2016 06 PDF

THE SECOND SEASON
FOR YOUR CONSI

DERATI
ON
OUTSTANDI
NG CI
NEMATOGRAPHY
FOR NONFI
CTI
ON PROGRAMMI
NG ADAM BRI
CKER
AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER JUNE 2016 CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR A BEAUTIFUL PLANET THE NICE GUYS ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS VOL. 97 NO. 6
JUNE 2016
An International Publication of the ASC
On Our Cover: The titular star-spangled Avenger (Chris Evans) finds himself at odds
with his fellow heroes in Captain America: Civil War, shot by Trent Opaloch. (Photo by
Zade Rosenthal, SMPSP, courtesy of Marvel Studios.)
FEATURES
38
56
72
86
Heroes Divided
Trent Opaloch frames the showdown between Earths
mightiest heroes in Captain America: Civil War
56
Time and Space

James Neihouse, ASC trains a crew of astronauts to shoot
the Imax feature A Beautiful Planet
Old-School Thrills
Philippe Rousselot, ASC, AFC embraces new technology
for the period action-comedy The Nice Guys
72
Against the Clock

Stuart Dryburgh, ASC, NZCS captures the high-stakes
whimsy of Alice Through the Looking Glass
DEPARTMENTS
10
12
14
22
102
112
113
114
116
118
120
Editors Note
Presidents Desk
Short Takes: Death of a Bachelor
Production Slate: High-Rise Love & Friendship
New Products & Services
International Marketplace
Classified Ads
Ad Index
ASC Membership Roster
Clubhouse News
ASC Close-Up: Frederic Goodich
VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM
86
ACCESS APPROVED
New digital outreach by American Cinematographer means more in-depth coverage for you.
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: STAR TREK CONTINUES
Boldly go into the past with the crew of the
starship Enterprise in this award-winning
fan-made Web series, as cinematographer
Matt Bucy pays homage to the stylish
photography of the 1960s sci-fi classic by
ASC members Gerald Perry Finnerman,
Al Francis and Ernest Haller.
FLASHBACK
AC presents an excerpt from Citizen Kane: A Filmmakers Journey, a
new book by author Harlan Lebo that focuses on wunderkind
writer-director-producer-star Orson Welles relationship with ace
cinematographer Gregg Toland, ASC. In addition, well present
Tolands own personal account of the making of the milestone
film, as published in the February 1941 issue of AC.
BEYOND THE FRAME

Our ongoing behind-the-scenes
GIF series features the cinematographers of such films as
2001: A Space Odyssey,
The Exorcist, The Wizard of Oz,
Jurassic Park, Enter the Dragon,
American Graffiti and
many more.
INSIDE: AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER

Be sure to check out our latest videos that showcase
articles in AC magazine, featuring key technical data
and behind-the-scenes images from the first-person
action film Hardcore Henry and the superhero epic
Captain America: Civil War.
Get all this and much

more via theasc.com and our
social-media platforms.
WRAP SHOT
With each post, we dip into ACs vast photo archive to bring
you informative and entertaining images from the past, featuring
such iconic films as Seven, The French Connection, Goldfinger,
Interview With the Vampire and The Godfather.
www.theasc.com
J u n e
2 0 1 6
V o l .
9 7 ,
N o .
Visit us online at www.theasc.com
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF and PUBLISHER

Stephen Pizzello
WEB DIRECTOR and ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

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

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Marion Kramer
PHOTO EDITOR Kelly Brinker
ADVERTISING
ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Angie Gollmann
323-936-3769 Fax 323-936-9188 e-mail: angiegollmann@gmail.com
ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Sanja Pearce
323-952-2114 Fax 323-952-2140 e-mail: sanja@ascmag.com
CLASSIFIEDS/ADVERTISING COORDINATOR Diella Peru
323-952-2124 Fax 323-952-2140 e-mail: diella@ascmag.com
SUBSCRIPTIONS, BOOKS & PRODUCTS

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

ASC EVENTS COORDINATOR Patricia Armacost
ASC PRESIDENTS ASSISTANT Delphine Figueras
ASC ACCOUNTING MANAGER Mila Basely
American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 96th year of publication, is published monthly in Hollywood by
ASC Holding Corp., 1782 N. Orange Dr., Hollywood, CA 90028, U.S.A.,
(800) 448-0145, (323) 969-4333, Fax (323) 876-4973, direct line for subscription inquiries (323) 969-4344.
Subscriptions: U.S. $50; Canada/Mexico $70; all other foreign countries $95 a year (remit international Money Order or other exchange payable in U.S. $).
Advertising: Rate card upon request from Hollywood office. Copyright 2016 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.
American Society of Cinematographers

The ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but
an educational, cultural and professional
organization. Membership is by invitation
to those who are actively engaged as
directors of photography and have
demonstrated outstanding ability. ASC
membership has become one of the highest
honors that can be bestowed upon a
professional cinematographer a mark
of prestige and excellence.
OFFICERS - 2015/2016
Richard Crudo
President
Owen Roizman
Vice President
Kees van Oostrum

Vice President
Lowell Peterson
Vice President
Matthew Leonetti
Treasurer
Frederic Goodich
Secretary
Isidore Mankofsky
Sergeant-at-Arms
MEMBERS OF THE
BOARD
John Bailey
Bill Bennett
Richard Crudo
George Spiro Dibie
Richard Edlund
Fred Elmes
Michael Goi
Victor J. Kemper
Isidore Mankofsky
Daryn Okada
Lowell Peterson
Robert Primes
Owen Roizman
Rodney Taylor
Kees van Oostrum
ALTERNATES
Karl Walter Lindenlaub
Kenneth Zunder
Francis Kenny
John C. Flinn III
Steven Fierberg
MUSEUM CURATOR
Steve Gainer
Our annual summer-blockbuster issue kicks off with Captain

America: Civil War, a Marvel Cinematic Universe epic shot by
Trent Opaloch, who last teamed with the projects sibling
directors Anthony and Joe Russo on Caps previous feature,
The Winter Soldier. In explaining their collaborative approach
to AC contributor Mark Dillon (Heroes Divided, page 38),
Anthony Russo notes, With Trent we asked, As a superhero, what makes Captain America stand out? And what
we kept coming back to is that hes a man, only a little bit
more so. So we wanted to approach his story on a human
scale. Cap shines brightest when the camera is close-up and
embedded with him during whatever hes going through.
Fans of action and fantasy can also indulge in Iain
Marcks coverage of The Nice Guys, shot by Philippe Rousselot, ASC, AFC (Old-School Thrills, page 72) and Neil Matsumotos piece on Alice Through
the Looking Glass, shot by Stuart Dryburgh, ASC, NZCS (Against the Clock, page 86).
Real-life heroes are the backbone of the Imax documentary A Beautiful Planet, which
offers stunning images of Earth captured by NASA astronauts aboard the International Space
Station. The astronauts were trained by supervising director of photography James Neihouse,
ASC, who also shot the projects terrestrial footage. I have trained all the crews on the Imax
space movies since 1988, Neihouse tells Jay Holben (Time and Space, page 56), adding with
wry humor, I tell everybody that Im the only [cinematographer] who has to train his first unit
how to shoot.
Neihouse was one of the star guests at the recent NAB Show in Las Vegas, where he
participated in an American Cinematographer Creative Master Series session with astronaut
Marsha Ivins; AC contributor David Heuring moderated the fascinating discussion. Our editorial
team also had the honor of hobnobbing with Neihouse, Ivins and her fellow astronaut Terry Virts
during a dinner hosted by Canon at the Brazilian steakhouse Fogo de Cho. Proving hes a
trouper, Neihouse joined ASC President Richard Crudo, the magazines staff and a dozen other
industry friends for a social voyage to The Golden Tiki, a pirate-themed lounge featuring cocktails like Hemingways Ruin, the Painkiller and the flaming Polynesian Haze; an animatronic sea
captains skeleton that would spring to life without warning, startling everyone in proximity;
and, best of all, a hunting knife that once belonged to Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson
(gifted to the bars owners by Thompsons goddaughter). The venue recommended by my
attorney, Wick Hempleman, general manager of J.L. Fisher GmbH proved to be a suitable
substitute for our usual Vegas hangout: the Kiss-themed Monster Mini Golf course, temporarily
closed for a pending relocation.
Lest you think NAB is all fun and games, this months New Products & Services section
(page 102) offers an abundance of information our team gathered at the show while marching
impressive distances over thinly carpeted concrete floors at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
(According to her Fitbit bracelet, staffer Sanja Pearce logged an incredible 22 miles over 2 days,
while Angie Gollmann estimated her average at 8 miles per day.) Our team met with representatives from dozens of companies to gather intel and scope out all the new gear, so our roundup
is second to none and perhaps merits a new motto: What happens in Vegas will be revealed
in AC.
10
Stephen Pizzello
Editor-in-Chief and Publisher
Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.
Editors Note
You could really make a case that the founders of the ASC started a popular trend when they established our organization back in 1919.
AAC, ACK, ACS, ABC, ACF, ADF, AEC, AFC, AIC, AMC, AIP, ASK, BAC, BSC, BVK, CSC, DFF,
FNF, FSC, FSF, HFS, HSC, ISC, JSC, KSC, LAC, MSC, NSC, PSC, RGC, SBC, SCS, ZFS ...
These are the initials and Im sure I missed a few that represent the various cinematographers societies that have sprung up around the world in our wake. (For the record, the acronyms
respectively represent Austria, Czech Republic, Australia, Brazil, Cuba, Argentina, Spain, France,
Italy, Mexico, Portugal, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Great Britain, Germany, Canada, Denmark, Norway,
Finland, Sweden, Croatia, Hungary, India, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, Republic of Macedonia, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Belgium, Switzerland and Slovenia.)
Beyond indicating that we are indeed a social lot, this alphabet soup also poses a question:
How many disciplines in the movie industry can make a remotely similar claim to such solidarity,
affection and respect for one another? Anyone who has had the good fortune to attend one of our
annual ASC Awards events will instantly recognize the bond that exists among us; most notable
among the pomp and ceremony is the sincere, wall-to-wall fellowship expressed by everyone there.
You cant help but come away from that evening with a renewed faith in what we do and a reaffirmed conviction that, without exception, cinematographers are the most naturally passionate artists in the industry.
And this is precisely why its so easy for us to join together in an effort to protect and expand our interests. Further proof will
come early this month when the ASC hosts the second International Cinematography Summit at our Clubhouse in Hollywood. It
will be attended by representatives of the various cinematography societies from around the world for the purpose of increasing
communication and interaction regarding the artistic and technical changes that are affecting our craft. The first summit, held in
2011, was a huge success; were anticipating even greater results this time around.
Standardization of emerging technologies, archival concerns, future trends these issues are right at the forefront for all
cinematographers, regardless of where we live or work. One issue in particular keeps popping up in most every circle: Its scary to
think that at this late date were still hearing reports about cinematographers being blocked from supervising the finish of their
work in the DI suite. Does discouraging or altogether barring the cinematographer from placing the final touches save money or
time? Example after example has proven the opposite to be true. Equally troublesome, artistic integrity is compromised every time
the original intent developed by the director and cinematographer is cast aside. Since were hired for our taste and expertise
which are generously proffered at every point in the process, by the way you really have to wonder whats going through someones head when they choose the exclusionary route. Compounding the insult, we are rarely paid for our postproduction labor.
Short of a binding, European-style right-of-authorship agreement which will never be enacted in the United States
were pretty much left to cover our own bases in this respect. Our employers are aware of the great commitment we bring to the
job, and many of them are all too eager to use that against us. Right now our only recourse is to develop strong relationships early
on with directors and producers that will serve to protect us when necessary. The irony is that the smart ones understand how
important our contribution is and generally insist that we supervise the DI. Problems usually emerge only when the uninformed are
in control, and sadly there are enough of those running around the industry to fill a stadium. Hopefully the International Cinematography Summit will offer some new solutions.
On another note entirely, this column marks my final Presidents Desk appearance. My term at the ASC helm has come to
an end, and Ill soon hand the reins over to a newly elected individual. The past three years in office have been a superlative pleasure,
and Ill always be thankful for being allowed the opportunity to serve this great organization. Its impossible to express how humbled
Ive been by this experience and the wonderful people Ive come in contact with. I want to send a great, big thank-you to our
members and associates, the ASC staff and Board of Governors, and, most of all, our faithful readers.
And to my successor whomever that may be I have but one word: excelsior!
Richard P. Crudo
ASC President
12
June 2016
American Cinematographer
Photo by Dana Phillip Ross.
Presidents Desk
Short Takes
Vintage Cool
By Matt Mulcahey
Based on the markers of post-millennium pop stardom, none

of the individual elements of 1960s-era Frank Sinatra qualify as
contemporarily cool: not the tux nor bowtie; not the corded microphone nor middle age. Yet theres a timeless swagger to Ol Blue Eyes
as he croons standards with those golden pipes. Its that bravado that
Panic! at the Discos new video Death of a Bachelor emulates, only
with an added touch of what co-director Mel Soria calls Brendon
Urie flair.
Urie is Panic! at the Discos frontman, and the Las Vegas-raised
singer spends Bachelor belting out the new tune to an elegant yet
empty ballroom captured in gorgeous black-and-white. The challenge
for cinematographer Eric Bader was achieving Sinatra swagger on a
less-than-Rat-Pack-level budget.
Though there are more avenues than ever before for musicians
to share their work, the current economics of the music industry dont
allow for the extravagant production outlays commonplace in the
1990s and 2000s. I love the format of music videos because you
have so much freedom, but the half-million dollar video is definitely
going the way of the dodo, says Bader. Making music videos these
days means working with limitations like a single six-hour shooting
day and lo-fi tools such as a DIY speed-rail jib, a doorway dolly and a
$100 plastic camera for inserts.
Bader and company had only three weeks to prep, shoot, edit
and color the video before Panic! at the Discos record label debuted
Death of a Bachelor online on Christmas Eve. Meeting that tight
deadline was made easier by the familiarity of the creative team.
14
June 2016
Bader met Soria and colorist Sherwin Lau through mutual friends at
their shared alma mater, Florida State University; Soria and co-director
Brendan Walter are frequent collaborators, having previously joined
forces on the MTV Video Music Award-winning Uma Thurman by
Fall Out Boy; and Bader had teamed with both directors on the video
for Panic! at the Discos This is Gospel (Piano Version).
With Bader and the pair of co-directors based on opposite
coasts, much of the prep work occurred via email and conference
calls. That communication included the sharing of YouTube clips of
1960s-era Sinatra performing Fly Me to the Moon and Ive Got
You Under My Skin.
Those clips all kind of live and die in a medium shot, but
theyre captivating because Sinatra is such a charismatic performer,
says Bader. Wed all worked with Brendon Urie before and we knew
the video could exist as just a showcase for his performance and still
be something that was interesting to watch.
While the black-and-white photography and Uries corded
microphone pay homage to the Sinatra at the Sands vibe,
Bader sought more than mimicry. Those live Sinatra performances
were our jumping-off point, he says. We wanted to take that old
crooner style and mix it with a more modern style, which is where
the idea of heavy lens flares and dynamic camera moves came
from.
After initially considering shooting the video at a venue that
coincided with one of Panic! at the Discos tour cities, the team
instead selected the Monte Cristo Banquet Hall in Los Angeles. Typically rented out for weddings and corporate events, the hall already
featured practical RGB LED lighting that could be adjusted via a small
control panel integrated into the space. The lighting was built more
Photos by Dan Zacharias and Zechariah Hall, courtesy of the filmmakers.
Panic! at the
Disco frontman
Brendon Urie
emulates Frank
Sinatras 1960sera swagger in
the black-andwhite music
video for the
song Death of
a Bachelor,
which reunited
cinematographer
Eric Bader with
co-directors Mel
Soria and
Brendan Walter.
for events than motion pictures, the cinematographer recalls. There was a bit of
flicker at every shutter angle. I ultimately
settled on 144 degrees for the entire video,
but there is still a small pulse visible in the
lighting.
I wanted to see which colors
responded best to black-and-white, and I
found a magenta hue that had a great
silvery effect, Bader continues. If you look
at the behind-the-scenes photos in color, its
pretty hilarious because its all tungsten lighting and then you have this pink looping the
entire space. In color, the video is pretty
hideous.
Recalls Soria, We showed the location to somebody from the record label and
they were worried. I had to tell them, You
have to see it in black-and-white. Its not
going to have these pink pastels.
Bader opted for his own Red Epic
Mysterium-X as his main camera, recording
in 5K anamorphic mode with 5:1 RedCode
compression. He paired the Epic with a set
of Kowa Prominar anamorphic lenses
supplied by L.A.s Radiant Images. Keeping
his T-stop around a 5.6/8 to create the deep
focus favored in the Rat Pack era, he worked
almost exclusively with the 40mm and
100mm, with a handful of shots done on
the 50mm.
The Kowas only limitation came
when trying to achieve tight close-ups as
the 100mm, for example, requires a minimum focus distance of approximately 5'. To
compensate, Bader used Tiffen +1 and +2
diopters for those close-ups, during which
gaffer Eric Clark pinged the lens with an LED
Top: Urie channels

Ol Blue Eyes in
this frame grab.
Middle, from left:
Set lighting
technician Drew
VanderMale (on
ladder), tour
manager Zechariah
Hall (under ladder),
key grip Jeb
Alderson (pushing
dolly) and Bader
capture the singers
performance.
Bottom: Bader lines
up a shot with the
productions Red
Epic MX camera.
16
June 2016
flashlight to add moving flares.

To light the banquet hall, Bader relied
on the locations practical LEDs and chandeliers, two Skypans and a whole lot of
Lekos, the cinematographer explains. A
Leko keyed the main-stage portion of Uries
performance, with set lighting technician
Drew VanderMale pivoting the light from
atop a ladder to simulate a roving spotlight.
Five additional Lekos were placed on the floor
of the stage behind Urie with matching fanpattern gobos that kicked in during the
videos chorus. Two more Lekos were situated
high above the stage one on each side
and blasted through the output of a pair of
DF-50 Diffusion Hazers to create shafts of
light.
The space was 90-percent lit using
Lekos, recalls Bader. Our Skypans on the
stage were modified so I could use the lights
on house power and have them both on a
single 2K Variac; the bulbs were removed and
replaced with 1K Mole-Richardson Molettes
that were actually Cardellini-clamped inside
of the Skypans. If youre really savvy, you can
definitely spot those Cardellinis in the video.
Creative rigging was also employed
for a boom down from a shimmering chandelier as Urie approaches the stage at the
videos outset. Without the budget for a
proper jib, a Sony a7S with a Canon L-series
16-35mm (f2.8) zoom was placed on a Ronin
gimbal and suspended from a goalpost
pulley system made from speed rail and
Mombo stands. Bader set the cameras ISO to
3,200 and aperture to f16 to ensure the
desired focus.
Top: The frontman

sings in close-up.
Middle: Bader
frames a shot
with a Digital
Harinezumi 3
taped beneath
the lens of the
Epic, and with a
turntable rigged
in front of the
cameras. Bottom:
Bader operates
the camera as
best-boy grip Ray
Chatman holds a
bead board and
gaffer Eric Clark
(far right) adds a
subtle pulse effect
by waving his
hand in front of a
bounced Leko.
18
June 2016
Top: Bader shoots as Urie sits with a drink. Bottom: Soria (back to camera) observes as 1st AC
Matt Ryan (far left), Bader and Alderson (pushing dolly) get a shot of Urie performing on an
elevated platform.
In addition to the faux jib, camera

moves were accomplished with a Dana Dolly
and a Matthews Doorway Dolly either on
track with skateboard wheels or directly on
the venues floor. We had a few takes
where key grip Jeb Alderson pushed me just
freewheeling on the smooth floors, says
Bader. He has some real finesse with that
thing, because we pulled off some great
precision moves, and a doorway dolly isnt
the easiest thing to control.
As an insert camera, Bader broke out
his Digital Harinezumi 3, a low-resolution,
bargain-priced Japanese camera he discovered while reading about Spring Breakers in
20
June 2016
American Cinematographer (June 13). It

has a really strange look that is degraded,
grainy and blown out, and that would be
very hard to duplicate with a better
camera, says Bader, who used the
Harinezumis dirtiest monochrome preset.
Since we had such a limited amount of
time, I just taped it to the rails on the front
of the [Epic] and let it roll during all of the
takes.
One short clip from the Harinezumi
that made its way into the video actually
reveals another of Baders lo-fi rigs a
record turntable with shards of jagged Plexiglas that were taped to an LP of Carl
Douglas Kung Fu Fighting. The turntable

was placed in front of the camera for some
close-ups, with the Plexi refracting light as it
spun in front of the cameras lens. You can
actually see the arm of the turntable in one of
those Harinezumi shots, Bader says with a
laugh. Its a little peek behind the curtain.
Trying to squeeze the most out of their
six-hour window, Bader and his crew rolled
until the final seconds of their allotted time.
Our location fee essentially tripled if we went
beyond six hours, Bader says. We did one
rehearsal with Brendon Urie, and then we
never stopped shooting until our six hours
were up. We were still shooting the last closeup with one single light when we were
getting ushered out just my gaffer Eric
Clark waving a Leko over Brendons face.
The music videos digital grade was
performed on a similarly tight schedule. Working out of his home studio in Las Cruces, N.M.,
colorist Sherwin Lau received a hard drive of
footage on a Sunday and worked into the
small hours of Monday morning to finish his
grade. On the drive were the R3D camera
originals; using editor Pete Martichs locked
cut in the Adobe Premiere project file, Lau
exported an XML directly into Blackmagic
Designs DaVinci Resolve 12. His final deliverables were both a 1080p ProRes 4:2:2 HQ
QuickTime and a more compressed H.264 file,
per record-company request. Three days after
his completion, the video debuted on
YouTube.
What they got on set and what you
see as the [end product] are pretty close, Lau
says. I did increase the contrast and bring out
some of the [mid-tones], and then I had to
match the Epic and a7S, which had a little bit
of a green shift. Laus final touch involved
adding a 35mm Ultra Fine grain plate from
Rgrain. The overall look we were going for
was classic, elegant and jazzy, and once I saw
what that location looked like in black-andwhite, it gave me a good idea of what I
needed to do, he says.
Adds Bader, Ive always loved blackand-white. You get to play so much more with
contrast, and theres a lot of forgiveness in
hard lighting. It was actually so freeing on this
shoot to not have a scrap of diffusion on set.
To watch Death of a Bachelor, visit
www.youtube.com/watch?v=R03cqGg40GU.
Production Slate
Faulty Tower
By Phil Rhodes
Appropriately for an adaptation of a J.G. Ballard novel, director

