya in Terrassa, Barcelona.
We needed that kind of set
construction to be able to have a rich
camera display. In fact, during the scene
of the first encounter with the Monster
in Conors room, we had to move every
single wall of the set at some point.
Normally one or two walls might be
movable, but not all of them. Even the
floor was removable, to set the camera
beneath the ground level.
One factor that determined a lot
of the set construction was the presence
of the Monster inside them. We used a
giant puppet of the Monster for some
shots, and [Bayona] had the idea of
combining digital and real shots of the
Monster to give more physicality to it.
Fitting an 11-meter-tall [36'] puppet in
a regular-size room requires special
preparation. It also affected the sched-
ule, because we had to split scenes into
two parts: We first shot the part of the
scene without the Monster, and then we
left the set so the special-effects and art
departments could build the Monster
in. That could take several days of work,
 A Friend in Need
while the main unit was off shooting a
different scene.
For the animated stories that
play a part in the narrative, what was
your role, if any, in their design and
execution?
Faura: I had active participation
in the second tale, because at some point
Conor becomes one of the characters in
that tale. The challenge there was how
to integrate the boy into such a fantastic
environment. We defined the scene as a
sunset moment, and shot it entirely
greenscreen. The key light was a 20K
Fresnel playing the sun in a very low
position. The visual-effects crew in
charge of the animation at Glassworks
in Barcelona then followed the reference
of the light [position] to set their digital
sun on top of it. It worked very well,
because the light affecting Conor always
matched the animated light source, and
that was a way to integrate the boy into
the tale.
The other element was color. We
applied the warmth of the tale to Conor,
who for the first time appears wrapped
by a colorful mantle in the movie. The
sunset-sky color spectrum of the scene
varied from a light salmon at the bottom
to a dark red at the highest part so we
had to equalize the boy with the envi-
ronment, applying an averaged color on
him. The dialogue between the monster
68 November 2016
The Monster sticks close to Conors side.
and the boy created a very powerful
color jump in the edit. The combination
of close-ups of the boy with a green-
grass background with close-ups of the
monster with the red sky behind him
was a challenge for the color grading.
For this particular scene, we did
the color grading partially on a
[Foundry] Nuke station due to the large
amount of layer compositing. After the
render, [colorist Quique Caadas]
finished the color in [Autodesk] Lustre
at Deluxe Barcelona. Taking advantage
of the sunset scene, I asked the
Glassworks visual-effects guys to add a
flare to the shots where the sun was in
frame, mimicking the particular hori-
zontal flare of the Vintage 74 lenses. I
thought it would be a nice connection
between the tale and the following
scene, where we find Conor surrounded
by naked, flaring bulbs lying on the floor
of the destroyed sitting room. [Caadas
performed the final grade on the movie
as a whole, as well, employing Autodesk
Lustre at Deluxe Barcelona for a 16-bit
2K DPX final deliverable.]
Regarding visual effects
beyond the Monster himself the
climactic church/cemetery scene
involved a huge mix of live, digital and
miniature elements. Please explain
how that was put together.
Faura: The Third Floor was in
American Cinematographer
charge of the previs for this scene, and
the previs was the basis of a very detailed
breakdown about how to shoot the
whole piece. We combined three essen-
tial elements to complete the scene: a
real location in Manchester, a piece of
the cemetery built on set, and a 110-
scale miniature of the church. [The
cemetery set and miniature were built
outdoors, adjacent to the stages.] The
director wanted to shoot the destruction
of the church by using a miniature to get
more realistic behavior of the collapsing
building, so we shot it as an action scene
with different camera angles capturing
the moment. The idea was that the
collapse was also going to appear in
several other moments of the film [as
snippets from Conors nightmares].
We did a breakdown, and we
ended up placing [a combination of
Alexa XT Studio and Alexa XT Plus
units, eight cameras in all] around the
miniature model to cover all the camera
positions needed. The Alexas were
placed in positions matching the multi-
ple-angle shot we had previously
captured in Manchester. The plan was
to insert the model over the real one. We
used approximately the same [focal
lengths] that we had in Manchester, but
at some moments we had to approxi-
mate them to avoid having one camera
blocking the other. Both the miniature
 A Friend in Need

and the location shots were captured

with [Arri/Zeiss] Master Prime spheri-
cal lenses. All the shots were completed
by shooting the actors in front of a blue-
screen and inserting them in the
composition. We also duplicated all the
model camera angles on the on-stage
cemetery set, as well, so the visual-
effects department would be able to
blend all the layers Manchester,
model and set to get the final shot.
To ensure we werent going to be
affected by the direct sun, we placed the
Above: The model in the shade of a big building
Monster tells
Conor a story in nearby, on one of the main stages. We
this piece of had two technical requirements: Both
concept art. the depth of field and the frame rate had
Right: Faura
measures the to be enough to make the model look
light on set as realistic. We had to shoot at noon to
the Monster reach the desired 75 fps at T11 in the
keeps silent
watch. shade with no artificial light.

