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F E B R U A R Y 2013

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CONGRATULATIONS TO

DEAN SEMLERRodney Charters, Robby Müller, Curtis Clark

And To All This Year’s Nominees

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The International Journal of Motion Imaging

32 The World’s Most Wanted ManGreig Fraser, ACS tracks Osama bin Laden for Zero Dark Thirty

42 War on CrimeDion Beebe, ASC, ACS revisits 1949 L.A. for Gangster Squad

54 Crumbling PillarsMike Eley, BSC evokes World War I England for Parade’s End

62 Vision and VerveDean Semler, ASC, ACS receives the ASC Lifetime Achievement Award

72 Postcards from PolandHighlights from 2012 Plus Camerimage

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On Our Cover: A CIA analyst ( Jessica Chastain) awaits the launch of a top-secret missionin Zero Dark Thirty, shot by Greig Fraser, ACS. (Photo by Jonathan Olley, courtesy ofColumbia Pictures/Sony Pictures Entertainment.)

8 Editor’s Note10 President’s Desk12 Short Takes: Marilyn Manson’s “Slo-Mo-Tion”18 Production Slate: House of Cards • Caesar Must Die76 New Products & Services82 International Marketplace83 Classified Ads84 Ad Index86 Clubhouse News88 ASC Close-Up: Stephen Goldblatt

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EDITORIALEXECUTIVE EDITOR Stephen Pizzello

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CONTRIBUTING WRITERSBenjamin B, Douglas Bankston, Robert S. Birchard,

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————————————————————————————————————American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 93rd year of publication, is published

monthly in Hollywood by ASC Holding Corp., 1782 N. Orange Dr., Hollywood, CA 90028, U.S.A., (800) 448-0145, (323) 969-4333, Fax (323) 876-4973, direct line for subscription inquiries (323) 969-4344.

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office. Article Reprints: Requests for high-quality article reprints (or electronic reprints) should be made toSheridan Reprints at (800) 635-7181 ext. 8065 or by e-mail [email protected].

Copyright 2013 ASC Holding Corp. (All rights reserved.) Periodicals postage paid at Los Angeles, CA and at additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA.

POSTMASTER: Send address change to American Cinematographer, P.O. Box 2230, Hollywood, CA 90078.———————————————————————————————————— 4

© 2012 Sony Electronics Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Features and specifi cations are subject to change without notice. Sony, CineAlta, and the make.believe logo are trademarks of Sony.

HD, 2K, 4K and beyond. With Sony 4K, your future is bright. Even if you’re distributing in HD, Sony 4K gives you beautiful, super-sampled pictures with higher contrast and greater sharpness. The F55 camera upgrades your imagery with true color, on-board 4K recording and electronic global shutter, while the F5 offers a 4K sensor and super-sampled HD recording. They join the 8K-sensor F65, not to mention a full spectrum of Sony 4K tools to create the ultimate in immersive viewing. Experience incredible Sony 4K recorders, monitors, digital cinema projectors, a nonlinear editor, a home theater projector and even a home television. Sony 4K: delivering tomorrow’s performance, today.

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OFFICERS - 2012/2013

Stephen LighthillPresident

Daryn OkadaVice President

Richard CrudoVice President

Kees Van OostrumVice President

Victor J. KemperTreasurer

Frederic GoodichSecretary

Steven FierbergSergeant At Arms

MEMBERS OF THEBOARDJohn Bailey

Stephen H. BurumCurtis Clark

Richard CrudoDean CundeyFred Elmes

Michael GoiVictor J. Kemper

Francis KennyMatthew LeonettiStephen LighthillMichael O'SheaRobert Primes

Owen RoizmanKees Van Oostrum

ALTERNATESRon GarciaJulio Macat

Kenneth ZunderSteven Fierberg

Karl Walter Lindenlaub

MUSEUM CURATORSteve Gainer

American Society of Cine ma tog ra phersThe ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but

an educational, cultural and pro fes sion al or ga ni za tion. Membership is by invitation

to those who are actively en gaged as di rec tors of photography and have

dem on strated out stand ing ability. ASC membership has be come one of the highest

honors that can be bestowed upon a pro fes sional cin e ma tog ra pher — a mark

of prestige and excellence.

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This issue has a decidedly Australian flavor, spotlighting atrio of cinematographers who hail from Down Under. Firstand foremost is Dean Semler, ASC, ACS, who will receivethe Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award on Feb. 10.During a long and prosperous career, Semler has amasseddozens of credits on a wide variety of popular movies. In1991, he earned Academy and ASC awards for Danceswith Wolves, and he earned a second ASC nomination in2007 for Apocalypto. A member of the Australian Cine-matographers Society’s Hall of Fame who has received theQueen’s Medal (one of Australia’s highest honors), Semlerhas also won an Australian Film Institute Award (for the

thriller Razorback) and earned five additional AFI nominations. “You’d think every filmwas his first film,” camera operator Mark Goellnicht tells Jean Oppenheimer in herentertaining profile of Semler (“Vision and Verve,” page 62). “He still has that excite-ment in him.”

Zero Dark Thirty, a gritty procedural that dramatizes the CIA’s hunt for Osama binLaden, was shot by another Australian with keen eyes and a hot hand: Greig Fraser,ACS, who joined the project after lending his talents to the recent features Let Me In,Snow White and the Huntsman and Killing Them Softly. In Michael Goldman’s pieceabout the production (“The World’s Most Wanted Man,” page 32), director KathrynBigelow says she wanted to work with a cinematographer “who possessed enormousconfidence to go along with his skill.” Mission accomplished, as the saying goes.

The period drama Gangster Squad benefits from cinematography by Dion Beebe,ASC, ACS, who has also enjoyed big success in Hollywood. Beebe’s experience onmajor productions served him well alongside director Ruben Fleischer, who was helm-ing his third feature. “I’m a young filmmaker,” Fleischer tells associate editor JonWitmer (“War on Crime,” page 42). “Dion is such a maestro and so experienced, andhe taught me so much. I value his opinion and respect everything he did.”

This month’s issue also covers the TV miniseries Parade’s End, which Mike Eley,BSC shot at locations in England and Belgium. London correspondent Mark Hope-Jonesvisited the production while the filmmakers were staging battlefield scenes in the lattercountry (“Crumbling Pillars,” page 54). Eley notes that he and director Susanna Whitewere inspired by an exhibition of Vorticist paintings at the Tate Modern museum inLondon: “Parade’s End is thought of as one of the first modernist novels, and Vorticismhit the world around 1914, slap-bang in the middle of our story. In particular, we werestruck by the vortographs, which are photographs taken through a fractured mirror,and we decided to borrow that technique.”

Rounding out this issue is a pictorial recap of the 2012 Plus Camerimage festival,which lived up to its billing as a premiere showcase for the art of cinematography(“Postcards from Poland,” page 72).

Stephen PizzelloExecutive Editor

Editor’s Note

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As you read this, know that you are probably one of many who willbecome People Without A History. Why? Because almost everything youwrite and every photo you save — things that have traditionally informedhistorians about previous generations — exist only in the digital domain,on hard drives or SSD devices. The half-life of a mechanical hard drive isabout five years. That means the magnetic particles on the surface of thedrive lose 50 percent of their strength in five years, and that makes yourmagnetically stored data vulnerable to corruption.

There is also the question of digital media’s obsolescence. What tech-nology will your grandchildren use to access your letters and photos? In50 years, a LaCie drive will probably be an unfamiliar object.

If you back up your hard drive with another, and maybe another, andleave them all at your home, you have broken Rule 2 of archiving:Geographically separate your master copies. What’s Rule 1? Your mastershould last 100 years and be readable with the naked eye. Okay, they arenot rules, but they are among archivists’ 10 commandments, I guaranteeyou. So, unless we all start saving our pictures and correspondence ongood old paper, we will pass nothing of our own history to our grand-children, or possibly even to our children.

And what of our collective cultural heritage? As motion-picture labsclose, moving images are more and more likely to be “preserved” onformats that cannot rival the universality of motion-picture film. There isno universally agreed-upon or proven archival storage method for digitalmedia.

Hollywood studios have announced they will soon stop making 35mm release prints for new movies, and that theyintend to stop striking new prints of existing films. This is terrible news for revival houses, small film festivals, movie theatersthat cannot afford to buy or maintain digital projectors, and museums or archives that occasionally want to screen a moviewith a film projector, as it was originally intended to be shown. It is amazing to us that Hollywood has no plan to facilitatethe screening of films in their original formats.

It is also amazing that in the industry’s transition to digital exhibition, little thought has been given to the sizableeducational market. At some colleges and universities, cinematography students mainly screen film prints, seldom Blu-raysor DVDs. Cinematography students need to build a comprehensive mental library that includes the wondrous artifacts ofgrain, gate weave, motion blur, and the other imaging glories of film.

Well, this is awards season, and the magazine you are reading recently won four Folio Awards for Editorial Excel-lence, or “Eddies.” In the category of Business to Business: Media/Entertainment/Publishing, the magazine’s June ’12 andDec. ’11 editions won the Gold and Silver Eddies, respectively, for Best Full Issue. And AC associate editor Jon Witmer wonthe Gold Eddie for Best Single Article for his piece on The Avengers (June ’12), while contributing writer Benjamin Bergerywon the Silver Eddie for Best Single Article for his piece on The Tree of Life (Aug. ’11). Congratulations to our publisher,Martha Winterhalter, and executive editor, Stephen Pizzello, as well as their colleagues! Onward … with paper!

Stephen LighthillASC President

President’s Desk

10 February 2013 American Cinematographer

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Pushing Boundaries with Marilyn MansonBy Jennifer Wolfe

The music video for Marilyn Manson’s “Slo-Mo-Tion,”directed by Manson and shot by Alan Lasky, utilizes motion effectscaptured in-camera to create a dynamic look that pushes the bound-aries of digital cinematography. Shot primarily on P+S Technik’s PS-Cam X35, the video is a literal realization of the song’s refrain,wherein Manson chants, “This is my beautiful show, and everythingis shot in slo-mo-tion.” Manson worked closely with Lasky, who alsoserved as the visual-effects supervisor, to create the complex motioneffects, many of which depended on sophisticated motion-vectoranalysis and complex mathematical algorithms.

With an undergraduate degree in film from New York Univer-sity and a master’s in media technology from the Massachusetts Insti-tute of Technology, Lasky has consulted for a number of cameracompanies over the years, including P+S Technik and Dalsa. A veteranof music-video cinematography, he first collaborated with Mansonon “No Reflection,” the first video from Born Villain. “The great thingabout working with Manson is that he is not afraid to utilize all of acamera’s potential functionality,” Lasky says. “What’s more, he’llalways say, ‘I want to push it way, way, way, way further.’ Once wedecoupled ourselves from the standard model of rock-video produc-tion, we were able to push the technology and get into an experi-mental side of filmmaking that is fun and exciting — and kind ofdangerous, too.

“What’s really cool about the X35 is that not only does it allowyou to capture up to 500 fps with a full-frame sensor and global shut-

ter, but it also enables you to shoot time-lapse, alter frame rates, dospeed ramping, and change and manipulate the shutter in reallyinteresting ways,” Lasky continues. He notes that Manson dislikesusing greenscreen and common compositing techniques. “He lovesimage processing and would much rather get it in-camera. He’sabout manipulating images, not assembling them.”

Using a style known as glitch art, a technique related to datamoshing, Lasky and editor/visual-effects artist Richard Piedra appliedoptical-flow analysis techniques to material captured with the PS-Cam X35 in order to create artifacts within the footage. “Basically,you take an image-processing algorithm and destabilize it in orderfor it to do something that it was never designed to do,” says Lasky.“Once you knock the foundation out from under the fundamentalalgorithm, the resulting imagery is the embodiment of what we callthe glitch. The visual artifacts that result from the destabilization ofthe algorithm can be very interesting, and they’re something youcouldn’t get any other way. We wanted to fundamentally destabilizethe optical-flow analysis and the timing interpolation in such a waythat we could get these artifacts that might look really cool.”

Lasky shot the material at 6 fps with a 360-degree shutter,capturing the footage to solid-state drives as uncompressed Quick-Time 10-bit files using Blackmagic Design’s Hyperdeck recorder. Theimages began to blur, becoming “jerky and strange looking,” hesays. “The camera was essentially allowing us to manipulate time.We shot the material and then brought that footage in for somefairly sophisticated motion-vector analysis. Then we took thatoutput, the underlying motion-vector map — in other words, amathematically derived vector map of the motion of the pixels in the

Short TakesShot by Alan

Lasky, the musicvideo for

MarilynManson’s

“Slo-Mo-Tion”features avariety of

motion effectsthat were

created in-camera using

a P+S Technik PS-Cam X35.

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frame — and started experimenting.”When Manson saw the results, he

suggested shooting some of the imagesusing ultraviolet light. “We had no idea ifthat would work at all,” Lasky recalls. “Wedidn’t know the UV cutoff point of thesensor or the phosphor levels, so we had togo in and run some tests. The first thing wedid was shut off all the camera’s internalprocessing, but I wish we could haveremoved the internal filters on the sensor aswell. If we’d had enough time, I probablywould have removed the UV-cutoff filter.We ended up having to boost the gain onthe back end, but it came out lookinggreat, like this strange, smeared, movingpainting.”

Lasky had shot with ultraviolet lightbefore, but “Slo-Mo-Tion” marked his mostextensive use of it. “The potential is therefor some very interesting imagery, bothultraviolet and infrared,” he observes. “I’vebeen researching how to shoot without theinfrared-cutoff filters and without the UV-cutoff filters, and learning what it takes toexcite the photosites on sensors using thosekinds of light rather than the visible lightspectrum.”

Lasky used Kino Flo Diva-Lites to lightthe UV sequences. “If we were to do itagain, I would probably look for a little bitmore brightness value so we could get alittle more depth-of-field. The Kinos gave usthe right amount of exposure, and we werealso able to get very good range using thecamera’s extra-sized sensor. It took a bit oftweaking in color correction because, ofcourse, the standard sensors are notdesigned to work with UV light. It’s anentirely different spectrum.”

Preparing the highly processedimages for editing was the next crucial step.“It’s important to note that we did a hugeamount of image processing before movinginto the edit bay,” says Lasky. “It’s alsoimportant to remember that we did anenormous amount of image processingwith the motion-analysis vector tool aswell.”

A variety of de-noising tools wereapplied to the 1920x1080-resolutionfootage, which was then transcoded intoProRes 4:4:4 and 4:2:2 formats usingAdobe After Effects and treated with colorlook-up tables designed by Lasky, Manson


Top and middle: A portion of the music video was shot using ultraviolet light, resulting in images that looked “like this strange, smeared, moving painting,” says Lasky.

Bottom: Manson and Lasky frame up the X35.

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and Piedra. “Depending upon the nature ofthe shot, we would utilize completely differ-ent de-noising applications,” Lasky notes,adding that five separate tools wereemployed. “Some of them are better atfixed-pattern noise, and some are better athigh-gain noise, so it really depended on theshot content.”

Lasky and Piedra set up a robust postpipeline at Sturmgruppe, creating fullyrendered and approved pre-comp elementssorted into a detailed bin structure for edit-ing within Adobe After Effects CS6. Mater-ial from the PS-Cam X35 was intercut withfootage captured with Canon EOS 5D MarkIII and Mark II DSLRs; the Canon materialwas acquired primarily in the native Canoncodec, although the new, higher quality IPBcodec available on the Mark III was alsoused for certain elements shot vérité style onthe streets of Los Angeles.

“For this type of experimentalproject, with multiple levels of imageprocessing, it’s important to have a solidbackground in visual effects,” notes Lasky.“We needed to develop a complex postpipeline with sophisticated process treesthat would allow us to get back to the orig-inal footage and change something in it ifwe needed to.”

As is the case for so many cine-matographers, image capture, visual effectsand post all blend into one for Lasky. “It’s adifficult thing for some people to metabo-lize, but the way I’ve worked throughout mycareer has led me in this direction for a longtime now,” he says. “I don’t consider myselfa cinematographer, a visual-effects artist, aneditor or a post person, but I certainlyconsider myself whatever the word is for allof those things.” ●


Lasky worked with editor/visual-effects artist Richard Piedra “to fundamentally destabilize the optical-flow analysis and the timing interpolation in such a way that we

could get these artifacts,” Lasky explains.


Power PlaysBy John Calhoun

The Netflix series House of Cards exists in the bubble of Wash-ington, D.C., politics, but it isn’t a seat of government that connectswith the populace at large — it’s more like a viper pit with no viewsin. Says director of photography Eigil Bryld, “Most of the windows inthe show are either burned or black. The idea was that the outsideworld doesn’t really matter. What matters is what’s in the room, notwhat’s beyond it.”

What’s in the room — connivers, manipulators and schemers— is not pretty. The master manipulator is Southern CongressmanFrank Underwood (Kevin Spacey), the House of RepresentativesMajority Whip, who vows to get revenge after he is passed over fora cabinet post by the incoming president.