Ben Wheatleys High-Rise raises many questions both about the
characters it presents and the environment in which its set. The film
stars Tom Hiddleston as Dr. Robert Laing, Jeremy Irons as Anthony
Royal and Sienna Miller as Charlotte Melville, three inhabitants of a
newly constructed luxury tower where events quickly take a dark and
sinister turn.
The production marked the fifth feature collaboration between
Wheatley and director of photography Laurie Rose, and since
wrapping High-Rise, they have completed a sixth, Free Fire. Prior to
partnering with Wheatley for 2009s Down Terrace, Rose recalls, I
was a broadcast cameraman doing a broad range of things, from
documentaries and current affairs to reality, working for any of the
main U.K. broadcasters BBC, Channel 4. Id always secretly
harbored a dream of doing narrative [feature] work, but the
opportunity had never presented itself.
His introduction to Wheatley came when the director was
shooting some online, viral comedy shorts for the BBC, Rose
continues. We became friends and stayed in touch. When Wheatley
subsequently approached Rose about Down Terrace, the
cinematographer says, he had a feature script, but he wanted to do
it in a week!
Rose remembers being on holiday when Wheatley reached out
regarding High-Rise: Ben told me they had a script for it. I hadnt
22
June 2016
read the book, so I quickly bought it on Kindle. The architectural

scale of Ballards world raised questions about achievability, though.
People have said its an unfilmable book, says Rose. There are lots
of things that would be quite expensive to do. The genius of [Amy
Jumps] script was that it made a lot of things more practical. It was
the most beautifully adapted screenplay.
The production ultimately shot just outside Belfast in Northern
Ireland. We looked at various places around the country to find a
suitable high-rise, Rose notes. It turns out there isnt anything thats
of [the desired] period thats in any way practical to shoot in, or in a
condition that looks new. Whats more, the plot of High-Rise
demanded particular events such as a character dropping a bottle
from above onto a lower apartments balcony that would ordinarily
be impossible, since balconies on high-rises arent built like that,
says Rose. Theyre built for privacy.
To facilitate the narratives needs, production designer Mark
Tildesley undertook a significant set build, which to Rose was a
completely different world, the cinematographer says. Our budgets
had been so meager. The biggest film wed done prior to High-Rise
was Sightseers, which was [made for] a little over a million pounds.
One audience-teasing question posed by the design is whether
the story represents a historical period or a retro future. Were we
making a film that was actually set in the Seventies, or were we trying
to pastiche something together that looked like the Seventies? asks
Rose. I was kicking that around and struggling with how it should
look. In prep, we talked a lot about 1975. Ben has a very big love for
that period, and Ive got that from him. The question is ultimately
High-Rise photos by Aidan Monaghan and Sebastian Solberg, courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
In the feature
adaptation of
J.G. Ballards
novel High-Rise,
Dr. Robert Laing
(Tom Hiddleston)
moves into a
luxurious
skyscraper
where the
stratified society
soon devolves
into chaos.
Right: Charlotte
Melville (Sienna
Miller) greets Laing
from her
apartment balcony.
Below: Anthony
Royal (Jeremy
Irons), the
reclusive building
architect, meets
with Jane Sheridan
(Sienna Guillory), a
glamorous
television actress.
left unanswered, although Rose feels that

Ballard writes sci-fi. Its always forwardlooking, futuristic but of its time.
In keeping with the 70s aesthetic,
Rose adds, We did end up using zooms. I
used Cooke classics, and we used those
more than I thought we were going to.
With the Cooke Varotal 18-100mm (T3) and
Cine Varotal 25-250mm (T3.9), the
filmmakers were cautious to avoid stylistic
tropes that might be seen as dated rather
than historical. Having watched lots of
period films, we realized how much zooming
was employed, but we tried to keep it from
being cheesy, Rose explains. Ben enjoyed
that. The only thing I sometimes struggled
with was the speed of the zooms.
When more speed was needed, Rose
24
June 2016
used Mark II and III Zeiss Super Speeds. Ive

used Master Primes on commercials, and I
did a film on Cooke S4s, he says. Theyre
beautiful, but theyre all too lovely and
modern. Other older lenses were rejected
because of usability concerns. Rose explains,
I tested Kowas and Super Baltars. [They
create] beautiful out-of-focus highlights, but
I struggled with their reliability. If [the lens
performance is] different from one focus pull
to the next, its going to drive everyone mad
principally my focus puller Kim Vinegrad.
Shooting with the Alexa XT Plus
camera, the production captured ArriRaw
files to Codex XR Capture Drives; the camera
package was supplied by Arri Media (now
Arri Rental) in London. While 35mm might
have furthered the filmmakers period
approach, it was not to be. I would shoot

35mm at the drop of a hat, Rose offers. I
think the opportunity is becoming less and
less.
The widescreen frame, however, was
an easy choice. There is a different sensibility
on TV, but the [2.39:1] masked aspect
is a no-brainer [for a feature], the
cinematographer opines. The filmmakers
didnt feel anamorphic lenses were an option
due to cost and practicality, but Rose remains
an enthusiast. I shot a pilot for a comedy
show last year on anamorphic, he says.
Just using anamorphic glass was a dream.
The way it dealt with light was incredible. It
was a joy to use.
Given the set build, Rose says he was
able to closely control what light fittings
were used and where we wanted them. We
had our pick of these beautiful period
practical lights. In order to create both day
and night looks, the cinematographer
employed a lot of HMI [units]. We carried a
lot of the [Arri] M series. We were always
using 1.8Ks; the output on those is just
fantastic. We used a lot of 2.5Ks and 4Ks
coming through big unbleached muslins and
nets to fill-in windows.
Rose exposed the Alexa at its native
800 ISO. Given the cameras sensitivity, he
often used the less powerful parts of his
lighting package, which was supplied by Cine
Electric Ltd. near Dublin. For instance, I used
[a Kino Flo] Image 80 on a crane on the
balcony studio set, he notes. For a nighttime
look, he adds, I was using Steel Green on
daylight tubes, eventually knocking [the
fixture] down to just two tubes.
Although the film relies on CGI for
exteriors of its titular building, practical effects
were not overlooked. For example, skyline
cycloramas were positioned beyond the
balcony and outside windows for the
interiors. Additionally, Rose explains, the set
build provided two long corridors and one
short one. They were built in a U shape
around our one apartment that we dressed
[to serve as] four different apartments.
The apartment set depicted the
residences of Laing, Melville and Richard
Wilder (Luke Evans). For a party scene where
Laing and Wilder are involved in a fight, Rose
explains that they mirrored the set in-camera.
What you often have [in an apartment
complex] are complete mirrors of
apartments, so itll be exactly the same

[layout] but flipped. Thats what we did. To
create the effect without actually building
another set, the filmmakers used mirrorimaged labeling on props and reversed
hairstyles on the cast, then completed the
trick by flopping the image in post.
Another key interior was an elevator
car in which senior art director Frank Walsh
mounted end-to-end mirrors on all four sides
to create infinite reflections. Rose recalls that
Walsh had done an exhibition design at the
Beatles museum in Liverpool, [including] this
glass box that had three sides of see-through
mirror and one side of solid, bright mirror.
[For High-Rises elevator,] we built a big
version with working doors and put Tom in
it. The camera remained outside the set,
26
June 2016
shooting through the see-through mirror. The

results, says Rose, were spectacular: We
shot on that set for a few hours. We could
have shot for days; it was incredible.
Digital-imaging technician Phil
Humphries used a Flanders Scientific CM250
monitor for final on-set review, and Rose
employed a viewing LUT that was close to
Rec 709. We sometimes tweak [the LUT],
says Rose, but I find it doesnt always put
me in a good place. I know that if I shoot Rec
709, the log is going to hold everything.
The crew worked without a large
video village. Ben tends not to like a village
thats too far away, Rose explains. He likes
to be close to set, and often that involves a
7-inch [monitor] on a stand. Were still quite
a small team up front. The cinematographer
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.39:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa XT Plus
Cooke Varotal, Zeiss Super Speed
Bottom photo courtesy of Laurie Rose.
Above: Director
Ben Wheatley
(left) and
cinematographer
Laurie Rose
discuss a scene.
Bottom: Camera
operator and
2nd-unit
cinematographer
Nick Gillespie
shoots with
a custom
kaleidoscope rig
mounted in front
of the lens.
adds that hes not overly concerned whether

the on-set monitoring perfectly represents his
final intent. I dont need everyone to look
at [the monitor] and know that this is how
its going to look on projection, he offers.
After the seven-week shoot, Rose
supervised the digital grade at Goldcrest Post
Production in London, where he reteamed
with his Sightseers colorist, Rob Pizzey; Pizzey
and Rose have since collaborated on Free
Fire. It feels like a genuine relationship that
weve got with him, Rose enthuses. Its
ongoing; its great.
Pizzey worked with Blackmagic
Designs DaVinci Resolve. In keeping with
other Rose-Wheatley collaborations, the
cinematographer speaks of a normality in
the films look. Weve not done anything
thats too fantastic in terms of the world, he
says.
I like tungsten, Rose continues. I
like warm light. A lot of the High-Rise story
was about power failure, so we did use a lot
of candlelight. Later on, theres a feeling of
low-voltage practicals. He adds that this
contrasts with Royals office, which was a
lot cooler, quite spacey, and had a very
simplistic color scheme in that sense. Rather
than being too crazy, it was about a sense of
normality.
Rose adds that Super Speeds on the
Alexa often come up a bit green, so he and
Pizzey spent time pulling green out of the
image as necessary.
With High-Rise already released in the
U.K. at the time of this writing, Roses
calendar remains full; in addition to
completing Free Fire, he has wrapped the
third season of Peaky Blinders and just
wrapped production on Paddy Considines
Journeyman. But the cinematographer
remembers the production of High-Rise with
particular fondness. You could say that you
need to know Ballard in order for you to
accept the world that youre presented
with, he muses. For the world to work,
you do have to accept the human study and
the social study from the outset.
Costumed Comedy
By Patricia Thomson
If ever there were a perfect match, it

would be Jane Austen and Whit Stillman.
Both possess a droll wit, a mastery of clever
repartee, and a bemused view of romance
in the genteel class. All these fine traits are
on display in Love & Friendship, Stillmans first
feature in five years, after a side trip into
episodic drama with Amazons The
Cosmopolitans.
The film is an adaptation of Lady
Susan, a novella written by Austen circa age
20 but left unpublished until five decades
after her death. Using the epistolary form
popular in the 18th century, Austen sketched
out a comedy of manners that centers on an
unscrupulous flirt, Lady Susan Vernon
(played by Kate Beckinsale). Newly widowed,
she arrives uninvited at her brother-in-laws
castle to let a scandal blow over and to snag
husbands for herself and her daughter,
Frederica (Morfydd Clark). The novella, being
both obscure and short, served Stillman well:
He wouldnt be paring down a beloved
tome, but fleshing out something new to the
Austen film canon.
The Irish-Dutch-French co-production
called for a Dutch director of photography,
and Richard van Oosterhout, NSC, SBC got
28
June 2016
the job. When I read the script, I was eager

to do it, says the two-time Golden Calf
winner. Its funny, modern, and the
dialogue is so witty.
Van Oosterhout came to
cinematography in his late 20s and got his
break in 1998 as director of photography on
Rosie, directed by his wife, Patrice Toye.
Today he is a member of the NSC board
and the European Film Academy, and hes
served as co-editor of the 2012 book
Shooting Time: Cinematographers on
Cinematography.
When interviewing for Love &
Friendship, van Oosterhout had one big
advantage: Hed just shot The Legend of
Longwood at Howth Castle, the same
location that would serve as Churchill, the
estate of Lady Susans relations, in Stillmans
film. Just as important, he knew how to
handle a tight 28-day schedule during
which, on a single day, the production would
shoot a dance scene with extras, a wedding
and reception, a tte--tte inside a church,
and an establishing shot of the DeCourcy inlaws. It was really a tough day, yet he
managed to get that lit, says Stillman. In
fact, Love & Friendship finished a day early.
I was trained in Holland, van
Oosterhout notes. Budgets and time are
really an issue there. All the Dutch
[cinematographers] are trained in working

fast and being forced to be very creative. He
adds that he takes Robert Bressons credo to
heart: Simplicity and lucidity. Sometimes
its not necessary to come up with 10 trucks,
to control everything and every moment. If
you only have one light, you can make a
whole film. If you can shoot a scene without
any lights, then shoot it!
Van Oosterhout came to Love &
Friendship relatively late and without time to
do much more than a makeup and wardrobe
test with Beckinsale and co-star Chlo
Sevigny. But, the cinematographer says, that
was okay. I like to work using my intuition,
he notes. If you have a lot of prep, you think
and rethink. I like to work in the moment.
The only visual references Stillman
provided were his earlier films: Metropolitan,
Barcelona, The Last Days of Disco (AC June
98) and Damsels in Distress. He wanted this
one to be as gorgeous as possible, with
camera subservient to the actors and the
atmospheric Georgian mansions in and
around Dublin. Love & Friendship was shot
entirely in these practical locations, including
Newbridge House, a real hero location,
says Stillman.
Though wickedly funny, Stillmans
dialogue-heavy script made van Oosterhout
gulp. You think, Oh my god, how are we
Love & Friendship photos by Bernard Walsh, courtesy of Amazon Studios and Roadside Attractions.
Newly widowed
Lady Susan
Vernon (Kate
Beckinsale,
right) confides
in her friend
Alicia Johnson
(Chlo Sevigny,
left) as colorful
rumors swirl
about them
both in Love &
Friendship, the
feature
adaptation of
Jane Austens
novella Lady
Susan.
Right: A camera
crane was
utilized only
once, for the
opening
sequence of the
film. Below:
Cinematographer
Richard van
Oosterhout, NSC,
SBC (right)
frames a shot
through a
window.
going to shoot this? the cinematographer

says. As always, Stillman wanted traditional
coverage and limited camera movement.
Normally, I like to work with a floating
camera, van Oosterhout relates. This was
completely different. Whit has very
outspoken ideas about how to make a film.
You have the shot, the reverse shot and
maybe an establishing. Thats how he wants
to see a scene. He doesnt like movement at
all. In the end, I think we ended up with
much more moving camera than was his
intention. Even so, Love & Friendship has
just one crane shot (for the opening) and one
Steadicam scene (a walk-and-talk with
Beckinsale and Sevigny); the rest is divided
30
June 2016
between dolly moves and static frames. Van

Oosterhout adds, That aesthetic gave me
the opportunity to be very subtle in lighting
and really dive into that aspect.
Film stock was never an option, but
Stillman insisted on capturing raw files.
Framing for 1.85:1, van Oosterhout used an
Arri Alexa XT coupled with Cooke S4 primes
and Schneider Hollywood Black Magic
softening filters. The ability to reframe the 12bit ArriRaw files saved the day when Stillman
began dispensing with dialogue during the
edit, leaving an awkward jump cut in the
Steadicam scene. Sophie [Corra, the editor]
was writhing in agony every time she saw it,
Stillman recalls. Their solution, he adds, was
to go in really tight, as if you had a different

camera position. She jumped in really close
and got away with this cut. Its a funny scene
and its in the trailer, so alls well that ends
well.
Van
Oosterhout
eschewed
customized look-up tables. I never use
[custom] LUTs on my films, he states. For
me, a standard [Rec 709] LUT is accurate
enough. Its only when you have an edit that
you know what the exact feel of the film is.
On set, my light meter is still my most reliable
tool.
For lighting, the 1790s setting meant
van Oosterhout had three motivating sources
at his disposal: daylight, candlelight and
firelight. Variety was important in recurrent
locations, such as the Golden Room the
castle drawing room where the Vernon
family gathers to read or converse. Rhythm
is so important, van Oosterhout says. The
idea was to look natural but different every
time youd come into this room.
Daylight was tricky, given Irelands
notoriously fickle weather. That country has
four seasons every day, van Oosterhout
laments. Compounding the difficulty, every
scene was long, sometimes shot over one or
two days. If you have big windows facing
south in a place like Ireland, continuity in
lighting is really a challenge. Outside, it was
a jungle of stands and lights and flags and
screens.
Shooting in February and March
Right: Catherine
Vernon (Emma
Greenwell) reads a
letter as her
brother Reginald
DeCourcy (Xavier
Samuel) looks
over her shoulder.
Below: Director
Whit Stillman
(center) discusses
the scene with
Greenwell.
under a winter sun, the crew controlled light

with Ultrabounce on 12'x12' and 20'x12'
frames placed on Genie booms. These were
mostly sun blockers, but they also had the
ability to reverse quickly, so we could use
them in conjunction with our HMI as
bounce, explains gaffer Tim Fletcher.
The majority of setups positioned 6K
and 12K HMIs outside the windows,
bounced and/or direct through frames.
According to Fletcher, On large setups like
the Golden Room a long, linear room with
multiple rooms off into the deep background
we augmented our larger heads with 4Ks
and M18s to pick out specific areas, on
occasion with some quite saturated color:
134 Golden Amber, 147 Apricot or CTOs. In
32
June 2016
all, we used two 12Ks, three 6Ks, three 4Ks

and three M18s at any one time.
Internally, we complemented the
lighting using Richards own BBS Lighting
Area 48 LEDs and smaller 400 and 200 HMI
units combined with 3-by-3 frames with Lee
216 White Diffusion, the gaffer continues.
We used the window shutters to control
and shape light using silk textiles and
diffusion filters. The Golden Room lent itself
particularly well to this because of its linear
nature and many windows. It was quite a
satisfying environment to react to, particularly
with the quality of light the weather
conditions blessed us with: bright and
golden. It inspired us to mimic, re-create and
enhance what the natural world was doing.
Following Bressons maxim, van