TECHNICAL SPECS
2.39:1

Digital Capture

Arri Alexa XT Studio, Plus

Vantage Film Hawk V-Lite,

V-Lite Vintage 74,
V-Plus Front Anamorphic Zoom;
Arri/Zeiss Master Prime

70 November 2016 American Cinematographer

 Filmmakers Forum
Drug dealer Shot-Z (Wambli Mills) realizes the monster hes become in the student film Destiny, written and shot by participants of the
Films by Youth Inside (FYI) Ute Mountain immersive cinema workshop.
I Stories From the Ute Mountain Youth
By Steve J. Roberts
Having grown up in the gray doldrums of Detroit, I have a
great appreciation for the bright desert Southwest, home to some
of the most breathtaking vistas and majestic skyscapes on Earth.
My first desert adventure was in 2002, filming commercials for
Marlboro around Moab, Utah. The air was blast-furnace hot, the
sun was unforgiving, the sand fleas were formidable, and fine
dust got into absolutely everything. Over the past few years I have
filmed on multiple Indian reservations, and happily some of these
projects have taken me back to the Southwest.
In spring 2015, I was cinematographer on a series of PSAs
for the Native American Rights Fund in partnership with
Comcast/NBCUniversal and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe. The Ute
Mountain Ute Reservation spans more than 1,000 square miles of
rugged, mountainous lands in southwestern Colorado. Its near
the picturesque Four Corners region and bordered by iconic land-
marks Shiprock to the south, the sacred Ute Mountain to the
west and Mesa Verde National Park to the east. Filming for the
PSAs took place in and around the reservation capital town of
Towaoc.
The PSA production would lead to another Towaoc-based
project, and one that has been among the most rewarding Ive
been part of. A month after the PSAs wrapped, I received a call
from director Alex Muoz asking if I would serve as director of
photography for a new project called FYI Ute Mountain Youth.
72 November 2016 American Cinematographer
Muoz contacted me based on a request from Waylon Plenty
Holes, a Ute Mountain tribal member Id worked with on the
PSAs. After learning about Muozs Los Angeles-based nonprofit,
Films by Youth Inside (FYI), I didnt hesitate to get on board. FYI
conducts immersive cinema workshops for groups of troubled
and incarcerated youth. The program aims to help participants
find their voices and develop skills that can be applied to all areas
of life. Program participants learn the basics of screenwriting and
filmmaking from industry professionals, and create short films
that express themes from their own lives.
Drawing From the Oral Storytelling Tradition
I asked Muoz, whose father is indigenous, if he thought
these young participants who share a strong oral tradition might
inherently relate to filmmaking as a modern way of telling stories.
Its in their DNA to tell stories, Muoz says. They just
need to become comfortable with the cameras and the lighting
and the editing. The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe really understands
the power of film as a platform where many people can experi-
ence the story. They understand the opportunity this technology
offers to tell their stories and guarantee their perspective and
voice.
During two two-week workshops, one last summer and
one this summer, we worked with program participants who used
motion pictures to explore the things that trouble them mentally,
spiritually, economically and socially. Last year, participants took
on teen suicide, homophobia and bullying through their short
 From left: Director Alex Muoz and cinematographer Steve J. Roberts shoot a
scene featuring Wendell Mills Jr. and Terrencio Dutchie.
movie Escape. It was written, acted and
shot by the Ute Mountain youth. The
project was a great success, playing to full
theaters in the region, screening at festi-
vals around the world, and winning three
significant awards, including Best Student
Film at the LA Skins Fest. Many of the
participants boarded a plane for the first
time to travel to the ceremony. When they
learned theyd won, they were in a state
of disbelief.
During this years workshop, partic-
ipants wrote an intense script centered on
drug addiction and loss. Their story,
Destiny, follows the life of a drug dealer
haunted by the ghost of his younger
brother, who died from an overdose. As
Unit photography by Scott DW Smith, courtesy of Steve J. Roberts.
the dealers life spirals downward, he falls
victim to the addiction that destroyed his
brother and family. The young filmmakers
dedicated their movie to a 2015 FYI
program participant who was murdered
by a family member under the influence of
methamphetamine. Postproduction on
Destiny will be completed by December,
after which the movie will be screened
publicly in southwestern Colorado and
entered into festivals around the world.
Gearing up and Learning on
the Set
Selecting gear for a project and
working to fulfill the directors vision is my
favorite challenge. Doing that while teach-
ing a group of 12-19 year-olds who have
never handled professional film equip-
ment takes that challenge to another level
entirely. We worked with the kids to teach
them how a film set is organized, the roles
of the crew and the general process of
filmmaking. Participants spent a lot of
hands-on time with the equipment. At
first they were intimidated by the expen-
sive gear, but after we reviewed proper
handling, their fear disappeared and
creativity took over.
The kids ran the set, both in front of
and behind the camera. Along with their
dedicated FYI instructors, they were
supported by a crew that included Kyle
Dagenhart, who managed sound record-
ing, and Craig Evans, who handled grip
and lighting.
The light in the high desert provides
its own set of challenges. At any given lati-
tude, the suns intensity increases by 6
percent per 1,000' above sea level. In
Towaoc, elevation 5,900', the suns rays
are about 36 percent stronger than at sea
level. Because of this, I opted for Red
Weapon and Epic Dragon camera pack-
ages. Reds Dragon sensor has one of the
widest dynamic ranges available; the
cameras do a great job holding highlights
while still being able to capture detail in
the shadow areas of high-contrast
outdoor scenes. The cameras performed
flawlessly, even in the extremely hot, dusty
73
 conditions and during long improvised
takes. As for the crew, well, it seemed
almost impossible to drink enough water
to stay hydrated under the sizzling sun.
We outfitted the cameras with a set
of Xeen cinema lenses, Canon L-series
zooms, and Red Pro Primes. I rated the
cameras for 800 ISO; with the intense
sunlight, we often added up to five stops
of neutral-density filtration to help control
the exposure. We chose a cinema-vrit
style to complement the grittiness of the
script, and the cameras were set to record
the full frame of the 6K sensor while we
framed for a 2.39:1 widescreen ratio. This
allowed the director to reframe and stabi-
lize the image if necessary in post.
Additional lighting was provided by
a pair of variable-color-temperature LED
light panels from Socanland and Arri
1,200-watt HMIs. When working outside,
strong wind gusts were always a possibil-
ity, so flexible reflectors were not a good
choice. Instead, we opted for foam-
backed shiny boards to light our actors.
Because we were a minimal, fast-
moving crew, we were not able to safely
set up large overhead scrims or silks for
light control. Activating the HDRx feature
on the Weapon helped us by extending
the cameras range so that it could capture
the brightness level of our entire scene.
Weather also was a major factor in our
outdoor setups. Because we were filming
at the beginning of the monsoon season,
high winds and fast-approaching after-
noon thunderstorms always posed a
concern.
With time running short during
production, we decided to break away a
second camera unit with program instruc-
tor Andrew Vasquez. To simplify things,
we reconfigured the B camera into a run-
and-gun setup with a set of Canon L-
series zooms and Light Craft Workshops
variable ND filters. Having the ability to
change the Red cameras lens mount from
PL to Canon in the field was a big advan-
tage.