Spacey is an executive producer on the series, as is DavidFincher, who directed the first two episodes and largely created itsaesthetic. Bryld, a Danish cinematographer who is based in NewYork, says Fincher and Spacey’s involvement was among the factorsthat attracted him to his first episodic TV drama. “I don’t watch a lot of TV series, and I’ve always had the rule that I would only doprojects that I would watch myself,” explains the cinematographer,whose credits include the features Not Fade Away and In Bruges (ACApril ’08). But, he adds, “I’ve always sort of been a political animal,”and the combination of the source material (a novel by MichaelDobbs), the script, and the participation of Fincher and Spacey ledhim to sign on.

Shooting in a slightly cropped 2:1 aspect ratio with two RedEpic cameras simultaneously was the cornerstone of the visual

approach. Fincher has worked with Red Digital Cinema since TheSocial Network and has a strong relationship with the brand. “Heloves the look and the camera’s design,” says Bryld. “He works veryclosely with the company to get what he needs. He’s very technicallyclued up, much more than I am!”

Images were shot at 6:1 compression and recorded to SSDcards. One option on the Epic that proved especially useful on Houseof Cards was the HDRx option, which “we used to control the skyand windows, and to reduce contrast if there was a harsh sun,”adds Bryld.

Fincher, Bryld and other key collaborators spent 10 weeksprepping the series in Baltimore, where most of it was shot. Muchof this time was devoted to designing the camera package, whichFincher continually pared down. “David doesn’t want a hugecamera truck, and he kept an eye on how much gear we wereusing,” says Bryld. “We didn’t carry a lot of big lights. We had a vancustom-built so we could roll out our dollies and cameras veryquickly. We didn’t have a DIT [digital-imaging technician]. We basi-cally shot everything around 4,000°K and then adjusted our lightingas opposed to tweaking the camera or building complicated looks.The general idea was, keep it simple so we can stay open and addlayers upon layers of ideas, thereby creating something very complexand dynamic.”

Fincher’s ground rules included “no Steadicam, no handheldand no zoom lenses,” the cinematographer continues. The first twotechniques were avoided for stylistic reasons. “If people were walk-ing down a corridor, we weren’t interested in using a Steadicam ortracking in a close-up,” says Bryld, who cites A-camera operatorGary W. Jay as a major collaborator on the show. “To a great extent,

Production Slate

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Rep. FrankUnderwood

(Kevin Spacey,right) establishes

a secretrelationship with

an ambitiousreporter, Zoe

(Kate Mara), inthe Netflix seriesHouse of Cards.

I


moves are on the dolly or the boom. Wewanted to use the space more so peoplewould grow larger in the frame or move awayand get smaller. We went for a morecomposed look; even though we had veryshallow focus, we tried to create deep compo-sitions all the time to add a sense of drama andpower, and the 2:1 aspect ratio really helpedwith that.”

The rule about no zoom lenses had todo not only with Fincher’s preference, but alsowith the need to work at very low light levels,and with concerns of time and efficiency. Bryldexplains, “When we walked into a location, ithad to either be pre-lit or have an ambientlight level we could work with. A lot of thedesign came from picking the right locationsand designing the sets in a specific way so wehad an ambience. Obviously, the difficult thingwith that was giving it character and atmos-phere as well. Darkness is a very importantelement in the story; Frank is often disappear-ing into darkness or emerging from darkness.”

The entire show was shot on Arri/ZeissMaster Primes, mostly the 27mm and 35mm.“We used longer lenses at times for close-ups,but we never wanted the sense of space todisappear,” says Bryld.

Standing sets built in a Baltimore ware-house included the Underwood residence, ashadowy townhouse where Frank and hisequally ambitious wife, Claire (Robin Wright),often conspire over a shared cigarette late atnight; the considerably more modest apart-ment of Zoe (Kate Mara), a young reporterwho uses Frank as an anonymous source; andvarious settings in the corridors of power,including the Oval Office. Locations includedthe offices of The Baltimore Sun, whichprovided a set for Zoe’s newspaper, The Wash-ington Herald; and Baltimore’s War MemorialBuilding, where the new president’s inauguralball was shot.

In general, mixed light sources give wayto a more uniform color temperature andbrighter sources “the closer we get to power,”says Bryld. “We worked with the art depart-ment to design practicals, and to make surethe wall color was right for the ambient light-ing so we would always get separation. Weoften used laptop screens and practical fixturesas sources. We were on our toes all the time,trying to find the light.”

In Frank’s office, the Oval Office and onother sets, bleached muslin was installed in the

Top: Underwood confers with his wife, Claire (Robin Wright). Middle: Zoe collates information for a scoop that will land her in the national spotlight. Bottom: Rep. Patrick Russo (Corey Stoll)

gets a call he has been dreading.


ceilings for soft ambience. Kino Flos wired todimmer boards were used in mixed colortemperatures. “We tried to balance every-thing as close to daylight as possible becauseof Red’s daylight-balanced sensor,” notesBryld. “We used the 1-stop polarizer, whichcools the image in a way that works wellwith the Red. We would typically try to cooloff the practical bulbs with either ¼ CTB or½ CTB. In the newspaper office, we changedall the fluorescent tubes to drive the colortowards the cooler spectrum.” Compactfluorescents were used in many practicals,and “we weren’t too worried about thegreen.” The White House and other settingscloser to the source of power are “less cont-aminated with green; they have a warmer,cleaner, more contrasty look.”

In two sequences in the secondepisode — the inauguration and the inau-gural ball — power is very close indeed. Theinauguration was shot in a warehousedoubling as an exterior. “We wanted to usereal footage of crowds from Obama’s 2009inauguration, so we had to match thatlight,” says Bryld. “We created the sun with12-light Maxi-Brutes through 20-by-20frames of ½ Soft Frost, and we hung a 20-by-20 of blue-tinted fabric in the ceiling andbounced 10Ks into it to create ambientskylight. In addition, we had to light anumber of greenscreens to allow for setextensions and crowd replication in post.”

For the inaugural ball, existing chan-deliers in the War Memorial were used,along with Kino Flos and China balls onboomed-in Menace Arms. “We were using alot of flags as well, basically taking away andthen adding a little bit of separation,” Bryldsays. “That scene is a really good example ofhow we worked: we looked at what was

there and augmented it with either lightingor the set design. We built a frosted-Plexi-glas bar lit from inside by Kino tubes thathelped define that space, and we had prac-tical lamps on the tables and greenscreensaround the stage that were replaced byimages of the American flag in post.” Thissequence features a Technocrane shot ofSpacey crossing the floor, a move that wastypically methodical in its planning, with“measured-out, taped-down space, and assoon as we were done with the shot, wecame off the Technocrane and moved on.”

Whatever the setting in House ofCards, darkness is never far away. “We shotat incredibly low light levels,” says Bryld.“The Master Primes are very fast, andFincher is not afraid to shoot at T1.4, eventhough that’s challenging for the first assis-tants. With the combination of MasterPrimes and the Red, you can never say thereisn’t enough light, because there prettymuch always is! But Fincher knows his craftwell, so he always fully understands whathe’s asking the camera crew to do.”

Because Fincher is so specific aboutwhat he wants the image to contain, “youlight specifically for that.” Also, the A and Bcameras are usually kept very close, oftenstacked one on top of the other. “We typi-cally had one camera doing a low-anglewide over and the other doing a tight over,”says Bryld. Continuity is key. “If you haveperfect continuity, I think it creates ahypnotic universe, like you’re almost experi-encing something in real time. In Fincher’sworld, you have to respect space and time,and two cameras help with that.”

After the first two episodes, theworld of the show expanded to includeother directors, such as James Foley, Joel

Schumacher, Carl Franklin and Allen Coul-ter. After shooting the first 11 episodes,Bryld moved on, making way for Tim Ives toshoot the last two. (Bryld returned towardthe end of the shoot to do some second-unit work with Fincher.) “I did 130 dayspretty much back-to-back,” says Bryld. “Wehad 15 days per episode on the first two,and then the rest of the episodes were 10days each. I didn’t have much time toprepare with the incoming director otherthan location scouting after a long day’swork.” This, he notes, was one reason the10-week prep period was vital: “We knewwe weren’t only prepping the first twoepisodes.”

However challenging it was for himto “shoot with one director on a Thursdayand another on a Friday,” Bryld notes thatHouse of Cards presented some challengesfor the directors as well. “We had to try toaccommodate the new director’s ideas butat the same time stick to the rules. A lot ofthe directors were used to working withSteadicam, and sometimes they would askfor a shot that would be a naturalSteadicam shot, but we’d go to greatlengths to track it or design it differently.”

There also was very little time forBryld to be involved in post, which Finchersupervised at A52 in Santa Monica, Calif.“During the shoot, David did a preliminarygrade using the Pix HD system, viewingimages in ProRes 4:4:4 on a Boland monitorand sending his notes to [colorist] PaulYacono,” says Bryld. “I was sent the firsttwo episodes for comments, but Davidfollowed through on every detail.”

Netflix will make all 13 episodes ofHouse of Cards available for streaming onFeb. 1. The company has committed to twomore seasons of the show, but Bryld says hisinvolvement will most likely be limited. “Inorder for me to take a project, it has to scareme in some way, and having done 11episodes of the show, I’m not sure it scaresme enough anymore. But it is my baby, sowe’ll see!”

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The Bard Behind BarsBy Patricia Thomson

“Friends, Romans, countrymen …”might be the most famous line in Shake-speare’s Julius Caesar, but there is a linethat follows in Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’sCaesar Must Die (Cesare Deve Morire), anadaptation featuring prison inmates, thatresonates more deeply: “These are men ofhonor, uomini d’onore,” Marc Anthonysays with veiled sarcasm about Caesar’sfriend Brutus and his fellow assassins.

Little did Shakespeare know thatuomini d’onore would become slang forMafiosi in the 20th century. Certainly, hecouldn’t anticipate how his lines wouldsound when spoken by members of theMafia, Camorra and Ndrangheta, Italy’sorganized-crime networks. But, as theTaviani brothers intuited, it’s a perfect fit.The themes of Shakespeare’s tragedy —friendship and loyalty, ambition andbetrayal — are at home in Rebibbia, a high-security prison for murderers, drug traffick-ers and other federal offenders.

Caesar Must Die is the 22nd film bythe Tavianis, who are best known for PadrePadrone (1977) and Night of the ShootingStars (1982), and it is their first digitalproduction. Shooting with a Red One MX“was a financial decision, and almost a

curiosity,” says Paolo Taviani. “I have to say,we weren’t disappointed.”

It was also the first digital feature forcinematographer Simone Zampagni, as wellas his first job as a director of photography.“To debut with two masters like them wasa great fortune,” Zampagni says.

Taviani notes, “Even though Simoneis just 40, he has long experience in film. Hecomes from a film dynasty. In his father’sgarden are benches from a Fellini film.”Indeed, Zampagni’s grandfather was agaffer, his father a grip-equipment designer,and his uncle a focus puller.

Zampagni began as a loader onRicky Tognazzi’s La Scorta (1992) andworked his way up to camera operator. Buthe calls the Tavianis’ films his true trainingground. In 1998, he started as secondcamera assistant on You Laugh. He thenmoved on to Resurrection (2001), LuisaSanfelice (2004) and The Lark Farm (2007);on those projects, he worked under Taviani’slongtime cinematographers, GiuseppeLanci and Franco Di Giacomo. “Franco DiGiacomo was in essence my teacherbecause I worked with him for 13 years,starting as loader and ending up as opera-tor,” says Zampagni. “He left his stamp onmy photography and approach to lighting.”

“On The Lark Farm,” says Taviani,“Simone was on B camera and often filmed

autonomously, and he filmed well. You canrecognize immediately someone who hasgood, strong taste in setting the frame. Heis the padrone, the owner of the image.When we started gathering crew forCaesar, we said, ‘Let’s give it a try!’ Simoneis young and enthusiastic, and he knew wedidn’t have much money. We shot thepicture in 22 days.”

Working with a budget equivalentto $1 million, “we felt like kids again!” saysTaviani. (Their preceding film, The LarkFarm, cost $12 million.) “Shooting withsuch little money unleashed an energy, anenthusiasm we’d forgotten we had.”

The crew was bare bones —Zampagni operated the B camera andSteadicam, Andrea Fastella operated the Acamera, and there were two focus pullers, agaffer, a key grip and a data manager. Allother crew roles were filled by prisoners.

Like the convicts who perform in thefilm, some of Zampagni’s crew had priorexperience from the prison’s theater lab.Since 2002, theater director Fabio Cavallihas worked inside Ribibbia, getting theconvicts to adapt the works of Shakespeareand Dante and other classics into their owndialects. Over time, a troupe of actors hasemerged. It was seeing them recite Dante’sInferno that got the Taviani brothers think-ing about a film. Ultimately, Caesar Must


Cae

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Julius Caesar(Giovanni Arcuri)makes his fateful

entrance in arehearsal scene

from CaesarMust Die,

directed byPaolo and

Vittorio Tavianiand shot by

SimoneZampagni.

I

Die was made in collaboration with Cavalli,who plays himself staging Julius Caesarinside Ribibbia.

Zampagni recalls the first few days ofthe shoot: “The prison guards put us onguard, saying, ‘Don’t trust the prisoners toomuch.’ It was the prisoners who broke theice. What struck me most was that theyweren’t ashamed of what they’d done, andthese were grave crimes. They were quiteready to recount them, almost boasting. It’sa powerful thing to put yourself before

these assassins. It has a certain effect! Butthen, they’re closed inside these walls 24/7,and that’s painful to imagine.” The film-makers struggled with these conflictingemotions, he adds, “but after a week, therapport was almost like a friendship.”

In keeping with previous Tavianifilms, two cameras were run simultaneouslythroughout the shoot, and only primelenses were used. 4K footage from thecameras was recorded in Red’s proprietaryRedcode raw format to onboard Compact

Flash cards. Zampagni used T2.1 ZeissCompact Primes, favoring the 40mm andthe 85mm. Shot composition was simple,spare and often static. “That’s our style,”says Taviani. “We use a fixed camera inalmost all our films. We like to make thescene live within the frame, without requir-ing the camera to go looking for theactors.” This time, however, the camerawas a bit more dynamic, occasionallymoving via a dolly or Steadicam.

However, the most unusual aspectof Caesar’s visual design is its alternationbetween color and black-and-whitephotography: the performance of JuliusCaesar that begins and ends the film is incolor, whereas the flashbacks to auditionsand rehearsals are black-and-white. TheTavianis decided to do this to make thepassage of time clear, but it was also anexpressive choice. “We chose black-and-white as a way of doing violence to reality,”says Taviani, noting that the goal was aharsh, dramatic monochrome look withscreaming whites and bottomless blacks.

“The Red helped me with thisbecause it exacerbates the highlights,”Zampagni says. “The data manager and Icreated a LUT that extracted all the colorand put contrast to the maximum. Then, incolor correction, we upped the contrasteven more, bringing up the whites andblacks to their maximum and trying toremove the mid tones. This was donetogether with a system of lighting that wasvery cutting, relying on strong sources with-out diffusion.”

Zampagni also finessed the satura-tion of the color scenes, choosing a slightlydesaturated look for the initial sequence inthe theater and bolder hues, especially astrong red, for the final one. “The color redmakes me think of ancient Rome,” heexplains. “I accentuated it because it alsorepresents a moment of liberation andhappiness for the prisoners when theyreceive applause.” Taviani adds, “For oneminute, they are free, and the color exaltsthis.”

Very little of Caesar Must Diehappens onstage, however. Most of itoccurs in Ribibbia’s cells, corridors andcourtyards. “It was important to presentShakespeare in these places where the pris-oners live,” says Taviani. “When Brutus is


Top: The prisoners’ performance of the play is rendered in color. Bottom: The inmates rehearse another scene in the prison courtyard, where the metal grid overhead helped

facilitate lighting control.

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talking about whether to kill Caesar, forinstance, shooting inside a real prison cellbecomes, for the actor, more true. It’s not astage, it’s his home, and we feel the force ofwhat he’s saying.”

Tech scouts and pre-rigging were outof the question in the prison, so every morn-ing, the crew would arrive an hour beforethe directors to set up. Shooting in a prison“is like shooting in a hospital: it’s hallwaysand rooms,” says Taviani. Fortunately, theproduction was granted access to the prisonchapel, a large, adaptable space on theground floor that featured three windows.The filmmakers set four scenes there.

The first scene is when Cavalliannounces auditions. “Because there wasnothing dramatic to convey in that scene, Ilit it simply, using a 4K ArriSun through oneof the windows and augmenting that with abit of diffused light inside, a 1.2K ArriSunbounced into a small reflector,” saysZampagni. This, he adds, was the onlyinstance of diffused light in an interior.

For the audition scene that followed,Zampagni played up the prison setting. “Weclosed all the windows and made the roomcompletely dark. Then, I lit the prisoner whospoke with a single Kino Flo overhead. Onthe background wall, I projected prison bars,

using a lamp without its front lens andsome bars constructed by us.”

A third look was created for thescript read-through, when actors seated onbenches stand one by one to recite lines. “Iclosed the windows and set two 650-wattincandescents coming from the left,” saysthe cinematographer. “In addition, theTavianis wanted a spotlight lighting eachactor as he spoke; as in a theater, it’s a circleof light that’s frontal and flat. In the script,Cavalli wants to habituate his actors to situ-ations they’ll encounter onstage. Therefore,you see a couple of film lights in the frame.”