Oosterhout didnt hesitate to grab a shot
with actual sunlight. We were blocking a
scene in the Golden Room and had beautiful
sunlight coming in. I decided that, okay,
maybe well have this light for half an hour;
we could do one angle with no added light
at all, he says. I like that combination of
things. If youre at the moment of shooting
and have a beautiful light, its nice if you can
shoot right away, thus serving the [actors
performances]. Then, for the reverse, you
have to light completely, but you got the first
part for free in a very short time.
For close-ups, Fletcher notes, we
used a combination of poly boards, often
complemented with a 19-inch Jem Ball with
CTB correction, plus a 3-by-3 216 diffusion
frame, which allowed us to create natural
texture and fill.
If theres a defining look to Love &
Friendship, its the simultaneous use of
daylight and candlelight. Double-wick
candles were tested, but for us, the
difference was not much, says van
Oosterhout. Single-wick candles sometimes
did their own work and sometimes were
augmented with Lowel Rifa 44s or 55s,
dimmed low. We also had some Chimera
Triolet fixtures with a 24-by-32 Video Pro Plus
soft box, which I really liked, says Fletcher.
Very durable!
Fireplaces were always outside of
frame. We didnt have the money to have
a proper firelight we could control, says the
Top: Van Oosterhout crafted a look that combined the use of daylight and candlelight. Middle:
Lady Susan discusses the ideals of marriage with her daughter, Frederica (Morfydd Clark).
Bottom: Cast and crew capture a dance scene.
cinematographer, and in places like an old

castle, you cant make actual fire its too
risky. So all of the firelight was made by using
a couple of lights on a flicker system. Very
simple, very old-fashioned.
Fletcher elaborates, We had a
34
June 2016
couple of DIY soft boxes with 500-watt

photoflood bulbs. Dimmed down with a
flicker generator, they gave a nice warm
glow without needing any gel. Flicker was
kept to a minimum.
In a crowded night interior like the
dance scene, the crew relied on candelabras

plus dimmed Rifa 55s and 66s in the four
corners, mounted on lightweight booms
with stands running up behind the curtains,
thus granting space for the characters to
cavort. In contrast, the dinner scene where
Sir James Martin (Tom Bennett) marvels at
the peas (Tiny green balls. How jolly!) was
set in a larger dining room with characters
remaining in their seats. In that scene, we
were not moving camera at all, so we could
place the soft boxes really on the edge of the
frame, says van Oosterhout.
During color correction, which was
performed at Filmmore in Amsterdam, van
Oosterhout showed Stillman candlelit scenes
from Barry Lyndon (shot by John Alcott,
BSC). My idea was, if you only have
candles, you dont see that much; colors fade
into the red part of the spectrum, says the
cinematographer. Stillman, though, wanted
to retain the color definition and the spirit
of comedy. If youre going to talk about
green peas, you have to be able to see
them, the director notes.
Van Oosterhout and Stillman worked
with colorist Fernando Rodrigues, who
utilized FilmLights Baselight 4.4 during their
14-day color grade. The final 4K DCP master
looks extremely crisp, says Rodrigues. For
van Oosterhout, the main thing was
rhythm: If we had a scene that was cloudy
and soft-lit and the next scene was a
candlelit atmosphere, going from one to the
other shouldnt be a big shock, but it should
be different.
As a costume drama, Love &
Friendship stands out for its mix of period
authenticity and modern esprit. It helped
that we lit in a natural way, because its an
interesting contrast to the modern aspects
of the film, says van Oosterhout. The
visual style, especially the light, feels very
authentic. The combination is nice: The
dialogue is so witty and modern, but still you
have the idea that youre in 1790.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa XT
Cooke S4
Heroes
Divided
In Captain America: Civil War,

director of photography Trent
Opaloch brings a naturalistic
sensibility to a giant-size tale of
clashing costumed Avengers.
By Mark Dillon
|
38
June 2016
arths mightiest heroes turn against each other in Captain

America: Civil War, the third Marvel blockbuster that headlines the star-spangled super-soldier. Following the events of
the previous chapter, Captain America: The Winter Soldier
as well as The Avengers (AC June 12) and its sequel, Avengers: Age
of Ultron (AC June 15) the world has grown weary and even
fearful of superheroes. Repeated incidents resulting in massive
collateral damage have prompted the United Nations to pass the
Sokovia Accords, which aim to require the Avengers and other
enhanced individuals to submit to official oversight. Steve
Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans) opposes the plan, while
Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) sparked by guilt
over having created the ultimately destructive Ultron globaldefense program favors it.
Unit photography by Zade Rosenthal, SMPSP, courtesy of Marvel Studios.
The Avengers and a slate of new

heroes choose their sides, with Cap
backed by Bucky Barnes/Winter
Soldier (Sebastian Stan), Sam
Wilson/Falcon (Anthony Mackie),
Scott Lang/Ant-Man (Paul Rudd),
Clint Barton/Hawkeye ( Jeremy
Renner) and Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet
Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). Across the
aisle, Iron Man is supported by Vision
(Paul Bettany), TChalla/Black Panther
(Chadwick
Boseman),
Natasha
Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett
Johansson), James
Rhodes/War
Machine (Don Cheadle) and Peter
Parker/Spider-Man (Tom Holland).
Tensions culminate in a battle royal
between the opposing sides, while the
mysterious villain Zemo (Daniel Brhl)
emerges from the shadows looking to
fuel the conflict.
Behind the scenes, Civil War
reunited much of the Winter Soldier
creative team, including sibling directors Joe and Anthony Russo, screenwriters Christopher Markus and
Stephen McFeely, and cinematographer
Trent Opaloch. The partnership is
Opposite: Captain
America/Steve Rogers (Chris
Evans, left) and Iron Man/Tony
Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) find
themselves at odds when a
U.N. committee is given
oversight of the Avengers
activities in Captain America:
Civil War. This page, top, from
left: Sharon Carter (Emily
VanCamp), Falcon/Sam Wilson
(Anthony Mackie) and Black
Widow/Natasha Romanoff
(Scarlett Johansson) have to
decide whether theyll stand
with Rogers or Stark. Bottom:
Cinematographer Trent
Opaloch lines up a shot.
clearly clicking, as Marvel has already

tapped this team to supervise the
upcoming, two-part Avengers: Infinity
War. Joe and Anthony are very inclusive, notes the Vancouver-based
Opaloch, who spoke with AC while in
Los Angeles to supervise Civil Wars
grading at Technicolor. The brothers
usually tackle a new scene by discussing
it among the core creative team. They
will start by asking a question and
putting it out to the rest of us. Its really
www.theasc.com
cool to be involved in that group

dynamic.
Before theyd met Opaloch, the
Russos were drawn to the cinematographers debut feature, director Neill
Blomkamps Academy Award-nominated aliens-on-Earth tale District 9
(AC Sept. 09). We love the look of that
film the lighting, the level of naturalism, the intensity and the camera operation, says Joe Russo in a separate
joint-interview with his brother. Its a
June 2016
39
Heroes Divided
Top and middle: The

story begins in 1991,
when the assassin
Winter Soldier
(Sebastian Stan) in
fact the brainwashed
Bucky Barnes is
awoken at a facility
in Siberia and given a
critical assignment
from the villainous
Hydra organization.
Bottom: Opaloch
eyes the onboard
monitor as an Arri
Alexa XT is
maneuvered into
position.
40
June 2016
whole package.
Anthony Russo adds, By our
nature, working as a directing team, we
love collaboration. And we gravitate
toward people who have a comprehensive view of what filmmaking and storytelling are, and how we can use all the
tools at our disposal to realize that. Trent
has a great eye for what works in terms of
story, and we consult with him very
closely.
Opaloch says that he and the
Russos have shared a visual philosophy
since day one on Winter Soldier: The
pitch we had is that, yes, there are a lot
of fantastic elements youve got
Falcon flying around in a wing-suit, and
Caps shield can stop bullets but to
visually ground [that action] in reality
takes the stink off what could be a farfetched world. And Civil War is an
extension of that.
Whereas Winter Soldiers look was
largely influenced by realistic politicalconspiracy thrillers such as Three Days of
the Condor (photographed by Owen
Roizman, ASC), Civil Wars style was
most inspired by director Michael
Manns Heat (shot by Dante Spinotti,
ASC, AIC; AC Jan. 96). With Trent,
Anthony Russo recalls, we asked, As a
Top:
Crossbones/Brock
Rumlow (Frank
Grillo) leads a
band of terrorists
through Lagos,
Nigeria. Middle:
The crew captures
the action as Black
Widow stops one
of the terrorists.
Bottom: A cranemounted camera
frames the scene
as Falcon keeps a
birds-eye view on
the mission.
superhero, what makes Captain

America stand out? And what we kept
coming back to is that hes a man, only
a little bit more so. So we wanted to
approach his story on a human scale.
Thats why we gravitated to that Heat
style of being right there in the action.
We do a lot of intimate, handheld work.
Cap shines brightest when the camera is
close-up and embedded with him
during whatever hes going through.
Opaloch had 12 consecutive
weeks of prep on Civil War, plus three
or four weeks of additional, noncontinuous time. He says hes grateful to have
been brought into the process earlier
than a cinematographer might normally
be. I value that time with Joe and
Anthony because so much of a films
design is done early, Opaloch says.
Generally the [cinematographer]
would come in and all of that design is
already roughed into place; then youre
playing catch-up and trying to keep
your hand on the steering wheel. The
earlier the better for the cinematographer to plug in.
He adds that due to the films
scope, much of the early planning was
done with previs and storyboards. The
cinematographer explains, Previs is part
of Marvels working approach, and its
www.theasc.com
June 2016
41
Heroes Divided
Top: Captain
America searches
for Barnes, who
was a childhood
friend and fellow
soldier in World
War II. Middle: In
an effort to
protect Barnes,
Captain America
clashes with the
police. Bottom:
Barnes
commandeers a
motorcycle to
escape his
pursuers.
great because of the Russos relationship

with it. We work it and work it, and it
becomes our master document especially if its a complex visual-effects
sequence but theres still freedom to
push in other directions on set.
Principal photography got underway in Atlanta on April 27, 2015; most
of the productions sets were constructed
at Pinewood Atlanta Studios. After
about 84 shooting days, filming wrapped
in Germany on Aug. 21.
As with Winter Soldier, the filmmakers shot primarily with Arri Alexa
cameras, in this case about 70 percent
with the XT Plus, recording 4:3
anamorphic footage for a final aspect
ratio of 2.39:1 in ArriRaw format
with a resolution of 2880x2160 active
pixels. Additionally, the 17-minute
sequence in which the two superhero
squads square off will be presented in the
1.90:1 Imax format in Imax-equipped
theaters, and was shot with Alexa 65
cameras at 6560x3100 resolution; the
filmmakers dubbed this the splashpanel sequence, referring to a one- or
two-page comic-book layout comprised
42
June 2016
Heroes Divided
Top: Captain America chases after Black Panther/TChalla (Chadwick Boseman), who believes Barnes is guilty of a recent and personal act of
terrorism. Bottom: A Libra remote head supports the camera for a fight between Black Panther and Captain America.
of a single attention-grabbing image

instead of multiple panels. All of the
Alexa cameras recorded to 512GB
Codex XR Capture Drives, which
yielded 35 minutes of footage for the
XT Plus and 10 minutes for the Alexa
65.
Red Epic Dragon cameras,
which recorded Redcode raw at
6144x3160 resolution to Red MiniMags, were also used for certain action
scenes. In the splash-panel sequence, for
example, one was installed in a drone to
provide an aerial view of multiple practical explosions overseen by special44
June 2016
effects supervisor Dan Sudick as

Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch run toward
an objective. In another scene, a Dragon
was mounted to a remote-controlled car
to provide the point of view from one of
Falcons reconnaissance drones as it
maneuvers underneath a moving truck.
For car-chase sequences, GoPro
Hero4 Black units were rigged as crash
cameras and captured 3840x2160 in
Protune mode with the Flat color
profile. This allowed us to add an input
color transform to match closer to the
Alexas look, explains digital-imaging
technician Kyle Spicer. Additionally, a
Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera

was used for security-camera footage
that was played back via on-set monitors.
The second unit will go for a
cameras form factor over anything else,
Opaloch notes. Spicer adds, We always
tried to capture the footage from each
camera uncompressed and at the maximum resolution possible.
The Russos like to shoot action
scenes with a 45-degree shutter angle
and at 22 fps, which results in a slightly
stuttering effect when played back at 24
fps. The characters are superheroes, so
Heroes Divided
Top: Wilson, Rogers

and TChalla are
brought into
custody for
interfering in the
authorities pursuit
of Barnes. Middle:
Barnes is detained
in a maximumsecurity cell.
Bottom: Rogers
strains to keep a
helicopter from
taking flight.
theyre supposed to move faster than a

normal human, says Joe. This combination creates very kinetic and dynamic
movement from the actors and stunt
players.
Opaloch adds, Well almost
always keep [the shutter] at 45 degrees
for action work if we can afford the Tstop, but if it starts to strobe or gets too
crazy depending on the context, we
might go to 23 frames or back to 24.
Dialogue would always be at 24
frames.
Opaloch paired the Alexa XT
with Panavision anamorphic prime
lenses, including, in descending order of
use, the G, E and C Series. He also
employed a 150mm lens from
Panavisions new anamorphic T Series,
which the company touts as offering
new optical layouts and mechanical
advances over the G Series. On the day,
the choice of lens series came down to
which one Opaloch considered best at a
given focal length, based on notes kept
by A-camera 1st AC Taylor Matheson.
What Ive always liked about the
anamorphic format is how it focuses
46
June 2016
Heroes Divided
Top: Hawkeye/Clint
Barton (Jeremy
Renner) and Scarlet
Witch/Wanda
Maximoff (Elizabeth
Olsen) are among
the heroes who
stand with Captain
America and Winter
Soldier. Middle: Iron
Man is backed by
Black Panther, Vision
(Paul Bettany), Black
Widow and War
Machine/James
Rhodes (Don
Cheadle). Bottom:
Stark also recruits a
young SpiderMan/Peter Parker
(Tom Holland) to
join the fight.
and shapes the subject against the background, [guiding the viewers] to look
where you want them to look in a visually pleasing way, Opaloch notes. As an
example, he points to a dialogue
exchange in a restaurant between
Rogers and Wilson; the out-of-focus
patrons in the background draw the
viewer into the duos predicament and
amplify the characters sense of isolation.
In addition to the primes,
Opalochs lens package also included
Panavision 40-80mm (T2.8) AWZ2
and 70-200mm (T3.5) ATZ anamorphic zooms, but the crew called on them
only when in a pinch. One example is a
scene in which Rogers uses his bare
hands to try to prevent a helicopter from
taking off. With daylight fading as
Evans strained against a cranesupported helicopter, the crew threw up
the short zoom. When the cameras on
a crane and were up against the schedule, Opaloch notes, theres a benefit to
how much footage were able to capture
by not changing the lens and rebalancing the head.
With a preference for the long
end of the focal-length spectrum, the
directors typically wanted close-ups to
be shot in the 75mm-135mm range, but
they occasionally employed the 150mm.
We love [optical] compression, Joe
Russo explains. We almost never go
wider than 40mm. On Winter Soldier we
48
June 2016
played up to the 200s, but we backed off

on Civil War because of the number of
characters in frame. This movie has a
slightly more epic look, and holding the
frames a little wider complemented that
scale.
In front of the lenses, the cinematographer used IRND filters and
selective ND grads and polarizers, but
never any diffusion. Opaloch generally
shoots at T3.5; any wider-open, he says,
and the anamorphic image starts to fall
apart, but any higher and he would
sacrifice the desired shallow depth of
field. Its a hell of a challenge for Taylor,
but I have a lot of confidence in his
focus-pulling capabilities, the cinematographer says. If its a daytime exterior, we might shoot at T4-T5.6 to help
things out a bit.
The Alexa 65 footage was shot
with Arri Prime 65 lenses, which incorporate Fujinon-manufactured optics
from Hasselblad HC lenses in housings
co-developed with IB/E Optics. The
splash-panel sequence, the filmmakers
reveal, was a trial run for the Infinity
War movies, which the Russos plan to
shoot entirely on the Alexa 65 for a
complete Imax viewing experience.
The Alexa 65 is off-the-charts beautiful, Joe Russo effuses. The amount of
information it can [gather] on its chip is
massive, which is very helpful for a
huge, visual-effects-driven sequence.
Anthony Russo adds, We like to
shoot a lot [of footage]. We needed a
camera that was a little more versatile
than what [Imax] had available up to
that point. The 65 is a great step
forward in terms of being able to move
the camera in ways we like.
The splash-panel sequence
entailed the productions most complicated logistics, in part because not all of
the actors who appear in the scene traveled to Germany, where the battle was
staged on the tarmac of the
Leipzig/Halle Airport in Schkeuditz.
The actors who didnt make the trip
overseas instead shot their action on the
Pinewood Atlanta back lot in front of
500' of horseshoe-shaped greenscreen.
Often, if certain fully costumed
characters performances could be read

in a medium shot or close-up, the actors
would be present in a partial suit that
would then be filled out with visual
effects. Vendors included Industrial
Light & Magic, which handled SpiderMan and was the main shop for Black
Panther; and Legacy Effects, which
animated Iron Man, Winter Soldiers
prosthetic arm, and Falcons backpack
and wings. For the moment when the
dueling superhero teams charge one

another, the characters seen running on
the ground were filmed on location or in
front of the greenscreen, while those in
flight Iron Man, Vision, War
Machine, Scarlet Witch and Falcon
were entirely CG. Noting the weaving
together of CG and live action for this
sequence, Opaloch offers the example of
Visions transition from air to land. We
would do takeovers of the Vision stunt
Heroes Divided
Top: War Machine and Iron Man fly into action. Middle: The battle takes its toll on
the evacuated Leipzig/Halle Airport. Bottom: Black Widow stands between Captain America
and his escape.
double on a wire as he was coming in to

land on the ground. CG-Vision would
fly around and then transition to guyon-wire for landing.
50
June 2016
Natural daylight served as

Opalochs primary source on the back
lot and was controlled in all but extreme
wide shots by a 60'x60' truss frame
skinned with Quarter Grid and

suspended from a construction crane
set up by key grip Michael Coo and his
team. For tighter coverage, the crew
added Light Grid on a 20'x20' flyswatter for further diffusion. Opaloch then
created backlight with remotecontrolled LRX 18K HMI Pars from
above, which were mounted on
Condors based behind the greenscreen.
On several occasions, gusting
winds and flash thunderstorms sent cast
and crew scurrying to Stage 2, where
they would shoot interior-for-exterior
footage including close-ups of Scarlet
Witch and Vision, and Mackie flying
on wires in front of greenscreen. Its
always challenging to mimic that realworld environmental wrap on the
subject [when shooting indoors],
Opaloch says. We would try to keep
those shots as small as possible so they
could be lit on set. My goal in those
situations is always to reproduce what
your eyes would see in reality. To
approximate the ambient sky, the crew
built two 40'x40' soft boxes fitted with
Kino Flo Image 85s and diffused with
Light Grid and Full Grid sometimes simultaneously for double diffusion and they placed 20Ks with Half
Blue as high as possible behind the
greenscreen to emulate the LRX sun
backlight.
Stark stops fighting after Rhodes is injured in the battle.
For the films handheld action

sequences, the crew used a bungee
camera-support system that Coo built
out of 30' to 40' of surgical tubing
suspended from a Condor. The tubing
would be tethered to the top handle of
the XT Plus or Alexa 65, lightening the
load for the operators. Ive never been
a big fan of some of the other support
systems, because they usually place the
cameras center of balance at the top of
the camera instead of on your shoulder, Opaloch says. With this system,
once you achieve the camera height,
youre not fighting it at all. You can hold
the camera above your head and you
wont be fighting to pull it down. It has
this really cool zero-g effect.
When not handheld, cameras
would most often reside on dollies or
Technocranes. Steadicam, handled by
A-camera operator Mark Goellnicht,
was used for only a handful of shots. I
am not a fan of the Steadicam look,
Opaloch explains. It feels like TV
hospital-drama to me. We pulled it out
only when we otherwise would see
dolly track or if a crane arm couldnt fit
in the space.
Per the Russos preference, the
crew usually ran three cameras, with
Goellnicht on A, Maurice McGuire on
B, and Kent Harvey who also served
as splinter-unit director of photography
on C. Sometimes that third camera
gets the most interesting shot, Joe
Russo notes. We know were covered

on our A and B [cameras], so we force
the C into interesting positions and
wind up with a dynamic frame. And
three cameras will give you a lot more
coverage a lot quicker. Working
through seven actors in costume on a
hot summer day in Atlanta with one
camera is not preferable.
However, Opaloch points out,
Once you roll in a third camera, you
have to compromise your lighting. It
normally means moving your diffusion
or neg frames out of [the cameras] way.
But every now and then on Winter
Soldier there was a C-camera shot I
didnt think would work, but wed get a
great moment and Id be glad we did it.
I try to be flexible and learn from the
process.
One three-camera setup that
proved particularly tricky features U.S.
Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross
(William Hurt) reading the riot act to
the Avengers at the super-groups headquarters. Ross, engaged in a long
monologue in a glass-walled meeting
room, walks about before coming to
rest in front of a large monitor; the
Avengers seated around the board table
watch somberly as the monitor shows
scenes of carnage related to their activities.
The scene was shot on location
inside Porsche Cars North Americas
headquarters beside the Hartsfield-
Heroes Divided
Top, from left:
Stan, co-directors
Joe Russo and
Anthony Russo,
and Evans discuss
a scene inside the
Quinjet set.
Middle: A remoteoperated camera
keeps the hero in
frame as Captain
America enters the
Siberian facility
where Winter
Soldier had been
held for decades.
Bottom: Iron Man
and Winter Soldier
duke it out inside
the facility.
Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

I found it a bit stressful, Opaloch
recalls. We were trying to keep [the
space] open for three cameras, so the
lighting all had to come down from the
ceiling or up from the floor. It was challenging to light for that many people
and their looks in either direction.
A solution was found by using
long, diffused soft boxes built overhead
in the background kitchen and lounge
areas, with a third functioning as a practical fixture above the board table. Chief
lighting technician Jeffrey Murrell and
his team placed Quasar Sciences BiColor LED T12 4' tubes in the soft
boxes, which had a soft Plexiglas coating supplied by the art department.
With the Quasar tubes, you can switch
between tungsten and daylight
settings, Murrell says. Traditionally,
you would use fluorescent tubes, but
theyre not as controllable. A dimmed
fluorescent gets very magenta and starts
to flicker, whereas LEDs dont. You can
dim them down to 2-4 percent, and the
color stays consistent.
The tubes were fed into a 1.2K
dimmer, which separated the tubes into
groups that could be manipulated by
52
June 2016
Heroes Divided
Opaloch checks
the frame for a
shot with the
Arri Alexa 65
camera.
lighting-console programmer Scott