Expanding Our Idea of

What Is Possible
Top: Roberts helps Markus Cook change the lens mount on a Red Epic. Middle: Roberts helps For me, the most rewarding part of
Mills line up a shot. Bottom, from left: Andrew Cuch Jr., Deandra Eaglefeather and Trinadie the production was having one-on-one
Lopez roll camera.
discussions about filmmaking with the

74 November 2016 American Cinematographer

participants. When I was a young adult,
working in a Detroit factory was the only
reality I knew. It was a narrow view shared
by my parents, neighbors and friends. Our
cultural glue was ingenuity, self-deprecat-
ing humor and a strong blue-collar work
ethic. Creativity and self-expression
through the arts were not part of the
collective consciousness.
Working with the youth of Ute
Mountain Ute Tribe, I saw so much
honesty, bravery and grit in the partici-
pants. And I witnessed a familiar unfold-
ing of hope as the workshop expanded
their views into a different world.
When asked what is meaningful
about the work for him, Muoz expresses
how proud he is of the participants for
their courage to address issues that are
affecting them in negative ways. The
most enriching thing is to see how the
youth are transformed by the experience,
Muoz says. They feel that they do have
something to say, that their voice is impor-
tant, that their existence is significant and
that they do have a future. This medium
gives them an opportunity to tell their
stories, and when they see hundreds of
people watching, it means a lot to them.
Their self esteem shoots through the
roof.
What a privilege to play a small part
in that transformation. I hope that one day
I will be working on a professional set
alongside some of the participants.

To learn more about FYI, visit

FilmsByYouthInside.org.
 New Products & Services
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.

Cooke Goes Classic Cinefade Controls Depth of Field

Responding to the ongoing high In partnership with
demand for the companys vintage Cmotion GmbH of Vienna,
Speed Panchro lenses from the 1920s- Austria, London-based
60s, Cooke Optics has announced the filmmaker Oliver Janesh
Panchro Classic line, which uses the origi- Christiansen has developed
nal lens design but with PL mounts for the Cinefade system,
modern cameras. which enables cinematog-
Designed by Horace W. Lee in the 1920s, the original Cooke raphers to vary the sharp-
Speed Panchro was a cine prime lens that chromatically enhanced ness of the background in
an image when filming under restricted illumination. Cooke Speed a motion-picture shot
Panchros combined a relative aperture as wide as f2.0 with defini- while maintaining constant
tion and an angular field of view previously impossible with smaller exposure and keeping the
apertures. They quickly gained a worldwide reputation for quality foreground subject in focus.
cinema production and were widely used throughout the 20th Cinefade enables an in-camera effect that can immerse view-
century. ers in a story or make a clients product stand out in a commercial.
People still love the look they get from the old Speed The system gives cinematographers the opportunity to explore the
Panchros, but they are hard to find and if you can find them, you creative potential of a variable depth of field. As Christopher Ross,
have to remount them for todays cameras, says ASC associate Les BSC says, Cinefade is a really useful and subtle tool to use in
Zellan, chairman and owner of Cooke Optics. In response to this, moments of extreme drama.
we have taken the original design and created a new housing to fit Cinefade uses a custom Cmotion lens-control system to vary
a PL mount. The new Panchro Classic lenses will have the same look iris diameter, changing the depth of field. The iris motor is slaved to
and feel that people love about the originals. a filter motor that controls a custom-built variable neutral-density
Cooke Optics has also introduced multiple mounts for its filter, which sits inside a matte box and keeps exposure constant. The
miniS4/i lenses. The new mounts include Canon EF, Nikon F, Sony E system works with any digital or film camera and cine lens, is quick
and micro 43, enabling productions working with mirrorless cameras and easy to set up, is simple to operate, and allows for a range of up
to take advantage of the Cooke Look. to 5 T-stops
A single mount will fit every focal-length lens in the miniS4/i Cinefade is currently being used on TV dramas, feature films,
series; for existing miniS4/i lenses, users can simply unbolt the PL commercials and music videos. The system is available to rent via
mount that comes as standard, bolt on the replacement mount, and Clairmont Camera in Los Angeles and directly through Cinefade.
shim as required. The mounts can be used on any miniS4/i lens, For additional information and to watch a video demonstra-
regardless of delivery date. For new miniS4/i deliveries, the lenses are tion, visit www.cinefade.com.
available with the mount of choice from the factory.
The miniS4/i lenses are steadily gaining popularity for many TheLight Expands Velvet Mini Range
genres of production, since they have all the coveted attributes of Following the successful launch of the companys Velvet Mini
Cooke prime lenses in a smaller, lighter and more affordable form, 2 half-panel LED fixture, Barcelona-based TheLight has introduced
says Zellan. With the introduction of these interchangeable the Velvet Mini 3. The panoramic LED panel shares the same features
mounts, we can now bring the Cooke Look to many more cameras as the full-sized Velvet line, including a rainproof, 100-percent
and productions, giving even more choice to directors of photogra- aluminum body; silent, fanless operation; and an intuitive
phy. control panel.
For additional information, visit www.cookeoptics.com. Measuring 34" long, 7.5"
wide and 3.5" deep, the Velvet
Mini 3 draws 150 watts, outputs
42 footcandles at 10' and
weighs only 9.5 pounds. This
lightweight panel can be
quickly rigged in tight locations
or low-ceiling studios, and it

