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On a desk
AMC_0708_p003 :00 toc
6/3/08
11:12 AM
Page 3
The International Journal of Film & Digital Production Techniques
On Our Cover:
Batman (Christian Bale) is back in The Dark Knight, shot by Wally Pfister, ASC. (Photo by Stephen
Vaughan, SMPSP, courtesy of Warner Bros.)
Features 30
46
54
64
Departments
8
10
14
18
68
74
78
79
80
82
84
88
Batman Looms Larger

Wally Pfister, ASC combines Imax and 35mm
formats on The Dark Knight
A Not-So-Super Hero
Tobias Schliessler spoofs superhero genre
with Hancock
Spy vs. Spy
46
Dean Semler, ASC, ACS updates Get Smart
Laugh Factory
Vanja Cernjul
lampoons network comedy on 30 Rock
Editors Note
Global Village: Torn from the Flag
Short Takes: On a Tuesday
Production Slate: Before the Rains
54
WALLE
Post Focus: CineSync Streamlines Dark Knight Effects
New Products & Services

International Marketplace
Classified Ads
Ad Index
In Memoriam: Burton Bud Stone, Honorary ASC
Clubhouse News
ASC Close-Up: Bill Taylor
64
V i s i t u s o n l i n e a t w w w. t h e a s c . c o m
AMC_0708_p004:masthead
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11:15 AM
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J u l y
2 0 0 8
V o l .
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The International Journal of Film & Digital Production Techniques Since 1920
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4
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 Kim Weston
ASC ACCOUNTING MANAGER Mila Basely
ASC ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE Corey Clark
American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 88th 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
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office. Article Reprints: Requests for high-quality article reprints should be made to Sheridan Reprints at
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postage paid at Los Angeles, CA and at additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA.
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5/31/08
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AMC_0708_p006 _R2:00 board
6/5/08
12:32 PM
Page 6
American Society of Cinematographers

The ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but
an educational, cultural and professional
organization. Membership is by invitation
to those who are actively engaged as
directors of photography and have
demonstrated outstanding ability. ASC
membership has become one of the highest
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Michael Negrin
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John Hora
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MEMBERS OF THE BOARD

Richard Crudo
Caleb Deschanel
George Spiro Dibie
Richard Edlund
William A. Fraker
Michael Goi
John Hora
Victor J. Kemper
Francis Kenny
Isidore Mankofsky
Robert Primes
Owen Roizman
Dante Spinotti
Kees Van Oostrum
Haskell Wexler
ALTERNATES
Stephen Lighthill
Matthew Leonetti
Sol Negrin
James Chressanthis
Steven Fierberg
MUSEUM CURATOR
6
Steve Gainer
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Editors Note
hen a summer blockbuster inspires sequels, the folks
behind the camera must create bigger thrills as the
franchise advances. After successfully re-imagining
Gotham City in Batman Begins, director Christopher Nolan
and cinematographer Wally Pfister, ASC topped themselves by filming portions of The Dark Knight in Imax 65mm.
Its ironic, Pfister notes, because many filmmakers are
trying out digital cameras that actually capture less resolution and information, and were going in the opposite direction, upping the ante by capturing images with unparalleled
resolution and clarity. The filmmakers ultimately shot
several key action sequences in 15-perf 65mm, marking the first time a major motion
picture has mixed the 35mm and Imax formats. I think the fact that it was unprecedented was a big selling point for the studio, Nolan muses. They probably didnt truly
get what we wanted to do until they saw the first test reel, which blew them away.
Judging by the details in David Heurings comprehensive article (Batman Looms Larger,
page 30), audiences will also be impressed.
While The Dark Knight brings a somber, operatic tone to its superhero saga,
Hancock offers a lighthearted but still action-packed take on the genre. Will Smith stars
as the titular hero, a homeless man endowed with super-powers but freighted with
human flaws. Despite the movies whimsical slant, cinematographer Tobias Schliessler
faced complex logistics, including lighting challenges that resulted from director Peter
Bergs mandate of handheld camerawork. I wouldnt say [the movie] was shot like a
documentary, because Peter rehearsed the actors, but it was shot very freely,
Schliessler tells writer Jay Holben (A Not-So-Super Hero, page 46).
Slapstick is also in high supply on Get Smart, an update of the gleefully silly
TV series that initially aired from 1965-70. Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway portray this
generations Maxwell Smart and Agent 99; their antic attempts at espionage were
captured by Dean Semler, ASC, ACS, who once again stood behind Panavisions Genesis. My crew is now very familiar with the Genesis, and theyve learned to discover the
camera, he tells Noah Kadner (Spy vs. Spy, page 54). It is different in that its a
computer instead of a film camera. But its 2008, and the digital era is no longer the
future were in it.
If your ribs can stand further tickling, tune in to the next season of 30 Rock, the
popular NBC series that skewers network comedy. Based on creator and star Tina Feys
experiences as head writer on Saturday Night Live, the show is shot by Vanja Cernjul,
who landed the gig after shooting a string of indie features and the pilot for Ugly Betty.
He enjoys the visual variety the series affords: We dont have one formula for the whole
show, because the look is really based on the storylines, he tells Jon Silberg (Laugh
Factory, page 64). Even within an episode, we can be very realistic for one storyline
and extremely stylized for another.
This issue also marks two milestones, one sad and one happy: the passing of
honorary ASC member Burton Bud Stone (In Memoriam, page 82), and a groundbreaking that will pave the way for the ASCs future (Clubhouse News, page 84). Bud
helped lay a solid foundation for cinematographers and the Society, and his generous
spirit will surely grace the halls of the refurbished Clubhouse.
Stephen Pizzello
Executive Editor
Photo by Douglas Kirkland.
5/31/08
8:38 PM
Page 1
AMC_0708_p010p012:00 global village
6/3/08
11:25 AM
Page 10
Global Village
Torn from the Flag: Laszlo Kovacs, ASC Takes a Final Bow
by Bob Fisher
Left: Budapests
Corvin Circle, the
site of a major
battle of the 1956
Hungarian
uprising, is
shown during a
lull in the
fighting. The flag
with the hole in
the center
became the
emblem of the
revolution. Right:
A Soviet tank
dumped into a
Budapest public
toilet entrance
during the
fighting.
10 July 2008
egendary cinematographer Laszlo