Barnes, who worked on a High End
Systems Hog 4 console. We knew wed
have to bounce around the room for
coverage, Opaloch explains. That way,
when we turned around, we could [dim]
down on the camera side and bring up
the background for a little backlight. Its
54
a great soft source when you have three

cameras and need open air among a
group of actors.
When the soft box served as the
key light, the crew would sometimes
add fill with a book light on the table.
The book light would consist of either a
Celeb Q or Murrells homemade pizza
box a 2'x2' flat panel with strips of

LiteGear LiteRibbon hybrid LEDs
attached aimed into Ultrabounce
and then diffused through Light Grid.
Most often, however, a three-quarter
key light was positioned from the floor
and motivated by the rooms large
window; this key-light configuration
often incorporated pizza boxes pushed
through 4'x4' Lee Heavy Frost or
White Diffusion. If there was more
space, the crew would use Kino Flo
Celeb 401Q DMX LED soft panels or
Celeb 800s through 8'x8' Light Grid or
Full Grid. The set dressing also
included practical standing lamps, and
when Opaloch wanted harder edges, he
turned to color-changeable Arri L5, L7
and L10 LED units.
Technicolor provided a show
LUT that, after testing, was further
finessed by Opaloch, Spicer and visualeffects supervisor Dan Deleeuw. While
Opaloch naturally leans toward less
saturation, the filmmakers strove to
ensure the heroes costumes featured the

color levels Marvel wanted and comicbook fans would expect. During
production, images were evaluated on
set on Sony PVMA250 OLED monitors. Under Opalochs direction, Spicer
created CDLs that, along with detailed
notes, were sent to dailies colorist Scott
Fox at Shed in Atlanta.
Technicolor reports that 320
hours were spent on the final grade for
the 2D release, operating with an endto-end 16-bit half-float linear EXR
workflow. (Technicolor also provided
3D and Imax 3D versions.) ASC associate Steven Scott Technicolors vice
president of theatrical imaging and
supervising finishing artist worked
with Autodesk Lustre 2016 Extension
2 on an HP Z840 workstation.
Faced with the speed of production and the three-camera shooting
method, Opaloch was confident that he
and Scott would be able to use the DI
process to bring the images to the level
he wanted. For example, if the cinematographer wasnt able to get the

desired contrast on a character
perhaps because the dolly tracks from
multiple cameras prevented the proper
placement of negative fill it could be
added or accentuated in the grade. Its
like rotoscoping-in a fill side, Opaloch
says. Its a fantastic way to work,
because Im trying to make the Russos
and the studio happy while also trying
to get our [days work] done. [I have] a
good sense of security knowing that as
long as the lighting direction and broad
strokes are there, I can finesse things
later.
The cinematographers schedule
will not get any easier, with 180 days
lined up to shoot the Infinity War
movies beginning this coming
November. Slated for release in 2018
and 2019, the features will propel the
largest-ever assemblage of Marvels
onscreen heroes beyond the Earth and
into an intergalactic adventure. The
movies will be radical, promises

Anthony Russo. It will be a real departure for all of us in terms of the ground
weve tread up to this point, and were so
grateful that Trent is coming with us.
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.39:1, 1:90:1 (Imax)
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa XT Plus, Alexa 65;
Red Epic Dragon;
GoPro Hero4 Black
Panavision G Series, E Series,
C Series, T Series, AWZ2,
ATZ; Arri Prime 65
55
Time and
Space
James Neihouse, ASC and

a team of astronauts offer
a unique view of Earth and
humanitys impact on it
in the Imax feature
A Beautiful Planet.
By Jay Holben
|
56
June 2016
Photos by Marsha Ivins and Bill Ingalls, courtesy of NASA and Imax Corp.
n 1990, Imax released Blue Planet, a

pioneering film that offered an astronauts view of Earth as seen from
space. Directed by Ben Burtt, that
film came about from seeing all the
great shots of Earth that came from the
first Imax space film, The Dream is Alive,
which was Imaxs first movie that was
actually shot in space, recalls director of
photography James Neihouse, ASC.
Neihouse shared cinematography duties
on Blue Planet with David Douglas, and
hes been involved in each of Imaxs
space-bound projects since The Dream
Is Alive including the latest, A
Beautiful Planet, which reteamed him
with filmmaker Toni Myers.
Myers had written Blue Planet,
went on to direct Hubble 3D on
which Neihouse again served as
cinematographer (AC April 10) and
directed A Beautiful Planet. Neihouse
recalls, When Leonardo DiCaprio came
in to record his voice-over for Hubble 3D,
he told Toni Myers that he had loved Blue
Planet and that we should make another
film like that today. We decided it was
time to have another look at the Earth
from space. What impact would we see a
quarter of a century [after Blue Planet],
with seven billion people on the planet?
Astronauts
aboard
the
International Space Station (ISS)
Opposite: Aboard the International Space Station (ISS), astronauts capture images of Earth,
creating a heightened awareness of the planet and humanitys impact on it in the feature A
Beautiful Planet. This page, top: NASA Commander Barry Butch Wilmore captures footage
while on a spacewalk to repair the exterior of the ISS. Bottom, from left: Cinematographer James
Neihouse, ASC; writer/director Toni Myers; and Wilmore during an Imax camera-training session.
captured the views presented in A

Beautiful Planet. Neihouse enthuses, In
the night shots, you can tell where the
human populations are from the city
lights. The whole boot of Italy is one solid
band of lights; you can see a ribbon of light
down the Nile, through the darkness of
Northern Africa. You can see North and
South Korea Seoul is very heavily lit,
one of the brightest [places] in the world,
and the north side of the border is just
www.theasc.com
totally black apart from [Pyongyang].

The oppression of North Korea is
painfully apparent from space. The same
thing with the border between Pakistan
and India you can see where it falls
from space.
We look at the Chesapeake Bay,
he continues, which was so polluted in
the Seventies that no one would eat
anything from it, but now its one of our
success stories; today the bay is thriving.
June 2016
57
Time and Space
Top: A view of
Californias coast
and Central Valley
from the ISS.
Bottom, left:
Neihouse trains
NASA astronaut
Scott Kelly at the
Space Station
Mockup and
Training Facility
(SSMTF) at NASAs
Johnson Space
Center in Houston.
Bottom, right:
European Space
Agency astronaut
Samantha
Cristoforetti and
NASA astronaut
Terry Virts during a
camera-training
session at SSMTF.
We talk about the California drought.

We have great shots of the West Coast
and Lake Powell and Lake Mead, and
we talk about the water situation there.
Thats the kind of film A Beautiful Planet
is.
Although he photographs the
requisite terrestrial footage for these Imax
films, Neihouse has never been in space,
and his primary responsibility as director
of photography is to properly train the
astronauts to serve as proxy
cinematographers capable of shooting
the footage themselves. I have trained all
the crews on the Imax space movies since
1988, he explains and with a laugh,
58
June 2016
he adds, I tell everybody that Im the

only [cinematographer] who has to train
his first unit how to shoot.
We had three different astronaut
crews on this film, he continues. Barry
Butch Wilmore [ISS Expeditions 41
and 42], Terry Virts [42 and 43], and
Kjell Lindgren [44 and 45] were the
primary shooters. Additional crew were
Samantha Cristoforetti [42 and 43],
Kimiya Yui [44 and 45], and Scott Kelly
[44 and 45].
The time Neihouse had to train
the astronauts was extremely limited.
With Wilmore, Neihouse was given a
scant eight hours to teach him the
fundamentals of Imax photography and

the functions of the camera so that the
astronaut could operate reasonably well
and make lens, exposure and composition
decisions. Eight hours was crazy,
Neihouse admits. Butch really put a lot
of extra effort into getting up to speed on
our cameras.
[Shooting] with digital really
helps, the cinematographer continues.
[The astronauts] would get feedback
right away, and they could download
proxies for us to see what they were
shooting. When they needed help, theyd
reach out about what exposure or focal
length Id suggest for this or that situation.
Top: A view of
Canadas
northeast, the
United States
and beyond as
seen from the
ISS. Bottom, left:
Onboard the ISS,
Wilmore
prepares for a
shoot. Bottom,
right: Wilmore
enjoys zero
gravity.
That was often done via email, but Id

sometimes get a phone call. I have to say,
its fun to get a call when the caller ID
comes up as International Space
Station.
With the retirement of NASAs
Space Shuttle program in 2011,
transportation to and from the ISS
became extremely limited, impacting the
choice of shooting format for A Beautiful
Planet. The Space Shuttle was a space
truck, says Neihouse. It would ferry
things back and forth as needed, but its
not flying anymore. Now, you can get
things up to the Station you just cant
get stuff back [on a regular schedule].
That was one of the key reasons we went
digital.
Digital gave us other advantages,
too, Neihouse continues. When we
were shooting film, three minutes worth
of [15-perf 65mm Imax] film weighed 10
pounds thats a lot of volume to bring
back. When we went digital, we were

bringing back Codex data packs the size
of a cell phone with 30 minutes of
footage. We also increased our low-light
capture substantially; we never would
have gotten some of the shots [in A
Beautiful Planet] with film. We were able
to shoot clean audio without hearing the
roaring sound of the camera which
sounded like a pissed-off sewing
machine on steroids permeating every
shot so we can actually use audio from
the astronauts and get real moments.
And we were able to shoot a lot more
footage, especially inside the Station, and
capture some really wonderful, candid,
interpersonal moments that we never
could have imagined getting with film.
The cinematographer tested
several digital cameras for A Beautiful
Planet, beginning with a Red Epic
Mysterium-X,
Vision
Research
Phantom 65, Sony F65, Arri Alexa M
www.theasc.com
and Canon Cinema EOS C300. We

shot side-by-side tests against [15-perf
65mm] Imax, then compared each
camera, Neihouse explains. We went
away from the F65 because of the size,
power consumption and complex menu
selections. Although these astronauts are
geniuses, they can get space brain and
become unable to perform relatively
simple tasks because they have so much
to focus on every day they just get
overloaded. So we try to keep things as
simple in orbit as possible. We also want
to keep it simple so that it doesnt take
much time for them to execute the shots.
The Phantom 65 had the same
issue it was just too complex and
menu-intensive, Neihouse continues.
We rejected the Alexa M because, at the
time, it was a two-piece system with a
cable from the camera down to the
recorder. Power was another issue the
camera is power-hungry. That left us with
June 2016
59
Time and Space

Red and Canon. When we were looking
at the test footage side-by-side in an Imax
theater with digital laser projection, people
were picking out the C300 as the bestlooking of the bunch. An additional factor
was that [NASA was] already using
Canon cameras on the Space Station,
which meant that the batteries were
already certified for space. Everything we
send up needs to be tested and certified
we cant have anything outgassing some
unknown chemical into the air. Since the
Canon battery system was already
certified, we saved a lot of money in
certification costs.
Before we started actually
shooting, Canon came out with the
[Cinema EOS] C500, he adds. We were
all completely impressed with the image. I
became a real believer in the need to shoot
uncompressed images, and the C500
offers a 4K uncompressed option that was
significantly superior to the other
contender. Neihouse and Myers therefore
opted to work primarily with C500
cameras, capturing raw 4K files to a Codex
Onboard S Plus recorder. We flew three
C500s total, Neihouse notes, but they
were only used one at a time. The camera
bodies were switched when the sensors
became too badly damaged from
radiation.
Additionally, they incorporated
Canon EOS-1D C cameras to shoot the
Earth in sequential still frames at about
four frames per second. We flew three 1D
Cs, Neihouse says, but only two made it
to orbit, as one was lost when SpaceX 7
failed. As with the C500s, the crew shot
with one camera at a time, with the camera
bodies being switched out when the
sensors showed considerable pixel
damage, Neihouse explains. The first
camera shot over 149,000 frames, and the
second more than 101,000 frames during
the production. The raw CR2 files from
the 1D C were then processed in post in
order to interpolate between the frames
and create full-motion 24-fps footage.
We used the full sensor, 5208x3477
[effective pixels], which is a 1.5:1 aspect
ratio, explains Neihouse. Thats pretty
close to the 1.44:1 Imax aspect ratio, so we
lost less information that way. Plus, using
Top: Astronaut
Kimiya Yui of the
Japan Aerospace
Exploration
Agency strikes a
Superman pose
while floating
through the ISS.
Middle: Wilmore
poses with the
camera. Bottom:
Virts preps for
shooting.
60
June 2016
Time and Space

Top: The Cupola is
a panoramic
observation
platform on the
ISS, from which
outside operations
and Earth can be
seen. Middle:
Wilmore preps the
camera. Bottom:
Virts prepares to
shoot through the
Cupola windows.
the camera in still mode enabled us to do

some longer exposure times for our night
passes of the Earth.
At night, if theres no moon, then
you can only see the lights from Earth,
Neihouse continues. With a full moon,
you can see the ground and get some
really amazing images. We were shooting
as high as 10,000 ISO on the 1D C with
a [Canon 24mm (T1.5) CN-E Cine
Prime, which was the primary lens for
night work] shooting anywhere from
110 of a second to 12 of a second
exposures. Theres a shot coming over
Florida, flying into the Bahamas, where
you see the reefs in the moonlight. That
was totally unexpected.
The cinematographer says that any
resulting trailing artifacts were still
acceptable even when the 1D C was set
for as slow as a 12-second exposure.
Although the ISS is orbiting at 17,500
miles per hour and the Earth itself is
rotating at about 1,000 miles an hour, at
about 250 miles away from the Earth, the
amount of trailing blur you see at those
slow exposures is really minimal, he
explains. We didnt use any tracking or
motion mounts like an Earth-bound
astro-photographer
would
use.
Everything was hard-mounted to the
Station.
Neihouse paired the 1D Cs with
62
June 2016
Time and Space
Top: The Strait of Gibraltar, Spain, the Mediterranean Sea and North Africa captured from the ISS.
Middle: NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren aims the camera over an empty space suit. Bottom:
Cristoforetti takes her first look at Earth upon arrival in the Russian Service Module of the ISS.
64
June 2016
14mm (T3.1) and 24mm (T1.5) Canon

CN-E lenses. The 24mm Canon was
pretty close to our typical Imax 40mm
standard wide lens, and I liked that one a
lot, he notes. Neihouse also employed a
Nikon adapter in order to take advantage
of the complement of Nikon lenses that
were already aboard the ISS. They have a
ton of Nikon lenses up there, he says. We
used the 58mm [Noct-Nikkor f1.2] and
the 180mm [Nikkor] f2.8. For the C500
we flew a 12mm [T1.3 Arri/Zeiss] Master
Prime and a lightweight 15.5-47mm
[T2.8] Canon Cine Zoom.
Without the Space Shuttle,
supplies for the ISS are now sent up on a
variety of launch vehicles, only one of
which, the SpaceX Dragon, returns to
Earth; all the other supply vehicles burn
up on re-entry into the Earths
atmosphere. When the supplies arrive, the
astronauts unload them, then pack the
non-return vehicle with trash so it can be
disposed of as the vehicle enters the
atmosphere. Thats how they get rid of
trash up there, Neihouse explains. You
put it in an empty supply capsule and send
it out, and it is totally incinerated in the
atmosphere. In the case of the Dragon,
he adds, it is packed with items requiring
return to Earth, and it then re-enters [the
atmosphere] and splashes down off the
coast of California.
After completion of the film, the
camera equipment was scheduled for
disposal aboard the non-return vehicles.
The plan was always to burn up the
equipment, Neihouse notes. None of it
was to return. The 12mm Master Prime,
the 15.5-47mm Canon Cine Zoom, a 1D
C and C500, and all of our accessories
have already burned up, and we just found
out that the remainder of our equipment
will be disposed of on the next non-return
vehicle. We had hoped to get it back to do
some post-mortem on the sensors, but
there is very limited space for returning
equipment and experiments, so anything
that does not absolutely have to be
returned is burned up. It applies to all
payloads, and is also a reason we couldnt
fly film there just isnt enough room to
return it to Earth.
To capture a first-person perspective
Time and Space

Top: The 25-milewide eye of
Typhoon Maysak.
Middle: The Great
Lakes of North
America beneath
ice and snow.
Bottom:
Thunderheads roll
over Central
Africa.
during space walks, the astronauts wore 4K

GoPro Hero4 Silver cameras on their
helmets. Neihouse notes, We used that
footage sparingly, but when its real close
and in your face, it works fairly well. A
couple of the shots look really good; a
couple are not so good, but good enough to
tell the story. Whats really surprising is that
you hear noise. Because the camera is
connected directly to the astronauts
spacesuit and there is atmosphere inside the
space suits, you actually hear bumps and
scrapes. Its really cool to hear that, and it
really helps draw you into the scene.
Inside the ISS, additional lighting
was mostly accomplished with portable
work lights. [The] original-model
Litepanels Brick lights that NASA uses for
work lights were pressed into service,
Neihouse says. During the training, I teach
the astronauts three-point lighting and how
to match levels. One of the hardest shots
that they pulled off was a shot of Samantha
Cristoforetti looking out the window
during daylight. To get that shot within the
dynamic range of the C500, we had to
really pump light into the Cupola
[observatory module], but we had to do it
delicately so that it didnt look fake or feel
like it was lit. They also did a scene at night
with Samantha sleeping that was lit totally
with the screen of her laptop. She has a
beautiful cool blue light on her, and you
66
June 2016
Time and Space

dont see that its the laptop until the
camera comes around.
All of the footage of Earth was shot
from inside the ISS, looking out through
existing windows. To eliminate any
reflections from inside, Neihouse built
window shrouds flat cloths with a hole
in the middle for the lens. One of the
areas that we struggled with was the big
Cupola. There are seven windows in the
back porch of the Station, and theyre
covered with what NASA calls scratch
planes basically cheap plastic coating.
So theres this beautiful view with these
incredible quartz optical-glass windows,
and its ruined by these 27-cent, scratched
plastic panels, which are also covered in
nose grease and fingerprints from
astronauts ogling Earth over the years. We
came up with a bump shield, a clear
plastic replacement for the scratch shield.
We built these little French doors into it
so you could open the doors and shoot
through the perfect window. Those helped
a lot, and NASA liked them so much that
they said, Were keeping these! So that
was our little contribution to the future of
space photography.
High-energy particles were perhaps
the most significant concern with regard
to the cameras performance throughout
the shoot. Without Earths atmosphere to
shield them from this galactic cosmic
radiation, as Neihouse explains, the
cameras sensors would receive high hits
of pixel-killing radiation. The higher you
get, the more radiation damage you start
picking up, he notes. You cant really
shield against it. NASA has tested several
ways to shield film and then digital
cameras from this damage, [but] none
have proven very effective.
Instead, he explains, When they
werent shooting, [the astronauts] would
pack water bags around the equipment.
The water like water vapor in our
atmosphere shields against the highenergy particle radiation; it really slows it
down. In the end, we had to do a lot of
post work to clean up dead pixels, but
other than losing pixels, we had no
technical issues at all, which is
astounding.
The dead pixels also prompted
Top: A view from

Wilmores helmet
as he looks down
at Earth. Middle:
Earths aurora in
action. Bottom:
The deforestation
of Madagascar as
seen from the
ISS.
68
June 2016
Neihouse to direct the astronauts away

from pushing the ISO on the C500s.
When you crank up the ISO, you really
start to expose dead pixels, the
cinematographer explains. We did do
some low-light shooting with [the C500]
inside the Space Station where the
astronauts [conduct] a lettuce-growing
experiment. It was actually under a
pinkish-fuchsia light, and they bumped up
the ISO [to 10,000] to shoot in there.
Unfortunately, we had to do a lot of deadpixel cleanup on those shots. Otherwise,
about the most we pushed the C500s was
up to 1,600 ISO.
Although the production focuses
on the planet from space, there are three
terrestrial shots in the movie, including a
piece of vintage footage that was actually
the opening shot of 1971s North of
Superior, which was probably the very first
aerial shot that was ever done for an Imax
movie, Neihouse explains. Its a shot of
Lake Superior, flying low. [In A Beautiful
Planet, as] the shot continues up into the
hills, it becomes a CGI shot, and the
world transforms to the landscape of
Mars.
The cinematographer goes on to
detail a new shot he personally
photographed: We did a shot of the sun
with the Space Station flying in front of
it. It was a real-time shot, and it required
our being in a very specific spot on Earth,
within a very narrow 5-kilometer band at
a specific time, in order to get the perfect
positioning of the Space Station as it
crossed between us and the sun. We
started by Big Bear Lake [in California]
and ended up in Idaho over four days of
leapfrogging. I wanted to get up as high in
the mountains as we could to avoid the
thicker part of the atmosphere and get a
clearer image; we also had to time it so
that we could shoot it right about high
noon, when the Station would be closest
to the camera. The Stations crossing of the
sun only lasts .53 seconds, so we shot it
with a Phantom Flex4K at 1,000 fps, with
a [Canon EF 800mm f5.6 L IS USM]
and a 2x extender on it. [That frame rate]
turns .53 seconds into 18 seconds on
screen, and we captured a perfect
silhouette of the ISS passing in front of the
Time and Space
Cristoforetti
photographs
Earth from the
Cupola.
sun, with sunspots flying around and

everything.
The cameras for A Beautiful Planet
were launched up to the ISS on Sept. 21,
2014, on a SpaceX Dragon unmanned
cargo spacecraft. Codex drives from the
C500 were returned to Earth on the
SpaceX Dragon vehicles, and then reflown to the station on the next Dragon
launch. However, when a Dragon vehicle
70
exploded after launch during mission

CRS-7 in June of 2015, the production
lost its primary source of transport
between Earth and the ISS. When they
lost their vehicle, we couldnt get any more
data packs back, recalls Neihouse. They
were all stuck in orbit.
We had always intended to fly the
data packs back with the SpaceX
missions, and this threw us for a loop, he
continues. Marsha Ivins, our spaceoperations guru and five-time shuttle

astronaut worked with Codex and
NASA to develop the protocol for remoteaccessing the 4K footage. Getting it off of
the recorder was like a second per frame; it
just wasnt made to do this.
The crew connected the Codex
recorder to an onboard laptop, Ivins
explains, and the ground through the
ISS space-to-ground data link was able
to transfer the full-resolution Codex data
from the Codex drive to the laptop hard
drive. Then that data was downlinked on
the same path that all onboard imagery gets
to the ground. Once on the ground, the
Imax data was then ported to Imax directly
on a secure server. The transfer rate from
Codex to laptop was 12GB per minute.
We were limited by the amount the laptop
hard drive could hold, so when we filled the
hard drive, we had to stop and that had
to be downlinked, the drive wiped, and [we
would] start again. So it took us something
like six weeks to get 1.4TB of data to the
ground. And not one byte was lost!