76 November 2016 American Cinematographer

includes two handles so it can be easily
hand-held.
The new model comes with a choice
of V-Mount or Gold Mount battery mounts.
Telecine &
An XLR3 connection will accept 12 to 35 Color Grading
volts DC, and a Smart AC power supply will
power the lights anywhere in the world.
Jod is a true artist with
The Velvet Minis are rated at a high
a great passion for his craft.
John W. Simmons, ASC
TLCI 95 and CRI 95. Color temperature can
be adjusted in 100K increments from Contact Jod @ 310-713-8388
2,700K to 6,500K; a dedicated button Jod@apt-4.com
allows for quick switching between 3,200K
and 5,600K. The fixtures controls are digital
and can be operated remotely by DMX-
RDM through a standard XLR5 connector.
The settings are easily visible on a digital
display, and the control panel is shockproof
and rainproof. There are no knobs or
toggles that can be broken or inadvertently
knocked out of adjustment.
Like the Velvet line, the soft and
natural light from the Velvet Minis can be
shaped with DoPchoice SnapGrids and
SnapBags.
For additional information, visit
www.thelight.com.es.

P+S Technic Adds

CinemaScope Zoom
Munich-based P+S Technik has
announced its second PL-mount Cinema-
Scope Zoom: the 70-200mm (T3.5). Like
the companys 35-70mm (T3.5) CS anamor-
phic zoom, the 70-200mm is based on a
front-anamorphic lens design and a 1.5x
anamorphic squeeze factor.
The 70-200mm CS is designed for
Super 35 and larger-size sensors. When
using the P+S Technic CS zooms on a 1.5:1
full-frame sensor (36x24mm), the 35mm
focal length produces an image corre-
sponding to a 22mm lens on a Super 35-
size sensor.
In addition to manufacturing original
lenses, P+S Technik offers an array of lens
services, including complete
rehousing for lenses from
Angenieux, Bausch