Kovacs, ASC earned his final credit
for the documentary Torn from the
Flag, which revisits a subject close to his
heart: the 1956 Hungarian Revolution,
when citizens rose up against the
Communist regime but were crushed by
the Soviet Army. (The title refers to the
Communist hammer-and-sickle insignia
that was ripped from Hungarian flags
during the uprising.) As very young men,
Kovacs and fellow Hungarian Vilmos
Zsigmond (future ASC) shot much of the
footage of the rebellion featured in
Torn from the Flag, which also
includes interviews with freedom fighters, politicians and historians.
At the time of the uprising, Zsigmond had graduated from the Academy
of Drama and Film in Budapest, and
Kovacs was in his final year of study
there. The young cameramen borrowed

a 35mm Arri camera, took some film
stock from the school and documented
civilians battling the Soviet Army with
small arms, Molotov cocktails and their
bare hands. Bullets were flying, and the
Soviets were arresting and executing
people caught with cameras or film.
After the revolt was crushed, Kovacs
and Zsigmond made a perilous trek on
foot across the border into Austria,
smuggling out their exposed film.
Torn from the Flag was conceived
by Klaudia Kovacs (no relation) and codirected by her and Endre Hules, who
spent six months on the project.
Although Klaudia hails from Hungary,
she says she knew absolutely nothing
about the revolution while I was growing up. She met Zsigmond at an exhibition of his still photography in Los Angeles around 1999. I just walked up to him
and introduced myself; we have a
mutual friend, still photographer Peter
Sorel [SMPSP], who is also a Hungarian
expatriate. Vilmos and other Hungarians
he introduced me to started telling me

about their experiences during the revolution.
In 1998, a Hungarian TV network
asked Klaudia to produce a short
segment about the uprising. She
conducted interviews with expatriates
living in Los Angeles. Hearing their
stories was a cathartic experience, she
recalls, but the TV station withdrew its
offer at the last moment. She turned to
George Adams, a producer with whom
she had collaborated on plays and short
films. He encouraged her to make her
own film and agreed to contribute as
associate producer. George was with
me during the entire nine-year process
of making this film, she says. He is a
fantastic collaborator.
In 1999, Klaudia and Adams
wrote a letter to Zsigmond describing
her intentions for the film and asking if
he would agree to be interviewed on
camera. When they met, he volunteered
to film the interviews; later, when he
took a feature-film assignment, he intro-
AMC_0308_pCV 3:Layout 1
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6/3/08
11:25 AM
Page 12
Right: Laszlo
Kovacs, ASC,
shown on
location with
writer-director
Klaudia Kovacs
as the two
filmed
interviews for
the documentary.
Below: Vilmos
Zsigmond, ASC
confers with
Kovacs.
duced Klaudia to Laszlo Kovacs, who

stepped into the breach. Both cinematographers also agreed to larger roles
as executive producers on the project.
Laszlo and Vilmos and I were on a journey together, says Klaudia.
In addition to providing insight,
the veteran cinematographers helped to
give the project credibility, she adds.
They introduced her to people at Panavision in Los Angeles, who selected her
for the companys New Filmmaker
Program, which provided free camera
gear. She got additional support from
Sparks, Ltd., a rental house in Hungary
partially owned by Zsigmond. They also
introduced her to people at Technicolor,
which provided postproduction support,
including the digital intermediate (DI).
12 July 2008
The filmmakers researched and

gathered footage and still photographs
from archives in the United States,
Hungary and Russia. Joseph Miko,
another cinematographer who filmed in
Hungary during the uprising, arranged
to have the Hungarian National Film
Archive provide his footage at no
charge. (Miko died in May 2008 at the
age of 87.) Scenes of the uprising came
in a range of formats, including Betacam, DigiBeta and VHS; that material
was color-corrected and up-rezzed to
16x9 high-definition video in the DI. The
filmmakers are currently seeking funding to make a 35mm print.
The archival material is intercut
with footage from about 30 interviews,
which were done in the U.S., Hungary,
Russia and Italy. In discussing the right

look for the interviews, Laszlo and Klaudia watched the drama Reds, shot by
Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC, and the
documentary The Fog of War, shot by
Peter Donahue and Robert Chappell (AC
March 04). According to Adams, they
agreed that the subject called for a
strong, dramatic look. Laszlo chose
black backgrounds for the interviews,
says Adams. He wanted the audience
totally focused on the person talking.
He lit half of the subjects face and left
the other half in shadows, and he used
an eyelight to make intimate contact
with the audience.
Interviews were shot with a
Panavised Sony HDW-F900, mostly
with an 8-72mm T1.9 Primo Digital
zoom lens. When Laszlos failing health
made his participation impossible, his
assistant, Zoltan Honti, stepped up to
cinematographer. Id ask myself what
Laszlo would have done with each
person, he says. Then Id put a face
partially in shadows and put a sparkle in
the eyes.
Zsigmond says Torn from the
Flag carries an important message:
People were incredibly brave during
the uprising, and that shouldnt be
forgotten. Klaudia recalls, Laszlo was
very proud of his contribution to this
movie; he often said, I owe it to my
country. Generations have grown up
with little or no knowledge of the
Hungarian Revolution, and we have an
obligation to tell them what it was like.
Many people told me Id never
make this film, she continues, but
Laszlo never questioned whether I
could. For that, Im very grateful to him.
Torn from the Flag was given its
world premiere at AFI Fest 2007. It has
since screened at a number of other
festivals, including one in Tiburon,
Calif., where it won the Golden Reel
Award for Best Cinematography.
I
Photos by George Adams (top) and Peter Sorel, courtesy of Klaudia Kovacs.
AMC_0708_p010p012:00 global village
6/3/08
3:16 PM
Page 1
AMC_0708_p014p017:00 short takes
6/3/08
11:16 AM
Page 14
Short Takes
On a Tuesday Exploits Panoramic Format
For the short film