Photography wrapped in midDecember, 2015. The final color grade
was performed by Brett Trider with
Autodesk Lustre at Technicolor
Toronto. Final DCP was 4K, as was the
color-grading resolution, Neihouse
says. The cinematographer further notes
that because the C500 was generally
used for interiors and the 1D C
primarily for Earth shots and that the
GoPros and Phantom were used in such
different kinds of environments there
were no substantial issues with matching
the footage between cameras.
The film also underwent a
stereoscopic post-conversion performed
by Legend3D. Hugh Murray was our
stereographer, and he supervised the
conversion process, Neihouse says. I sat
in on some of the depth-approval
screenings. I was very impressed with the
job Legend3D did with the conversions,
and even more impressive was the
excitement they had for the project.
They were really wonderful.

In comparing the conversion
process to shooting in native 3D,
Neihouse notes, Im a fan of shooting
3D natively, but that really was not an
option for this project. The amount of
data would have been overwhelming; if
it had been in native 3D, [the existing]
number would have doubled. There were
other reasons that led us to shoot 2D and
post-convert, such as not wanting to fly a
3D rig and having to deal with the
challenges that brings to the table.
Its hard to believe that Im saying
this, because Im an old film guy,
Neihouse continues, but I was amazed
seeing the results of the C500 footage
through Imaxs new xenon laser dualprojector system on a full Imax screen.
The way the stuff looks on the laser
system really does rival [15-perf ] 70mm
film especially Imax 15/70 original
film that goes through a DI process with
a filmout at 5.6K.
Reflecting on the journey to bring
A Beautiful Planet to the screen, Neihouse

offers, Its been a very fun project to do,
and the crew was just incredible. The film
compares living on the planet to living on
the Space Station. We have all these
things that we just take for granted
water, air but when those things are
limited like they are on the space station,
everyone has to do [his or her] part to
conserve. The people on Earth need to
be treating each other like crewmates,
respecting our needs and taking care of
our resources. Theres no free ride.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.44:1
Digital Capture
Canon Cinema EOS C500,
EOS-1D C; GoPro Hero4 Silver;
Vision Research Phantom Flex4K
Canon EF, Nikon Nikkor,
Arri/Zeiss Master Prime
71
Old-School
Thrills
Employing modern
technology for a vintage look,
Philippe Rousselot, ASC, AFC
helps re-create 1970s Los Angeles
for The Nice Guys.
By Iain Marcks
|
72
June 2016
Opposite and this

page, top: Private
detective Holland
March (Ryan
Gosling, left) and
freelance enforcer
Jackson Healy
(Russell Crowe)
team up to find
runaway Amelia
(Margaret Qualley)
and investigate
the seemingly
unrelated death of
a porn star in The
Nice Guys. Middle:
Cinematographer
Philippe Rousselot,
ASC, AFC (behind
the camera) lines
up the Arri Alexa
XT Plus 4:3.
Bottom: Director
Shane Black and
Rousselot plan
their coverage.
Unit photography by Daniel McFadden, courtesy of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
he year is 1977. The place: Los

Angeles. The story is a sharpedged, Chandler-esque thriller in
which a private detective named
March (Ryan Gosling) and a freelance
enforcer named Healy (Russell Crowe)
team up to track down a runaway girl
(Margaret Qualley) with a devastating
secret. The Nice Guys is Shane Blacks
third feature as a director, and its close
to No. 70 for Oscar-winning cinematographer Philippe Rousselot, ASC,
AFC.
In prepping the film, the director
of photography found himself thinking
of Diva, the now-classic French thriller
he shot for director Jean-Jacques Beineix
in 1981. I entertained going rather bold
with colors, the way I did on Diva when
I played a lot of hard blue against the
occasional drop of bright yellow, says
Rousselot. Over the course of his preparation for The Nice Guys, however, the
locations, sets and costumes began to
conflict with that concept. Every film
dictates its own style, and L.A. in the late
1970s is not Paris in the early 1980s, he
elaborates. The cameraman is given
things to film, and it is the job of the
cameraman to go with the flow.
This meant relying on production
designer Richard Bridgland and
www.theasc.com
June 2016
73
Old-School Thrills
Top and middle:

March conducts a
stakeout from his
car. Bottom: Two
cameras capture the
action as March is
wheeled out of a
medical center.
costume designer Kym Barrett to convey

the films sense of time and place by
embracing what they all considered to be
the most atrocious things about the
Seventies in the periods colors, textures
and locations while Rousselot sought
a more straightforward, contemporary
approach to the cinematography. I dont
want to go back in time, and there isnt a
1970s style of cinematography because
all the cinematographers were different,
he says. Its more like, who do you want
to emulate? No matter who you choose,
it will end up looking very dated and
zooming in and out like Claude Lelouch
would distract from the story.
Creatively, much has changed for
Rousselot in four decades. I do not still
use the same techniques that I did in the
Seventies, because whatever [equipment] you could get, we dont use
anymore, he says. My taste has evolved,
but I still have the same idiosyncrasies. I
never use backlight unless it is totally
justified; I like when the foreground and
background blend into each other, and I
try to leave in the dark whatever I dislike
or deem unnecessary to the story. I wish
I could achieve something as beautiful as
the light in the early Italian Renaissance
paintings of Piero della Francesca so
simple, no effect, no artificial drama, so
strong.
74
June 2016
Top: March escorts

his daughter Holly
(Angourie Rice) to
a cab as Healy
looks on. Middle
and bottom: The
crew preps the
driveway of the
Sandy Springs,
Ga., house that
stood in for a Bel
Air mansion.
Taste is in the details, he adds, like

a preference for using one light source, or
no source, in a given scene. There was a
period of time when he stopped using
hard lights altogether, but over the past
few years he has reintroduced them into
his repertoire. The Nice Guys is another
stage of evolution for Rousselot, as it is
his first feature shot digitally with
Alexa XT Plus 4:3 cameras and
marks his most extensive use of LEDs to
date. These choices were dictated partly
by a tight 50-day schedule, when a
feature with as much action and as many
locations as The Nice Guys would
normally call for something closer to 70.
Hed used the Alexa before, but only on
commercials, and since The Nice Guys
takes place mostly at night, having the
ability to raise the cameras ISO to 1,280
meant that Rousselot wouldnt have to
spend time setting up numerous 18K
HMIs on Condors for his night exteriors
though some were indeed used.
With LEDs, Rousselot could
place two 4'x4' panels against a wall and
shoot a complex dialogue scene in two
hours instead of eight. Adopting this
technique was a decision he made with
gaffer Joshua Stern, who designs and
www.theasc.com
June 2016
75
Old-School Thrills
Top and middle:

For the Bel Air
party, guests cross
over steel-deck
platforms rigged
with RGB LED
ribbons disguised
as practicals.
Bottom: The crew
captures a fight
scene featuring
Crowe and actor
Keith David.
builds his own units under the banner of

Grounded Production Services (GPS).
When you work with Philippe, Stern
notes, you work with carts of Jem [Paper
Lantern] Harps, Jem Balls and Skylight
Skyballs anything thats round. I
knew I wasnt going to get away from
that, but here was an opportunity to
show him the tools Id built and used
with other people.
Their workhorse units were GPS
d-Light Albatross 4'x4' Hybrid lights,
and narrow and medium d-Light hybrid
Singles. The narrows are 212 inches
wide and the mediums are 5 inches wide,
so we would often rig them just above
frame to augment a practical, says Stern.
Now instead of a 4-foot diameter
sphere, you can have a 4-foot square
thats 4 inches deep. It has an egg crate,
so we can make it more directional, and
we can put it right up against the actors
because it doesnt generate any heat.
The GPS LED lights boast a
higher-than-95 CRI rating and the
diffused-incandescent quality of a paper
lantern. As long as the light is fairly
balanced, I dont care what its made of,
the cinematographer says. The thing is
where to put the light, and how soft it is.
Im not saying LEDs should replace
everything, but because of the short time
76
June 2016
we had on this film, they proved to be

very useful.
The unpredictable fall weather in
Atlanta made it difficult to use lighting
balloons, so 6K Skyballs were rigged to
Mombo Combos and bathed large areas
with soft light. Jem Lighting 14" and 19"
rigid Paper Lantern Harps were mounted
on C-stands for eye lights, or to carbonfiber boom poles for walk-and-talks. If a
tungsten light needed any adjustment,
one of three things would happen: It was
moved, diffused, or, as Stern explains, the
most likely scenario is youll dim it down,
which warms it up. Stern did away with
much of the need for CTO or diffusion of
any kind on his hybrid LEDs which
were used primarily for lighting actors
by engineering them with adjustable color
temperature ranging from 2,800 degrees
to 6,500 degrees Kelvin. Rousselot also
relied on RGB and RGBAW LED Par
cans, as well as Philips Color Kinetics
ColorBlast TRXs. Tungsten Fresnels and
Source Fours were bounced onto walls
and ceiling corners for background separation when desired.
The Nice Guys is set in Los Angeles,
but most of the film was shot in and
around Atlanta, Ga., where Marchs
house, Healys apartment above the
Comedy Store, process shots for driving
scenes, and many other interiors were
constructed on stages in converted warehouses around the city. Rousselot spent
three weeks in Los Angeles filming the
exteriors of Marchs house, the Comedy
Store, City Hall, House of Blues and the
Burbank Holiday Inn, as well as Griffith
Park and various city streets.
We had a lot of conversations with
our visual-effects team about set extensions and modifying the streets, says
Rousselot. Lead visual-effects supervisor
Josh Saeta worked closely with Lipsync
Posts visual-effects supervisor George
Zwier to create a near-seamless composite of the two cities with Saeta often
communicating via FaceTime from the
set in L.A. or Atlanta with Zwier at the
post house in London.
Saeta was also tasked with coordinating the L.A. background plates for
process shots, as well as the opening heli-
copter shot photographed by cinematographer Ryan Hosking during

which the camera swoops up the
Hollywood side of Mt. Lee and ends
inside a set in Atlanta. The Hollywood
sign was digitally re-created in its crumbling late-1970s condition, and even a
heavy blanket of brown smog, which
plays a small background role in the
films story, was painted back into wide
shots of the city. We were periodizing
Los Angeles with an eye to smog both

during the day and at night when it
dissipates, as well as population density
and architectural replacement, says
Saeta.
The scene in which Healy and
March investigate a swinging Bel Air
bacchanal was filmed in Sandy Springs,
Ga., at a mid-century home surrounded
by dense woods. We put greenscreens
all around the house because its
Old-School Thrills
Top: Multiple
cameras are
rigged for a
driving scene in
Marchs
convertible.
Middle and
bottom: Marchs
driving goes
awry.
supposed to be on a hill above Los

Angeles, and you should see the city in
the distance, says Rousselot, who
describes the house as very weird and
quite small, especially the interior. It was
one of the first scenes to be shot, and
with all of the action, dialogue and background that it called for, it was one of the
films largest and Rousselot only had
four days to get it rigged. It wasnt just
the house, says Stern. Its the drive up
to the house, the pool in the back, the
pond in the front, and the valet stand.
Guests have to cross a series of
steel-deck platforms over the pond to get
to the main house. Stern and Atlanta
rigging gaffer Michael Tyson decided to
wrap the undersides of the platforms
with waterproof RGB LED ribbons
filtered with Lee 216 diffusion
disguising them as practicals and
lined the edges of the rooftop with
LEDs encased in frosted tubes. Inside
the house, the filmmakers used practical
lamps wherever possible, and swapped
the recessed ceiling lightbulbs with WiFi-controlled Philips Hue LED Par
lamps. We went through the entire
rainbow at that party, says Stern, but
we didnt do any color shifting or moving
lights, the rationale being that there
werent a lot of color-changing lights in
78
June 2016
Old-School Thrills
Top and middle:
Cast and crew
work at the
Atlanta set that
was employed for
much of the
footage at
Marchs house.
Bottom: The crew
preps a
greenscreen stage.
the Seventies, and if they did move, they

were likely huge and unlikely to be
hanging in someones home.
The films other major set piece is
the 1978 Los Angeles Auto Show, a
flashy exhibition filmed on the thirdfloor pool deck of the Hilton Hotel in
downtown Atlanta. Philippe wanted
color and light everywhere, so our lights
needed to be part of the set, says Stern.
We built our LEDs into the set in an
indirect manner under bars, behind
diffusion panels. There was a lot of
chrome and vinyl and shiny Mylar
surfaces, and we took every opportunity
we could get to reflect the light.
Stern also researched commercial
lighting of the 1970s and learned that a
big car show might have featured a
handful of Sky Tracker xenon searchlights, which prompted him to order two
controllable four-xenon pods that were
built into both ends of the convention
set. Hundreds of glitzy 7-watt candelabra carnival lights were attached to the
step faces of rotating platforms where
the latest automobiles sat on display, and
both sides of the hoops that arched over
them were lined with hundreds of 11watt carnival lights. Set decorator
Danielle Berman built 7' mirrored
towers of clear 40-watt vanity bulbs and
placed them around the convention floor
80
June 2016
Old-School Thrills
Top: Healy and
March find
trouble at the Los
Angeles Auto
Show. Bottom
left: The crew
preps an autoshow scene.
Bottom right: The
Alexa is mounted
on a high hat and
dolly wheels.
so Rousselot could use them as light

sources, and to add some visual interest.
The integration between the art
department and lighting department is
important, because the more you can
build into the set, the less you have to
inconvenience your cast and crew with
lighting instruments that are in the way,
says Stern. If you can light a room with
just one additional light instead of 20,
that gives the actors more freedom to
move around, and helps you bring an
audience into the story.
Rousselot agrees, and sees his
relationships with the other design
82
June 2016
departments as highly practical. Im not

telling them what he or she should do,
he says. Its not my job; they dont need
my advice. Set design is a bit more
involved, but they still dont need me to
tell them what color to put on the wall.
The aesthetic is theirs.
G and E Series anamorphic
prime lenses were rented from
Panavision Woodland Hills, and an
Optimo 56-152mm A2S (T4) compact
anamorphic zoom was provided by
Angenieux. A Red Epic Dragon with
Kowa anamorphic primes was used for
drone shots of the hedonistic party.
With the exception of NDs, Rousselot

eschewed filtration. I was never fond of
doing things like bleach bypass, or flashing, or putting a lot of stuff in front of
the camera, he explains. Sometimes I
did, but not very often. My policy is to
be as simple as possible and then do all
the tricks later in the DI and then I
go into the DI, and I dont use any tricks,
or very few!
This may seem controversial,
Rousselot continues, but I care more
about what the film is going to be as a
whole than my cinematography, because
my work will never be better than the
Old-School Thrills
The crew captures a scene with Gosling while working on location at the Los Angeles house
that provided certain exteriors for Marchs home.
film itself. You can say this about most

technical things, that the quality of the
combined thing is the quality of its
weakest element.
The Nice Guys was captured in 3K
ArriRaw, graded on a FilmLight

Baselight system at Lipsync by Adam
Inglis with whom Rousselot had
collaborated on Guy Ritchies Sherlock
Holmes films and delivered in 2K.
Phillippe is very relaxed and confident

with his material and in his approach to
the grade, which creates a great environment [in which] to be subtly creative,
Inglis enthuses. We were never going to
do a super-strong look like we did with
Sherlock Holmes its just not that kind of
movie. Nice Guys has a strong visual style,
but its not something weve invented in
the grade; the DI is just part of the overall
process.
Philippe told me he feels that
grades should be like a piece of music, that
no one scene exists in isolation, but [each]
is dependent on its place within the
whole, the colorist continues. This is
something I strongly agree with. We
would often run the film with sound and
just watch it as a whole to see how it flows.
This is an approach I find to be very effective: get the film broadly graded as quickly
as possible, get a sense of its structure and
what direction it wants to go, and then
refine with each pass.
Some films are more DId than
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.39:1
Digital Capture
Alexa XT Plus 4:3,
Red Epic Dragon
Panavision G Series, E Series;
Angenieux Optimo; Kowa
Multiple cameras are lined up on Gosling for a night-exterior scene in the woods.
others, Rousselot adds. The Nice Guys

DI was useful for matching the different
mattes and visual effects; compared to
timing on film, you can have almost
perfect color. We were working with
extremely fine details, sometimes to

bridge shots in the same scene that were
actually filmed in different places. There
was no blanket style. It was all according
to taste.
85
Against the
Clock
Stuart Dryburgh, ASC, NZCS and

a host of collaborators employ a
mix of digital and physical tools to usher
Alice Through the Looking Glass.
By Neil Matsumoto
|
86
June 2016
Unit photography by Peter Mountain, Susie Allnutt and David Appleby, courtesy of Disney Enterprises.
Opposite and this

page, top: Alice (Mia
Wasikowska) returns
to Underland a.k.a.
Wonderland to help
her friend the Mad
Hatter (Johnny Depp)
in Alice Through the
Looking Glass. Middle:
Director James Bobin
(left) and
cinematographer
Stuart Dryburgh, ASC,
NZCS on set.
Bottom: Dryburgh
considers a frame.
ack in the real world after

her fantastical adventures in
Wonderland,
Alice
(Mia
Wasikowska) has found herself
institutionalized with a diagnosis of
hysteria. After a deft escape from
captivity, she is summoned back to the
magical realm to save her friend the
Mad Hatter ( Johnny Depp) from the
nefarious machinations of Time
(Sacha Baron Cohen).
A sequel to Tim Burtons Alice
in Wonderland (photographed by
Dariusz Wolski, ASC; AC April 10),
Alice Through the Looking Glass was
directed by James Bobin and shot by
Stuart Dryburgh, ASC, NZCS. Rich
in visual effects, the feature required
substantial storyboarding and previs
work. By the time I came on to the
picture during prep in March of 2014,
a lot of the concept art was well in
place, explains Dryburgh, who was
hired after a successful Skype meeting
with Bobin. There are some scenes
that we just storyboarded, but a lot of
it had to be created very accurately in
previs due to the effects and the threedimensional virtual architecture that
www.theasc.com
June 2016
87
Against the Clock
Top: Alices
mother, Helen
(Lindsay Duncan,
holding
Wasikowskas
hand), worries
about her
daughters sanity.
Bottom, left and
right: Alice travels
through the
looking glass,
returning to
Underland.
we had to match on stage.