77
 & Lomb (Super Baltar), Canon (K-35 and
FD), Cooke (Panchro and Telepanchro),
Kinoptik, Kowa, Leica, Lomo (spherical and
anamorphic), Meyer-Optik-Grlitz, and
Schneider (Cinegon and Cine Xenon).
For additional information, visit
www.pstechnik.de.
MAT Launches Cosmo Dolly
Founded by Peter Braun in Hamburg,
Germany, in 1976 and celebrating 40 years
of contributions to the film, television and
music industries, Mad About Technology
(MAT) continues to innovate with the intro-
duction of the Cosmo Dolly.
The Cosmos design hides all of its
electronics inside, and its fast and high-
precision belt drive enables smooth, noise-
less shots. The lightweight dolly can work
on the ground, overhead, vertically and
diagonally, and can perform curved moves
on its 35cm-wide tracks. The compact,
30x82cm dolly can also be combined with a
special edition of the Academy Sci-Tech
Award-winning MAT-Towercam to create
one-of-a-kind moves.
For additional information, visit
www.mat-film.tv.
Zeiss Adds Lightweight Zoom
Zeiss has introduced the Lightweight
Zoom LWZ.3 21-100mm (T2.9-3.9) for the
Super 35 format. Weighing only 2kg (4.4
pounds), the LWZ.3 is compatible with all
common film cameras, and will be available
starting January 2017. The zoom lens opti-
cal characteristics, as well as its long and
precise focus rotation and the high quality
of materials used in its construction, make it
an ideal lens for an array of applications.
The LWZ.3 is equipped with the
Interchangeable Mount System, with five
different mounts for all current camera
systems. Other features of the LWZ.3
78 November 2016
include calibrated scales, consistent imag-
ing quality across the entire image field, no
vignetting, and the efficient reduction of
reflections thanks to the Zeiss T* anti-reflec-
tive coating.
For additional information, visit
www.zeiss.com.
Cineo Tunes HSX, Partners
With LumenRadio
Cineo Lighting has unveiled the HSX
Color-Tunable Soft Source.
The HSX features flicker-free opera-
tion and a color-tuning range of 2,700K-
6,000K while measuring in at
12"x21"x8.5". Boasting an output control
range of 0-100 percent with local control,
DMX and RDM support, and a straightfor-
ward, intuitive control interface, adjust-
ments can be made quickly and efficiently.
A silent, passive cooling system without
fans ensures that no ambient noise will
disrupt a shoot.
Other features include three Stan-
dard Deviation Color Matching (SDCM)
variations over 50,000 hours, and presets at
2,700K, 3,200K, 4,300K, 5,600K and
6,000K. The HSX has no color shift over the
full dimming range and is 100-percent
compatible with all HS-line accessories.
Cineo Lighting has also announced
an OEM wireless partnership with Lumen-
Radio, a leader in wireless technologies for
the entertainment industries.
With the addition of integrated
LumenRadio CRMX OEM RDM modules to
Cineos HSX and HS2 Wave products, users
are now able to control and configure their
fixtures wirelessly. The HS product line is
highly configurable over RDM, and Lumen-
Radios RDM implementation means the
Cineo Lighting fixtures can now be
patched, monitored and configured from a
distance.
American Cinematographer
The HS2 Wave and HSX are the first
Cineo Lighting products to utilize Lumen-
Radios award-winning technology, and
Cineo promises that additional products
both new and existing will integrate the
technology in the near future.
For additional information, visit
www.cineolighting.com.
Gates Houses ME20
Gates Underwater Products has
introduced the ME20 underwater housing
system for use with Canons ME20F-SH
multi-purpose camera, which is capable of
incredible low-light performance at up to 4
million ISO.
The Gates ME20 Housing is
designed to take advantage of the cameras
capabilities in order to capture natural biolu-
minescence, moonlit reefs, dark caves and
other light-challenged scenes without the
aid of artificial lighting. The Gates ME20
system is integrated with the Starlite ST5, a
small and highly capable external monitor
housing for Transvideos Star-
liteHD OLED monitor.
Together, the ST5 and
StarliteHD give
users a 5" high-
resolution display
and H.264 proxies
recorded to SD
cards. Additionally,
the housing includes
integrated space for an exter-
nal recorder such as Convergent
Designs Gemini. Adaptations for other
recorders and applications can be accom-
modated.
Consistent with Gates line of
cinema housings, the Gates ME20 boasts
reliability, field serviceability, Gates Precision
Ports, an adjustable trim weight system for
buoyancy and balance, adjustable handle
grips, and an extensive line of accessories,
including a 3G-SDI surface feed and remote
camera control. The Gates ME20 also
supports all EF-mount lenses with Gates
Lens Gear Drive system. The Gates Seal
Check II verifies housing integrity before
entering the water.
For additional information, visit
www.gateshousings.com.
International Marketplace

80 November 2016 American Cinematographer

Classifieds
CLASSIFIED AD RATES EQUIPMENT FOR SALE EQUIPMENT FOR SALE
All classifications are $4.50 per word. Words set TJs Grip Design, Inc. Worlds SUPERMARKET of USED MOTION
in bold face or all capitals are $5.00 per word.
First word of ad and advertisers name can be set Grip Rigging Accessories PICTURE EQUIPMENT! Buy, Sell, Trade.
in capitals without extra charge. No agency 5/8 fittings Mini Ball heads CAMERAS, LENSES, SUPPORT, AKS &
commission or discounts on classified advertis- www.tjthegrip.com MORE! Visual Products, Inc. www.visual
ing.PAYMENT MUST ACCOMPANY ORDER. VISA,
Mastercard, AmEx and Discover card are accept- products.com Call 440.647.4999
4X5 85 Glass Filters, Diffusion, Polas etc. A
ed. Send ad to Classified Advertising, Ameri-
can Cinematographer, P.O. Box 2230, Good Box Rental 818-763-8547
Hollywood, CA 90078. Or FAX (323) 876-4973.
Deadline for payment and copy must be in the HOLLYWOOD STUDIO ANTIQUES
office by 15th of second month preceding publica- www.CinemaAntiques.com
tion. Subject matter is limited to items and servic- BUY-SELL-TRADE
es pertaining to filmmaking and video production.
Words used are subject to magazine style abbre-
viation. Minimum amount per ad: $45

www.theasc.com November 2016 81

 Advertisers Index
Abel Cine Tech 27 Deck of Aces 81
AC 81 Digital Sputnik Lighting
Adorama 11, 45 Systems 15
AFI 83 Duclos Lenses 75
AJA 47 Eastman Kodak C4
Alan Gordon Enterprises 80 ECU Film Festival 8
Arri 9, 29
ASC Master Class 69 Filmotechnic 73
ASC Film Manual 60 F.J. Westcott 65
Fluotec 67
B&H Photo-Video-Pro Audio
25 Government Video Technology
Backstage Equipment, Inc. Expo 71
67 Grip Factory Munich/GFM 8
Blackmagic Design 7 Groupe TVA/Mels Studio
and Post 19
Camerimage 87
Carl Zeiss SBE, LLC 17 Hexolux/Visionsmith 81
Cavision Enterprises 80 Horita Company Inc 81
Chapman/Leonard J.L. Fisher 39
Studio Equip. 23 Jod Soraci 77
Cinebags, Inc. 81
Cinematography K5600 57
Electronics 67 Kino Flo 61
Cinekinetic 80 Lee Filters 38
Cooke Optics 13 Lights! Action! Co. 80
CW Sonderoptic Gmbh C3
Mac Tech LED 55
Matthews Studio Equipment/
MSE 75
Mole-Richardson/Studio
Depot 80
Movie Tech AG 80
NBC/Universal 55
Nila, Inc. 8
P+S Technik Feinmechanik
Gmbh 81
Panasonic System
Communications Co. 5
Panavision, Inc. 21
Pille Filmgeraeteverleih
Gmbh 80
Powermills 80
Pro8mm 80
Samys DV & Edit 35
Schneider Optics 2
Slamdance Film Festival 79
Super16, Inc. 81
Technicolor Content &
Theatrical Services 37
Teradek, LLC C2-1
Thelight Luminary for
Cine and TV, S.L. 49
University of North Carolina
School of the Arts 59
Willys Widgets 80
www.theasc.com 48, 77, 82