On a Tuesday,
director David
Scott Smith and
cinematographer
Svetlana Cvetko
framed the
action in the
3.18:1 aspect
ratio inspired by
the panoramic
setting on their
Kodak Advanced
Photo System
(APS) still
camera. The
production
gained access to
San Franciscos
City Hall to tell
the story of a
couple (Peter
Holden and Sally
Nacker) getting
married in the
middle of a busy
afternoon.
14 July 2008
ts a story about a couple getting

married, says first-time director
David Scott Smith of his short film
On a Tuesday. After a pause, he adds,
Actually, its more about a beautiful
moment hidden within a busy life.
For the most part, that describes
how Smith and cinematographer Svetlana Cvetko approached the film: start
with a broad concept and then dial into
its deeper meaning.
Smiths background is in motionpicture editing, which is how he and
Cvetko met. An expatriate of the former
Yugoslavia, Cvetko came to America in
the late 1980s as a still photographer
who was interested in making a transition into cinematography. She settled in
the San Francisco Bay Area and took film

classes through the University of California-Berkeley extension program. One of
her first film projects was a documentary
about the conflict in Bosnia, No War,
which she shot and directed. After five
trips to the Balkan Peninsula, she had
accumulated a mountain of footage, and
a friend introduced her to Smith, who
agreed to cut the film for her. They have
worked together in varying capacities
ever since.
On a Tuesday takes place over the
course of an afternoon in and around
San Franciscos City Hall. The filmmakers
scouted the location using their Kodak
Advanced Photo System (APS) camera;
the short-lived 24mm APS film format is
distinctive for its native 1.77:1 aspect

ratio, which Cvetko knew would represent the standard 1.85:1 frame. It just
wasnt feeling strong, she recalls. It
looked very ordinary, and we knew we
didnt want this movie to be ordinary.
Many professional APS cameras
come equipped with three different
frame settings: the native 16:9 H
frame, the 4:3 C frame, and the 3:1
P frame. Setting her camera to the P
setting, Cvetko took a second look. It
was breathtaking. The space was just
asking to be seen that way. She
handed the camera to Smith, who
agreed theyd stumbled upon something
unusual and exciting. The story is a
very simple one; what we needed was
Photos by Victoria Smith, Marcy Maloy and Svetlana Cvetko, courtesy of David Scott Smith.
by Iain Stasukevich
AMC_Sup_0308_pCV
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4:10 PM
Page 1
Right: The extrawide frame

encouraged
Cvetko (below
left) to
experiment with
her compositions
while
emphasizing the
characters
surroundings.
Bottom: The
womans eyes
follow her new
husband as he
runs back to
work. The film,
Smith says, is
about a beautiful
moment hidden
within a busy
life.
16 July 2008
6/3/08
11:16 AM
another layer of beauty to help capture

the essence of the film, he says.
Smith and Cvetko decided to
shoot On a Tuesday in Super 35mm
(using Kodak Vision2 5205 250D) with
the intention of finishing on film. Smith
scanned one of the panoramic APS
photos theyd taken while scouting and
used Adobe Photoshop to measure the
image size, which was 3.18:1. Lee
Utterbach in San Francisco provided the
production with an Arri 535B and Cooke
S4 prime lenses. The team couldnt
afford a custom 3.18 ground glass, so
during prep, Cvetko shot a framing chart
and matted off the picture area on all
the video-assist monitors. Initially, the
Page 16
filmmakers were concerned the effect

might not work in post, so Smith asked
Cvetko to use 3.18 framing but shoot for
2.35 safe. 1st AC Tom Spingola mounted
a masked 8" LCD monitor above the
cameras eyepiece so Cvetko could
check the frame without straying from
the camera, but even so, shooting for
two different aspect ratios quickly
became a troublesome experience. It
was really stressful on the first day,
says Cvetko. Im very obsessive about
my composition, and switching between
the eyepiece and the monitor wasnt
working for me. Shooting digitally definitely lends itself better to operating by
a monitor, but with film, I really love that
final check of looking through the
eyepiece.
This is one instance where the
trust Cvetko and Smith had built paid off
on set. At the end of the first day, David
saw my frustration and said, Just go for
it and well make it work, she recalls.
He didnt want me to have to
constantly worry about whether it was
better for 2.35 or 3.18.
Once she was free to experiment
more confidently with the panoramic
frame, Cvetko discovered it offered as
many challenges as it did opportunities.

While the ultra-widescreen format
proved ideal for isolating and accentuating the finer details of City Halls sweeping Beaux Arts design, it was less so for
shooting singles of the two actors
sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in conversation, as they do in one scene in the
buildings rotunda. This scene, which
takes place just minutes prior to the civil
ceremony, is an important one for the
couple and a defining moment for the
style of the film. We couldnt get
singles, says Smith. It wasnt until
Svetlana started exploring that she
came up with this anti-framing, putting
the groom far on the right in one shot,
whereas traditionally he would be
framed to the left. The same goes for
the bride, who is framed to the left.
When the two shots are juxtaposed,
they seem to bring the couple closer
together.
Getting permission to shoot in
and around San Francisco City Hall was
a coup; the building had been off-limits
to short-form productions for almost a
decade in the wake of a feature-production accident that caused a devastating
flood in the buildings rotunda. On a
6/3/08
11:16 AM
Page 17
Cvetko and Smith share a moment with Nacker on location.
Tuesday was allowed to shoot there

because of our professionalism,
because our crew size was 50, and
because of our incredibly experienced
gaffer, Arthur Aravena, says Smith.
Smith and Cvetko knew they
would be working under strict time and
location limitations, so they made sure
to block out every shot before a single
frame of film was exposed, using the
APS camera as a storyboarding tool. I
took photos that truly represented what
I was looking for, recalls the cinematographer. On set, I was trying to
match the framing of the stills and keep
the natural element of the building. To
me, there is no difference between cinematography and photography; I try to
compose every frame so it looks like a
still photo if you freeze it.
As physical production drew
near, Cvetko noticed the quality of the
sunlight entering City Hall was changing
from day to day. Three months had
passed since the first location scout in
January, when the winter sun was
lower in the sky and entered the buildings windows more directly. By April,
many of the naturally lit interior locations she had fallen in love with were
doused in shadows. The unpredictable
local weather didnt help, either. When
we did the original scout, we were there
on what were probably going to be the
two most beautiful days of the year,
says Cvetko. The day we actually shot
it, it was probably the rainiest and darkest day of the year! Fortunately, she
knew ahead of time shed be shooting
almost wide open even on a bright day