In addition to his collaboration
with Bobin, Dryburgh worked closely
with production designer Dan
Hennah and visual-effects supervisor
Ken Ralston, the latter of whom had
worked on Burtons Alice in
Wonderland. As Dryburgh notes, the
world of Underland which, as
explained in the first movie, is
Wonderlands actual name is
instantly recognizable as the place that
88
June 2016
appeared in the prior project, though

different aspects of the environment
are presented. Indeed, to maintain a
look for Underland that was consistent
with that of the first feature, Dryburgh
and the effects team continually
referred to the world that Burton and
Ralston had previously designed.
Shooting camera tests was a top
priority during prep. We wanted to
determine what would be the best
camera to shoot the movie, Dryburgh
says. James and I were thinking in

terms of the live action and what
camera was going to give us the best
results, but also fulfill the needs of the
visual-effects department.
Shooting interiors, exteriors and
night shots around the Disney lot, they
tested an Arri Alexa XT against a
Sony F65 and F55. Ralston and his
co-visual-effects supervisor, Jay Redd,
were firm that they needed 4K for
visual-effects shots, especially those
Against the Clock
Top: Alice finds Absolem (voiced by Alan Rickman), who has transformed from a caterpillar to a
butterfly. Middle: Alice finds herself shrunken down to the size of chess pieces. Bottom: Alice
encounters the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter).
90
June 2016
involving the Mad Hatters eyes and

the face of the Red Queen (Helena
Bonham Carter). The angrier and
crazier she gets, the bigger her head
gets, Dryburgh notes. They take her
face and expand and morph it, so you
need more pixels.
The cinematographer therefore
opted to use the Alexa XT for the real
world of Victorian London, and the
F65 for all of the Underland scenes,
which occupied most of the approximately 15-week shooting schedule,
and where the majority of visual effects
were required. Although Dryburgh
preferred the dynamic range of the
Alexa XT, the fact that the Underland
scenes would be shot on a stage meant
he could control the light to preserve
his highlights.
The movie was framed in the
1.85:1 aspect ratio instead of
widescreen for several reasons, including the sentiment that it would ease
the post conversion to 3D. There was
also a preponderance of vertical
elements throughout the shoot, particularly in the case of tall and tall-hatted
characters. Time, for instance, was
7'2", so frame height was a priority for
scenes in which he and Alice appear
together.
Against the Clock

For the Alexa XT, which shot in
Open Gate mode at 3.4K, Dryburgh
selected his favorite lenses Vantage
Film Hawk V-Lite anamorphics with
a 1.3x squeeze. Though one might
typically use 1.3x-squeeze lenses on a
16:9 chip to obtain a widescreen
image of 2.39:1, Dryburgh used it to
stretch the Alexa XTs 4:3 Open Gate
sensor to 1.85:1. The cinematographer
notes that his preferred focal lengths
for Alice Through the Looking Glass
were 28mm, 45mm, 55mm, 80mm
and 110mm.
Dryburgh used a full set of
spherical Arri/Zeiss Master Primes
with the F65, generally sticking to
standard and wide lenses as wide as
16mm if they were working in a
smaller room. I wasnt too worried
because its a magical world, he says.
If it looks a little distorted, thats not
such a bad thing. His favored focal
lengths were 21mm, 27mm and
40mm, though longer lenses were
occasionally employed if they were
pushing into characters faces. In terms
of exposure, Dryburgh was generally
shooting at T4 to 5.6 on stage, and at
T2.8 to 4 on practical, low-light locations. We also used the tried-andtrue Angenieux Optimo 24-290mm
[T2.8] zoom, especially on our B
camera, Dryburgh adds.
For previs, the production
worked with Halon Entertainment to
determine which digital enhancements were needed and what the
effects would look like. We can do a
really fast pass of all the shots so they
can get it into the editing room and
they can see a completed sequence
with [temporary] effects, explains
Halon Entertainment supervisor Tefft
Smith II. Its not going to be the final
pretty shots that Sony [Pictures
Imageworks, the projects principal
visual-effects vendor] ends up doing,
but its enough to tell the story so the
[filmmakers] can understand what
action is happening and the look of
the environment Alice is in.
In cooperation with Bobin and
Dryburgh, Halons previs process
Top: The camera is

mounted on a crane
to follow Alice
through the town
of Witzend. Middle:
The crew preps a
bluescreen scene in
which Alice
interacts with
virtual characters.
Bottom:
Wasikowska leaps
through a
bluescreen set.
92
June 2016
Against the Clock
Top: One of
Times steampowered
Seconds, Wilkins
(voiced by Matt
Vogel), studies a
book. Middle:
Wilkins is on the
move with a
team of his
fellow Seconds.
Bottom:
Dryburgh plans a
shot of Sacha
Baron Cohen
(reclining), who
portrays the
villain Time.
involved creating 3D digital versions

of the characters. Alice or the White
Queen (Anne Hathaway), for example, might be animated to demonstrate
how they would appear in a particular
environment, complete with an indication of whether the shot would be
medium or wide, and even which focal
length would be used. Then Anne
and Mia will see roughly what it looks
like, explains Smith. And once
theyre on set, they will use the previs
as a base, but not be locked to it. The
other good thing is that with previs,
[the filmmakers] now have an edited
sequence that they can show to
producers to get a feeling of how the
story is being told.
Underland scenes were shot on
stage at Shepperton Studios part of
the Pinewood Studios Group in
Surrey, U.K. For the main street in the
fanciful town of Witzend, Hennah
and his crew built storefronts and
gables a set that reached approximately 40' in height, with everything
above that being realized via visual
effects. And though a stage-based set
might lead to a general reliance on
CG, the production took pains to
build as many practical elements as
possible, including a royal palace and
medieval cathedral. For the Mad
Hatters tea party, the table had real
94
June 2016
Against the Clock

cakes, jellies and cookies, though
Ralstons team created the surrounding
environs by trailing the grass off into
blue carpet.
Dryburgh and the effects team
chose to work with bluescreen rather
than green due to the nature of the
movies onscreen surroundings. If
youre working with an environment
that is more in cool tones, if you get a
little bit of blue fringing or pollution
on a foreground element or face, its
much more forgiving, says Dryburgh.
You make this choice per project.
While in the first picture the
Victorian London scenes were limited
primarily to a country house and a
garden party, the aboveground scenes
for Alice Through the Looking Glass were
more ambitious. One of Dryburghs
main inspirations for the look of these
scenes was Autochrome Lumire, an
early color-photography process that
was patented by the Lumire brothers
in 1903. The medium consists of a
glass plate coated with tiny potatostarch grains that were dyed redorange, green and blue-violet.
Lampblack fills the spaces between the
grains and a black-and-white silverhalide emulsion coats the top of the
filter layer. It was a very early process
similar to daguerreotype, explains
Dryburgh. In terms of color and
lighting, it really became our main
reference.
The movie opens with an action
sequence that depicts Alices voyage
home, a trek that involves fleeing from
pirates. The nighttime storm is infused
with blacks and cyan, with flashes of
lightning and flame as the pirates
attack a sequence that was shot on
a full-sized gimbaled ship on the back
lot at Longcross Studios. For Alices
arrival in London, Dryburgh crafted a
smoky, sepia look. The production
shot several sequences at the historic
Gloucester Docks, a Victorian-era
shipping port. It is being treated
as a heritage site, so its all pristine
1800s warehouse architecture, says
Dryburgh. We brought in a bunch of
tall ships so we were able to re-create
Top and bottom:

The crew
captures the
sequence in
which Alice is
attacked by
pirates during
her voyage home
to London.
Middle: Dryburgh
readies for action
on the ship set.
96
June 2016
this harbor scene for when she returns

home.
For both the Alexa XT and F65,
Dryburgh generally stuck to their
respective base ISOs of 800, although
for practical night locations with the
Alexa, he would push to 1,600. Ive
always hated the idea of stacking up
filters on a digital camera, and I used to
rate at a lower speed if I could, he
explains. But I realized that all you do
[by lowering the cameras sensitivity] is
compress the top end of the signal.
And the image quality at the top end,
the cinematographer contends, is one
of the elements that makes the Alexa
such a great camera. In my experience
particularly with Open Gate 3.4K
Ive never experienced any issues
[rating the camera at 800 and using
ND filters in front of the lens], as long
as you end up with a good exposure
and not drag too much out of the
bottom end.
Pete Cavaciuti served as
Dryburghs
A-camera/Steadicam
operator, with Ashley Bond as Acamera 1st AC. The Alexa captured
ArriRaw to Codex XR Capture
Drives, and the F65 captured 16-bit
4K raw files to Sonys proprietary SRR4 recorder that docks to the camera.
In both cases, the cards were backed up
on set and then sent to Deluxes
Company 3 in London for storage,
archiving and dailies creation, the
latter of which was performed with
Colorfront On-Set Dailies. Once the
dailies had clearance and the LTOs
were struck for archival purposes, the
cards were sent back to the set for reuse.
Dryburgh worked closely with
digital-imaging technician Peter
Welch in developing base LUTs for
both camera systems. We shot some
tests in a variety of situations faces,
bright backgrounds, dark backgrounds, night exteriors, the cinematographer says. We took the files to
Company 3 and basically refined the
look we wanted in terms of gamma
and saturation. Having made those
adjustments in the DI suite, you can
Against the Clock
The production prepares to shoot on location at the Gloucester Docks.
create a LUT, which you can then reimport either directly to the camera as
an Arri LUT or in a LUT box
between the DIT station and the
camera.
In the old days we would say
we want a blue-green soft look, so
were going to shoot Fuji, continues
Dryburgh. If we wanted a highcontrast and colorful [image], we
would go with Kodak 5245. For digital
youre making similar decisions, but
essentially youre creating your own
film stocks. Im an old film guy, so I
cant describe it any other way. The
LUT is the film stock and the CDL is
the subsequent grading decision that
you make on set, which is conveyed to
the dailies colorist. The production
crew viewed dailies at Shepperton
Studios on a 12' screen using a 4K
projector.
A graduate of University of
Auckland with a degree in architecture, Dryburgh came up the ranks as a
gaffer, shooting low-budget movies
and music videos in the mid-1980s.
Early on my strength was lighting,
he says, and I had to learn the skills of
camera operating on the job. Lighting
is a very technical business, and to this
98
day I have to restrain myself from

grabbing the lights [or at least]
minimize it so I dont drive my lighting crew completely bonkers.
On Alice Through the Looking
Glass, Dryburghs lighting for daytime
location work was heavy on HMIs,
with a number of Arrimax M18s and
M40s. In the studio, he typically used
5K tungsten units and Arri T12s.
Perhaps the cinematographers
most difficult location was the Syon
House an 18th-century estate in
west London that is owned by the
Duke of Northumberland which
served as the residence of Lady Ascot
(Geraldine James) and her son
Hamish (Leo Bill), who were partners
with Alices father. The locations
historic designation placed numerous
restrictions on gaffer Harry Wiggins
and key grip Kevin Frasers crews.
You couldnt put a nail into a wall, so
we couldnt put up spreaders, says
Dryburgh. Candles were allowed, so
Dryburgh had the props department
use as many as possible in each room
in order to get a base exposure for the
Alexa. As toplight was difficult, any
light from above was accomplished by
hanging a soft light typically a Jem
Ball on a boom pole.

Dryburgh also employed a fair
amount of ground bounce laying
white sheets on the floor and bouncing Par cans off of them to raise his
ambient light level. We did use a lot
of what my British gaffers call coop
lights, which are a wireframe ground
row with a lot of light bulbs, says
Dryburgh. You can wrap your gels
around them and hook it up to a
flicker box. We were hiding those
behind the furniture or in the fireplaces, jamming them in wherever we
could. Pretty much everything was
candlelight, ground bounce and small
units carefully hidden. But you still
feel that youre keying off the candles.
The balance was the most challenging.
Another challenging lighting
scenario was Times castle. With a
swirling ocean below, Dryburgh
bottom-lit with an array of Vari-Lites
for moving light effects. And for
Times clock room, the art department
created gobos of gears, spindles and
springs through which light could be
projected. Time also has a glowing orb
called a Chromosphere that is about
the size of a baseball and, when
thrown, turns into a time machine.
When Alice steals it from Time and
is holding it in her hand, we needed it
to glow, so gaffer Harry Wiggins
worked with the art department to
create a 3D-printed sphere that was
full of LED lights, says Dryburgh. It
had an interior battery, so you could
literally pick it up, throw it, and it still
glowed. As long as we kept the ambient light level down, it became the
dominant source in the space. Thats
kind of amazing that you could create
so much light energy in such a small,
self-contained unit.
Above the set for Witzend, the
crew positioned more than 250 space
lights, with very large 20-foot-wide
strips of soft blue diffusion extending
over the entire stage, below the space
lights, Dryburgh explains. Also
employed were Dinos and MaxiBrutes that provided a strong side key
Against the Clock
A telescopic crane moves the camera into position for a medium shot of Anne Hathaway
as the White Queen.
along the width of the street. Though

Wiggins had suggested the use of
LED panels for the overheads instead
of space lights, the notion was nixed
due to the high rental cost. Noting his
100
dismay over the decision, Dryburgh

recounts, What they discovered was
that the stage got so hot that they had
to bring in two truck-size air-conditioning units, which are unbelievably
expensive. Plus we had such a high

electricity load that they had to bring
in massive generators. When we came
back to do some additional photography, I was delighted to see that the
production manager had suggested to
the gaffer, You know what? Why dont
we use LEDs this time? At the end of
the day, they had spent more money on
air conditioning and generators than
they would have spent renting LEDs.
At the time of this writing,
Dryburgh is keen to begin color-grading sessions at Company 3 in Los
Angeles with colorist and ASC associate Stefan Sonnenfeld, who would be
working with Blackmagic Designs
DaVinci Resolve for a 16-bit finish
optimized for HDR versions, with a
resolution of 1998x1080 for the 1.85:1
aspect ratio. Versions will be delivered
for 2D, 3D, Imax Laser and Dolby
Vision.
Whats great about working
with Stefan, Dryburgh attests, is that
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa XT, Sony F65
Vantage Film Hawk V-Lite,
Arri/Zeiss Master Prime,
Angenieux Optimo
Bobin (left) studies the action as Wasikowska stands aboard a rig worthy of Wonderland.
he is inclined to let the on-set photography speak for itself, rather than
saying, Ill make this look highcontrast in red just because I can. Ive
done several movies with him now,
and hes got a great sense of taste and a

great sensitivity thats relative to
photography. Hes a brilliant artist in
his own right.
101
New Products & Services

CW Sonderoptic Adds Leica Lenses, Diopter
CW Sonderoptic, sister company to Leica Camera, has added
two lenses the 40mm and 15mm (both T2.0) to the Leica
Summicron-C cine lens family. These lenses bring the growing
Summicron-C family of primes to 11 focal lengths, all of which are
T2.0.
Both the 40mm and 15mm share the creamy sharpness
image quality that distinguishes Leica cine products, rendering favorable, natural skin tones
without sacrificing clarity or
resolution. The primes also
maintain the compact,
lightweight and reliable
build quality of the other
Summicron-C focal lengths.
While all lenses have
matched focus- and iris-ring
locations and a 95mm front diameter, the 15mm prime is slightly
longer, with a body similar to the 135mm.
The Leica Summicron-C 40mm is expected to deliver this
month, with the 15mm to follow in October. Leica cine lenses are
available from CW Sonderoptics worldwide network of resellers,
which can be found at www.cw-sonderoptic.com/resellers.
CW Sonderoptic has also introduced the Leica Cine
MacroLux +1 diopter, which allows cinematographers and lens
owners to decrease the minimum focus distance of lenses and offers
a creative way to get different looks and extend the performance of
spherical and anamorphic primes and zooms with 95mm front
diameters. The custom coatings offer high resolution and contrast
along with a color temperature matched to the natural, neutral look
of the Leica Summilux-C and Summicron-C lenses, although it also
pairs well with other lenses.
Often diopters are thought of as a tool for tabletop work on
longer lenses, but the creative possibilities extend well beyond
macro imaging. The secret of the Leica Cine MacroLux is not just
about what happens in focus, but what happens out of focus, says
Gerhard Baier, managing director of CW Sonderoptic. Using the
Cine MacroLux on wide or mid-range focal-length lenses throws the
background further out of focus and accentuates beautiful
elements like focus falloff and bokeh.
The modern lens design of the Leica Cine MacroLux creates
a high-performance optic with no perceptible light loss, spherical
aberrations, color fringing or centering issues. In an interview setup
with a close background, for example, the cinematographer can
create more separation without distorting the subject. It is also
useful for creating separation when shooting at a deeper stop.
The Leica Cine MacroLux quickly clamps onto the front of the
lens, and the mechanical design allows for two or more to be
102
June 2016
SUBMISSION INFORMATION
Please e-mail New Products/Services releases to
newproducts@ascmag.com and include full contact
information and product images. Photos must be
TIFF or JPEG files of at least 300dpi.
stacked to increase the effect. Regular or

clamp-on matte boxes can also be used. A
double-screw tightening system allows the
diopter to be safely and securely attached or
removed from either side of the camera.
For additional information, visit
www.cw-sonderoptic.com.
Mole-Richardson
Illuminates Tener LED
Mole-Richardson has introduced the Tener LED Fresnel. The
tungsten-balanced version boasts output comparable to a 10K
Molequartz Tener Solarspot, while the daylight-balanced unit is
comparable to a 2.5K HMI Fresnel. Mole-Richardsons proprietary
LED technology offers a high CRI (95 for the Tungsten Tener, 90 for
the Daylite Tener) and full-spectrum color.
The Tener LED fixture
includes a 14" glass Fresnel, a
traveling flood/spot mechanism, local and DMX
dimming control, and
flicker-free dimming from 100-0
percent. The fixture measures 24"
deep, 23" wide and 33" high; the
head weighs 42 pounds and the
external ballast weighs 28 pounds.
At 1,800 watts, the Tener LED only pulls
a maximum of 14.5 amps, and its universal
power supply works on 90-250-volt AC, 50-60Hz.
For additional information, visit www.mole.com.
SmallHD Goes Big
SmallHD has unveiled a line of daylight-viewable HDR
production monitors in 17", 24" and 32" sizes. Designed to endure
years of heavy use, every monitor housing is milled from billet
aluminum and holds a 3mm-thick, user-replaceable polycarbonate
screen protector. Out of the box, the 1700 Series, 2400 Series and
3200 Series monitors can drop straight onto a C-stand, table or cart,
and the built-in RapidRail system enables quick mounting and
powering of third-party accessories.
High-end software features include HDR preview capability
when used with high-dynamic-range cameras, multi-view mode
with ColorFlow for viewing multiple sources with varied postproduction LUTs applied, 10-bit color processing, 10-bit HD waveform and
scopes, and automatic display calibration. Looks in the form of
3D LUT files and HDR can be applied and compared side-by-side
to the raw SDI and HDMI signals using the multi-view function.
Independently, a separate LUT can be sent

downstream via SDI and HDMI. Any active
LUT will be documented when the imagecapture button is pressed, placing the
captured image and the corresponding 3D
LUT next to each other on the users SD
card. SmallHD production monitors also
incorporate a built-in Color Intelligence
Engine that enables them to automatically
calibrate by self-generating a 3D calibration
LUT based on data received from a USBconnected color probe.
A custom flight case holds every
accessory needed and has been designed
so that wireless systems do not need to be
removed from the rear of the monitor when
stored. The monitors built-in top handle,
table stand and C-stand mount plus the
optional sun hood, polycarbonate screen
protectors, Gold Mount and V-Mount
battery plates, USB color probe, power
cables and signal cables all pack comfortably and quickly into the protective case.
SmallHD has also added two highdefinition on-camera monitors to its

feature-rich 700 Series. Both the 701 Lite
and 702 Lite combine 450-nit 720p displays
with durability and on-set versatility.
The 701 Lite and 702 Lite offer an
intuitive operating system with built-in
professional software tools, including focus
assist, exposure assist, waveform, RGB
parade, audio meters and more. Users can
apply 3D LUTs to the image in real time as
postproduction preview. With the Pagebuilder menu, presets can be configured to

allow the shooter to quickly toggle
between frequently used pages of in-monitor tools.
A full-sized SD card slot allows users
to conveniently transfer images and LUTs.
Users can opt for custom LUTs or SmallHDs
free 3D LUT collection. The SD card also
allows the capture of on-screen images
from the monitor and the overlay of nearly
any JPEG over live video.
www.smallhdr.com
and
www.smallhd.com/lp/700-series/.
Hive Lighting Boosts Output,

Opens Stage
Hive Lighting has introduced a
1,000-watt plasma bulb, which uses only
9.5 amps on 120-volt power and is five
times brighter than Hives 250-watt plasma
bulbs. It produces the equivalent output of
a 2,500-watt HMI or 10,000-watt tungsten
incandescent but costs almost 40 percent
less to purchase and more than 50 percent
less to operate.
Hives 1,000-watt plasma bulb
boasts a full-spectrum 98 CRI. Like all of the
companys plasma products, it is 100percent flicker-free at any frame rate, is a
single-point-source arc lamp, has an

extremely long bulb life (50,000 hours), and
can offer color-temperature adjustment
between 4,600K and 6,500K.
Hive has also introduced the Hive
Antenna, an affordable pocket color meter.
The compact Hive Antenna reads CCT in all
degrees Kelvin, is operated by a single
button, and can be charged with a phone
charger.
Additionally, Hive Lighting has partnered with Drone Dudes, a pioneer of UAV
camerawork, to present a new stage space
designed for high-speed video, photography and visual effects. The 1,500-squarefoot stage houses a 30'-long by 17'-wide by
14'-high covered hard cyc (white, green or
blue) that is fully pre-lit with Hive Honeybees; the cyc lighting is fully dimmable and
can be pre-set to 5,600K or 3,200K,
chroma-key green or blue, or an almost infinite variety of colors.
Hives entire rental inventory is stored
onsite, allowing stage clients to rent additional Honeybees, Wasps and Bee fixtures
as well as accessories including soft boxes;
Leko lenses; and two-, four- and six-light
frames. Hive also has a variety of standard
grip and production gear available for
rental.
Hive Speed Studio and Rentals is
located at 1732 E. 14th Street, Los Angeles,
Calif., 90021. To arrange a time to visit the
space, contact rentals@hivelighting.com.
www.hivelighting.com.
Codex Streamlines Workflows