82
 In Memoriam
Frederic Goodich, ASC, 1939-2016
Frederic Goodich, ASC was equal parts
cinematographer and director, student and
educator, and an ever-engaged advocate for
directors of photography all around the world.
His enthusiasm for the art and craft of motion-
picture making and his devotion to his family,
friends and the ASC were equally boundless.
Goodich died on Aug. 30 at age 76.
Goodich was born on Sept. 10, 1939,
in the Bronx, New York. Growing up, he
demonstrated an early affinity for the arts,
particularly drawing and painting, and in
elementary school he took first prize in an all-
Bronx competition for a Keep Your Subway
Clean poster campaign. He developed an
interest in still photography after borrowing a
friends Leica camera in junior high school, but
at his familys encouragement, he turned his
academic focus toward engineering. He gradu-
ated from Bronx High School of Science and
went on to attend City College of New York.
At CCNY, his passion for the visual arts
resurfaced, and he came to realize that film-
making and specifically cinematography
combined that love with his interests in science
and technology. Cinematography is part of
my personal journey to understand the world,
Goodich told AC for the magazines erstwhile
Member Portrait series (May 12). Movies and we maintained our friendship through the
crystalized my childhood experience and
taught me the ways of the human heart;
theyve influenced my creative vision and
heightened my sensibility to wonderfully inven-
tive ways of telling stories that resonate within
our lives.
Complementing his time in the class-
room, Goodich took a part-time job as a film
handler at New Yorks Museum of Modern Art,
where he nurtured an appreciation for avant-
garde and documentary films that would
inform his work and his tastes throughout the
years to come.
After graduating from CCNY, Goodich
was recommended for a camera job in Wash-
ington, D.C., for a magazine-style show, after
which he shot travelogues aboard a four-mast
windjammer. Then, in the mid-60s, a chance
meeting in Los Angeles opened the door for
Goodich to join the tight-knit team at Ency-
84 November 2016
clopdia Britannica Films in Hollywood, where
future ASC member Isidore Mankofsky was
the on-staff cinematographer, shooting educa-
tional pieces. He was hired as my assistant,
Mankofsky recalls. Plus, since there were only
four of us on the staff, he did all sorts of
things. I left in 1969 and he left around 1973,
How do I shoot a greenscreen? He usually
years.
As a staff director-cinematographer for
Britannica, Goodich hired future ASC member
John Bailey as an assistant. Although I had
very few credits to justify his hiring me, Fred
talked to me, understood our common love of
cinema, and quickly offered me work, Bailey
recalls. It was the best jumpstart to a career
any young film student could ever hope for.
Freds ongoing commitment to
mentoring young cinematographers was
evident through his entire career, Bailey
continues. Eventually, I was lucky to get into
the union and move up through the ranks.
Along the way, Fred and I often crossed paths;
we always talked, not about lenses and film
stocks, but about cinema, especially foreign
movies. Many years later I was able to ask Fred
to do some second-unit cinematography for
me on For Love of the Game, where he seam-
American Cinematographer
lessly blended his work with our main unit.
In conversation, Goodich often refer-
enced a metaphysical sense of the interplay of
light and shadow in the natural world. Why I
became a cinematographer has much to do
with my relationship to Light and Dark, Good-
ich told AC. Its a spiritual thing, the ghost that
surrounds and reveals. Light and its absence
define objects and people and initiate feelings.
The dramas of Light and Shadow have
comforted, frightened, thrilled, challenged and
elated me.
He looked at things a little bit differ-
ently than other people did, says Peter Ander-
son, ASC. The conversations with Fred, in
person or on the phone, were often long, and
were often graciously convoluted. But you
could always feel it was building to an under-
standing of the art that he loved. And his ques-
Portrait by Owen Roizman, ASC. Bucharest photo by Tudor Lucaciu, RSC. All photos courtesy of the ASC archives.
tions were incredibly insightful.
Anderson met Goodich in 1983, after
sitting next to Goodichs son, Nikolai, on a
cross-country flight. A day or two later,
Anderson says, Fred called me up and we got
to talking. Fred specialized in commercials, and
he loved technology. Over the decades, we
stayed in touch, and oftentimes he would call
me up about, How do I shoot a bluescreen?
knew the answer, but he was doing a double-
check and he was just keeping a friendship
going.
Goodichs commercial career both as
a cinematographer and a director flour-
ished, and he ultimately notched more than
900 credits. In addition, he photographed
numerous narrative projects, including the
Oscar-winning short film Board and Care; the
camp horror movie Fear No Evil; and two early
entrants in the then-nascent 24p HD field, The
Affair and Surviving Eden. His feature credits
also included The Lay of the Land and G.I.
Jesus.
When he wasnt shooting, Goodich
regularly participated in film festivals and other
events where he could promote the impor-
tance of his fellow directors of photography.
He became closely associated with Cinematog-
raphers Day, an event that was conceived by
 Left: Frederic Goodich, ASC with his wife, Donna, at the Wine Country Film Festival. Right: Goodich leads a master class in Bucharest, Romania.
Luciano Tovoli, ASC, AIC and established by Dr.
David B. Kaminsky. Soon after it began in
1999, Goodich joined Kaminsky as the events
associate chair, helping to stage the day at
venues around the world.
Goodich was also a tireless educator
and taught at the American Film Institute;
ArtCenter College of Design; California Insti-
tute of the Arts; Valencia College; and Seoul,