and placed an order for some big
daylight-balanced lamps as backups.
Shooting in City Hall meant facing a
challenging combination of some really
bright places and some really dark
places, and it was interesting to watch
Svetlana work with Arthur to balance all
that out, notes Smith.
Production wrapped after two
weeks of weekend shooting. Alpha Cine
Labs in Seattle processed the footage,
and Smith, who planned to edit the film,
had the footage transferred to HDCam
SR 4:4:4 masters at Encore Hollywood,
where colorist Steve Porter collaborated
with the filmmakers on the digital intermediate (DI).
Cvetko and Smith were so
pleased with Porters work on the dailies
that very little color-correction was
needed at the DI stage. At that point,
most of the work went into properly
composing the films unique aspect ratio
on the final print. Multiple finishing
formats were considered, and in the
end, the filmmakers decided a flat print
hard-matted for 3.18 would be best.
The final transfer to film was
performed at EFilm, and there was some
concern about whether the HD online
master transferred to 35mm would
retain enough resolution for an acceptable theatrical presentation, but when
we saw the first test print, it looked
fantastic, says Smith. Cvetko adds,
We are both perfectionists, and we
wanted to have as great a film as we
could afford.
I
17
AMC_0708_p018p029:00 production slate
6/3/08
11:20 AM
Page 18
Production Slate
Colonial Drama and Futuristic Comedy
Tragedy in India
by Jean Oppenheimer
An adulterous affair between an
English spice exporter, Moores (Linus
Roache), and his Indian housemaid,
Sajani (Nandita Das), sets the stage for
tragedy in Before the Rains, a drama set
in India in 1937. Equally in jeopardy is the
plantation owners right-hand man, T.K.
(Rahul Bose), whose knowledge of the
illicit relationship makes him an accomplice in the eyes of his fellow villagers.
Torn between loyalty to the tradition of
his culture and allegiance to Moores and
the opportunities he offers, T.K. serves as
a thinly veiled metaphor for the promise
and perils of British Colonialism.
Before the Rains was directed
and shot by Santosh Sivan, ISC (The
Terrorist, AC April 99) amid the lush
18 July 2008
forest and majestic mountains of Kerala,

a state in southern India. Sivan was born
and raised in Kerala and brought with
him a special feel for the surroundings.
The landscape hasnt changed much
since the 1930s, he says. People have
worked hard to maintain the ecological
balance in the area, so nature hasnt
been tampered with.
Before the Rains is very much
about the land, he continues. Rather
than use telephoto lenses, I wanted to
go with a wide kind of feel, where you
have people, frogs and insects in sharp
focus in the foreground while the background is slightly blurred. He favored
16mm and 18mm lenses for these shots.
Sivan, who attended the Film and
Television Institute of India, points to the
late Subrata Mitra, the great Indian cinematographer who worked with Satyajit
Ray, as perhaps his greatest influence,

especially in terms of framing. In Rays
films, people are almost always seen in
relation to the landscape and the sky;
they are either dominating the landscape or being eaten up by it. I wanted
to achieve something similar in Before
the Rains.
The storys themes were a major
influence on the visual design. To help
underscore the clash of cultures, Sivan
tried to incorporate contrasting images
and/or colors within the shots. Some
occurred naturally, such as the contrast
in skin tones between the pale Moores
and his Indian mistress. At other times,
production design and wardrobe were
crucial, as in the contrast between
Moores neutral-colored attire and
Sajanis bright saris and sparkling
jewelry.
Before the Rains photos by Alphonse Roy, courtesy of MIP/Roadside Attractions.
In a scene from
Before the
Rains, Moores
(Linus Roache,
left) and T.K.
(Rahul Bose),
his right-hand
man, chart the
path of a new
mountain road
in India that
will bring
Moores great
wealth.
AMC_0807_p015
6/29/07
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6/3/08
11:21 AM
Page 20
Not surprisingly, the concept of

contrast extended to the lighting
warm light and cold light meeting each
other is how Sivan describes it. He
tried to shoot exteriors when the light
was fleeting, in early morning or at
magic hour, and consistently used an 85
or 81EF filter on the lens. The cold light
of early dawn, dusk and the night sky is
juxtaposed with the warm light of interiors and fire-lit exteriors.
T.K.s living quarters, essentially
a shack on Moores property, is hazy
with thick, honey-colored light. We
dimmed the [practical] bulb down to 30
percent and augmented that light with
a bank of tungsten lights wired through
dimmers. The look of most interiors was
modeled on the paintings of Raja Ravi
Varma, who is an icon in India. He
painted gods and goddesses in beautiful light and costumes, and his feel for
light has been a big influence on many
Above: Moores
and his maid,
Sajani (Nandita
Das), steal away
to the forest for
an intimate
encounter. Right:
In T.K.s quarters,
T.K. and Moores
debate what to
do with Sajani,
who asks for
help after being
beaten by her
husband.
20 July 2008
of my films, especially this one.

Sivan tried to minimize the use of
artificial light outdoors. When he needed
it, usually for a night scene, he set up big
sources pushed through large frames of
white diffusion. He points to one such
magic sky shot, which shows villagers
carrying torches crossing a bridge on
their way to seize T.K., whom they
suspect of killing Sajani. Sivan waited
until just after dusk to film the scene and
relied on HMIs pushed through diffusion.
The flames from the torches contrast
markedly with the cold sky.
Both kinds of light can also be
seen during a sequence in which
Moores and his wife (Jennifer Ehle) are
entertaining a British official. The inside
of the Moores home is lit with Jem
Lights dimmed down to a golden glow.
(Ostensibly, the light comes from the
chandeliers and lamps scattered
throughout the house.) During the scene,
the Moores dog starts barking, and
Moores grabs his rifle and goes out to
investigate. A short distance from the
house, he finds Sajani in the bushes,
battered and bruised. HMIs pushed
through white diffusion keep the foreground a chilly blue, while the warm
light of the house stands out in the background.
In one of the films most arresting
sequences, T.K. is tried by the village
council for Sajanis murder. A panicstricken T.K. cowers on the dirt floor in
the middle of the circle, surrounded by
village elders who sit in rows of chairs.
One of the villagers crouches next to
T.K., holding a large metal spoon that he
thrusts into a ceremonial dish of flames.
He hands the red-hot spoon to T.K., who
must slowly drag it across his tongue.
This is repeated three times, and T.K.s
guilt or innocence will be determined by
whether his tongue is burnt.
T.K is seen in tight close-up, with
the villagers seated perhaps 10' behind
him. The flames dance between his face
and the camera. Everything is in focus:
the flames, T.K.s face and the villagers.
I used a wide-angle lens, I think an
18mm, recalls Sivan. And I maximized
the depth-of-field by shooting at f11.
The trial takes place in a court-
5/6/08
12:36 AM
Page 1
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Financial Aid available to those who qualify s Accredited by ACCSCT s Career Development Assistance
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are registered trade marks or service marks of The Los Angeles Film School.
Above: As the
monsoons finally
begin, Moores
contemplates his
ruinous actions.
Below: Director/
cinematographer
Santosh Sivan,
ISC discusses a
scene with
Roache and
Jennifer Ehle,
who plays
Moores wife.
22 July 2008
6/3/08
11:21 AM
yard that is open to the sky. We put a