The fourth scene shows the prison-ers deep into rehearsals. Brutus and Cassiusare at a window, watching Caesar reject thecrown while speculating about his lust forpower. Again, Zampagni darkened theroom, but this time he used the window asthe sole source of illumination, placing bothArriSuns outside. He was pleased with theRed’s rendering of the extreme contrast. Asalways, “we were very attentive not to burnthe highlights,” he says.

Exteriors come into play for theassassination scene. The production madedramatic use of a narrow exterior corridorfor Caesar’s arrival at the senate. Zampagniclimbed a spiral staircase to a guard’s over-

look to grab a high-angle wide shot, thencaptured close-ups of Caesar walkingthrough a gauntlet of admirers with a low-angle Steadicam.

The assassination played out in asmall courtyard topped by a metal grid.Zampagni laid a white silk on top of the gridto control the sunlight for most of the shots,but for high-angle shots, “we had to usecolor-correction tools to compensate formovement of the sun,” he says. “If you payattention, you’ll notice a wall in the back-ground that’s sometimes in the sun, some-times in shade. We had to work to minimizethat.”

Special care also had to be takenwith 35mm release prints, which werenecessary because many Italian theaterslack digital projectors. The picture featuresseveral dissolves from black-and-white tocolor, so the filmmakers decided to print theentire movie on Kodak Vision 2383 colorstock and use digital tools to try to approxi-mate black-and-white for those scenes.“With time and the bravura of the lab staffat Technicolor Rome, the problem wasresolved,” says Zampagni.

“This experience was very powerfulon a human level,” he concludes. “Whenwe left the prison for the last time, everyonebroke out in tears. The prisoners had justhad four weeks of contact with peoplefrom the outside after many years [withoutit], and for us, just knowing these peoplewas a powerful experience. It left a mark.”

TECHNICAL SPECS

1.85:1Digital CaptureRed One MXZeiss Compact Prime ●

Paolo Taviani (left), Zampagni (second from left) and other crew prepare to shoot.

© 2012 Red.com, Inc. All rights reserved.

This still frame was pulled from 5k RED EPIC® motion footage. “Stand Up Guys” © 2012 Lakeshore Entertainment. All rights reserved. Not for sale or duplication.


C inematographer Greig Fraser, ACS emphasizes thatdirector Kathryn Bigelow “really excels at the run-and-gun” method of filmmaking, and he experienced thisfirsthand on Zero Dark Thirty, which documents the

decade-long manhunt for Osama bin Laden and the 2011covert op in Pakistan that successfully ended it.

Bigelow says she knew early on that accurately re-creat-ing the events, particularly the nighttime raid on bin Laden’s

compound, would be “no easy feat,” and she wanted a cine-matographer “who possessed enormous confidence to goalong with his skill.” She found that in Fraser, whose recentcredits include Killing Them Softly (AC Oct. ’12), Snow Whiteand the Huntsman (AC June ’12) and Let Me In (AC Oct. ’10).“Greig was a real lifeline on a difficult production,” saysBigelow, adding that their collaboration “had a spirited,wonderful, giving and generous quality to it.”

Bigelow’s last film, The Hurt Locker, was shot documen-tary style, mostly on Super 16mm, by Barry Ackroyd, BSC(AC July ’09). When she and Fraser began discussing ZeroDark Thirty, the director said she once again wanted a hand-held, guerrilla-filmmaking feel to the production, and she wasopen to whatever format would work best. “I think the onlyformat we didn’t talk about was Super 8,” recalls Fraser. “Weeven discussed prosumer cameras. I had tested various digitalformats for Snow White and had a good idea about the prosand cons of each for a show like this one. Production was notgoing to be a linear affair; we would be shooting in India andJordan largely without local support staff or a studio system

The World’sMost

WantedManZero Dark Thirty, directed by Kathryn Bigelow and shot by

Greig Fraser, ACS, dramatizes the hunt for Osama bin Laden with a

run-and-gun style.

By Michael Goldman

•|•

www.theasc.com February 2013 33

was neither feasible nor conducive tothe cracking pace the productionrequired. He therefore asked Codex,Digilab Services of London, and video-assist company Video Hawks of LosAngeles to help devise a methodologythat would allow Bigelow to view whatwas being shot in the least invasive waypossible.

Video Hawks had just come offWorld War Z (shot by RobertRichardson, ASC), another Alexa showthat also needed to work “light and tightand fast,” says Video Hawks co-ownerGlenn Derry, and the company sent oneof the custom backpacks developed forWorld War Z to Fraser’s camera crew inthe U.K. so they could try it out. Thepack was attached to a diving vest andheld a Codex recorder, camera batteries,video transmitters and other accessories,with only one lightweight cable runningto the camera head. “We decided thatbackpack was too heavy for our film, asit was going to be mainly handheld, sowe had to come up with a lighterversion,” recalls 1st AC Jake Marcuson.“After trying quite a few different packs,we decided on lightweight runningpacks. Each held a small plywood frameon which we mounted the Codex, twoGold Mount batteries and the trans-mitter.” The transmitter was either ashort-range wireless unit or a longer-range Cobham Technical Services unitthat could transmit the camera image tohandheld Sound Devices Pix 240monitors.

The running packs made it possi-ble for the production to recordU

nit

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Phot

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Ent

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In these frames from Zero Dark Thirty, Navy SEALs fly into action and land at a walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that is believed to houseOsama bin Laden. Low-light and no-light/night-vision looks differentiate

objective and subjective perspectives during the raid. Far right: Director ofphotography Greig Fraser, ACS.

harsh light of the Middle East for manyscenes that are set in Afghanistan andPakistan, so we had to be sure ourformat would work suitably well withhighlights,” he adds. “The Alexa justmade the most sense for this showbecause it works so well in bothextremes.”

In choosing a format, Fraser hadanother important requirement: “anidiot-proof workflow” that would notimpede the filmmakers during theshoot. He planned to run four handheldcameras for many scenes, and hebelieved a sophisticated video village

“Greig was a real lifeline on a difficult

production.”

nearby — in fact, we would be as farfrom technical support as we could get!So I wanted a tried and tested systemthat would be simple to use on locationin a run-and-gun situation. Film istried and tested, of course, but we weregoing to be in heat and dust and farfrom labs, often shooting in locationswe hadn’t been able to scout, and oftenin very low light.”

These considerations led thefilmmakers to opt for digital capturewith Arri Alexa Plus and M cameras,which they rented from PanavisionU.K. “In testing, we found the low-lightcapabilities of the Alexa to be quiteamazing,” Fraser says. “The camera hasa reach into shadows that film does nothave, and a key portion of this movietakes place in the dead of night, with nomotivation for light whatsoever. Theraid on the bin Laden compound actu-ally took place on a moonless night.

“We also had to deal with the


ArriRaw while providing a wirelessimage for Bigelow and Fraser to view onhandheld monitors. “On World War Z,we learned we could remove our cameraoperators from the video assist and dowithout an engineering village, and ZeroDark Thirty just took the idea to thenext level,” says Derry. “They had fourand sometimes five or six cameras going

at a time, and Kathryn was able to havea wireless image in front of her at alltimes without worrying about the tradi-tional video village. She didn’t need avideo-assist operator; she could use themonitor in her hand to view [footagefrom] any of the cameras while she wasrunning around with Greig.”

Marcuson says the running

packs, which were worn by the gripsand the first assistants, and sometimesby the camera operators, facilitated animpressive degree of mobility. “It was apretty easy arrangement,” he says.“Keeping the cameras as light as possi-ble was the main thing because theoperators had them on their shouldersall day long, often for very long takes.”

◗ The World’s Most Wanted Man

Clockwise fromtop: CIA analyst

Maya (JessicaChastain, left)works with a

colleague(Jennifer Ehle) to

pursue a lead;lightweight

backpacksoutfitted by

Fraser’s camerateam held a data

recorder, twobatteries and a

wirelesstransmitter; Maya

observes adetainee.


Considering that the story coversover a decade and unfolds in severaldifferent countries, Bigelow was keento keep the aesthetic realistic and“rigorous in terms of the journalisticimperative,” she says. “I’m drawn tomaterial that tends to be journalistic,anyway, but in this instance, we alsohad the weight of reality imposed uponus. So, Greig and I and [productiondesigner] Jeremy Hindle workedclosely to find or create environmentsthat were correct and respectful to story,reality and authenticity. To service thestory and still maintain a kind ofaesthetic coherence was a pretty tallorder.”

To help accomplish that,Bigelow and Fraser decided early on toshoot with spherical lenses, mainlyCooke S4 primes. Because the materialis so firmly rooted in reality, “it would-n’t help,” says Fraser, if they went toowide or epic with the frame. He notes,“Anamorphic might have shown toomuch at times. This movie isn’t just theraid; there’s a narrative that leads up tothe raid, and our lensing decisions hadto consider both aspects of the story.”Panavision U.K. supplied the Cookesand an Optica Elite 150-520mm zoomlens, and Fraser rounded out the pack-age with his own Optica Elite primesand Angenieux 25-250mm HP zoom.

Overall, says Fraser, his first digi-tal feature was “less complicated than Iexpected it to be. We had the wirelesssystem going all the time, Kathryn hadthe video feed all the time, and therewas no recabling necessary. It was asimple system: when I had a picture upon the camera, so did the director.”

On the set, images were moni-tored in Rec 709 color space, and thefilmmakers decided against choosing orcreating look-up tables for the shoot.“We had other fish to fry!” says Fraser.“We had a lot of setups to get each day,quite a few cameras going, and lots oflocations to tackle. Getting an image tothe monitor was the priority ratherthan worrying about whether it wasperfect color. Rec 709 gave us a niceimage to broadcast, which was all we

Top: An informant leads to the apprehension of a key player. Middle: Director Kathryn Bigelow(right) discusses a scene with Ehle and another actor. Bottom: Key grip Kurt Kornemann (second

from right) spots Fraser as the cinematographer captures a shot with 1st AC Jake Marcuson.Fraser is wearing the running pack in this instance.


needed at that stage. Using the camerasettings, we made a couple of smalltweaks, like dialing out some of thegreen color temperature, but [Rec 709]formed the basis of the exposure and thelook that was applied to the dailies.”

For the dailies, Digilab Servicesdownloaded, processed and backed up

protected storage) and direct-attachedSAS storage. Data packs were clearedand returned to set twice a day, andFraser and colorist Rob May usedColorfront On-Set Dailies to view andgrade the original 2880x1620 ArriRawimages each night. (May then trans-formed them to 1920x1080 AvidDNxHD MXF files for editorial.)Fraser was particularly pleased by theworkflow because it was “a very hands-off digital department, which wasimportant for how we were working.”

He notes that the movie, from atechnical standpoint, “is essentially twoparts: the raid on the bin Ladencompound, and all things not the raid.”The latter include scenes set in CIAoffices, at military bases, in interroga-tion facilities and in various publicspaces around the world. For much ofthis work, the goal with lighting wassimplicity. “We didn’t always knowwhat lights we could acquire when wearrived at a location, so we wanted tokeep it basic,” Fraser explains. “We trav-eled with our base set, mainly aCreamsource LED package [fromAustralia’s Outsight Lighting] that I

the raw data each day in a mobile CodexData Lab set up at a hotel near eachlocation. During the course of principalphotography, which lasted 63 days,three data-lab technicians collatedalmost 24 million raw images into twoseparate storage systems, a CodexStorage-10 Diskpack (10TB Raid-3


Top: Thefilmmakers

prepare to shootone of Maya’s

meetings with aCIA station chief(Daniel Lapaine).

Bottom: Two40'x40' Kino Flo

Image 80 lightboxes were

suspended overthe compound set to provide

night ambiencefor the raid.


really like. They are LEDs with a lot ofpunch — in my opinion, a 2-by-1Creamsource is as strong as a 1.2KHMI — and they can run off batterypower.

“We carried six of those units,and I could just about guarantee that inalmost any location, they would give usthe light we needed even if no otherlights were available. Depending onwhere we were, we could occasionallyget lights from local rental companiesto augment what we had, but ingeneral, we used the LEDs quite a bitfor those portions of the movie.”

For the raid on the compound,says Bigelow, the goal was to create “theillusion of zero-light conditions for theobjective camera,” which shows theaction to the audience, and contrastthat with the green-hued night visionof the Navy SEALs’ goggles. Thus,Fraser had to first design general nightlighting for the exterior and interior ofthe compound, a set built to scale onlocation in Amman, Jordan, and thendetermine how to light and shoot theraid, which is shown mainly from theSEALs’ point of view.

The team shot most elements ofthe raid twice on location. “First, Greigcreated very low-light illumination togive the general idea of a moonlessnight, and that was the objective


Top to bottom: The SEALs go into action at the compound; dolly grip Ian J. Hanna (right) helps 2nd-unit cinematographer/operator Simon Tindall (left) andoperator Duraid Munajim capture the action; a closer angle on the SEALs; Tindall goes handheld, assisted by 1st AC John Watters (right) and Hanna.

camerawork,” says Bigelow. “Then,when we switch to the night-visionview, we go to an almost-no-lightconfiguration. That’s why we had toshoot it twice.”

The low-light work was keyed bytwo 40'x40' light boxes suspended overthe compound courtyard by cranes.“Each box held 24 [Kino Flo] Image80s, which had to be shipped to us byWarner Bros. Lighting in the U.K.,”says gaffer Perry Evans. “We riggedthem on a scaffold hung from thecranes with Half Grid Cloth under-neath them. We flew them about 70feet above the set, with only four bulbs

on most heads. We wanted to getenough of a glow that you wouldn’tthink of it as full moonlight, but youwould still be able to see. That allowedGreig to play with the temperature andcrush it down a bit more, and he couldtweak it even more later [in the DI].”

The goal was “some kind oftoplight that would imitate a nightambience,” as if there were stars provid-ing a very dull glow, says Fraser, whorated the Alexas at 160 ASA and 800ASA for this work. “Cinematographerscan create nighttime a number of ways,and we considered all of them,” hecontinues. “We tested a lot of things,and we looked at many references forlow moonlight as well as references forday-for-night. None of it gave us thelook we had in mind, so we insteadsettled on something that was moreabstract. Our ‘night’ ended up being on

the dim side, and very impressionistic.”He maintained a stop of T2 on theseexteriors.

The interior of the compoundalso presented challenges because theoccupants kill their lights when theyrealize they are under assault. Yet somekind of minimal light was needed toilluminate the action for the audience.“The compound was re-created to scale,foot by foot, without any higher ceilings

or wider walls [to accommodate film-ing],” Fraser says. “It’s hard to put crewand lighting into those places, but Perryand his crew built thin LED sourcesthat we could easily attach to ceilingsjust out of frame. Most of the time, thatwas all we used.”

“We built 8-by-4-foot screens ofLEDs, frames that were really justchicken wire with LEDs stapled to it,”explains Evans. “There were eight LED

“Cinematographerscan create nighttime a number of ways,and we considered

all of them.”

strips, and 3 inches under them weadded some Lee 216 diffusion so thelight would seem directionless. It justsort of glowed. It was enough to give usa small hue in the room, it worked wellwith the Alexa, and we could dim itdown enough that it didn’t look toobright with the night-vision lenses.”

Fraser and his team went to greatlengths to devise a night-vision lensingsystem that would replicate the lookand feel of military-issue night-visiongoggles. “We tested a few differentsetups before we managed to sourcesome night-vision devices and convertthem to accept a PL mount,” saysFraser. “We weren’t allowed to useexactly what Navy SEALs use, ofcourse, because that’s classified, but thiswas something similar. The image looksdirty, like there’s a bit of muck in thelens, and that makes the sequence feelquite real.”

The night vision was achievedwith a combination of two image


40

The SEALs return to base with their target in hand.

enhancers from Panavision and twoscopes adapted from rifle night scopesFraser sourced in Jordan; these weremounted between the camera and thelens. Infrared lights taken from some ofthe production’s prop security cameraswere mounted on the cameras toprovide what Fraser calls “invisible light”that the Alexa sensor could read in thedark with the addition of the adaptednight-vision technology. “The infraredlights on those prop cameras were real,and we used them as little sources,” hesays. “On film, you could not get anexposure rating on that because lightmeters can only read visible light, but inthis format, they worked great. Kathrynand I did not want faux night vision, andthis gave us a good image.”