Codex has launched Codex Production Suite 4.5, an all-in-one software package that enables the color grading, review,
metadata management, transcoding,
QCing and archiving of media generated
by the latest digital cinematography
cameras. From ingest to postproduction,

Codex Production Suite 4.5 provides a
single, simple, secure and affordable workflow for multiple types of cameras, from
Arris Alexa 65 to GoPros.
Codex Production Suite is available
on several different platforms, including
Codexs own hardware. Production Suite
was developed hand-in-hand with
customers worldwide, particularly DITs, who
now have all of the tools they need to
deliver color-accurate on- or near-set dailies,
and to securely archive camera-original
material in one efficient workflow.
Codex Production Suite features a
comprehensive toolset, including splitscreen or A/B playback of camera-original
material, with correct frame rate, color
space, LUT and CDL values applied; imagescaling and crop tools; metadata checking,
fixing and appending; QC tools and
customized reporting; fast transcoding to
common dailies formats; high-quality
deBayering to DPX and Open EXR for visualeffects deliverables; and archiving using
LTFS to LTO-tape and Codex Media Vault
Library via Codex Archive.
Codex Production Suite 4.5 also
includes non-destructive, CDL-based color
grading. Production Suite can import and
process externally created CDLs and LUTs,
so that looks can be applied overall or shotby-shot; looks can be baked into editorial
dailies or appended in the metadata of
deliverables. Production Suite offers a full,
end-to-end ACES-compliant color pipeline;
it seamlessly integrates with Codex Live for
a consistent color pipeline from camera
through to deliverables and beyond, and
with Tangent panels for grading purposes.
Production Suite also features an audio-sync
toolset, enabling the import of WAV files,
playback of shots in a proxy window, and
synchronization of audio files to shots based
on time code.
Additionally, Codex and Offhollywood the latter of which was recently
acquired by the Vitec Group have
announced the seamless integration of the
Codex Live color-management and lookcreation system with Offhollywoods
OMOD camera modules for Red Digital
Cinema cameras. This technology collaboration delivers a fast and robust set-to-post
solution for Red camera workflows, and it
enables live HDR on-set grading at the same

time as SDR. With Codex Live, users can
also color grade CDLs under HDR output.
Codex Live features an easy-to-operate interface and enables users on set to
create and preview looks and color grades
directly from multiple live HD-SDI camera
feeds. These looks and grades can be
previewed with Codex Review and automatically applied when generating deliverables via Codex Production Suite. With
Codex Live, the looks created can be
exported in various formats for application
downstream in the workflow. Codex Live
has multiple color controls to adjust the
range of color parameters and is ASC-CDLand ACES-compliant.
The technology partnership means
that Codex Live can generate CDLs and 3D
LUTs for the Offhollywood OMOD module.
Codex Live users can grade wirelessly, in
real-time, directly to the OMOD. Each monitor path can have a separate color pipeline
so that, for example, the DIT can grade and
preview in isolation and then share the look
when ready.
www.codexdigital.com.
AadynTech Updates LED Range

Aadyn Technology has released a
new line of LED lamps that offer greatly
increased light output over the companys
previous models while boasting the same
efficient power consumption. Four fixtures
have been improved to deliver at least 30
percent more footcandles at 10': The Jab
Daylight, Jab V2 Variable, Jab Hurricane and
Punch Plus, the latter of which is nearly 50
percent brighter than before.
In addition, the Jab Daylight, Jab V2
Variable and Punch Plus now have a built-in
105
Telecine &
Color Grading
Jod is a true artist with
a great passion for his craft.
John W. Simmons, ASC
Contact Jod @ 310-713-8388

Jod@apt-4.com
user-interface module for enhanced

programming convenience. The Jab V2
Variable also has a new digital Kelvintemperature readout; that fixture and the
Jab Daylight retain their tethered remoteunit option. Adding to its heightened
programming convenience, the Jab V2 Variables upgraded software enables users to
set the light to a specific Kelvin temperature.
AadynTech has also expanded the
Punch series of LED fixtures with the addition of the Punch Plus Variable, which offers
variable color-temperature output without
compromising the quality of the light beam.
With a Kelvin range from 2,950-6,200, the
Punch Plus Variable delivers 5,000 footcandles at 10' with a Kelvin reading of 4,377K.
At the same distance at 5,600K it delivers
3,310 footcandles, and at 3,200K it delivers
2,540 footcandles.
Color changes are smooth throughout the Kelvin range, and the fixture offers
100-0 percent dimming with no change in
color temperature; color temperature and
brightness along with lightning and
strobe effects can be controlled with the
built-in user interface, remote user interface, or DMX/RDM via the built-in wireless
receiver.
The Punch Plus Variable consumes
only 4.78 amps, allowing four fixtures to
operate on a single 20-amp circuit. The
power supply is universal and built into the
fixture; no ballast or ballast cables are
required.
AadynTechs LED fixtures are all
designed, engineered and assembled in the
United States.
www.aadyntech.com.
Teradek Expands COLR

Teradek has added three models to
its line of COLR devices. The 4K COLR Pro,
COLR Duo, and COLR Lite join the original
COLR which
combines a real-time
LUT box, camera-control
bridge and HDMI/SDI
cross-converter to
offer cinematographers and broadcasters an array of
options for wireless
real-time
color
correction and remote
camera management.
The entire COLR lineup offers a
simple ACES-capable solution for wirelessly
grading live video footage with the CDL
and 33x33x33 3D LUT of the users choice.
The COLR, COLR Lite and COLR Duo
devices also function as a wireless cameracontrol bridge when connected to a
cameras USB or Gigabit Ethernet port.
Using the cameras native Web interface or
a third-party software solution such as FoolControl, COLR can manage camera parameters like white balance and tint as well as
start/stop trigger, frame rate and shutter
speed.
COLR Pro is a professional cart or
rack-mounted 4K color-grading system. It
brings additional I/O and bandwidth to the
COLR platform with support for two independent 12G-SDI inputs and up to four
12G-SDI outputs, each with independently
applied 3D LUTs with a CDL or 1D LUT.
The COLR Duo offers all the functionality of the original COLR and adds a
second 3G-SDI output. This allows users to
apply unique 3D LUTs with a CDL or 1D LUT
on each of the two outputs or independently monitor a clean output signal. COLR
Duo maintains the platforms wireless
camera control via Wi-Fi and easily attaches
to any camera, monitor or DIT cart via 20" mount or a custom bracket.
COLR Lite is designed for compact
action cameras or small DSLRs and mirrorless cameras. Built from lightweight and
rugged ABS plastic, COLR Lite features an
HDMI input with a 3G-SDI output, with the
same 3D LUT capability found in all COLR
models. A USB port for camera control
and/or powering an action camera is
included, as well as Wi-Fi for robust wireless
camera control and remote color grading.
www.teradek.com.
Schneider Grows Filter Family

Schneider Optics has introduced an
array of front-of-the-lens filters, including
the 1-Stop Circular Polarizer. With only a
single stop of exposure loss, the 1-Stop
Circular Pol minimizes glare and reflections
and maintains full color saturation without
any of the inconsistencies of linear polarizers. The filter is available in popular sizes
including 4"x4", 4"x5.65" and 6.6"x6.6",
as well as custom sizes.
Schneider has also expanded its line
of Emmy Award-winning Platinum IRND
filters, which limit the light that strikes the
cameras CCD or CMOS imager to the visible spectrum, dramatically reducing IR
spillage. While previously offering 0.3, 0.6,
0.9, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8 and 2.1, the new addition
tops the line at 2.4 (8 stops). These filters
are available in all standard video and cine
sizes.
Schneiders .15 ND MPTV filter has
also made a comeback. The .15-density
light-refining filter rejoins the Neutral
Density lineup, which also includes .3, .6, .9,
1.2, 1.5 and 1.8.
The latest addition to the True-Streak
effects filter line, Schneiders Star filters are
now available in clear and red/white/blue
versions the latter just in time for election
season and the July Fourth holiday. The sixpoint star-effect filters join the True-Streaks
(blue, red, orange, green, yellow, pink,
violet and clear), which provide an anamorphic-streak look, as well as the Confettis,
which create mini-streaks that appear as a
sparkle or fireworks effect as the filter is
rotated. Custom Star filters can be specially
ordered in a choice of four, six or eight
points, and any of the eight True-Streak
colors can be custom combined.
The company has also unveiled clear
optical flats to fit the 111mm front thread
on the Fujinon Cabrio lens family, and the
112mm front of Canon Cine zooms. The
optical flats utilize Schneiders water-white
glass, which boasts outstanding optical clarity at an exceptional value.

www.schneideroptics.com.
Rosco Lights Up Silk 110

Rosco Laboratories has unveiled the
Silk 110 soft-light LED fixture. Developed by
David Amphlett, Roscos product-development manager for broadcast lighting solutions, the Silk 110 offers precise color quality and powerful output in an efficient,
ergonomic form factor.
Building on the success of Roscos
Silk 210, the lightweight Silk 110 features
broad-spectrum daylight- and tungstenbalanced LEDs, and is tunable from 2,8006,500K. Independent tests have measured
a TLCI rating of 97 and a CRI of 98 at
3,200K. The portable and versatile Silk 110
operates under mains power and is also
compatible with Anton/Bauer or V-Lock
batteries.
The Silk 110 weighs only 9.25
pounds and measures 15.9"x15.5"x3.9".
The fixture features both DMX and local
control, and is available with a wide range
of accessories, including magnetic eggcrate louvers, barn doors and a rain cover.
www.rosco.com.
ShareGrid Opens Marketplace
Recently launched peer-to-peer
marketplace ShareGrid enables filmmakers
to rent gear, spaces and resources directly to
and from other members. Every rental is
covered by insurance or damage waiver,
and every member is verified. Currently live
in Los Angeles and New York City, ShareGrid is gearing up to expand to additional
U.S. markets, and members can register for

early access in their city.
ShareGrid was co-founded by Brent
Barbano, a Los Angeles-based director of
photography and member of Local 600;
Arash Shiva, a photographer and ecommerce veteran; and Marius Ciocirlan, a
product designer and Emmy Awardwinning animator. The trio sought to create
a community where fellow creatives could
make supplemental income on their equipment investments and find affordable rental
options for their own projects.
ShareGrid
renters can browse
or search for specific
gear, sort by popularity or price, and
gauge distance with
a map view, while
gear owners can list
for free. ShareGrid
has price-suggesting
tools that help
owners price their
gear competitively,
and scheduling tools
that help them set
the availability of their gear.
To ensure security, every member
provides a valid ID and goes through a twostep verification process. Additionally,
ShareGrids security team uses bank-level
software for background verifications on
every member before he or she rents.
Members also have the ability to review one
another in order to keep the community
transparent and safe.
ShareGrid has formed an exclusive
partnership with Athos Insurance
(www.athosinsurance.com) to build an
instant online insurance system for creative
productions. Within minutes, ShareGrid
members can purchase a short-term or
annual policy for their rental. ShareGrids
Insurance and Damage Waiver system
110
covers every rental up to $750,000; ShareGrid also verifies and accepts third-party
insurance policies.
Members can choose where they
want to exchange gear, with provided
check-sheets to ease the prep and checkout
process; a delivery option is available in
NYC. ShareGrid also allows members to
build their own profiles/bios, link socialmedia profiles, upload a demo reel, follow
other members and message one another.
Members of the ShareGrid community
range from students to seasoned filmmakers, including cinematographers, camera
operators, camera assistants, gaffers,
producers, directors and editors.
www.sharegrid.com.
Rotolights Anova
Pro Streamlines Effects
U.K.-based LED lighting manufacturer Rotolight has unveiled the Anova Pro
LED fixture. Up to 43-percent brighter than
the companys previous-generation Anova,
the Anova Pro also boasts revised electronics, 10-percent weight reduction, a revised
yoke design, and a new Flash Sync Trigger
input for shutter-release synchronization at
up to 150 percent of the maximum continuous light output.
Anova Pros Bi-Color LED system with
AccuColor LED-phosphor technology delivers exceptional color rendering (CRI of 96+)
and a powerful output (up to 6,545 Lux at
3') while using 94 percent less energy than
a standard tungsten bulb. The fixture
features dual controls for fast, tunable color
and brightness adjustment, along with an
accurate color-temperature display (CCT),
DMX control and V-Lock battery operation.
Wi-Fi control will also be available on Anova
Pro Air models, which are slated to be avail-
able in the fourth quarter of this year.

Anova Pro also boasts four unique
innovations: CineSFX, Flash Sync, True Aperture Dimming and Designer Fade. CineSFX
provides an arsenal of customizable lighting
effects for motion-picture applications
strobe, lightning, fire, cycle, throb, police,
TV, spin, weld, spark, film, neon and
gunshot and eliminates the need for
flicker box workflows. These effects are
compatible with the fixtures wired remotetrigger functionality and the Anova Pro Airs
wireless control. The unit also offers rollingshutter compensation.
Flash Sync and remote triggering
allow Anova Pro to be integrated into a
traditional photography workflow while
providing a hyper-accurate modeling light
and control of flash power and duration, as
well as color temperature and offset. True
Aperture Dimming calculates and displays
the correct f-stop for a subject at a given
distance, while also allowing users to adjust
the fixtures brightness in order to work at a
desired aperture. Lastly, the Designer Fade
mode provides custom fade-up and fadedown effects that can save time in postproduction.
Rotolights Magic Eye iPhone/iPad
App for the Anova Pro Air provides a simple
user interface and advanced feature set that
enables wireless remote control and triggering of CineSFX modes, as well as real-time
brightness, color-temperature and systemsettings adjustments.
Anova Pro is available in Bi-Color
(3,150K-6,300K) Standard 50-degree
beam angle (for greater straight line
output), Ultrawide 110 (for soft fill, flood
or chroma-key), or fixed-color 5,600K
versions.
www.rotolight.com.
International Marketplace
112
June 2016
Classifieds
CLASSIFIED AD RATES
All classifications are $4.50 per word. Words set
in bold face or all capitals are $5.00 per word.
First word of ad and advertisers name can be set
in capitals without extra charge. No agency
commission or discounts on classified advertising.PAYMENT MUST ACCOMPANY ORDER. VISA,
Mastercard, AmEx and Discover card are accepted. Send ad to Classified Advertising, American Cinematographer, P.O. Box 2230,
Hollywood, CA 90078. Or FAX (323) 876-4973.
Deadline for payment and copy must be in the
office by 15th of second month preceding publication. Subject matter is limited to items and services pertaining to filmmaking and video production.
Words used are subject to magazine style abbreviation. Minimum amount per ad: $45
EQUIPMENT FOR SALE

TJs Grip Design, Inc.
Grip Rigging Accessories
58" fittings Mini Ball heads
www.tjthegrip.com
EQUIPMENT FOR SALE

HOLLYWOOD STUDIO ANTIQUES
www.CinemaAntiques.com
BUY-SELL-TRADE
Worlds SUPERMARKET of USED MOTION

4X5 85 Glass Filters, Diffusion, Polas etc. A PICTURE EQUIPMENT! Buy, Sell, Trade.
Good Box Rental 818-763-8547
CAMERAS, LENSES, SUPPORT, AKS &
MORE! Visual Products, Inc. www.visual
16,000+ USED PRODUCTION EQUIPMENT ITEMS
products.com Call 440.647.4999
www.ProVideoFilm.com
www.UsedEquipmentNewsletter.com
888 869 9998
www.theasc.com
June 2016
113
Advertisers Index
Aadyn Technology 99
Abel Cine Tech 53
A.C. Entertainment
Technologies 51
Adorama 19, 43
AJA Video Systems, Inc. 91
Alan Gordon Enterprises 112
Arri 9, 29
Arri Rental 45
ASC Film Manual 104
Aura Productions 106
B&H Photo-Video-Pro Audio
31
Backstage Equipment, Inc.
103
Band Pro Film & Digital 27
BBS 8
Blackmagic Design 17
Camberwell Studios Ltd. 113
Cavision Enterprises 112
Chapman/Leonard
Studio Equip. 35
Chrosziel Gmbh 106
Cinebags, Inc. 112
Cinematography
Electronics 69
Cinekinetic 112
Cinelease 23
Cineo Lighting 81
Convergent Design 89
Cooke Optics 15
Creative Industry
Handbook 115
CTT Exp & Rentals 108
CW Sonderoptic Gmbh 61
Deck of Aces 113

Digital Sputnik Lighting
Systems 33
DMG Technologies/DMG
Lumiere 109
Duclos Lenses 97
Eastman Kodak C4
Filmotechnic 110
F.J. Westcott 105
Fluotec Sapi De CV 99
Quixote/Smashbox Studios 65
Rag Place, The 104

Glidecam Industries 67
Grip Factory Munich/GFM 107 Really Right Stuff 84
RED Camera 36-37
Group TVA/Mels Studios
Revolution 435 D&C/Bolt Stage
and post 95
Mexico 93
Haskell Wexler 3-pack 100
RTS 25
Hawk 83
Scheimpflug Rentals 69
Hollywood Rentals 70
Schneider Optics 2, 55
Horita Company, Inc. 113
Selected Tables 114
Hulu, LLC 11, 13
Shape WLB, Inc. 101
J.L. Fisher, Inc. 71
Siggraph 119
Jod Soraci 106
Super16, Inc. 113
K5600 63
Teradek, LLC C2-1
Kino Flo 54
Thales Angenieux 21
Koerner Camera Systems 108 Tiffen 79
Ledsmaster/Ledsfilm 7
Ushio America, Inc. 107
Lee Filters 85
Vantage Gmbh 83
Lights! Action! Co. 112
Visionsmith/Hexolux 113
Maccam 98
Vitec Videocom 47
Mac Tech LED 77
Willys Widgets 112
Manfrotto Distribution 49
www.theasc.com 100,
Matthews Studio
104, 113
Equipment/MSE 97
Mole-Richardson/Studio
Depot 111, 112
Movie Tech AG 113
NBC/Universal 77
Nila, Inc. 69
114
P+S Technik Feinmechanik

Gmbh 113
Panasonic Communications Co.
5
Panavision, Inc. C3
Pille Filmgeraeteverleih
Gmbh 112
Powermills 112
Pro8mm 112
American Society of Cinematographers Roster