big scrim across the top and cut out all
the sunlight, continues Sivan. I
wanted ambient light from the top but
wanted the flames next to T.K. to always
dominate.
According to Sivan, the most
challenging part of the 33-day shoot was
the construction of the road that Moores
is building in order to expand his business. It is imperative the road be built
before monsoon season begins, and
Moores hires dozens of locals for the
job. Its very difficult to start building a
road, declares Sivan with a laugh, so
we found one that had been abandoned.
We actually had three or four different
Page 22
stages of road building, each in a different location. We used two cameras for
these scenes; one was on a crane and
the second was locked off.
Sivan relied on an Indian crane,
manually operated, for many of the
shots. Frequently, the director/cinematographer began scenes by
pulling back from a close-up or medium
shot, as when Moores wife and son
arrive at the dock, or during the antiBritish protest when the villagers block
the road into town. I like the idea of
things being revealed, he muses, and I
like the idea of motion because it serves
to lead an audience into a scene. I also
like rack-focuses because they slowly
shift an audiences attention.

Equipment was rented from a
variety of rental houses, although Sivan
uses his own lights. The production
also had a Jimmy Jib and an 80' Akela
crane; the latter was used for a shot of
T.K. climbing onto an elephant. The
crane had a trunk like an elephant,
laughs Sivan. The elephant was a little
confused by it!
Although Before the Rains is set
in the 1930s, Sivan didnt want a typical
period look. I wanted to give the story
a somewhat contemporary feel, which
is why I chose Cooke S4 lenses. In India,
we normally use Zeiss lenses, but I
tested both brands and liked the sharpness of the Cookes. He also used an
Angenieux 25-250mm zoom. The
productions cameras were an Arri 535B
and an Arri 435.
During his interview with AC,
Sivan repeatedly praised his crew,
which included production designer
Sunil Babu, sound man Paul Schwartz,
gaffer and 1st AC Anjuli Shukla, and Bcamera operator Alphonso Roy.
Before the Rains was shot in
standard 1.85:1 on two Kodak Vision2
stocks, 500T 5218 and 100T 5212. I like
the way the colors jump out at you,
explains Sivan. The negative was
processed and scanned at Prasad Film
Labs in Chennai, and the digital intermediate (DI) was carried out at Hollywood Intermediate in Burbank.
Sivan did not make any extreme
alterations during the digital grade, but
he says the DI process proved helpful in
matching the light in some shots. An
example is the scene in which Moores
carries Sajanis lifeless body into the
river and sinks it. The wide shot shows
Moores wading into the water, carrying
the corpse, but the water was so cold it
was impossible to do the close-up of
Moores submerging her. Instead, the
filmmakers set up a tub of warm water
near the river, and, with the camera
shooting from above, the actor released
the body into the water. Matching the
light reflection on the water to the wide
shot required time and patience, says
Sivan.
5/31/08
8:41 PM
Page 1
6/3/08
11:21 AM
Page 24
Expert Eyes Enhance

WALLE
by Iain Stasukevich
With the Pixar film WALLE,
director Andrew Stanton wanted to
pose the question, What if humanity
left the earth but forgot to turn the last
robot off? He posits the answer in the
shadows of monolithic towers of
garbage piled as high as skyscrapers,
killer dust storms that sweep across a
desolate landscape, and the plight of
the titular character, a stoic trashcompactor on wheels who ekes out a
lonely existence trying to make sense of
the remains of the civilization that abandoned him.
WALLE (which stands for Waste
Allocation Load-Lifter: Earth Class)
differs from other Pixar films in that
there is very little dialogue; the hero and
his computerized co-stars communicate
mostly through beeps, squeaks and
chirps. When you take away dialogue
from the pot of elements you can use to
tell a story, something has to fill that
vacuum, says Stanton. All of the
remaining elements, including camerawork, must rise to another level.
On WALLE, as on every Pixar
film, two technical directors, one
specializing in lighting and the other in
camerawork, share a screen credit for
director of photography; they serve in
roughly the same capacities that a light24 July 2008
ing cameraman and operator would on a

live-action set. Danielle Feinberg supervised the lighting team, and Jeremy
Lasky supervised the camera team.
From the very beginning, Andrew used
the term more filmic to describe how
he wanted the movie to look, recalls
Feinberg. At first, people thought he
meant photo-realistic, which was not
what he meant at all. Lasky adds, He
meant he wanted the movie to feel
photographed. He wanted the audience
to believe the robot is in a real environment doing something and our cameras
just happened to capture it.
I was inspired by the work of
Harris Savides [ASC] in Finding
Forrester, says Stanton. I was very
attracted to the way they were holding
the focus; there seemed to be a very
narrow, shallow focus throughout the
entire movie, and it was always where
the focus of your interest should be.
The animation package Pixar
uses, Marionette, has the ability to
calculate depth-of-field, f-stops and
focal lengths, and can effectively
emulate most of the other functions of a
real motion-picture camera. But Stanton
felt the images it captured never looked
as if they came from a real camera.
When he raised this concern with Pixars
in-house software team, they looked at
the formulas theyd copied out of the
American Cinematographer Manual and
said their math was correct the
cameras and lenses were doing what