Given the nature and style of theshoot, the DI process, handled bycolorist Stephen Nakamura atCompany 3, was particularly helpful toFraser. In fact, he calls it “a lighting part-ner.” He notes, “We wanted the night-

raid footage to be dark but balanced, tofeel natural, unlit and moody. Stephencontributed a lot in helping us achievethe right balance for that footage, espe-cially for the wide shots, where we hadlimited control. Although we had twobig 40-bys over the house, they had tocover a very large surface area. In thosewide shots, putting big cutters in to takelight off entire walls would have beenimpossible, and getting a scenic artist topaint the wall a few tones darker wasn’tfeasible on our schedule. By windowingin the DI, I was able to complete thelighting job I’d started months earlier inJordan. Often, this was the final fewpercent needed to cap off the job.” ●

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41


It’s 1949 in the City of Angels. With a mountain of corpsesand a river of bribes in his wake, mob boss Mickey Cohen(Sean Penn) rules with a closed fist and a loaded Tommygun. But Los Angeles Police Chief Bill Parker (Nick Nolte)

can’t abide the rule of crime, so he taps Sgt. John O’Mara(Josh Brolin) to handpick a team of cops who will leave theirbadges behind and wage an unsanctioned war on Cohen’sempire. O’Mara’s “Gangster Squad” includes Coleman Harris(Anthony Mackie), an ace with a blade; electronics wizard

Conwell Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi); the mustachioed cowboyMax Kennard (Robert Patrick) and his sidekick, NavidadRamirez (Michael Peña); and Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling),who complicates matters by falling for Cohen’s moll, GraceFaraday (Emma Stone).

Based on the book by Paul Lieberman, Gangster Squadmarks the third feature outing for director Ruben Fleischer(Zombieland, 30 Minutes or Less), and his first with cine-matographer Dion Beebe, ASC, ACS. Beebe recalls that theircollaboration began “fairly traditionally. In our first meeting, Ithink Ruben wanted some assurance that he was going to havethe support visually and technically to do what he had to do.The genre was a bit of a shift for him, and he was going to bedealing with a big cast. He brought a lot of references to thediscussion, a lot of clips that had in some way inspired him.What excited me was that Ruben really wanted to push thingsand take chances with the material — that’s something a cine-matographer loves to hear. Because of the 1940s era, one of thethings we discussed early on was film noir. Although wewanted a stylized feel, we were both nervous about classic noirbeing too forceful a stylistic choice; we thought it might

War on Crime

Dion Beebe, ASC, ACS anddirector Ruben Fleischer bringGangster Squad ’s tough justice

to the screen.

By Jon D. Witmer

•|•


distance us from the reality these char-acters were in.

“I only had a six-week prepperiod, which is pretty tight for anaction movie that takes place in 55 loca-tions [with a 70-day shooting sched-ule],” the cinematographer continues.He and Fleischer “had very specific,pointed meetings” with productiondesigner Maher Ahmad and costumedesigner Mary Zophres. “There wasdefinitely a shared aesthetic, and we allquickly agreed on the approach towardcolor, wardrobe and practical-lightingelements,” says Beebe.

The filmmakers decided to shootGangster Squad with an Arri Alexacamera package rented from PanavisionWoodland Hills. “I grew up shootingdigital,” says Fleischer, “so I’ve alwaysenjoyed the what-you-see-is-what-you-get experience. We also had a lot ofnight exteriors on this movie, and wewanted to be able to capitalize on [theAlexa’s] low-light capabilities.”

Fleischer and Beebe bothbelieved shooting 2.40:1 would be “asort of homage to the big-screen nature

of the subject,” says Beebe. “I was alsovery interested in combining the Alexawith anamorphic lenses. I was a littlenervous because the 4:3 sensor was notyet available on the Alexa; we dealt withthe 16:9 sensor and ended up cropping[the sides of ] the sensor as opposed toutilizing the entire frame.”

“Because we were cropping thesensor, [Panavision optical engineer]Dan Sasaki helped us by optimizing allof our anamorphic primes for the

middle of the lens,” notes A-camera 1stAC E.J. Misisco. The primes comprisedPanavision G-, C- and E-series lenses,and Beebe also used a 40-80mm AWZanamorphic wide zoom. Beebe adds,“When we went wider than a 35mmanamorphic on the 16:9 sensor, we saw aloss of image resolution at the edges ofthe frame. So whenever we needed awider lens, we switched to a sphericalPrimo.”

Beebe set the Alexas to 160 ASAPhot

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Opposite: In GangsterSquad, Sgt. John O’Mara(Josh Brolin, right) leadsan unorthodox police unitthat includes (from left)Navidad Ramirez (MichaelPeña), Jerry Wooters(Ryan Gosling), MaxKennard (Robert Patrick)and Coleman Harris(Anthony Mackie). Thispage, top: With GraceFaraday (Emma Stone) onhis arm, mob boss MickeyCohen (Sean Penn) pays avisit to his rival, Dragna(Jon Polito). Bottom:Cinematographer DionBeebe, ASC, ACS.


for day exteriors and 800 ASA for allother situations. “We shot day-exteriortests at 800, 400, 200 and 160 ASA, andthere is a difference,” he notes. “Youdon’t quite get the same dynamic rangethat you do when you’re rating it at 800,but for our day work, I quite liked howit responded at 160.” The lower ASAalso allowed Beebe to keep lens filtra-tion to a minimum. “We didn’t do anysort of softening or cosmetic [filtra-tion],” he says. “We just used NDs andpolarizers to control light levels andreflections.

“Much to the horror of the firstassistants, I’ve always liked being at thewider end of the lens,” Beebe continues.On Gangster Squad, the shooting stoptended to be between T2.8 and T4. “Inshooting anamorphic, I wanted to try totake the edge and the sharpness off thedigital image. Softer backgrounds andthat familiar depth of focus was some-thing we all wanted. It sort of put theanamorphics through their paces, but Iwasn’t afraid of that. With the HDmonitor, you can really scrutinize [theshot] and know whether you’ve got it.And E.J. and [B-camera 1st AC] PaulSantoni did an amazing job.”

Reference monitors were alsocrucial in setting the exposure through-out the production. Beebe tends to keephis meter holstered on a digital shoot. “Icheck the waveform and the HD

◗ WaronCrimeTop and middle: A

Phantom Flex high-speed camera wasused to capture an

early scene of Cohenbattering a punchingbag. Bottom: Director

Ruben Fleischer worksthrough a scene withNick Nolte, who plays

Police Chief BillParker, in Los

Angeles’ City Hall; theoffice was primarily

lit by 18K HMIsthrough the

windows,supplemented bycovered wagons

gelled with 1⁄2 Blue.


Bellflower, Calif. Because of schedulingconstraints, Beebe recounts, “We had tofit this inside an existing location, so wefound an area in an old departmentstore that we were using [for otherscenes]. The art department built thewindow and layered on paper and paintto create a patina on the window andthe existing walls. We had an 18Kstreaming in through the window, andwe had a 4K bouncing off unbleachedmuslin on the floor.”

Much of Gangster Squad takesplace in night exteriors. When workingaway from city lights, Beebe typicallycreated a moonlight source “with HMIfixtures. I take some of the blue out ofthem, usually with ¼ or ½ CTO, andadd a little Plus Green. We used 18Ks

display at the color station,” he says. “Itcan be frustrating because it often takesme off the set, but I’ve also tried to trainmyself to make decisions off thecamera-mounted monitor so that I’mnot completely tied to the DIT tent.[The Alexa presents] a different latitudethan film, but the more you use it, themore you understand it, and the moreyou can respond intuitively to whatyou’re shooting, just as cinematogra-phers have always done while shootingon film.”

Beebe adds that he and DITGregson Gabrio “worked withTechnicolor’s DP Lights to set ourlook-up tables in prep, and we kept theDP Lights system with us throughproduction. When shooting digital, andparticularly when shooting raw, the timespent defining your look in prep is criti-cal. The LUTs you create determine thecolor palette and affect the dynamicrange you’re going to be working in, andthat, in turn, affects your lighting ratiosand whole approach to the project.”

The Alexa’s ArriRaw footage wascaptured to Codex Onboard Srecorders. It was standard throughoutthe shoot to run two cameras simulta-neously, with Peter Rosenfeld serving asthe A-camera/Steadicam operator andJohn Skotchdopole operating the Bcamera. “Coming from comedy, I’m ahuge fan of using two cameras,” saysFleischer. “Most of the time, bothwould shoot in the same direction, like a

wide and a tight or a three-quarter anda straight-on, but occasionally, we’d doopposing angles. I don’t know if it’snecessarily any cinematographer’s pref-erence, but Dion accommodated that— having worked with Michael Mann,I think he’s used to it!”

The filmmakers occasionally ranthe Alexas above 24 fps, but for certainsequences that required especially highframe rates, a Vision Research PhantomFlex was brought in for the day, accom-panied by Phantom technician JamieAlac. Gangster Squad opens with somePhantom footage that shows Cohenbattering a punching bag in super-slowmotion as daylight filters in through anearby window. The scene was shot at1,000 fps in a set built on location in

Top: The squadtakes aim in animpromptu firingrange beneath theCalifornia sun. Bottom: ConwellKeeler (GiovanniRibisi, far right)and the squaddiscuss whatthey’ve learnedfrom a wiretap;this garage interiorwas lit with 1,200-watt Pars throughthe windows, withKinos, Dedos andcovered wagonssupplementing thepracticals inside.


in Condors, and we also had a couple ofnights with Bebee Night Lights.

“One of the challenges we had inthe more urban settings was that all ofL.A.’s street lighting is now mercuryvapor or sodium vapor, which were notused in the 1940s,” Beebe continues. “Iwanted to avoid the modern mixed-lighting scenario, so we had to disablethe existing streetlights that were in ourshots and then attach our own heads tothose lamps. Inevitably, we arrived at

some locations and the streetlights werestill on; in those cases, it was a matter ofblack-wrapping certain heads and tryingto avoid others This sounds simpleenough, but when you have 10 street-lights down half a mile of street, it’s a bigtask. My key grip, Don Reynolds, andhis team always got it done.” Theproduction’s streetlights were goose-neck fixtures with incandescent headsthat were fitted with 1K Pars or 2KNooks; all of these were run off a

dimmer board. Bryan Booth was the dimmer-

board operator, and all fixtures, interiorand exterior, were run through hissystem, which included a High EndSystems Hog 3PC connected via Wi-Fi to a tablet. With the tablet, Buckleysays, “Bryan could stand right by meand Dion, and we could control everylight. It was awesome!”

Once O’Mara assembles hisGangster Squad, the team gathers at

◗ WaronCrime

This lighting plot illustrates the filmmakers’ approach to the interior of Slapsy Maxie’s nightclub.


what Beebe describes as an “impromptufiring range. They were literally standingin an open field in the blazing sun!

“My general approach to dayexteriors is to keep the sun on the actors’backs,” he continues. “When you dothat, you can utilize a lot of grip lighting,like big UltraBounces. But the challengeis planning out the day, because you’vegot to try to follow the sun withoutinterfering with the way the scene isplaying out. Thankfully, everyone

understood what we were doing, and wewere able to shift as the sun moved andcheat backgrounds and actors’ positions.If you look closely, you’ll notice that thesun, despite any logic, is behind every-body — an old trick!”

For its first mission, the squadtries to take down one of Cohen’s illegalcasinos in Burbank. Things go awrywhen O’Mara’s force bursts in and findsa group of Burbank police who frequentthe establishment and aren’t keen to see

it closed. To light the interior of thecasino, Buckley details, “we used 200-watt globes in the practicals on thetables, and we augmented those withDedos [rigged overhead]. There werealso covered wagons — fitted with 100-or 200-watt tungsten bulbs on battenstrips — all over the place.”

Trying to evade the Burbankpolice, the squad members run backoutside toward their car. “This is allmeant to be out in an undeveloped partof Burbank, so it was very dark, and weprimarily utilized a moonlight [source],”says Beebe. Buckley elaborates, “Weused two Bebee lights. One was placedalmost a quarter-mile away and backlitthe officers as they reached their car, andthe other was a sidelight when we werelooking toward the casino. We also usedsome 18Ks through double-diffusedFull and Light Grid 12-by-12s with eggcrate.”

Despite its ignominious start, theGangster Squad soon finds success in itsoperations, which include placing awiretap in Cohen’s home. Having alimited range, the tap has to be moni-tored from a nearby garage that doublesas a sort of headquarters for the team.“That was a real garage in Sylmar,” saysFleischer. “It was cramped, crummy,smoky and less than ideal for lightingand shooting, but it had a real quality wecouldn’t get on a stage.”

To light the garage interior,Buckley explains, “We used 1,200-wattPars through the windows and coveredwagons. We also used a couple of 2-footKinos — we couldn’t really fit anythingbigger — and we bounced some Dedosinto pieces of white paper so they lookedlike they were practicals bouncing off atable.”

Coming off projects like Land ofthe Lost and Green Lantern (AC July ’11),Beebe says, “it was refreshing to do somuch of the movie on location. It wasreally interesting going around andidentifying the parts of Los Angeles thatstill have those period elements we couldutilize. When we couldn’t simply avoidparts of the surrounding views, we usedvisual effects [supervised by Ariel


Velasco-Shaw] to clean things up.”Fleisher adds, “We were lucky to

benefit from the California tax incen-tive, which allowed us to keep the wholeproduction in Los Angeles. One of thethings I’m proudest of is that we onlybuilt a few sets in the whole movie.Almost everything was practical or builton location.”

The biggest location build was inBellflower: Slapsy Maxie’s, the night-club that serves as the center of Cohen’s

criminal operations. “That was built inan existing location, a big shoppingcomplex from the 1930s or ’40s,” saysBeebe. “Almost the whole street is stillperiod and intact, so we were able to usethat great exterior, and then Mahercreated the interior of the nightclub.”

For the scene that introduces theclub, the filmmakers sought to under-score the location’s importance with along, fluid take. From a high anglelooking down at the street, the camera

cranes down and finds Wooters, andproceeds to follow him through thecrowd outside the club and into thelobby. Then, in the main room of theclub, Wooters steps out of frame whilethe camera continues forward towardthe stage, wending through the revelersbefore finding Wooters once again.When Wooters takes a seat at a tablewith his friend, Jack (SullivanStapleton), the camera finally cuts.

Getting the introductory shotrequired Rosenfeld to ride the cranewith his Steadicam rig. When the cranereached the ground, he was unhookedand stepped off to follow Gosling. “It’s afantastic shot,” Buckley enthuses, “butthe amount of work that went into itwas enormous. It took about a week anda half to get all the rigging done. EddieCox, the rigging gaffer, did a fantasticjob, as did Bryan Booth.”

“Having decided on this approachto introducing the club in preproduc-tion, we devised a scheme where wecould integrate practical lighting, know-ing that we’d be walking into the clubwith the camera looking 360 degreesfrom the get-go,” says Beebe. “Maherbuilt large, deco-type chandeliers thatwere hung around the room, and weused a lot of neon inside and on thefaçade of the building. There were 30 orso tables spread out around the room,each with a Perspex top and a linentablecloth, and we underlit each of thetables [with 40-watt globes in cleatsockets] so they would glow.

“Because it wasn’t on a stage, DonReynolds and his crew had to devisesystems to rig our light sources to pillarsand existing structures in the room,” thecinematographer continues. “That loca-tion presented a big challenge to every-one. Fortunately, we had a great teamand it was scheduled toward the end ofproduction, so we had some time tofigure things out.”

As the introduction of SlapsyMaxie’s illustrates, the filmmakerssought to give “a fluidity to the actionand to the drama,” says Beebe. “Wewanted to keep up the energy of thecamera and utilize camera movement to

◗ WaronCrime

Top: The crew shoots a scene in which Wooters offers to help Faraday get out of town. Bottom: AfterFaraday agrees to testify, Wooters and O’Mara procure an arrest warrant for Cohen.

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tell the story. We used Technocrane,Steadicam, handheld and a lot of tradi-tional dolly moves. We had one of thebest dolly grips, if not the best — BradRea — and great operators. We oftenput down dance floor so we were able todo complex, multi-axis dolly movesamongst the actors without track.”

In planning the action pieces,Fleischer and Beebe worked with story-board artist Gary Thomas, but onesequence — a nighttime car chase acrossa massive, dusty field — also requiredsome previsualization. The sequencefinds the squad in hot pursuit of a cara-van of cars that is transporting Cohen’sdrugs. Naturally, gunfire and explosionsensue. The location work with all of thestunt driving was tackled by the secondunit, headed by director Terry Leonardand cinematographer Paul Hughen,while the main unit shot close-ups ofthe principal cast against greenscreenonstage at Sony Studios in Culver City.

“Paul and I went out to the loca-tion together and talked through a light-ing plan,” says Beebe. “He did a greatjob capturing the main elements of theaction. We then went onto the stage tofill in some of the dialogue and connect-ing pieces. We utilized camera moves tokeep it alive, and we also had guys with2-by-4s shaking the cars. Low tech!”

Because second unit had shot theaction footage first, matching the close-ups onstage came down to “trying tofigure out which side they had keyedfrom, and then trying to augment thatwith passing lights,” says Buckley. “Weused Dedos and Kino Flos on wandsand moved them around as if they wereheadlights bouncing around. It workedwell — simple is easy.”