South Koreas Chung-Ang University, among
other institutions.
From the time I met him through the
rest of his life, what most distinguished Fred
Goodich was his absolute passion for cinema
and the culture of cinematography, shares
Robert Primes, ASC. No one loved movies
more than Fred. He completely immersed
himself. He traveled the world going to film
festivals and gatherings of cinematographers.
He invited John Bailey and me to the Bangkok
Film Festival [AC June 04], where he seemed to
be practically running the show. Id find him
catching double bills at the Directors Guild. He
brought colleagues to AFI to teach lighting and
blocking. He kept up relations with cinematog-
raphers around the world. He was every-
where.
Primes, Bailey, Mankofsky and Ander-
son each wrote letters of recommendation for
Goodich to become an active member of the
ASC, and on Feb. 12, 2007, he was officially
invited into the Society. Anderson reflects that
Goodich brought his love of the industry, and
the work hed done at festivals and teaching
students, to our Society. He was heavily
involved in participating on the Board [of
Governors], putting together meetings,
outreaching to groups, and just generally
making everybody feel welcome and proud to
be a cinematographer.
Fred served with amazing love for and
commitment to the ASC, Bailey agrees. Once
Goodich had become a member, Mankofsky
adds, He was always very active at the ASC
and very, very helpful. He was the secretary [on
the Board], which is a tough job. He was a very
good member.
Just this past June, Goodich was re-
elected to serve a sixth consecutive term as
secretary of the Board. He was also chair of the
Societys International Committee and an
active participant on the Spotlight Award
Committee. As he told AC in his ASC Close-
Up (June 16), Membership authenticated movies continued with his chairmanship of the
and reinvigorated my lifes passion the tech-
nical and artistic sides. It led to teaching and
shooting gigs. And new friendships! I look
forward to participating in Society activities,
hanging out with colleagues of different back-
grounds, sharing issues and tales of our expe-
riences, engaging with students. I value the
responsibility of being an ASC officer and the
chair of the ASC International Committee,
grateful for the privilege and the trust
bestowed.
Goodich continued to tackle a variety
of projects. In 2012, he wrote and directed the
short Kickstart Theft, which was shot by the
late Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC, HSC (AC Nov.
12), and he participated in the ASC-PGA
Image Control Assessment Series (AC Sept.
12).
He also continued to travel, represent-
ing the ASC and carrying high the torch for
cinematographers everywhere. In 2013, for
example, he attended the Imago/FNF Oslo
Digital Cinema Conference to discuss the
ICAS, and journeyed to the Caragiale Acad-
emy of Theatrical Arts and Cinematography in
Bucharest, Romania, where he presented two
master classes. That same year, he presented a
session at the Wine Country Film Festival in
www.theasc.com
Northern California; about the event, Goodich
told AC (Clubhouse News, Dec. 13), The
lecture demonstrated how great cinematogra-
phy is not about capturing, but rather about
creating and constructing meaningful
images. Cinematographers dont just take
pictures; they make pictures.
Most recently, as chair of the Societys
International Committee, Goodich spear-
headed the organization and presentation of
the International Cinematography Summit (AC
Sept. 16). Freds ongoing love of foreign
ASCs International Committee and his work
on behalf of the [ICS], says Bailey. Talking
about international cinema with Fred was a
bright beacon, cutting through the some-
times-murky air of Hollywood movies. Fred
and his love for great filmmaking will be so
missed.
Primes adds, His passion so perme-
ated the Clubhouse that his sudden death has
created a great vacuum. ASC President Kees
van Oostrum reflects, He was a wonderful,
kind spirit with an unending loyalty to the
ASC.
He was always so passionately inter-
ested, says Anderson. That continued up to
basically his final moments. Getting the [news
of his passing] was a total shock I expected
him to always be there. His contributions were
very special. He was a very unique and
talented cinematographer, teacher and good
friend. We were so glad to have him part of
us.
Goodich is survived by his wife, Donna,
and son, Nikolai.
Jon D. Witmer
November 2016 85
 Clubhouse News
From left: Antonio Riestra, ASC, ACK, AMC; Dana Gonzales, ASC and John Simmons, ASC with their Emmy Awards.
Society Welcomes Riestra
New active member Antonio Ries-
tra, ASC, ACK, AMC is a native of Mexico
and now resides in Los Angeles and Prague.
His love for cinematography began at a
young age, when he would watch popular
television shows and take still photos with a
Kodak Brownie camera. His first job as a still
photographer was with the National
Indigenous Institute in Mexico, after which
he got his start as a camera assistant with
French director-cinematographer Pierre
Beccu on a documentary about
Guatemalan refugees returning home after
years of living in Mexico. He served as a
loader for Don McAlpine, ASC, ACS on the
feature Clear and Present Danger; was a
focus puller on numerous commercials,
including several shot by Emmanuel
Lubezki, ASC, AMC; and worked as 2nd-
unit cinematographer on Frida alongside
Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC.
Riestra has continued to work on
several international commercial campaigns
for such companies as Dodge, Beats by Dre,
Fiat, Disney and Kodak. His recent feature
credits include Mama, The Face of Love,
Eloise and Stephanie.
86 November 2016
Gonzales, Simmons Win Emmys
The Television Academy recently
presented the 68th annual Emmy Awards.
Dana Gonzales, ASC won in the
Outstanding Cinematography for a Limited
Series or Movie category for his work on
Fargo, Waiting for Dutch. In the