they were supposed to be doing, he
recalls.
Lacking practical experience in
cinematography and the kind of
programming knowledge required to
address the problem, Stanton set out to
find someone who could help. WALLE
producer Jim Morris, a former president
of Lucas Digital, tapped an Industrial
Light & Magic alum, cinematographer
Marty Rosenberg, who subsequently
showed up at the Pixar campus with a
35mm Panavision camera and a set of
spherical and anamorphic lenses. The
plan was to shoot a practical lens test
that could be easily re-created in a digital environment; Lasky and Stanton
would compare footage from the practical test with that of their computer-simulated camera.
Prior to WALLE, Pixar software
didnt have the ability to discern the
differences between spherical and
anamorphic lens characteristics, so all of
its 2.39:1 features originated with a
Super 35 frame. We wanted to give this
film a specific anamorphic look reminiscent of 70s sci-fi films, says Lasky.
With the existing software, we felt the
depth-of-field was never right. We could
never defocus things enough, even at f2
or f1.4.
For the camera test, the Pixar art
department created cardboard and Styrofoam mock-ups of WALLE and his love
WALLE images courtesy of Pixar/Walt Disney Co.
The makers of
WALLE sought
the advice of
several
prominent
visual
consultants,
including ASC
member Roger
Deakins, to
lend the
animated
movies images
the feel of real,
live-action
photography.
AMC_1207_p083:AMC_1007_p
11/6/07
2:25 PM
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Right: WALLE (an

acronym for
Waste Allocation
Load-Lifter: Earth
Class) shares a
tender moment
with his
paramour, EVE
(Extraterrestrial
Vegetation
Evaluator).
Below: Recalling
his experience
with the
production,
Deakins says, I
think what they
wanted was to
get a better
understanding of
what it was like
on a live-action
set how I
moved the
camera, how I lit
the set, how I
considered the
lighting from shot
to shot and scene
to scene.
26 July 2008
6/3/08
interest, a capsule-shaped automaton

named EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation
Evaluator), and positioned them on a grid
in the atrium of Pixars office building.
Rosenberg shot the models at different
relative positions and at different aspect
ratios. He even photographed lens flares
and Christmas lights, racking in and out
of focus to create the subtle effect of a
lens breathing.
When the CG and film tests were
played back, the results were definitive.
They didnt match at all, says Stanton.
11:21 AM
Page 26
We finally had proof. He returned to

the programmers with the footage.
That put a bee in their bonnet, he
says. Theyre the kind of guys who
cant let it go if youve proven they made
a mistake. The programmers made the
necessary changes to their code, which,
aside from upgrading their lens package, also allowed for more realistic
camera movements.
The Pixar camera was conceived
as a nodal camera, meaning that when
it pans and tilts, the lens is the point
around which the layout artist makes his
or her move. Theres no change in
perspective, and the effect lends itself
to a 2-D look, almost like classic cel
animation. Real cameras pivot from
positions behind the lens, so Lasky
asked his programmers to move their
axis point behind the lens and slightly
below it. Now, when he pans or tilts the
camera, hes rewarded with a very
subtle perspective shift in the image.
Most people will never notice it, but
subconsciously, it makes you feel like
theres a camera in the CG space.
With that accomplished, Stanton
was almost ready to bring his vision to
life. He and his team had the proper
tools; what they needed was someone
to show them how to properly use them.
Enter Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC. I was
talking to Andrew and Jim about bringing in a visual consultant, and Jim asked
for a list of people I wanted, recalls
Lasky. Roger Deakins was at the top of

that list because his craft is so finely
honed. The filmmakers also wanted to
consult with Savides, who was then at
work on Zodiac (AC April 07).
I think what they wanted was to
get a better understanding of what it
was like on a live-action set how I
moved the camera, how I lit the set,
how I considered the lighting from shot
to shot and scene to scene, says
Deakins. Everybodys got his own
preconceptions about what cinematography is. He began by conducting a
lighting demonstration for Lasky and
Feinberg. He recalls, I did what people
like to think I do as a cinematographer: I
lit a set with a lot of lights and kept
adding lights backlights, kickers,
specials and so on until I had about
20 lights up. Then I said, I bet thats
what you think I do, but its not what I do
at all. Then I broke it all down and
showed them how I really light a set.
He avoided the requisite keylight-backlight-fill light scheme and instead used a
less formulaic, story-based approach.
Its a balance between how you can
imagine that scene and how you can
actually do it in reality, says Deakins.
Before he made suggestions
about WALLE, Deakins spent some
time familiarizing himself with Pixars
work methods. He was surprised to
learn that the camerawork is done first,
without any knowledge of what the
4/2/08
3:34 PM
Page 1
6/3/08
11:22 AM
Page 28
Right: The
lonely robot
ponders his
place in the
vast universe.
Below: WALLE
is overjoyed to
learn that hes
not alone
after all.
lighting designer will do; layout artists

use the same lighting studies and storyboards as the lighting directors, but
neither has immediate access to the
others work. Animating lighting is one
of the last steps a shot must go through.
Roger didnt understand how we could
possibly make the movies we make
doing things this way, Lasky recalls
with a laugh.
One of Deakins first suggestions
was that the camera and lighting
departments be combined so the
camera team could set their frame and
make lighting suggestions and the lighting team could rapidly respond to their
requests. The departments could not be
combined for logistical reasons, but
Feinbergs team did feed lighting information to Laskys team, bringing the
departments much closer. That gave us
28 July 2008
a lot more flexibility, Feinberg says.