When the squad finally moves totake down Cohen himself, they confronthim and his thugs at the Park PlazaHotel. Despite the action and pyrotech-nics of the climactic gunfight, the actualhotel lobby was used. “It was prohibitedto rig anything to the building,” saysBeebe, “so we used a large hybridballoon as fill, and for part of the scenehad a small Genie boom parked in thelobby, covered with set dressing. The rest

◗ WaronCrime

Top: The squad arrives at the Park Plaza Hotel to arrest Cohen. Middle: Cohen shoots his way throughthe lobby. Bottom: Cohen and O’Mara go their final round in the nearby MacArthur Park, where Beebe

had his crew position 18Ks in Condors for broad strokes and Par cans for specific accents.

of the lighting was achieved from thefloor, using MR16 strip lights, coveredwagons and, when we had to get up to500 to 1,000 fps for some high-speedPhantom work, 10Ks through 12-by-12 frames.” Additionally, Buckley notes,“there were some beams up in the ceil-ing, and we put 2-foot Kino Flosbehind them to give a bit of fill. Ofcourse, that didn’t work too well because

[the actors] were all wearing fedoras!”“The wonderful things of the

1940s gangster movies are the trenchcoats, Tommy guns and fedoras, but allthose hats at night were a bane to usthroughout the shoot,” Beebe noteswryly. “We used a lot of different thingsto try to send light into people’s faces,like walking alongside them with lowbounces or small Kino Flos, a lot of skip

lighting, and covered wagons placed onthe floor.”

After O’Mara and Wooters elim-inate Cohen’s gunmen, Cohen stepsinto the lobby with his Tommy gunblazing. As Cohen and O’Mara shoottheir way across the room, a Christmastree and other holiday decorations getcaught in the crossfire and blow apart inslow motion. Fleischer recalls, “I’d seen aYouTube video of a Tommy gun firingin slow motion and thought it was thecoolest thing ever. That was the seed forthis scene. Then, I thought that if therewas a ton of stuff for them to blow up,too, that would look awesome!”

Gangster Squad originallyincluded a gunfight in Grauman’shistoric Chinese Theatre, but after theJuly 2012 shooting inside a movietheater in Aurora, Colo., Warner Bros.and the filmmakers decided to replacethe sequence, requiring the cast andcrew be brought back months after prin-cipal photography had wrapped. By that

◗ WaronCrime

52

Neonpracticals and

Chineselanterns

provide a baseambience

aroundGosling and

Brolin onlocation in

Chinatown.

time, Beebe was busy shooting All YouNeed is Kill. “Our line producer, MikeTadross, was prepping a movie withCaleb Deschanel [ASC],” saysFleischer, “so we asked Caleb to watchour movie, and then Caleb and Diontalked a lot about the look. We were alsoable to bring back John Buckley andDon Reynolds, who made it really easyto maintain continuity.”

Seeking an iconic Los Angelesbackdrop for the new scene, the film-makers chose Chinatown. In the scene,the squad walks into an ambush orches-trated by Cohen, whose goons explode atruck and open fire in a large publicsquare. The location was rigged withneon practicals and hundreds of multi-colored Chinese lanterns fitted with 40-watt globes. The lanterns provided thebase exposure, which Buckley’s crewaugmented with 20Ks throughChimeras.

Reflecting on the scene, Fleischeroffers, “At the time, it seemed insur-

mountable, but I’m really proud of theway everyone rallied together to figure itout. The new scene seamlessly inte-grates with the rest of the material. I wasalso incredibly excited and grateful toget to work with Caleb; he was a greatcollaborator and a real team player.”

When Fleischer spoke with AC,he had just completed the final digitalgrade with colorist/ASC associatemember Michael Hatzer at Technicolorin Hollywood. As Beebe was shootingin London during the grade,Technicolor coordinated a Tech-2-Techlive grade between the company’sLondon and Hollywood facilities.“While I was in London, we managedto run four separate grading sessionswith all of us ‘in the room,’” Beebenotes. “The system worked incrediblywell.”

Sounding relaxed as the releasedate approached, Fleischer enthused,“Dion and I were always on the samepage, and we shared a common passion

and commitment to making theabsolute best movie we could. I’m ayoung filmmaker, and Dion is such a maestro and so experienced, and he taught me so much. I value his opinion and respect everything he did. Ialso love the crew he brought to thetable. Everyone put so much into eachshot, and they were always hustling tomake things better. The film is a testa-ment to their hard work, talent andperfectionism.” ●

53

TECHNICAL SPECS

2.40:1

Digital Capture

Arri Alexa, Vision Research Phantom Flex

Panavision G-series, C-series, E-series, AWZ, Primo (spherical)


Mike Eley, BSC captures World War I’s impact on

England’s aristocracy for the television miniseries Parade’s End.

By Mark Hope-Jones

•|•

Parade’s End, by Ford Madox Ford, is not one novel butfour, a tetralogy published sequentially in the 1920s andonly brought together in a single volume after theauthor’s death. It chronicles the disintegration of

English society around the time of the First World War andcenters on the character of Christopher Tietjens, an intel-lectual aristocrat whose outdated Tory values leave him illequipped to deal with the modern world.

Tasked with adapting the story for a five-partBBC/HBO miniseries, screenwriter Tom Stoppard focusedon the triangle of relationships between Tietjens (BenedictCumberbatch); his adulterous, cruel wife, Sylvia (RebeccaHall); and a young suffragette with whom he falls in love,Valentine Wannop (Adelaide Clemens). To bring theproject to the screen, director Susanna White tapped cine-matographer Mike Eley, BSC, her collaborator of some 20years. Together they have worked on TV shows such as JaneEyre (2006) and Generation Kill (2008), as well as thefeature film Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010).

White began researching Ford and the period inwhich Parade’s End is set, a time that saw cataclysmicchange to almost every facet of society and culture. “Ithought a way to be really true to the spirit of Ford as a

Crumbling Pillars


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writer was to draw on the modernistmovement that was going on in thevisual arts,” she notes. “He was veryclose to painters like Picasso, Juan Grisand the Cubists, and the Vorticistmovement.”

Early in prep, White and Eleyvisited an exhibition of Vorticism at theTate Modern. “It was quite inspiring,”says Eley. “Parade’s End is thought of asone of the first modernist novels, andVorticism hit the world around 1914,

slap-bang in the middle of our story.In particular, we were struck by thevortographs, which are photographstaken through a fractured mirror, andwe decided to borrow that technique.We wanted to create it in-camera, sowe experimented and decided to usethree lengths of mirror, each about 6-by-4 inches, taped together to create atriangular tube that we simply placedin front of the lens and adjusted by eyethrough the viewfinder.”

The mirror rig split the imageinto triangular shards and was put touse for flashbacks, memories and timetransitions. White explains, “I didn’twant to get too tricksy in my overallvisual approach, but this device addedanother layer without any kind ofconfusion. The use of three mirrorsalso seemed so appropriate for thisstory of a love triangle.”

Parade’s End was shot with ArriAlexa cameras and Cooke S4 lenses,

Opposite page (fromleft): ChristopherTietjens (BenedictCumberbatch),Valentine Wannop(Adelaide Clemens)and Sylvia Tietjens(Rebecca Hall) forman unhappyromantic triangle inParade’s End. This page: AtMacMaster’s partiesfor artists andwriters, Sylvia turnson the charm (top)and flirts with othermen (bottom right).Bottom left:Christopher issmitten withValentine, a youngsuffragette.


◗ Crumbling Pillars

with the majority of the shoot takingplace at locations in England andBelgium. Neither Eley nor his gaffer,Paul Murphy, had worked with theAlexa before, and with about 150different sets to squeeze into a tightschedule, they had very few pre-lightdays. “Our producer, Selwyn Roberts,gave us four full days of camera tests atthe start of prep,” Murphy recalls. “Ona stage, we played with smoke effects,

practical bulbs and various types ofcandles supplemented with minimallighting, exploring what the Alexacould do. It was double the time wemight normally have [to test], whichwas really beneficial; we knew theextremities we could go to before wewent out to shoot properly.”

Eley decided to hand overcamera-operating duties to Ian Adrianso he could give his full attention to

the lighting and spend time at themonitor with White. “It was an inter-esting experience to be at the monitorthrough the shoot and see somethingthat pretty much represented the finalimage,” says Eley. “Prior to shooting, Iworked with our colorist, PeterBernaers, to establish about six differ-ent look-up tables, which I had on anSD card. I ended up using just two,and, like all LUTs, they were just aworking model, but it was good for usto see them on the monitor and havesomething to stay true to.”

“It is extraordinary to see thatlevel of precision in what you’regetting, and I completely loved it,”says White. “The images had so muchmore latitude than I expected. I hadbeen nervous about whether it wouldhold the skies, which were very impor-tant to me. Having the monitorcertainly eased communication,although we couldn’t spend a hugeamount of time looking at it — wehad to shoot five hours in 15 weeks atmultiple locations!”

For the early section of the story,portraying the dying days of theEdwardian era, the filmmakers agreedon a saturated look inspired by Pre-Raphaelite art. White recalls, “I talkedwith our production designer, MartinChilds, about achieving a general feel-ing of richness for this privilegedworld, with crystal and gilt and ajewel-like palette of blues and greens.Later, we see things blown apart bythe war, and those jewel colors giveway to the mud of the trenches.”

Color was important through-out the narrative, which spans adecade. It was central to a pivotalscene, frequently revisited throughflashbacks, in which Christopher andValentine realize they are in loveduring an all-night journey downcountry lanes by horse and cart.Starting in total darkness, the sceneprogresses to pre-dawn and dawn,with the characters increasinglyengulfed by a silvery mist that risesuntil they can barely see each other.“That scene was a huge opportunity to

A carriage ride that begins in the evening and lasts through the next morning marks a pivotal momentin Christopher and Valentine’s relationship. In the top photo, the actors prepare to shoot the beginning

of the scene in a studio in Brussels.


where the sensitivity of the Alexarevealed itself, especially whenTietjens’ lamp fails and we were downto just one. I was looking down thelength of this huge studio, and I liter-ally couldn’t see the horse and cart.Every instinct in my body told me itwas wrong, but it looked perfect on themonitor.”

For the sunrise, Eley used a 24KMaxi-Brute gelled with Full CTO on

do something special, and it reallyexcited me when I read it,” saysWhite. “I wanted to use shades ofwhite and silver to contrast Valentine’sfreshness with Sylvia and the jewel-like palette of Edwardian England. Iwas inspired by a picture I found ofEmmeline Pankhurst in which she’swearing a white lace dress and a hattrimmed with white flowers, so I madesure we got a dapple-gray horse and allthe costumes were whites and grays.We even put white flowers into thehedgerows.”

Eley says this scene “was, forme, the most challenging of the wholeproduction. It had to be supremelyromantic and iconic, and it soonbecame clear that doing it as a realnight exterior wasn’t going to work.It’s seven or eight pages of dialogue, sowe needed to find a studio in whichwe could ride a horse and cart farenough to do at least a page ofdialogue before we had to stop andreset. We eventually found a space afew miles outside Brussels that waspart of a TV studio and more than 200feet long. I walked the length of it,holding the script and reading thedialogue as slowly as I could, anddecided we could get a least a page inbefore we had to turn around.”

Though long enough, the studiohad no overhead grid for the requiredlights. “We hired a Belgian firm thatdoes a lot of rock concerts to do thetruss work for the 108 space lights weused,” says Murphy. “They put themon one main three-phase hoist soeverything was lifted together, and wecould pick the height that suited us.We had to transition from moonlightto dawn, so every third light had a bitof CTB for moonlight, and inbetween we had one clean space lightand one with a bit of CTO for dawn.That gave us a lot of options on thedimmer board, and we did manydifferent variations as the journeywent on, slowly bringing up the over-all level.”

During the initial part of thejourney, the couple is ostensibly lit by

nothing more than faint moonlightand two carriage lamps mounted tothe cart. “We had the lamps in shot,but we supplemented them with a 19-inch Spring Ball on a boom pole,” saysEley. “One of the electricians tried it invarious positions, tracking back withthe cart, but it always looked toomuch. Eventually, he just let it drop tothe floor, and that looked perfect onthe monitor! That was a situation

A misty dawn turns to morning toward the end of the sequence, which Mike Eley, BSC calls “the mostchallenging of the whole production,” noting that it called for several pages of dialogue and had to be

“supremely romantic and iconic.”


an Easylift stand that could be pushedbehind the horse and cart. Heexplains, “We gradually brought it upon a dimmer for the light to piercethrough the fog as a glow that growson their faces. Valentine turns aroundand says, ‘Look, the sun,’ which washelpful — characters should do thatmore often! Having used that warmlight in the studio, I was praying forsome sunlight when we shot the lastbit of that sequence on location sometime later.”

In this final part of the journey,the horse collides with a car and boltsout of the mist, bringing the two char-acters back into the real world with ajolt. White notes, “The magic is shat-tered, and we’re back to our oldpalette, with the addition of bright redin the uniform of General Campion[the owner of the car] and the blood ofthe horse’s wound, representing theblood that will come later in thetrenches.”

AC visited the set in Belgium tosee some of the battlefield action beingfilmed. A small system of trenches wasdug into low-lying farmland, andCumberbatch was rolling around inthe mud in order to appear sufficientlydisheveled for a scene in whichTietjens witnesses his drunk, shell-shocked commanding officer throw-ing whiskey bottles and strollingbrazenly across No Man’s Land. Threecameras were set up to cover theaction, including one on aTechnocrane that could be armeddown into the relatively shallowtrenches. “Using the crane was a veryquick way of working for that whole[sequence],” says White. “It was ablessing that we made that decision,especially with all the mud. It also gavethe scene movement and a differentquality from the earlier scenes, wherewe wanted to give the feeling that thecharacters are prisoners of their classand environment.”

Despite the late hour, not asingle light was used on the set duringAC ’s visit. “We knew we wanted extrasand other actors coming down the


Top (foreground,from left):

A-camera operatorIan Adrian,

A-camera 1st ACIan Coffey,

A-camera 2nd ACAdam Dorney and

an unidentifiedcrewmember

prepare to shooton location in

North Yorkshire.Middle and

bottom: Thetrench warfare ofWorld War I adds

another dimensionto the picture’s

palette.

trench, so I thought it would be freerand quicker to keep it clear of lightingequipment,” says Eley. “All we usedwere some 12-by-12 UltraBouncesand large blacks to shape the light.That scene was done half-an-hourafter sunset with no lights! When wegot to the DI, we could see that it wason the edge of what we could do, but Ithink we got away with it.”

For night scenes in the trenches,when lights had to be used, Eley usedLee 728 Steel Green filters to give theimages a distinct hue. Murphy notes,“We had time to test various filters inprep, and we decided Steel Greencoming through a tungsten sourcelooked fantastic. The Belgian lightingcompany we were working with mademe a Wendy Light, which they don’thave in Belgium — they tend to lighttheir nights with Maxi-Brutes. It wassuch a large area that getting a Wendyup on a crane or cherry picker was a


The crew prepares to capture one of Christopher’s visits home from the front.

60

cost-effective way of lighting it.“We basically lit the night

scenes with that Wendy Light and acouple of 12K Maxi-Brutes for fill,because there were some quite wideshots,” continues the gaffer. “When wegot in a bit tighter, we had the Maxi-Brutes on little Genie booms withtank track that could traverse thebattlefield really well. If the Wendywas dropping off, we’d use one just tocontinue that look, or, if the camerawas looking down a trench, we couldhave one at the end to get some lightgoing through the trench. We hadSteel Green on all the lamps.”

In the final grade, Eley workedwith Bernaers to fine-tune the colordecisions made on set, as well as theLUTs that had been applied to moni-tors and dailies. “Thanks to the time Ihad with Peter during prep to test howfar we could push and pull the mater-ial, I was pretty confident in situations

where I might otherwise have beenconcerned,” says the cinematographer.“We were mainly balancing materialout and refining the looks in the finalgrade. We had a very long discussionabout the look of the trenches; Iwanted there to be humanity to it. Itwas quite an interesting process toarrive at a look that feels dirty andgrim, yet still has color. Although thetrenches feel like a colorless world,there is actually a lot of color there.”●

TECHNICAL SPECS

1.78:1

Digital Capture

Arri Alexa

Cooke S4, Angenieux Optimo

61


Vision andVerve

Dean Semler, ASC, ACS adds the ASC Lifetime Achievement Award

to his crowded mantel of career triumphs.

By Jean Oppenheimer

•|•


“He’s a director’s secret weapon,”says Angelina Jolie of DeanSemler, ASC, ACS, who willreceive the ASC Lifetime

Achievement Award this month. Withsome 60 films under his belt, Semler hasa special affinity for working with first-time directors like Jolie, for whom heshot In the Land of Blood and Honey(2011).

Another such collaboration thatwon Semler considerable acclaim wasKevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves (ACMay ’91), whose seven AcademyAwards included statuettes for bestpicture, directing and cinematography. “Iknew it was going to be tough out there,and I knew I would make somemistakes,” says Costner, explaining hisdecision to hire Semler for his directingdebut. “I wanted somebody who couldroll with the punches and not be afraidof the dirt. I didn’t know what my ownlearning curve was going to be, and Ineeded somebody who was going tohelp me. Plus, Dean’s got that greatAustralian mentality.”