OFFICERS 2015-16
Richard Crudo,
President
Owen Roizman,
Vice President
Kees van Oostrum,
Vice President
Lowell Peterson,
Vice President
Matthew Leonetti,
Treasurer
Frederic Goodich,
Secretary
Isidore Mankofsky,
Sergeant-at-Arms
MEMBERS
OF THE BOARD
John Bailey
Bill Bennett
Richard Crudo
George Spiro Dibie
Richard Edlund
Fred Elmes
Michael Goi
Victor J. Kemper
Isidore Mankofsky
Daryn Okada
Lowell Peterson
Robert Primes
Owen Roizman
Rodney Taylor
Kees van Oostrum
ALTERNATES
Kenneth Zunder
Francis Kenny
John C. Flinn III
Steven Fierberg
116
June 2016
ACTIVE MEMBERS
Thomas Ackerman
Lance Acord
Marshall Adams
Javier Aguirresarobe
Lloyd Ahern II
Russ Alsobrook
Howard A. Anderson III
James Anderson
Peter Anderson
Tony Askins
Christopher Baffa
James Bagdonas
King Baggot
John Bailey
Florian Ballhaus
Michael Ballhaus
Michael Barrett
Andrzej Bartkowiak
John Bartley
Bojan Bazelli
Frank Beascoechea
Affonso Beato
Mat Beck
Dion Beebe
Bill Bennett
Andres Berenguer
Carl Berger
Gabriel Beristain
Steven Bernstein
Ross Berryman
Josh Bleibtreu
Oliver Bokelberg
Michael Bonvillain
Richard Bowen
David Boyd
Russell Boyd
Uta Briesewitz
Jonathan Brown
Don Burgess
Stephen H. Burum
Bill Butler
Frank B. Byers
Bobby Byrne
Patrick Cady
Sharon Calahan
Antonio Calvache
Paul Cameron
Gary Capo
Russell P. Carpenter
James L. Carter
Lula Carvalho
Alan Caso
Vanja ernjul
Michael Chapman
Rodney Charters
Enrique Chediak
Christopher Chomyn
James A. Chressanthis
T.C. Christensen
Joan Churchill
Curtis Clark
Peter L. Collister
Jack Cooperman
Jack Couffer
Vincent G. Cox
Jeff Cronenweth
Richard Crudo
Dean R. Cundey
Stefan Czapsky
David Darby
Allen Daviau
Roger Deakins
Jan de Bont
Thomas Del Ruth
Bruno Delbonnel
Peter Deming
Jim Denault
Caleb Deschanel
Ron Dexter
Craig DiBona
George Spiro Dibie
Ernest Dickerson
Billy Dickson
Bill Dill
Anthony Dod Mantle
Mark Doering-Powell
Stuart Dryburgh
Bert Dunk
Lex duPont
John Dykstra
Richard Edlund
Eagle Egilsson
Frederick Elmes
Robert Elswit
Scott Farrar
Jon Fauer
Don E. FauntLeRoy
Gerald Feil
Cort Fey
Steven Fierberg
Mauro Fiore
John C. Flinn III
Anna Foerster
Larry Fong
Ron Fortunato
Greig Fraser
Jonathan Freeman
Tak Fujimoto
Alex Funke
Steve Gainer
Robert Gantz
Ron Garcia
David Geddes
Dejan Georgevich
Michael Goi
Stephen Goldblatt
Paul Goldsmith
Frederic Goodich
Nathaniel Goodman
Victor Goss
Jack Green
Adam Greenberg
Robbie Greenberg
Xavier Grobet
Alexander Gruszynski
Rick Gunter
Rob Hahn
Gerald Hirschfeld
Henner Hofmann
Adam Holender
Ernie Holzman
John C. Hora
Tom Houghton
Gil Hubbs
Paul Hughen
Shane Hurlbut
Tom Hurwitz
Judy Irola
Mark Irwin
Levie Isaacks
Peter James
Johnny E. Jensen
Matthew Jensen
Jon Joffin
Frank Johnson
Shelly Johnson
Jeffrey Jur
Adam Kane
Stephen M. Katz
Ken Kelsch
Victor J. Kemper
Wayne Kennan
Francis Kenny
Glenn Kershaw
Darius Khondji
Gary Kibbe
Jan Kiesser
Jeffrey L. Kimball
Adam Kimmel
Alar Kivilo
David Klein
Richard Kline
George Koblasa
Fred J. Koenekamp
Lajos Koltai
Pete Kozachik
Neil Krepela
Willy Kurant
Ellen M. Kuras
Christian La Fountaine
George La Fountaine
Edward Lachman
Jacek Laskus
Rob Legato
Denis Lenoir
John R. Leonetti
Matthew Leonetti
Peter Levy
Matthew Libatique
Charlie Lieberman
Stephen Lighthill
John Lindley
Robert F. Liu
Walt Lloyd
Bruce Logan
Gordon Lonsdale
Emmanuel Lubezki
Julio G. Macat
Glen MacPherson
Paul Maibaum
Constantine Makris
Denis Maloney
Isidore Mankofsky
Christopher Manley
Michael D. Margulies
Barry Markowitz
Steve Mason
Clark Mathis
Don McAlpine
Don McCuaig
Michael McDonough
Seamus McGarvey
Robert McLachlan
Geary McLeod
Greg McMurry
Steve McNutt
Terry K. Meade
Suki Medencevic
Chris Menges
Rexford Metz
Anastas Michos
David Miller
Douglas Milsome
Dan Mindel
Charles Minsky
Claudio Miranda
George Mooradian
Reed Morano
Donald A. Morgan
Donald M. Morgan
Kramer Morgenthau
Peter Moss
David Moxness
M. David Mullen
Dennis Muren
Fred Murphy
Hiro Narita
Guillermo Navarro
Michael B. Negrin
Sol Negrin
James Neihouse
Bill Neil
Alex Nepomniaschy
John Newby
Yuri Neyman
Sam Nicholson
Crescenzo Notarile
David B. Nowell
Rene Ohashi
Daryn Okada
Thomas Olgeirsson
Woody Omens
Michael D. OShea
Vince Pace
Anthony Palmieri
Phedon Papamichael
J U N E
2 0 1 6
Daniel Pearl
Brian Pearson
Edward J. Pei
James Pergola
Dave Perkal
Lowell Peterson
Wally Pfister
Sean MacLeod Phillips
Bill Pope
Steven Poster
Tom Priestley Jr.
Rodrigo Prieto
Robert Primes
Frank Prinzi
Cynthia Pusheck
Richard Quinlan
Declan Quinn
Earl Rath
Richard Rawlings Jr.
Frank Raymond
Tami Reiker
Robert Richardson
Anthony B. Richmond
Tom Richmond
Bill Roe
Owen Roizman
Pete Romano
Giuseppe Rotunno
Philippe Rousselot
Juan Ruiz-Anchia
Marvin Rush
Paul Ryan
Eric Saarinen
Alik Sakharov
Mikael Salomon
Paul Sarossy
Roberto Schaefer
Tobias Schliessler
Aaron Schneider
Nancy Schreiber
Fred Schuler
John Schwartzman
John Seale
Christian Sebaldt
Joaquin Sedillo
Dean Semler
Ben Seresin
Eduardo Serra
Steven Shaw
Lawrence Sher
Richard Shore
Newton Thomas Sigel
Steven V. Silver
John Simmons
Sandi Sissel
Santosh Sivan
Michael Slovis
Dennis L. Smith
Roland Ozzie Smith
Reed Smoot
Bing Sokolsky
Peter Sova
Dante Spinotti
Buddy Squires
Terry Stacey
Eric Steelberg
Ueli Steiger
Peter Stein
Tom Stern
Robert M. Stevens
David Stockton
Rogier Stoffers
Vittorio Storaro
Harry Stradling Jr.
David Stump
Tim Suhrstedt
Peter Suschitzky
Attila Szalay
Masanobu Takayanagi
Jonathan Taylor
Rodney Taylor
William Taylor
Romeo Tirone
John Toll
Mario Tosi
Salvatore Totino
Luciano Tovoli
Jost Vacano
Stijn van der Veken
Theo van de Sande
Eric van Haren Noman
Hoyte van Hoytema
Kees van Oostrum
Checco Varese
Ron Vargas
Mark Vargo
Amelia Vincent
William Wages
Roy H. Wagner
Mandy Walker
Michael Watkins
Michael Weaver
William Billy Webb
Jonathan West
Jack Whitman
Lisa Wiegand
Jo Willems
Stephen F. Windon
Dariusz Wolski
Ralph Woolsey
Peter Wunstorf
Steve Yedlin
Robert Yeoman
Bradford Young
Richard Yuricich
Jerzy Zielinski
Kenneth Zunder
ASSOCIATE MEMBERS
Pete Abel
Rich Abel
Alan Albert
Richard Aschman
Kay Baker
Joseph J. Ball
Amnon Band
Carly M. Barber
Craig Barron
Thomas M. Barron
Larry Barton
Wolfgang Baumler
Bob Beitcher
Mark Bender
Bruce Berke
Steven A. Blakely
Joseph Bogacz
Jill Bogdanowicz
Mitchell Bogdanowicz
Jens Bogehegn
Michael Bravin
Simon Broad
Michael Brodersen
William Brodersen
Garrett Brown
Terry Brown
Reid Burns
Vincent Carabello
Jim Carter
Martin Cayzer
Leonard Chapman
Mark Chiolis
Michael Cioni
Denny Clairmont
Adam Clark
Cary Clayton
Dave Cole
Michael Condon
Grover Crisp
Peter Crithary
Daniel Curry
Marc Dando
Ross Danielson
Carlos D. DeMattos
Gary Demos
Mato Der Avanessian
Kevin Dillon
David Dodson
Judith Doherty
Peter Doyle
Cyril Drabinsky
Jesse Dylan
Jonathan Erland
Ray Feeney
William Feightner
Jimmy Fisher
Thomas Fletcher
Claude Gagnon
Salvatore Giarratano
John A. Gresch
Jim Hannafin
Bill Hansard Jr.
Lisa Harp
Richard Hart
Robert Harvey
Michael Hatzer
Josh Haynie
Fritz Heinzle
Charles Herzfeld
Larry Hezzelwood
Frieder Hochheim
Bob Hoffman
Vinny Hogan
Cliff Hsui
Robert C. Hummel
Zo Iltsopoulos-Borys
Jim Jannard
George Joblove
Joel Johnson
Eric Johnston
John Johnston
Mike Kanfer
Andreas Kaufmann
Marker Karahadian
Frank Kay
Debbie Kennard
Glenn Kennel
Robert Keslow
Lori Killam
Douglas Kirkland
Mark Kirkland
Scott Klein
Timothy J. Knapp
Franz Kraus
Karl Kresser
Jarred Land
Chuck Lee
Doug Leighton
Lou Levinson
Suzanne Lezotte
Grant Loucks
Howard Lukk
Andy Maltz
Gary Mandle
Steven E. Manios Jr.
Steven E. Manios Sr.
Chris Mankofsky
Michael Mansouri
Frank Marsico
Peter Martin
Robert Mastronardi
Joe Matza
Albert Mayer Jr.
Bill McDonald
Dennis McDonald
Karen McHugh
Andy McIntyre
Stan Miller
Walter H. Mills
George Milton
Mike Mimaki
Michael Morelli
Dash Morrison
Nolan Murdock
Dan Muscarella
Iain A. Neil
Otto Nemenz
Ernst Nettmann
Tony Ngai
www.theasc.com
Jeff Okun
Marty Oppenheimer
Walt Ordway
Ahmad Ouri
Michael Parker
Dhanendra Patel
Elliot Peck
Kristin Petrovich
Ed Phillips
Nick Phillips
Tyler Phillips
Joshua Pines
Carl Porcello
Sherri Potter
Howard Preston
Sarah Priestnall
David Pringle
Doug Pruss
David Reisner
Christopher Reyna
Colin Ritchie
Eric G. Rodli
Domenic Rom
Andy Romanoff
Frederic Rose
Daniel Rosen
Dana Ross
Bill Russell
Chris Russo
Kish Sadhvani
Dan Sasaki
Steve Schklair
Peter K. Schnitzler
Walter Schonfeld
Wayne Schulman
Alexander Schwarz
Steven Scott
Alec Shapiro
Don Shapiro
Milton R. Shefter
Ryan Sheridan
Marc Shipman-Mueller
Leon Silverman
Rob Sim
Garrett Smith
Timothy E. Smith
Kimberly Snyder
Stefan Sonnenfeld
John L. Sprung
Joseph N. Tawil
Ira Tiffen
Steve Tiffen
Arthur Tostado
Jeffrey Treanor
Bill Turner
Stephan Ukas-Bradley
Mark van Horne
Dedo Weigert
Marc Weigert
Steve Weiss
Alex Wengert
Evans Wetmore
Franz Wieser
Beverly Wood
Jan Yarbrough
Hoyt Yeatman
Irwin M. Young
Michael Zacharia
Bob Zahn
Nazir Zaidi
Michael Zakula
Joachim Zell
Les Zellan
HONORARY MEMBERS
Col. Edwin E. Aldrin Jr.
Col. Michael Collins
Bob Fisher
David MacDonald
Cpt. Bruce McCandless II
Larry Mole Parker
D. Brian Spruill
Marek Zydowicz
June 2016
117
Clubhouse News
ASC, AC Attend NAB

During the recent NAB Show in Las
Vegas, AC presented the Creative Master
Series session Cinematography in Space
for A Beautiful Planet. Moderated by journalist and former AC editor David Heuring,
the session featured cinematographer
James Neihouse, ASC and space-operations consultant Marsha Ivins in conversation about the making of the Imax film.
Neihouse also appeared on Canons Live
Learning Stage on the show floor to discuss
working with the companys EOS C500 and
1D C cameras for the production.
A number of other ASC members

also participated in various events over the
course of the show. Among them were
Curtis Clark, Dejan Georgevich, David
Klein, Robert Legato, Steven Poster,
Frank Prinzi, Roberto Schaefer and
David Stump.
ASC Hosts Panasonic
VariCam LT Discussion
The Society recently opened the
doors of its Clubhouse in Hollywood for a
presentation showcasing Panasonics new
VariCam LT camera system. The evening
In Memoriam: Phil Radin

Longtime ASC associate member Philip S. Radin
died at his home in Woodland Hills on March 28. He
was 62.
Radin was born on April 3, 1953, in Los Angeles
to Morris and Bess Radin; he was the second of their
four children. He joined Panavision when he was 23,
starting in the shipping and receiving department
before moving into camera rentals. In 1987, he was
appointed the companys vice president of marketing
and sales. Responsible for Panavisions entire North
American inventory, Radin supervised all departments that interacted with cinematographers, directors and producers, and shared those filmmakers feedback with Panavisions
research and development team.
Radins significant contributions did not go unnoticed, and he was made an ASC
associate on Jan. 8, 1990, after having been proposed by ASC members Woody Omens and
Victor J. Kemper. Radin remained with Panavision for the rest of his career, and most recently
served as the companys executive vice president of worldwide marketing. In 2012, the Society of Camera Operators presented Radin with its Presidents Award.
Radin is survived by his son and daughter, Jeremy and Kayla.
118
June 2016
was launched by Bill Bennett, ASC, who

introduced associate member Doug
Leighton, Panasonics senior partner and
sales manager. The subsequent slideshow
was presented by Panasonics senior technologist Steve Mahrer, and senior production market technical specialist Aaron
Latham-James was available to answer additional questions. Society members in attendance included James A. Chressanthis,
Curtis Clark, Steven Fierberg, Victor
Goss, Mark Irwin, Jacek Laskus, Peter
Moss, James Neihouse, John Newby,
Rodrigo Prieto, Robert Primes, Christian
Sebaldt and Lisa Wiegand.
Sonnenfeld Named Deluxe CCO
ASC associate member Stefan
Sonnenfeld was recently named chief
creative officer of Deluxe Entertainment
Services Group. Sonnenfeld will continue to
work as a colorist for film and commercial
projects while developing new customer
relationships in North America.
Sonnenfeld got his start in postproduction with a summer job delivering dailies
for the series Miami Vice. He co-founded
Company 3 with Mike Pethel and Noel
Castley-Wright in 1997; the company was
purchased by Liberty Media Corp. in 2000,
then acquired by Deluxe in 2010. Sonnenfelds recent feature credits as a DI colorist
include Batman v Superman: Dawn of
Justice (AC May 16), Zoolander 2 and Star
Wars: The Force Awakens (AC Feb. 16).
Photo of Clubhouse by Isidore Mankofsky, ASC; lighting by Donald M. Morgan, ASC.

Top-right photo by Alex Lopez. Radin photo courtesy of the ASC archives.
Left, from left: David Heuring; James Neihouse, ASC; and Marsha Ivins. Right, from left: Aaron Latham-James, Steve Mahrer, associate member
Doug Leighton and Bill Bennett, ASC.
Frederic Goodich, ASC
When you were a child, what film made the strongest impression
on you?
Three in black-and-white: The Third Man, for its theme of best-friend
betrayal, and for its aggressive and tactile lighting, deep shadows and
silhouettes, backlit stone textures, the sewer-tunnel chase shots, the
striking interplay of faces, and Orson Welles insidious smile; Bicycle
Thieves, for the empathy it generated over the father and sons dilemmas, the naturalness and simplicity of the images, and the irony of a
seemingly tiny yet hugely significant family drama played out on indifferent city streets; and City Lights, for Chaplins pathos
and humor, his playfulness and gentle kindness,
and his expressive body language.
Which cinematographers, past or present, do
you most admire?
Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC, HSC; Emmanuel Lubezki,
ASC, AMC; Conrad L. Hall, ASC; Gianni Di
Venanzo, AIC; Laszlo Kovacs, ASC.
What sparked your interest in photography?
As a child, I loved to draw. On occasion, Id watch
my older cousin process and print rolls of 35mm still
film in the temporary darkroom hed set up over his
bathroom sink. One day I found myself shooting stills in my Bronx neighborhood just for the fun of it, using a 35mm Leica IIIf borrowed from a
buddy in junior high school. I realized then that making photo images
was a premier pleasure! Eventually, while at college, I found a job working in the Film Library at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City,
surrounded by prints and original negatives of films Id seen and loved in
theaters. Some of them were in bad shape. Handling them with care,
shipping prints to schools and other museums, Id incurred an enormous
responsibility. I was hooked!
Where did you train and/or study?
On the job mostly, but initially at the Robert Flaherty Institute at the City
College of New York, and later at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Who were your early teachers or mentors?
My grandmother Rose Schoenholz, and cinematographers Isidore
Mankofsky, ASC; Haskell Wexler, ASC; and Jordan Cronenweth, ASC.
What are some of your key artistic influences?
Caravaggio, John Alton and Robert Krasker, BSC, for single-source lighting ideas; Henri Cartier-Bresson, for his decisive moments; Mark
Rothko, for his spiritual use of color.
How did you get your first break in the business?
Although Id already been shooting news-style documentaries out of
Washington, D.C., a chance meeting in Venice, Calif., with a Beat Gener120
June 2016
ation critic led to steady employment, first as an assistant, then shooting and directing at Encyclopedia Britannica Films in Hollywood.
What has been your most satisfying moment on a project?
Directing, writing and producing Kickstart Theft [AC Nov. 12]. Vilmos
was the cinematographer, and he allowed me to operate only one
shot. He said it wouldnt work, but later told me it was great!
Have you made any memorable blunders?
Turning down a music-video offer in NYC from
world-famous director Ken Russell felt like a
significant blunder at the time career-wise, but
my dear wife, Donna, said I made the right decision, choosing instead to be with my son, Nik, at
his graduation in Santa Monica. Indeed, I could
always shoot another video, but Nik would graduate from high school only once. It was a celebration of family, of our dreams and aspirations.
Turning down Julie Corman to shoot a feature at
$100 a week was a true blunder career-wise.
What is the best professional advice youve
ever received?
Remain a student. Respect your crew. Collaborate.
What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you?
Book: Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood Radical. Film: Carol.
Painting: Epiphany #1 by Nikolai Soren Goodich.
Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like to
try?
Neo-film-noir.
If you werent a cinematographer, what might you be doing
instead?
Fiction writer.
Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for membership?
John Bailey, Isidore Mankofsky, Bob Primes, Peter Anderson, John Toll.
How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?
Recognized! Reinvented! Membership authenticated and reinvigorated my lifes passion the technical and artistic sides. It led to teaching and shooting gigs. And new friendships! I look forward to participating in Society activities, hanging out with colleagues of different
backgrounds, sharing issues and tales of our experiences, engaging
with students. I value the responsibility of being an ASC officer and
the chair of the ASC International Committee, grateful for the privilege and the trust bestowed.
Photo by Todd Sharp.
Close-up

2016 06 PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

2016 06 PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

THE SECOND SEASON

FOR YOUR CONSI

An International Publication of the ASC

Time and Space

Against the Clock

An International Publication of the ASC

BEYOND THE FRAME

INSIDE: AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER

Get all this and much

An International Publication of the ASC

Visit us online at www.theasc.com

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF and PUBLISHER

WEB DIRECTOR and ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

ART & DESIGN

SUBSCRIPTIONS, BOOKS & PRODUCTS

ASC GENERAL MANAGER Brett Grauman

American Society of Cinematographers

Kees van Oostrum

Our annual summer-blockbuster issue kicks off with Captain

Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.

Photo by Dana Phillip Ross.

Based on the markers of post-millennium pop stardom, none

Photos by Dan Zacharias and Zechariah Hall, courtesy of the filmmakers.

Top: Urie channels

flashlight to add moving flares.

Top: The frontman

In addition to the faux jib, camera

American Cinematographer (June 13). It

Douglas Kung Fu Fighting. The turntable

Appropriately for an adaptation of a J.G. Ballard novel, director

read the book, so I quickly bought it on Kindle. The architectural

left unanswered, although Rose feels that

used Mark II and III Zeiss Super Speeds. Ive

approach, it was not to be. I would shoot

apartments, so itll be exactly the same

shooting through the see-through mirror. The

Bottom photo courtesy of Laurie Rose.

adds that hes not overly concerned whether

If ever there were a perfect match, it

the job. When I read the script, I was eager

[cinematographers] are trained in working

going to shoot this? the cinematographer

between dolly moves and static frames. Van

to go in really tight, as if you had a different

under a winter sun, the crew controlled light

all, we used two 12Ks, three 6Ks, three 4Ks

Following Bressons maxim, van

cinematographer, and in places like an old

couple of DIY soft boxes with 500-watt

dance scene, the crew relied on candelabras

In Captain America: Civil War,

arths mightiest heroes turn against each other in Captain

Unit photography by Zade Rosenthal, SMPSP, courtesy of Marvel Studios.

The Avengers and a slate of new

clearly clicking, as Marvel has already

cool to be involved in that group

Top and middle: The

superhero, what makes Captain

great because of the Russos relationship

of a single attention-grabbing image

effects supervisor Dan Sudick as

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera

Top: Wilson, Rogers