Pixars films tend to be lit so
audiences can see every detail of the
animation. Everyone wants his or her
stuff shown in the best light, so everything gets a high-school-portrait kind of
attention, notes Stanton. Not surprisingly, he had different ideas for
WALLE. Feinberg built a test shot from
scratch; the scene was set inside the
robots truck before the set or the robot
was even finished. Deakins encouraged
Feinberg to work primarily with the
scenes practical sources: some Christmas lights and a television. It created
a lot of shadows and had a very stark
feeling, says Feinberg.
The second and third acts of the
film take place on a massive, Vegasstyle spaceship called the Axiom.
There, at Stantons request, Feinberg
tried to maintain a minimalist aesthetic,

letting the digital actors move through
the scene rather than lighting the scene
for the actors an idea inspired by
Savides. Lighting the Axiom was very
different than lighting Earth, she
recalls. It was closer to how we traditionally do things, but we didnt overpolish anything.
Meanwhile, over in layout, Lasky
was tinkering with new ways to operate
the camera. With the upgraded optical
system and a properly oriented camera,
he had to treat his virtual camera more
like a real one. One of Deakins recommendations was that the team avoid
moving the camera in ways that
wouldnt make sense to the audience,
breaking the illusion of reality. With that
in mind, Lasky created two different
styles of movement for the storys two
environments; for action set on Earth, he
created a handheld look accentuated by
subtle frame adjustments and shifts in
focal length, and on the Axiom, he
created sleeker, more graceful moves.
Im really impressed by what
Jeremy and Danielle have done, says
Deakins. There are sequences in the
movie that are just so filmic. And Stanton couldnt be more pleased. I dont
know if its going to be obvious to the
audience, but we feel the difference,
says the director. Its as though this
story really happened, and we were
there to capture it.
I
AMC_0707_p009
5/29/07
11:41 AM
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- UNleashed Magazine
AMC_0708_p030p045:a_feature
6/3/08
11:32 AM
Page 30
Batman
Looms Larger
The Dark Knight,
shot by Wally Pfister,
ASC, combines
35mm and Imax
65mm to depict the
Caped Crusaders
latest adventure.
by David Heuring
Unit photography by
Stephen Vaughan, SMPSP
30 July 2008
n the summer of 2006, during

early preparations for The Dark
Knight, director Christopher
Nolan told Wally Pfister, ASC he
was going to try to convince
Warner Bros. to allow them to use
the Imax format for a handful of
scenes in their sequel to Batman
Begins (AC June 05). Nolan had
been interested in exploring the large
formats potential in a fictional
project for some time. Ive always
been fascinated by large-format
photographys immersive quality, the
impact it has on the huge screen,
says the director, and Id never seen
a fiction film or a Hollywood movie
that employed that degree of immersion on the visual side.
Many Hollywood features,

including Batman Begins, have been
presented on Imax screens via Imaxs
digital DMR (Digital Remastering)
process, which scans a 35mm interpositive, applies grain reduction and
other image-processing algorithms,
and generates a 70mm Imax negative. But a feature-length narrative
film combining 35mm images with
the native Imax format, in which a
65mm negative travels horizontally
through cameras and projectors, had
never been attempted.
Nolan and Pfister were
impressed by an Imax presentation
of Batman Begins Not only was
grain not an issue, but you could see
details that you never saw on the
Photos and film frames courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.
6/3/08
11:32 AM
Page 31
35mm prints, recalls Pfister and

they subsequently stuck a toe in the
water by shooting an Imax visualeffects plate for The Prestige (AC
Nov. 06); at the time, Nolan told
Pfister the shot was also serving as a
test of the formats viability in a
feature film.
After
Nolan
suggested
combining Imax with the 35mm
anamorphic format on The Dark
Knight, he and Pfister shot a series of
Imax tests in Nolans backyard, then
put the camera in the back of a
pickup truck and shot a night test on
Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood
using only existing light. We wanted
to find out what we could put on the
negative with this bigger camera and
its slower lenses in a variety of conditions, recalls the cinematographer.
We also wanted to push the film to
see how that looked. Chris subsequently did a range of scanning tests
at 4K and 6K with varying degrees of
DMR processing. We also did exposure and density tests.
The results were very
successful and encouraging, he
continues. Chris spent some time
figuring out what the post path
would be [see sidebar on page 36],
and I came up with a realistic breakdown of the costs, which were
roughly four times the cost of shooting only 35mm. Chris then set about
convincing Warner Bros. to try
something that had never been done
before. I dont think that was easy,
but among his many other skills,
Chris is a very smart marketing
person! Nolan notes, I think the
fact that it was unprecedented was a
big selling point for the studio. They
probably didnt truly get what we
wanted to do until they saw the first
test reel, which blew them away.
The filmmakers received
permission to shoot a number of
action sequences in Imax; these
would include the opening
sequence, which depicts a huge bank
heist, and the climactic closing
scenes. By the time production
Opposite page:
Batman
(Christian Bale)
comes down
hard on crime in
Gotham City.
This page: The
Caped Crusader
faces a
formidable new
foe in the
ghoulish Joker
(Heath Ledger).
American Cinematographer 31
6/3/08
11:33 AM
Page 32
Batman Looms Larger
Top: One of the

Jokers
henchmen,
Grumpy (Danny
Goldring), turns
on his boss
during a bank
robbery. Middle:
Director of
photography
Wally Pfister,
ASC (at eyepiece,
with director
Christopher
Nolan, center)
aims an Imax
camera at Ledger.
The robbery
sequence and
others were shot
in the 65mm Imax
format, marking
the first time a
feature-length
narrative film
combined 35mm
images with
Imax footage.
Bottom, left and
right: A pair of
stunt clowns
descend from a
skyscraper
window to a
nearby rooftop
during the
robbery. Their
landing was
captured with a
Steadicam by
operator Bob
Gorelick.
32 July 2008
started, four major action sequences

were planned for Imax, but Chris
and I knew that if we had the money
and the cameras, and if it made
sense, we would add other scenes,
says Pfister. For instance, we quickly
decided to shoot all the aerial work
in Imax because of what wed gain in
resolution. In the end, 15-20 percent
of the movie roughly 30 minutes
of screen time was originated in
Imax.
In Imax presentations of The
Dark Knight, shots filmed in Imax
will fill the screen, and material shot
in 35mm anamorphic will appear in
the center of the frame. (Hard cuts
are planned between the two types of
images.) For standard 35mm
presentations, a 2.40:1 image will be
extracted from the Imax footage;
Nolan and editor Lee Smith could
choose which portion of the frame
to extract, depending on the shot.
Even in the 2.40:1 presentations, the
Imax sequences will be sharper and
clearer, with improved contrast and
no trace of grain, says Pfister.
Its ironic, muses the cinematographer, because many filmmakers are trying out digital
cameras that actually capture less
resolution and information, and
were going in the opposite direction,
upping the ante by capturing images
with unparalleled resolution and
clarity.
6/3/08
11:33 AM
One of the first puzzles to