Semler is an Aussie through andthrough. He was born in 1943 in thesmall town of Renmark, on “the MightyRiver Murray” in South Australia. “Itwas semi-arid but on a beautiful river,”he says. “I used to love getting on my

bike and just going, feeling the space,feeling infinity.” His parents were strictLutherans and had no car, no telephoneand no television set. Every Sunday, thefamily would don their best clothes andbicycle to church.Ph

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Opposite: Dean Semler,ASC, ACS points the wayon location forApocalypto. This page,top: At work on Danceswith Wolves, Semler and1st AC Lee Blasingameline up an over-the-shoulder involving Lt.Dunbar (Kevin Costner,third from left), KickingBird (Graham Greene,fourth from left) andother members of thetribe. Bottom: One ofSemler’s adventures as ayoung TV-newscameraman in Australiain 1964. “I was on myway to cover a bush firefor the TV news, and afire engine camescreaming over the hill. Iswerved to avoid it andflipped over. Thefiremen all got out. Iwas fine, and betweenthe six of us, we rightedthe vehicle, and I gotthe footage and made itback in time to get it onthe 6 o’clock news.”

➣

His parents gave him a camerawhen he was 14. “It was a tiny Coronetwith a flash that opened up like aflower. I still have the first picture I evertook with it. It’s on my computer as ascreen saver!”

Although Semler excelled inschool, he never graduated. “I discov-ered girls in my last year of highschool,” he says with a laugh. “I had afew girlfriends, and my mind was justelsewhere.” He took a job as a juniorclerk at the nearby railway station, buthis older sister urged him to getinvolved in a profession where he couldutilize his sense of humor and wit. “Afew months later, a TV station inAdelaide [advertised] for a props boy,”he recalls. “I had no idea what a propsboy was — I had never even seen a tele-vision!”

He got the job. “The first time Iwalked around the studio, it was likebeing on the moon. I was 16 andnervous as hell.” He started out floormanaging for live variety shows andcommercials, and soon he was operat-ing one of the big studio cameras. “Thenews cameramen used to walk throughthe studio with their Bell & Howells,and I’d look at them and think,‘Wouldn’t it be the bee’s knees to dowhat they’re doing, going out andshooting film?’”

He got his chance when thenews director sent him out the doorwith an assignment and said, “You’lllearn.” Semler was 19. “It was fabu-lous,” he recalls. “I loved telling a storywith moving pictures and took great

Clockwise fromtop left: Semler

(left) works on adocumentary in

Fiji; the youngcameraman

takes a break topose with his

future wife,Annie, while

shooting adrama for ABCTV in Adelaide;

bringing camerasfor nearly everyoccasion, Semler

heads to workon a tourist film

in Hong Kong.


◗ Vision and Verve


pride in using film efficiently. Withthe Bell & Howell, every time you cutthe camera, the shutter would stayclosed, so there were no flash frames.I could edit in the camera. We had100-foot rolls of 16mm black-and-white reversal stock, and I could fitthree stories on one roll of film.”

He eventually left the stationfor a job at ABC television, thegovernment-run national networkthat produced dramas and documen-taries in addition to news. He was theassistant cameraman to three seniorcameramen, who each had a month’svacation every year. When they wereoff, Semler would eagerly fill in, andhis work made an impression. “Zoomlenses had just come in,” he recalls. “Idid a story on the city skyline chang-ing and used a lot of double zooms.That got me a job at the ABC head-quarters in Sydney.”

Semler was asked to shoot adocumentary called The InfinitePacific, which celebrated the 200thanniversary of Australia’s founding byretracing the voyage of Capt. JamesCook. “That was the first time I shot

color, and I don’t know why I got thejob over senior cameramen who had alot more experience, but I wasn’t goingto say no!”

When Don McAlpine, a friendand future ASC and ACS colleague,became chief cameraman at theCommonwealth Film Unit, he askedSemler to join him. “Those were nineof the best years of my life,” saysSemler. He traveled the world, shoot-

ing documentaries. “My favorite expe-riences were working with ethno-graphic filmmaker Ian Dunlop,recording traditional Aboriginallifestyle and charting the changes intheir community. I had an NPR Éclair.I worked without an assistant; a smallunit was much better.”

Director Phillip Noyce was atFilm Australia during the same period,and he and Semler made a series of

Top: On locationin Borneo forJohn Milius’adaptation ofFarewell to theKing, Semlercaptures a dollyshot of U.S.soldier Learoyd(Nick Nolte) andthe local tribethat adopts himas a leader.Bottom: Miliusand Semler atwork.


documentaries together. “Dean was amaster of cinéma vérité — I had neverseen anybody like him, and I stillhaven’t,” says Noyce. “He handheldthat camera like he was a humantripod. He knew how to make himselfinvisible, yet he was so attuned to thehuman psyche. He just had this instinct

for humanity. You see it throughout hiswork.”

Semler began shooting shortfilms that played before a theater’smain attraction. One was A SteamTrain Passes (1974), which took a jour-ney back in time on a restored locomo-tive that had been built in 1943.

Semler’s eyes light up at the memoryof “that big, green, thunderingmachine.” The film brought Semleraccolades, awards and offers to shootcommercials, which he turned downrepeatedly before finally agreeing tothe new, more lucrative lifestyle.

When McAlpine asked Semlerto shoot second unit on The Earthling,a feature starring William Holden,Semler jumped at the chance. Heworked as a freelance cinematographerfor the next several years. Then, out ofthe blue, he got a call from directorGeorge Miller, who was prepping MadMax 2: The Road Warrior (1981).Miller had just seen A Steam TrainPasses and offered Semler the job. “Avery strong bond developed betweenDean and me,” says Miller. “WhenDean came off the viewfinder, youcould tell by his body languagewhether he thought the shot had gonewell. If he came off with a little twin-kle in his eye, I knew we had the shot.If he came off a little hesitant, I’d say,‘Let’s go again.’”

The Road Warrior proved to be a City

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Top: Semler takesa familiar seat

while prepping ashot for George

Miller’s actionadventure Mad

Max BeyondThunderdome.

Bottom: Thecinematographer

(center, atcamera) enjoys

the oppositeextreme while

filming thecomedy City

Slickers. WithSemler in the

background aregrip Paul Iski

(left) and 1st ACMark Davison(right). In the

foreground are(from left)

director RonUnderwood, key

grip William“Bear” Paul, actor

Billy Crystal and2nd AD Jeffrey

Wetzel.



turning point for Semler. It alsochanged the way action films weremade. “It was so raw and visceral,” heobserves. “George told me to be bold.There I was, strapped to the front ofthe truck, facing Mel Gibson, who wasdriving. The camera was on a bungeecord. The villain smashed the sidewindow and attacked Mel. It wasviolently bumpy, and my eye started tobleed, so I closed the eyepiece and justaimed the camera toward the actionand crossed my fingers. George lovedit so much he added shaking to the restof the sequence.”

Gibson recalls how helpfulSemler was to him on the set. “I wasn’tvery experienced as an actor, so I had alot of questions about the camera andhow things work. Dean would alwaystake time to explain what he wasdoing. He’d say, ‘I’m going to tilt thecamera this way,’ or, ‘I’m going to runit at this frame rate or from this lowangle.’ It made me feel so much moresecure.”

In 1984, between shooting Road

Warrior and Mad Max BeyondThunderdome (1985), Semler shotRazorback, a thriller about a giant pigthat terrorizes an Outback town. Itbecame a cult hit and brought the cine-matographer his first Australian FilmInstitute Award.

The open-water thriller DeadCalm (1989) reunited him with bothNoyce, who directed, and Miller, whoproduced the project and directedsecond unit. During the shoot, Millertold Semler he had just bought therights to a book called The Sheep PigYo

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Top: Semlerand directorGeoff Murphyplot theirstrategy onlocation inWhite SandsNationalMonument,New Mexico,for YoungGuns II.Bottom:Checking thelight inWhistler,BritishColumbia, forthe serial-killerdrama Eye SeeYou.


(a.k.a. Babe, the Gallant Pig), and thathe thought Semler was well suited todevelop and direct it for the screen.Many months later, the two gottogether in Los Angeles, where theyhammered out the first draft of thescript. Animatronics and computergraphics weren’t advanced enough tomake the movie at that time, however.

The two friends were workingon the script when, according toMiller, “one day, apropos of nothing,Dean’s wife, Annie, said, ‘Indians.Dean has to make a film aboutIndians.’ Within a year, Dean wasmaking Dances with Wolves! But healways kept an eye on Babe, calling meperiodically to find out where theproject stood.” Ultimately, Babe wasdirected by Miller and shot by AndrewLesnie, ASC, ACS, but one ofSemler’s fondest memories is his“thanks to” credit on the picture.

Semler is largely self-taught, buthe says he learned a great deal fromgaffers, directors and other collabora-tors he met along the way. He consid-ers Russell Boyd, ASC, ACS hismentor, although the two have neverworked together. “Russell paved theway for all of us,” he declares. Boydobserves, “Dean is a very straight-up-and-down guy and very honest. He isgregarious and innovative. He has agreat sense of humor, and he doesn’tbullshit. He won’t flatter anybody.”

In an e-mail to AC, Jolie echoesBoyd’s comment: “I don’t think Dean iscapable of a lie. If he thinks somethingis crap, he’ll tell you.” She says he alsoprovided valuable emotional supporton set. “Many times, in the middle of adifficult scene, I would look over atDean, and he would smile and nod as ifto say, ‘Go on, you’re doing just fine.I’ve got your back.’ And he always did.”

Semler worked with Ed Harrison the Western drama Appaloosa(2008), the actor’s second film as adirector. “Dean is a real trooper, a hardworker and just a lot of fun,” saysHarris. “It was a tough shoot.”

So was Gibson’s Apocalypto (ACJan. ’07), which was shot in the junglesof Mexico. Though Semler is enthusi-astic about every project he works on,he confesses that Apocalypto was “prob-ably my most enjoyable film ever. Iloved where it was and what it was. Iwas shooting on the [Panavision]Genesis and could see dailies at theend of every day and know we had it inthe can.” Gibson recalls with a laugh,“Dean was like a kid in a candy store.He has been at this game a long time,and to still have that childlike enthusi-asm is fantastic — and it’s infectious!”

Semler’s only major complaintabout digital is, “You have to sit in that


Semler preps a shot of members of the Yanomami tribe in Venezuela for Tom Shadyac’s drama Dragonfly.


bloody little black [DIT] tent. I hate it,but that’s the price you have to pay.”

Andrew Rowlands, SOC, theA-camera operator on Apocalypto,recalls an occasion when Semlerwanted to keep shooting after the sunhad set: “Dean was in the DIT tent,and over headphones, I told him, ‘It’sawfully dark out here.’ He said, ‘Don’tworry. Keep shooting.’ After a fewminutes, I couldn’t see my hand infront of my face, so I tried again.‘Dean, it’s really dark out here.’ Hesaid, ‘Don’t worry about it, just bloodyshoot!’ Ten minutes later, he comes outof the tent and says, ‘Holy shit, it’s darkout here!’”

Though he has embraced digitalcinematography — he shot his latestfeature, the 2014 release Maleficent, onthe Arri Alexa — Semler still lovesfilm. Recently, he was sitting in ascreening room at Deluxe Laboratories ➣

in Hollywood with Beverly Wood, anASC associate and the executive vicepresident of technical services andcustomer relations at Deluxe andEFilm. “We could hear the projectorpurring through the wall,” he says. “It’sgoing to be a sad day when we don’thear that anymore.”

A self-professed “Panavisionman,” Semler has counted Bob Harvey,the company’s senior vice president ofworldwide sales, among his friends andcolleagues since Young Guns (1998).“Dean is the best there is,” maintainsHarvey. “Nobody has to panic overanything when he is there because theyknow he will take care of them. It’s anhonor to be considered one of hisfriends.”

Semler is always conscious of thebudget, making him a productionmanager’s dream. “He never asks foranything unless he can really use it,”

says producer/production managerJames Brubaker, who has made severalfilms with Semler.

Noyce, who reteamed withSemler on the thriller The BoneCollector (1999), notes that Semler isalways sensitive to the director’s needsin the editing room. “He knows exactlyhow to get all the shots that will allowme to cut a sequence into a fluid real-ity. That goes back to his documentarytraining.”

Semler’s crew clearly worshipshim. “He has the patience of Job,”claims gaffer Jim Gilson, a longtimecollaborator. “Once you work withhim, you inevitably compare everybodyelse to him. It’s unavoidable.”According to Rowlands, “The firstweek of a shoot, Dean learns every-body’s names on set — not just theelectricians’ and camera crew’s names,but everybody’s.”

A year after making Dragonfly, Semler reteamed with Shadyac for a movie at the opposite end of the tonal spectrum, the visual-effects-heavy comedy Bruce Almighty.

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supportive. He’ll make you feel relaxedno matter how difficult the shot.” Witha laugh, he adds, “He also gives abloody good hug.”

Key grip William “Bear” Paul

Camera operator MarkGoellnicht cites Semler’s “youthfulnessand vitality,” noting, “You’d think everyfilm was his first film; he still has thatexcitement in him. And he’s so

◗ Vision and Ververecalls one of Semler’s improvisationswhile shooting the comedy BruceAlmighty (2003): “In one scene, a dog issitting on a toilet reading a newspaper,and Jennifer Aniston had to open thebathroom door and look surprised. Wedid several takes, and then Dean hadan idea for the next one: he asked me tosit on the toilet with my pants down tomy ankles. Nothing was exposed, mindyou, but, boy, was Jennifer surprisedwhen she opened that door!”

Miller thinks there is a quality inAustralian culture that helps explainSemler’s disposition and approach:“Australians are very resourceful; theycan do a lot with very little. They arealso very strong team players and lookout for one another. It’s that hardy,rural ethos, what we call ‘the diggerspirit.’”

One thing that impressedCostner on both Dances with Wolvesand Waterworld (AC Aug. ’95) was that“Dean isn’t boastful, and he never lets

DirectorAngelina Jolie

works out ashot with

Semler for theBosnian Wardrama In the

Land of Bloodand Honey.

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his ego get in the way. I got lucky withhim because in addition to being a greatcinematographer, he is a really goodman. There are a lot of talented assholesout there. The thing that really mattersin life is what kind of person you are.

“He had a tremendous influenceon what Dances with Wolves came tobe,” continues Costner. “He coaxed methrough some things that were not myidea, but he did it gently, and I wassmart enough to realize he was right.”

Semler reacts to such praise bystressing how lucky he feels “to bedoing what I’m doing. How and why itever happened, I don’t know.”

Semler joined the ASC in 1998after being proposed for membershipby Society fellows Jack Cooperman,Harry Wolf and John Alonzo. He wonan ASC Award for Dances with Wolvesand earned another nomination fromthe Society for Apocalypto. Of theLifetime Achievement honor, he sayshe is “thrilled to bits. I’m shocked,

surprised, and, well, it’s just fabulous.” In 2002, Semler was named to

the Order of Australia and received theQueen’s Medal for his service to thearts. He recalls, “Annie and I went toGovernment House in Sydney, the guvpinned the shiny, gold medal andribbons on, and the event was filledwith wonderful pomp and circum-stance. It was fantastic.” A year later, hereceived another honor from theAustralian government, a CentenaryMedal, for his service to internationalcinematography.

“I love telling stories visually,” hesays. “It’s all about making people feel.”Perhaps his wife, Annie, expresses itbest: “Dean can shoot the feeling ofwhat he sees.” ●

Semler receives the Queen’s Medal, one of Australia’shighest honors, in 2002.

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and the Bronze Frog was awarded to Rhino Season cinematog-rapher Touraj Aslani.

In the student competition, the Laszlo Kovacs StudentAward (a.k.a. the Golden Tadpole) was awarded to Blackstorycinematographer Robert Oberrainer, a student at Institut fürFilm und Fernsehen Filmakademie in Vienna. The SilverTadpole went to The Zone cinematographer Mikko Kamunen,a student at the University of Art and Design in Finland, andthe Bronze Tadpole was given to Without Snow cinematogra-pher Magnus Borge, of the Polish National Film School inLodz. A special prize was given to All Souls’ Day cinematogra-pher Bartosz Bieniek.

In the feature documentary competition, the GoldenFrog was awarded to Planet of Snails cinematographer Seung-Jun Yi, and co-cinematographers Ester Martin Bergsmark andMinki Jakerson were given a special mention for She MaleSnails. In the short documentary competition, co-cinematog-raphers Lorenzo Castore and Adam Cohen received theGolden Frog for No Peace Without War, and co-cinematogra-phers Jacek Blawut and Pawel Chorzepa received a specialmention for Loneliness of Sound.

The Best Music Video Award was given for DieAntwoord’s “I Fink U Freeky,” directed by Roger Ballena andshot by Melle Van Essen. Matthew J. Lloyd won the award for


The Plus Camerimage International Festival of the Art ofCinematography celebrated its 20th edition in December,and the unique gathering of cinematography practitionersand aficionados included a large contingent of ASC

members, including Andrzej Bartkowiak, Paul Cameron,Stuart Dryburgh, Stephen Goldblatt, Frederic Goodich,Robbie Greenberg, Adam Holender, Ed Lachman, StephenLighthill, Karl Walter Lindenlaub, Claudio Miranda, YuriNeyman, Daniel Pearl, Roberto Schaefer, Vittorio Storaro,Rodney Taylor, Jerzy Zielinski and Vilmos Zsigmond, all ofwhom participated in panel discussions or workshops or servedon juries.