Outstanding Cinematography for a Multi-
Camera Series category, John Simmons,
ASC won for Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn,
Go Hollywood. Also nominated were
ASC members George Mooradian and
Steven V. Silver, for Outstanding Cine-
matography for a Multi-Camera Series; and
John S. Bartley, David Klein and
Crescenzo Notarile, for Outstanding Cine-
matography for a Single-Camera Series.
Bailey Judges Kodak
Scholarships
John Bailey, ASC recently led a
panel of judges chosen to select the recipi-
ents of the 2016 Kodak Student Scholarship
Awards and the Kodak Student Cinematog-
raphy Scholarship Awards. This was Baileys
fifth consecutive year as a judge. The
announcement of the 25th annual Kodak
Student Scholarship program winners took
place at the 70th annual University Film and
Video Association conference held at the
American Cinematographer
Gonzales photo by Phil McCarten, courtesy of Invision for the Television Academy and AP Images. Simmons photo courtesy of the cinematographer.
University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Due to an increase in submissions of
outstanding movies shot on film, an honor-
able-mention category was added this year
to the Kodak Vision Award category. The
first-place Student Cinematography Schol-
arship Award was presented to Sonja Tsypin
from New Yorks Bard College, for her cine-
Photo of Clubhouse by Isidore Mankofsky, ASC; lighting by Donald M. Morgan, ASC.
matography on Powder Room. The Kodak
Vision Award was presented to Jomo Fray
from the New York University Tisch School
of the Arts, for his cinematography on Get
Out Fast. The Kodak Vision Award honor-
able mention was presented to Thomas
Doran from the National Film and Television
School in the U.K., for his cinematography
on The Sea, the God and the Man.
Primes Exhibits Discoveries
Robert Primes, ASC recently
unveiled his photographic exhibit Discov-
eries at the Perfect Exposure Gallery in Los
Angeles. Discoveries is an exhibit of
shapes and rhythms, people and places,
anything that I thought might make a
surprising photograph, Primes said of the
exhibit. My hope is that these discoveries
will cause the viewer to pause a moment to
contemplate the visual richness of the
world around us.
 Close-up Mandy Walker, ASC, ACS
When you were a child, what film made the strongest
impression on you?
The transition from black-and-white to color in The Wizard of Oz
[1939] struck me as cinematic magic at an early age.
Which cinematographers, past or
present, do you most admire?
Robby Mller [BVK, NSC], Owen Roiz-
man [ASC] and Gordon Willis [ASC]
were big influences on my early work,
and now it would have to be Roger
Deakins [ASC, BSC] and Emmanuel
Lubezki [ASC, AMC].
What sparked your interest in
photography?
I have visited art galleries ever since I
was in a stroller with my mother. My
father also made me a darkroom at home where I could do my own
black-and-white processing and printing. I was inspired by our
familys regular ventures to the cinema, including [screenings of]
foreign-language films.
Where did you train and/or study?
I knew I wanted to be a cinematographer from the age of 14.
However, I never went to a film school. At 18, my first job was as a
production runner on a feature film. Then, after working my way up
through the camera department starting as a loader I shot my
first feature film at 25 years old.
Who were your early teachers or mentors?
My film-criticism teacher at high school, Brian Simpson and later
Ray Argall [ACS], a cinematographer I was working with in
Australia. I started as his assistant on documentaries, and then
dramas, before operating for him and moving on to shooting his
films when he became a director.
What are some of your key artistic influences?
Every time Im in preparation for a movie I seek out references such
as paintings, photographs and other movies that I feel evoke the
style and emotion of the story.
How did you get your first break in the business?
A teacher and actor, John Flaus, gave me the contact of a producer.
I followed it up and was employed as a runner on a movie. I persis-
tently asked the camera department for contacts, told them I
wanted to be an assistant and showed I was keen.
88 November 2016 American Cinematographer
What has been your most satisfying moment on a project?
If I have succeeded in visually supporting the story and the directors
vision of a film, then that is always satisfying.
Have you made any memorable
blunders?
It would have to be on my first film-
loading job on a 16mm [Arriflex] BL,
where I loaded a roll of film twice. In
dailies we watched a double-exposed
scene of a kid being berated by his
teacher at school while, upside down,
his parents were having a dinner party.
What is the best professional
advice youve ever received?
When I was starting out there were
only a small percentage of women in
the camera department, and I am constantly reassured that while it
may still appear to be male-dominated, theres no reason why it
should be.
What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you?
The still photography of Bill Henson and the paintings of William
Turner are very evocative and moving.
Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like to
try?
I like shooting all different genres. Something I have not done but
would really love to shoot is an action movie, such as a James Bond
or Jason Bourne film.
If you werent a cinematographer, what might you be doing
instead?
I would be a still photographer. Storytelling through images is what
I enjoy the most.
Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for
membership?
Kees van Oostrum, Bill Bennett and David Darby.
Photo by Matt Nettheim, SMPSP.
How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?
What I enjoy the most about the ASC is the camaraderie, the gener-
ous exchange of ideas and advice, and getting to socialize and talk
to some of the cinematography legends Ive admired throughout my
life.