AC executive editor Stephen Pizzello joined contribut-ing writers David Heuring and Iain Stasukevich for a panelfocused on writing about cinematography, and AC Europeancorrespondent Benjamin B led two Panavision seminars.

More than 250 movies were screened during the week-long festival. Between screenings, there was plenty of opportu-nity for socializing. Lavish parties were hosted by Arri, Kodak,Panavision and Vantage Film, among others.

The week culminated in the awards presentation. In themain competition, the Golden Frog was awarded to War Witchcinematographer Nicolas Bolduc; the Silver Frog was awardedto Holy Motors cinematographer Caroline Champetier, AFC;

Postcards fromPoland


1. Roberto Schaefer, ASC, AIC tests out the Vantage One T1 spherical prime lens; 2. Dana Ross and Bob Hoffman of Technicolor catch up with Rodney Taylor, ASC;3. War Witch cinematographer Nicolas Bolduc socializes with Stuart Dryburgh,ASC at the Arri banquet; 4. Stephen Goldblatt, ASC, BSC shares a laugh withfellow cinematographer Beth Cloutier; 5. Franz Wieser of Arri poses with anAlexa; 6. The Opera Nova served as the festival’s headquarters; 7. AC Europeancorrespondent Benjamin B (far left) moderates a panel with participants VilmosZsigmond, ASC; Jim Plannette; Michel Abramowicz, AFC; Reuben Garrett; andMatthew Butler; 8. Karl Walter Lindenlaub, ASC, BVK takes five with OliverStapleton, BSC; 9. ASC members Rodney Taylor, Ed Lachman and ClaudioMiranda trade some gripping tales; 10. Denny Clairmont enjoys the Europeanambience during the Panavision party; 11. The “How to Teach Cinematography”panel included Jerzy Zielinski, ASC, PSC of the Polish Film School; Larra Andersonof the Northern Film School in Leeds, England; ASC President Stephen Lighthillof the American Film Institute; Mariusz Grzegorzek, rector of the Polish NationalFilm School; moderator Filip Kovcin of FilmPro magazine; and Rolf Coulanges,BVK, of the International School of Film and Television in San Antonio, Cuba.

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history of international cinema.”“When I screened Ivan’s

Childhood, I felt like I knew this man,”said Pearl. “Those angles, the composi-tions and the light all felt so familiar, andI sensed that even though our paths havebeen so different, he must be a kindredspirit.”

“Our members returned from the20th edition of Camerimage buzzingabout the many films screened incompetition,” said Lighthill, president ofthe ASC. “And, of course, the festivaland the Society have many goals incommon. The ASC delegation partici-pated in many aspects of the festival,including representation on all the juries.We always appreciate the opportunity tosee and discuss the work of ourcolleagues from around the world, and toexchange ideas in an atmosphere ofwarm hospitality. It is indeed worth thejourney to find a place where cinematog-raphy is the star of the show.” ●

◗ Postcards from Poland

1. Alexander Schwartz of Vantage Film confers with Stuart Dryburgh, ASC; 2. Oliver Stapleton, BSC chats with Robbie Greenberg, ASC; 3. Frank Kay and Warwick Hempleman of J.L. Fisher display their company’s wares; 4. ASC members Frederic Goodich (far left), Vilmos Zsigmond and Yuri Neyman await the

start of a screening; 5. Benjamin B enjoys a convivial moment with AC publisher Martha Winterhalter; 6. PSC members Piotr Sliskowski and Witold Sobocinskitake a coffee break.


Best Cinematography in a Music Videofor his work on Flying Lotus’ “Until theQuiet Comes.”

The award for Best Polish Filmhonored To Kill a Beaver, directed by JanJakub Kolski and shot by MichalPakulski. The Best Director’s Debut andBest Cinematographer’s Debut awardswent to Miguel Angel Jimenez andGorka Gómez Andreu, respectively, fortheir work on the film Chaika.

The festival presented itsCinematographer/Director Duo Awardto director Gus Van Sant and the lateHarris Savides, ASC. Two separate trib-utes to Savides, who died in October,offered friends and colleagues theopportunity to share warm remem-brances.

Among those presented with life-time accolades and retrospectives weredirector David Lynch, editor AlanHeim (All That Jazz, American Psycho,Billy Bathgate, Introducing Dorothy

Dandridge) and documentarian StevenOkazaki (White Light/Black Rain: TheDestruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,Black Tar Heroin: The Dark End of theStreet).

Russian cinematographer VadimYusov, best known for his early collabo-rations with Andrei Tarkovsky (Solaris,Andrei Rublev, Ivan’s Childhood), waspresented with the festival’s LifetimeAchievement Award.

As always, the festival was areminder that cinematography is aglobal language. Taking place inBydgoszcz, Poland, the fest’s invaluablerole as a bridge between cultures wasespecially apparent in the interactionswith Yusov, known previously by mostASC members only through his images.“Mr. Yusov is certainly one of the world’sgreat cinematographers, even though heis relatively unknown in Hollywood,”said Schaefer. “The films he made withTarkovsky are important works in the

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1. Lifetime Achievement honoree Vadim Yusovhefts his award; 2. Lifetime Achievementhonoree David Lynch with actor Keanu Reeves;3. Plus Camerimage festival director MarekZydowicz with most of the year’scinematography honorees; 4. Christopher Doyle,HKSC and Anthony Dod Mantle, ASC, BSC, DFFjoin director Gus Van Sant, who shared theCinematographer/Director Duo Award with thelate Harris Savides, ASC; 5. AC contributor DavidHeuring listens to a response from MihaiMalaimare Jr. during a panel discussion; 6. Lynchreceives the key to the city; 7. CarolineChampetier, AFC; Nicolas Bolduc; and TourajAslani hold the Silver, Golden and Bronze Frogs,respectively; 8. Stephen Lighthill, ASC takes abreak; 9. Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC addressesthe crowd; 10. Paul Cameron, ASC (right)conducts a seminar; 11. During the panel“Writing About Cinematography,” ACcontributor Iain Stasukevich, executive editorStephen Pizzello and Heuring listen to Yusov ashe discusses his collaborations with directorAndrei Tarkovsky; 12. Zydowicz acknowledgesall of the festival’s volunteers for theircontributions.

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Miller Soars with Skyline 70Miller Camera

Support Equipment hasintroduced the Skyline70, a 150mm ball-level-ing fluid head. Suited fordigital cinematographyachieved with DSLRs, theRed Epic, the Sony F65,the Arri Alexa and othercameras, the Skyline 70

incorporates precision drag and counterbalance systems thatsupport an array of camera configurations with payloads from 4.5kg (10 pounds) to 37.5 kg (82.6 pounds).

The Skyline 70 features an illuminated rear-mounted controlpanel; a new counterbalance system with eight positions of adjust-ment to enable payloads to be perfectly balanced at various centersof gravity; smooth, selectable pan and tilt fluid drag, with distinctlevels of repeatable drag resistance even when operating in extremetemperatures (from -40°F to 149°F); a caliper disc-brake system andsafety tilt-lock mechanism; an industry-standard 120mm quick-release camera platform; and an optional accessory-mounting-blockadapter.

A variety of system packages are available, including theHeavy Duty 2-Stage Carbon Fiber tripod, the Heavy Duty Single-Stage Alloy tripod and the studio-based Heavy Duty Studio Alloytripod.

For additional information, visit www.millertripods.com.

Redrock Micro Enhances SupportRedrock Micro has released enhanced camera-support rigs

that improve performance, comfort and reliability for camera oper-ators. Among the upgrades are the MicroShoulderPad with Field-Tech tool-less MicroBalance QR counterweights and improvedhandgrips. The improvements are standard on all new Redrock rigsand are available as upgrades to existing ones.

The completely redesigned MicroShoulderPad improvescomfort and balance, andpromotes proper alignment andbetter stability with balancedpressure distribution. The paduses Cordura and breathable 3Dmesh and is filled with soft, free-forming MicroPoly beads thatactively adapt to the shoulder’sshape and slope.

Building on the success of

New Products & Services• SUBMISSION INFORMATION •

Please e-mail New Products/Services releases to:[email protected] and include full contactinformation and product images. Photos must be

TIFF or JPEG files of at least 300dpi.

Redrock’s MicroBalance weights, the MicroBalance QR rig counter-weight speeds rig balance and stability. Weights can be added orremoved just by pushing a button, without any tools. Multipleweights can be added or removed at once. Battery mountingpatterns on each weight enable brick batteries (such asAnton/Bauer, Switronix, Sony, etc.) to be attached directly to theMicroBalance QR, making the battery mount quick-release as well.Additionally, MicroBalance QR can be set up horizontally or vertically,and can be adjusted for left-right balance in the vertical setup.

Redrock’s handgrips have been updated with a diamondpattern that reduces potential for moisture buildup, while therubber surface keeps things comfortable. The added double lock oneach grip end offers another option for mounting points or rigextensions.

For additional information, visit www.redrockmicro.com.

Induro Gets Low with Hi-HatDesigned by filmmak-

ers, Induro’s 100mm Hi-Hatoffers a new take on a classicfilmmaking tool. Rubberpivoting feet and adjustable,extendable legs provide exactpositioning for low-angleshots. Additionally, the Hi-Hatincludes a 100mm balladapter with a 3⁄8" mount forball heads and camera sliders.

The Induro Hi-Hat is sturdy enough to hold 220 pounds. Eachleg has three positions for super-low shots as well as unevensurfaces, and each leg can also extend an additional 2" for fineadjustment. Equipped with rubber pivoting feet, the Hi-Hat can beplaced on any surface without causing damage, and reinforcedmounting holes can be used for mounting to a wooden board. TheHi-Hat can also be folded for easy travel.

For additional information, visit www.indurogear.com.

MovieTech Launches G-Force MasterABC-Products, a division of MovieTech that

delivers a range of lightweight, quality equipmentfor the video, HD and broadcast sectors, has intro-duced the G-Force Master camera-support rig,which fills the gap between G-Force Pro and G-Force Advanced and boasts an 11 kg (24.25pounds) payload.

The G-Force Master’s size-adjustable vest,which can be adjusted to the individual body shapeof the operator, has been taken from the G-Force


Advanced sys-tem. Additionally,the lightweightpost has beenadopted from theG-Force Pro rigand has a V-mount doubleadapter for thecamera anddisplay powersupply.

The high-light of the G-Force Master is

the newly developed spring arm, which isequipped with a horizontal and verticaladjustment. Both the vest and the springarm provide standard connectors. Threepadded soft bags allow for safe and easytransport of the rig.

For additional information, visitwww.movietech.de.

Schneider Adds to Optical AccessoriesSchneider Optics has introduced the

Sunshade Filter Holder and the True-Cut IRTuner Kit.

The Sunshade Filter Holder featuresa sunshade that rotates independently ofthe 4" filter holder, enabling easy use ofpolarizing or graduated filters. The 4" filterholder is designed to hold Schneider MPTV4mm-thick water-white Schott glass filters,which are available in 4"x4" and 4"x5.65"sizes. The holder rotates a full 360 degreesand can accommodate up to two glassfilters.

The filter holder/lens shade assemblyattaches to the camera lens via a 77mmwide-angle adapter ring, which can beeasily removed from the holder andreplaced with other available sizes. The

included 77mm wide-angle adapter ringcan also be used with conventional steprings to quickly accommodate smaller-diameter lens filters.

Schneider’s True-Cut IR filters aredesigned to prevent light in the infraredspectrum from contaminating the imagecaptured on CMOS or CCD sensors. IRcontamination can become troublesomewhen large-sensor cameras are used withND filtration to achieve shallow-depth-of-field images captured with a wide-open iris.Schneider’s Platinum IRND filters addressthis issue, but with the True-Cut IR filters,filmmakers can use existing standard ND orother filters (such as 85, 81EF or coloreffects) and select just the right amount ofIR cut for any situation.

The three filters in the True-Cut IRTuner Kit are set to the various nanometercut requirements of popular sensorscurrently on the market, allowing the direc-tor of photography to select the appropri-ate cut level for the sensor of the camerabeing used, and put the correspondingTrue-Cut IR filter in front of all other filtersmounted in front of the lens. The True-CutIR Tuner Kit comprises 680 (IR680), 715(IR715) and 750 (IR750) IR cut-strengthfilters, as well as a protective pouch. Thefilters are available in 4"x5.65" and6.6"x6.6" sizes.

For additional information, visitwww.schneideroptics.com.

Hollywood Camera Work Designs ShotsHollywood Camera Work has

released Shot Designer, a camera-blockingapp for iPad, iPhone, Android, Mac and PCplatforms.

Shot Designer gives directors andcinematographers the ability to quicklyprevisualize shots and scenes by combininga number of useful features into a compre-hensive app. Camera Diagram enablesusers to block entire scenes; the integratedShot List communicates with the CameraDiagram to write itself while the userworks; Animation allows users to previsual-ize the rhythm of a scene; Storyboards canbe used inside the Camera Diagram tobetter illustrate camera angles; and an inte-grated Director’s Viewfinder allows users to


build their scene blocking on location.Shot Designer is free for use on a

single scene at a time, and a $19.99 ProUpgrade gives users full file management,sharing and export as well as a free DesktopPro license. To download the mobile version,search for Shot Designer in the Apple AppStore, Google Play or the Amazon Appstore;the Mac/PC version can be downloadedfrom the Hollywood Camera Work website,www.hollywoodcamerwork.us.

Rokinon Unveils Cine Video DSLR LensesRokinon has intro-

duced a line of CineVideo Digital SLR

lenses: an 8mm T3.8 Fish-eye, a 14mm T3.1 Aspherical Wide

Angle, a 24mm T1.5 Wide Angle, a35mm T1.5 Aspherical Wide Angle and an85mm T1.5 Aspherical.

Each Cine Video Digital SLR lens isproduced with outstanding optical glass.Features include de-clicked apertures andgears for follow focus. The 8mm Fisheye ismade for APS-C sensors, while all others arecompatible with full-frame cameras and areavailable for popular mounts such asCanon, Sony Alpha and Nikon.

For additional information, visitwww.rokinon.com.

Technicolor Releases CineStyle SoftwareTechnicolor has launched CineStyle

Color Assist, the company’s first video color-correction and grading software. Designed

by the company’srenowned colorexperts and basedon Technicolor’saward-winning DPLights system,CineStyle ColorAssist features highquality, easy to use,real-time colorcorrection forvideographers of allskill levels.

“CineStyleColor Assist givesany video-produc-

tion enthusiast easy-to-use, professional-quality color-correction tools,” says Alejan-dro Guerrero, senior vice president andgeneral manager for CineStyle at Techni-color. “We adapted the technology we usefor blockbuster films and TV shows tocreate an affordable tool with an intuitiveuser interface, time-saving features andextensive color library.”

The software allows users to selectfrom 25 custom-designed CineStyle Lookscreated by Technicolor’s world-classcolorists, or create new looks that can bepreviewed in real time across an entire videoclip without having to render. Users can alsosave up to nine Color Compositions pervideo file for instant review and ultimatecreative flexibility. The tool also speeds upworkflows by allowing users to quickly andeasily apply, preview and modify CineStyleLooks during production and in the editingprocess.

Additional premium CineStyle Lookpackages can be purchased for $19. Eachpackage includes 10 custom-created Looks.Packages currently available include “MovieLooks” and “Extreme Looks.”

CineStyle Color Assist is compatiblewith Mac and PC platforms and works inconjunction with popular editing softwaresuch as Final Cut Pro 7 and Adobe PremierePro CS5.5 and CS6. Additional featuresinclude non-destructive color correctionand grading via MetaColor files; a three-way color corrector, key selector and curvesadjustments for advanced control; supportfor popular codecs in SD, HD and 2K reso-lutions; scopes for easy monitoring of colorinformation; and secondary monitorsupport for full-screen playback.

CineStyle Color Assist can bepurchased for $99 from www.technicolorcinestyle.com, where a free 7-day trialversion can also be downloaded.

Assimilate Shipping Scratch v7Assimilate is shipping Version 7 of its

Scratch and Scratch Lab products, whichfeature a suite of enhanced 3-D composit-ing tools that integrate seamlessly into thecolor-grading, data-management andfinishing systems to allow faster, more fluidand more cost-effective digital gradingsessions.

Scratch v7 is a real-time, client-attended toolset that delivers a consistent,integrated user-interface across bothproduction dailies and the DI. Theenhanced creative tools within Scratch v7include an expanded compositing toolsetwith a new 3-D camera model and animproved OFX plug-in environment andplug-in workflow; full peer interactivitybetween all Scratch features and criticalvisual-effects plug-ins, such as Sapphire,Neat Video, ReelSmart Motion Blur, BeautyBox and Mocha Pro; the ability to nest layersand apply color grades to groups of layers;planar tracking data import from ImagineerSystem’s Mocha Pro v3; and new rendering

features, including directionaland motion blur, multi-sampling, and bit-map filtering.

Scratch v7 also boastsan entirely new, flexible viewingmodel that displays content in amore intuitive manner, andextended native camerasupport for Phantom Miro,Canon C500 and C300, Black-magic Cinema Camera, SonyF55 and F65 native high frame

rate, Red 5K, and the latest Arri de-Bayeralgorithm. Scratch v7 also includes fullsupport for the entire ACES specification,including the file format, color space, anddevice and rendering transforms.

Scratch Lab v7 offers a robust on- ornear-set dailies solution. Scratch Lab v7meets the complex challenges of managingmedia and metadata from any number ofdifferent cameras into a single timeline,quickly syncing audio with or without accu-

rate time code, color correcting and creatinglooks in real time, and providing fast render-ing simultaneously for multiple deliverableformats.

“Scratch v7 is a huge time-saver forme,” says Julio Macat, ASC, who used thesystem for the digital grade on the featurePitch Perfect. “I found the Scratch DI sessionto be far more fluid and much faster thananything I’ve experienced before. With thesavvy hands of [colorist] Leandro Marini atthe helm, we were able to do color timingside-by-side with items like object replace-ment, beauty work on women’s faces, andeven some [visual effects] — such as chang-ing skies, adding assorted lens flares andcreating or extending light beams fromlighting instruments that couldn’t be practi-cally photographed — right inside ofScratch. This was all quickly achieved with-out time delays, which can interrupt thecreative process. The faster you go, themore DI work you can do. It was an eye-opening experience for me.”

For additional information, visitwww.assimilateinc.com.

Boris FX Expands ContinuumBoris FX, a developer of integrated

visual-effects and workflow technology formotion pictures, has introduced BorisContinuum Complete 8 FxPlug, which deliv-ers more than 200 comprehensive visual-

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effects filters to Apple’s Final Cut Pro 7, FinalCut Pro X and Motion 5.

Boris Continuum Complete giveseditors and motion-graphics artists thepower to create high-quality broadcastgraphics and perform project-saving imagerestorations within Final Cut Pro. The expan-sive filter set includes extruded text, 3-Dparticle effects, image restoration andtouchup tools, true 3-D lens flares and volu-metric lighting effects, keys and mattes,color-grading tools, time-based effects,blurs, glows, stylish auto-animating transi-tions and cinematic effects such as filmglow, film grain, and film-process looks.

Highlights of BCC 8 FxPlug includenew Final Cut Pro X templates and transi-tions; extrusions for Final Cut Pro X thatmake it easy to create 3-D objects using textand shapes; Beat Reactor technology, whichenables easy generation of audio-driveneffects; a built-in masking system and built-in motion tracking for Final Cut Pro X; lens-blur effects for Final Cut Pro X; and versatile,high-quality glow effects. Other all-newBCC 8 FxPlug filters include BCC FlickerFixer, BCC Lens Flare 3D, BCC Particle Emit-ter 3D, BCC Organic Strands, BCC WildCards and BCC Stage Light.

For additional information, visitwww.borisfx.com.

Stargate Opens Middle East StudioStargate Studios, a production

company that specializes in virtual produc-tion and visual effects, has partnered withthe Middle East Broadcasting Center Groupto open Stargate Middle East.

The company’s first two full-servicevirtual production studios will be located inDubai Studio City, U.A.E., and Cairo, Egypt.Both will be equipped with the latest digitalcamera technologies, LED lighting, motiontracking, real-time compositing, 3-D imag-ing and virtual sets. Both Stargate Dubai andStargate Cairo will employ multiple visual-effects supervisors, producers and localgraphic-artist talent and will feature exten-sive soundstages.

According to Stargate CEO SamNicholson, ASC, the partnership with MBCwill further strengthen Stargate’s interna-tional presence and will bring the company’sproprietary Virtual Backlot technology to the

Middle East. “MBC has given us the oppor-tunity to dramatically change the face ofthe television industry throughout theMiddle East,” says Nicholson. “This part-nership connects MBC to the entire Star-gate global digital network, effectivelycombining our production expertise andadvanced technologies with MBC’s creativeartistry and local programming.”

Founded in 1989, Stargate hasoffices in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Berlin,Vancouver, Toronto, Mumbai and Malta.The company’s global network allowsclients to access more than 250 visual-effects artists and supervisors all over theworld, as well as high-speed data transferand simultaneous international renderingand delivery. Stargate’s Virtual Backlotprovides an alternative to shooting on loca-tion, offering fully immersive environmentsto shoot establishing shots, multiple-anglecoverage, walk-and-talks and driving.

For additional information, visitwww.stargatestudios.net.

Company 3 Plays “Games”Company 3, a subsidiary of Deluxe

Entertainment Services Group Inc., recentlyprovided a variety of post services to its firstvideo-game project, Call of Duty: Black OpsII. Concurrently, the company announcedthe opening of Company 3 Games, a newdivision dedicated to offering high-endpost services for game production.

“The creation of Company 3 Gamesrepresents a new level of collaborationbetween game developers as well aspublishers and providers of feature-film-level post services,” says ASC associatemember Stefan Sonnenfeld, president andfounder of Company 3. Malte Wagener,vice president of Games, adds, “With theamazing level of sophistication in gamesand the immense talent pool in the featurefilm world, a tight collaboration [between]the two spheres is a natural development.”

Wagener, who oversees Gamesfrom the division’s offices in Company 3’sSanta Monica, Calif. headquarters, comesto the position following an extensivecareer in video-game business with compa-nies such as Koch Media in Germany andWEG, a division of CJ Media, in SouthKorea. “I’m very excited to be leadingCompany 3 Games,” he says. “With the

talent and resources of Company 3 and itsaffiliated companies, we plan to set thenew standard for game postproduction.”

For additional information, visit www.company3.com andwww.bydeluxe.com.

Visual Data RelocatesVisual Data Media Services, a

provider of integrated end-to-end postsolutions and distribution for all mediaoutlets, has opened a new facility inBurbank, Calif. The location was designedfrom scratch to support 21st-century work-flows and accommodate the needs of achanging industry.

The 30,000-square-foot facilityfeatures 20 suites for editing, QC, colorcorrection and captioning built around ahighly secure Data Center, a large DigitalMachine Room and an Encoding Center.The Data Center was built to support thecompany’s proprietary Asset ManagementSystem, which will simplify distribution andarchival tasks for Visual Data’s clients. Thenew space also offers two mix stages, anADR stage and a Foley stage.

The increased capacity afforded bythe new facility will support Visual Data’swide-ranging services dedicated to thecreation, management, repurposing anddistribution of content. These offeringsinclude subtitling and localization, closedcaptioning, DVD services, syndicationservices, asset management, encoding,digital cinema DCP and digital delivery. Tosupport these workflows, the facility hasbeen installed with the latest products froma number of vendors, including DVS-SAN,Aspera, Isilon, Avascent, Miranda andBlackmagic Design’s DaVinci.

Visual Data Media Services, 610North Hollywood Way, Burbank, Calif.,91505. For more information, visitwww.visualdatainc.com.

Siren Digital Employs Digital VisionSiren Digital, a film, television and

new-media production group, has turnedto Digital Vision for a number of solutionsto power its new facility in Hollywood.

“We have a significant comfort leveland familiarity with Digital Vision’soutstanding toolset, support and R&D

group built upon years of experience atanother facility we designed and operatedin Los Angeles and global projects we’vemanaged,” says Kyle Jackson, co-founderof Siren Digital. “Over the past five years,Digital Vision has been the backbone ofmany of our endeavors. Their softwareproves time and again to be able to handlethe real-world challenges of changing post-production workflows.”

Siren Digital has chosen DigitalVision’s Nucoda color-grading system withthe Digital Vision Optics toolset and Preci-sion control panel to sustain its DI and tech-nological operations. The Nucoda gradingand mastering solutions offer a powerfulcolor toolset that integrates easily withcustomized workflows; it supports ACESand all of the major digital camera formatson the market. The Precision panel adds ahigh level of control for colorists with itscombination of tactile controls and inte-grated touch-sensitive panels. Additionally,the DVO image-processing softwareprovides a comprehensive solution forimage repair, restoration, enhancement andformat conversion, whether originatingfrom film or video.

Together, Siren Studios, an emerging360-degree production studio, and SirenDigital offer a broad base of services to theindustry, from creative to advanced produc-tion, visual effects, post audio, film financeand international distribution. “We areengaged in a number of traditional andemerging processes globally, and it is crucialthat our tools work now and evolve withthe way our colleagues want to collaboratein the future,” says Jackson. “While we areinvolved in some very technologicallyadvanced work, we are also working dailyon digital intermediates, designing postworkflows and delivering projects. Webelieve that Digital Vision is with us todayand for the long run.”

Siren Digital, 6500 Sunset Blvd.,Hollywood, Calif., 90028. For more infor-mation, visit www.siren6500.com andwww.digitalvision.tv. ●


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CLASSIFIED AD RATES

All classifications are $4.50 per word. Words set in boldface or all capitals are $5.00 per word. First word of adand advertiser’s name can be set in capitals without extracharge. No agency commission or discounts on clas si fiedadvertising.PAYMENT MUST AC COM PA NY ORDER. VISA,Mastercard, AmEx and Discover card are ac cept ed. Sendad to Clas si fied Ad ver tis ing, Amer i can Cin e ma tog -ra pher, P.O. Box 2230, Hol ly wood, CA 90078. Or FAX(323) 876-4973. Dead line for payment and copy must be inthe office by 15th of second month preceding pub li ca tion.Sub ject mat ter is lim it ed to items and ser vic es per tain ingto film mak ing and vid eo pro duc tion. Words used are sub -ject to mag a zine style ab bre vi a tion. Min i mum amountper ad: $45

CLASSIFIEDS ON-LINE

Ads may now also be placed in the on-line Classifiedsat the ASC web site.

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

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

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Advertiser’s Index 16x9, Inc. 6

AC 6, 77, 83Adorama 7, 29AJA Video Systems, Inc. 71Alan Gordon Enterprises 82Arri 9ASC 1AZGrip 82

Backstage Equipment, Inc. 79Barger-Lite 83Birns & Sawyer 82Blackmagic Design, Inc. 15Brain Emo 82

Camerimage 59Canon USA Video 11Cavision Enterprises 21Chapman/Leonard Studio Equipment Inc. 23Cinematography Electronics 79Cinekinetic 82Codex Digital Ltd. 37Cooke Optics 13

Deluxe C2Denecke 82Doggicam 17

Eastman Kodak C4

Film Gear 81Filmotechnic USA 40Filmtools 77

Glidecam Industries C3

J.L. Fisher 53

K5600 19Kino Flo 41

Lights! Action! Co. 82

Manios Optical 82M. M. Mukhi & Sons 83Movie Tech AG 82, 83

NAB 85NBC Universal 39Nevada Film Commission 61New York Film Academy 25

Oppenheimer Camera Prod. 82Outsight 49

Pille Film Gmbh 82Pro8mm 82

Red Digital Cinema 30-31

Schneider Optics 2, Sony Electronics, Inc. 5Super16 Inc. 83SXSW 51

Thales Angenieux 27

VF Gadgets, Inc. 83Visual Products 79

Welch Integrated 87Willy’s Widgets 83www.theasc.com 4, 52, 60 70, 83, 84

84

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Society Welcomes ChomynNew active member Christopher

Chomyn, ASC was first entranced by thefilmmaking process when he visited theEdison Museum in East Orange, N.J., on his7th birthday. He later joined a photographyclub at school. After graduating from FairfieldUniversity with a degree in history, Chomyntook a trip to California. While visiting CarmelValley, he landed a job as a production assis-tant on the series Doris Day’s Best Friends, andwhen the series wrapped, he stayed inCarmel and worked as an electrician and grip.Two years later, he moved to Los Angeles andearned an MFA with honors from UCLA’sSchool of Theater, Film and Television.

Chomyn is currently an associateprofessor of practice on the cinematographyfaculty at the University of Southern Califor-nia’s School of Cinematic Arts, where he hastaught for 15 years. While teaching, he hascontinued to shoot features, documentariesand commercials. At the 2010 Cine GearExpo, he was awarded the Best Cinematog-raphy prize for his work on Wild About Harry.Chomyn has also led cinematography work-shops and seminars for Walt Disney FeatureAnimation, Eastman Kodak and the Interna-tional Film and Video Workshops, amongothers, and in 2010, he redesigned the cine-matography curriculum for the VancouverFilm School. He is a Film Independent ProjectInvolve mentor and an alternate on thenational executive board of the InternationalCinematographers Guild.

Reisner Becomes Associate MemberNew associate member David Reis-

ner, the owner of D-Cinema Consulting, hasserved as secretary of the ASC TechnologyCommittee since its founding, and heperforms the same function for three of itssubcommittees: DI, Workflow and AdvancedImaging. He helped to design and create theASC CDL, the ASC-PGA Camera AssessmentSeries and Image Control Assessment Series,the ASC-DCI Stem test, the InterSociety Digi-

tal Cinema Forum 3-D projection-luminancedemonstration, the ACES Look ManagementTransform, and the log ACES definition. Forthe forthcoming 10th edition of the Ameri-can Cinematographer Manual, he co-authored the chapter about the ASC CDLand contributed to the chapter about ACES.

Reisner was the vice chairman of theSMPTE groups that drafted the standards fordigital-cinema imaging. His work in otherindustries has included still photography formagazines and book jackets, early technicaland business plans for Web-based music andmovie distribution, and computer hardwareand software architecture.

Band Pro Honors ZsigmondVilmos Zsigmond, ASC was the

guest of honor during the recent Band ProOne World Open House, which was held inthe company’s Burbank facility. For the event,Band Pro created an interactive workflowenvironment to showcase the latest technol-ogy from 16x9, 1Beyond, 3ality Technica,AJA, Angenieux, Atomos, Bertone Visuals,Canare, Canon, Cinoflex, Codex, Colorfront,Convergent Design, DeepX, Focus Optics,For-A, Fujinon, IDX, K5600, Leader, Leica,Manios Digital, Marshall, NextoDI, Nila,Oppenheimer, Red, Sony, Tiffen, TruColor-PRG, TrueND, Vitec and Zeiss.

Nicholson, Okada Share Sony FootageSony recently hosted “The Future:

Ahead of Schedule,” a screening of footagecaptured with the company’s F5, F55 and F65CineAlta 4K digital cameras. ASC associatemembers Peter Crithary and Alec Shapirojoined Phil Molyneux, president and COO ofSony Electronics, in representing Sony, andJon Fauer, ASC moderated the discussionswith the filmmakers. Sam Nicholson, ASCscreened the short Mahout, which hedirected and co-shot with Dana Christiaansenusing the F55; and Daryn Okada, ASCshared scenes from the series Made in Jersey,which he shot with the F65. ●

Clubhouse News


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From top: Christopher Chomyn, ASC;associate member David Reisner;

Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC.

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When you were a child, what film made the strongest impres-sion on you?As a boy in London, the Bond films were a thrill. The MagnificentSeven (1960) also made a big impression on me. Then came Frenchfilm, Truffaut and Godard particularly.

Which cinematographers,past or present, do you mostadmire?Geoffrey Unsworth [BSC] camefrom very conventional black-and-white movies yet somehowevolved into a magnificent colorcinematographer; Cabaret andTess are extraordinary. I canwatch [BSC member] GuyGreen’s work in Oliver Twistagain and again, as well as BobKrasker’s unforgettable work inthe The Third Man. Recently, Iwatched an original print of MaxOphüls’ La Ronde, with magnificent cinematography by ChristianMatras. So many films, so little time.

What sparked your interest in photography?I seem to have been born with it. I remember, as a child of maybe 5,watching in dismay as my father tried to load an 8mm camera.

Where did you train and/or study?Guildford School of Photography, but I dropped out to work as aphotographer on Fleet Street. Later, I studied film at the RoyalCollege of Art London.

Who were your early teachers or mentors?Karel Reisz gave me wonderful advice in which he enjoined me tospend more time lighting the actors than the sets.

What are some of your key artistic influences?The photography of Irving Penn, Robert Capa and Edward Steichen;the reportage photography of Life Magazine and Paris Match from1935 to 1975; the landscapes of Joseph Turner; and, of course, thePost-Impressionists. Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère isthe painting I’d most like to steal.

How did you get your first break in the business?I was smuggled into an animation company in London by a friendwho got me into the British union as a Rostrum cameraman.

What has been your most satisfying moment on a project?Being kissed on both cheeks by Mike Nichols after rather gooddailies on Angels in America.

Have you made any memo-rable blunders?Many. They never seem to stop.

What is the best profes-sional advice you’ve everreceived?My gaffer in England, MartinEvans, advised me to say noth-ing during the first three weeksof production, to just watchand listen. I wish I had followedhis advice more closely.

What recent books, films orartworks have inspired you?Book: Matterhorn by Karl

Malantes. Film: Although not recent, Casque d’Or (1952) by JacquesBecker, which I saw for the first time two weeks ago at the PacificFilm Archive. Artwork: Man Ray and Lee Miller: Partners in Surreal-ism, an exhibition in San Francisco.

Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like totry?I would like to shoot a documentary again. I haven’t shot one indecades.

If you weren’t a cinematographer, what might you be doinginstead?I would be an emergency-room physician.

Which ASC cinematographers recommended you formembership? Howard Schwartz, Jordan Cronenweth and Vilmos Zsigmond.

How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?I have always been something of a loner, and ASC membership hasbrought me into the company of many fine cinematographerswhom I greatly admire. ●

Stephen Goldblatt, ASC, BSCClose-up

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