solve was how to best compose for
the Imax frame. The production was
advised to enlist a large-format
director of photography for that
work, but with Nolans support,
Pfister decided he and his crew could
adapt quickly enough to use the
format effectively on their own. We
just needed to shoot and learn, he
says. Theres a whole booklet about
how to film in Imax, but our inclination was to break all those rules. In
the end, we incorporated some of
the ideas to a degree, but for the most
part, we did what felt right to us and
addressed composition shot-byshot.
Imax protocol stipulates
maintaining an enormous amount
of headroom because in most
theaters, seeing the top third of the
screen requires craning ones neck.
The rule of putting the crosshairs
on top of the head seemed a little
extreme, says Pfister. Plus, we felt
like we were wasting all this great
negative. So we put the crosshairs on
the eyes for close-ups. A normal
close-up is often way too big in Imax
if you hold it for a while, the audience is going to be looking at one eye
or the mouth. You have to back up a
bit.
Chris didnt want any of us
Page 33
freaking out about makeup flaws and

the like, but the reality is that you see
every little detail that piece of
camera tape down the street in the
frame, the one you dont normally
worry about, had to be removed. We
had to condition everyone on the
crew to a higher level of discipline,
especially [production designer]
Nathan Crowley and his team.
Everyone had to be meticulous.
During the week he spent testing Imax MSM 9802 and MKIII
cameras and Hasselblad lenses in
Toronto, 1st AC Bob Hall found a
number of limitations that had to be
overcome or avoided. The cameras
were incompatible with Cine Tape or
Panatape, electronic focus assist
devices that camera assistants have

come to depend on, and the
viewfinders were not up to standard
quality. The stiffness of the
Hasselblads mechanisms meant
focus could only be adjusted with
specially modified Preston remote
motors. When we saw the depth-offield test projected, it was pretty
scary, recalls Hall. It was a close-up,
and very little of the face was in focus.
I didnt dwell on how hard and
complex [the job] was going to be,
and I dont think that hit any of us
until we saw the dailies from the first
days bank-heist sequence. It was an
epiphany for everyone. We were
seeing extremely wide shots with the
depth of field of a telephoto shot.
Above: The
Joker attempts
to intimidate
Gothams strongwilled assistant
D.A., Rachel
Dawes (Maggie
Gyllenhaal). Left:
Batmans alterego, billionaire
Bruce Wayne,
finds he has a
new rival for
Dawes
affections:
District Attorney
Harvey Dent
(Aaron Eckhart),
whose battle
against the
Joker has
severe personal
consequences.
6/3/08
11:33 AM
Page 34
Batman Looms Larger

After being
captured, the
Joker languishes
in a jail cell with
more common
criminals. The
top photo is a
behind-thescenes shot
taken on set,
while the bottom
image shows the
look of a
finished film
frame.
The production went forward

with three MSM 9802s and one
MKIII. The MSM is the lightest
Imax camera; the MKIII is capable
of frame rates up to 60 fps. The
MKIII proved to be more durable
and was used on car mounts,
whereas the MSM was used on a
Steadicam rig, a Libra IV head and
on motorcycle rigs. Each camera was
set up with a 2.40 ground glass, but
34 July 2008
this was more of a reference for the

operators than actual framing parameters. The 500' magazines lasted
about 100 seconds at 24 fps.
Normally, thats considered waste,
and you wouldnt even bother loading that on a camera, Hall points
out. Bob Gorelick, our Steadicam
operator, said the MSM in its smaller
configuration was only slightly heavier than a [Panavision] Genesis.
The production carried four

medium-format Hasselblad lenses:
50mm, 80mm, 110mm and 150mm.
Pfister and Nolan favored the 50mm
and, less often, the 80mm. As the
shoot went on, says Hall, the filmmakers became bolder about using
the 110mm. Also, they quickly
learned what kinds of shots to avoid.
Because the Imax screen is so huge,
you tend to follow the action thats in
6/3/08
11:33 AM
focus, and that helped us, Hall says.

Also, we saw that certain actions
had to be minimized to an extent.
Strobing was an issue, and we
learned which fast shots and what
kinds of moves we could get away
with. Chris is very astute about what
is usable and what isnt; he realized
that in extremely difficult shallowdepth-of-field shots, some moments
would be out of focus. His intent
was to get certain important beats,
and once we had those in focus, we
could move on.
The Dark Knight centers on
the relationship between Batman
(Christian Bale) and police Lt. Jim
Gordon (Gary Oldman) and their
attempt to curb crime in Gotham.
They are joined by District Attorney
Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), who,
with Batman alter ego Bruce Wayne,
forms a love triangle with Assistant
D.A. Rachel Dawes (Maggie
Gyllenhaal). A new villain, the Joker
(Heath Ledger), presents a difficult
challenge for law enforcement
because of his nihilistic methods.
In this film, Batman is going
in a new direction, and the environments we created are completely
different from those in Batman
Begins Wayne Manor has burned
down, and the Batcave has been
replaced by a brightly lit secret
bunker, says Pfister. We wanted to
suggest a colder, more modern
world, and rather than going dark
with everything, we had fun with
some brighter environments. The
red-yellow patina of Batman Begins
came naturally from the sodiumvapor lamps we used so much, and
Dark Knights different environments became an excuse to play with
colors a bit more.
The new film features three
distinct tones: one is slightly bluegreen; another is neutral, almost
black-and-white; and the third is a
rust-like tinge that references
Batman Begins. Early on, I
suggested to Wally that because the
film is called The Dark Knight and is
Page 35
Batman assists
with an
interrogation of
the Joker that
turns a bit
physical.
about, metaphorically, extremely

dark subjects, it would be interesting
to play against that for much of the
film and make things as bright as
possible, even as the material gets
darker, says Nolan. I encouraged
Wally to be open to different textures
for different scenes and not be too
rigid in terms of an overriding style,
and he really warmed to that. His
style of photography is very naturalistic and very subtle; hes very good at
making things feel real with an
unforced and natural beauty, and
thats what we were really after on
this film.
The 35mm material was shot
with Panavision cameras, two
Millennium XLs and a Platinum,
and the production carried the same

E-Series and C-Series anamorphic
lenses Pfister had used on The
Prestige, along with some Panavision
Super High Speed lenses. The picture
was filmed on two Kodak Vision2
emulsions, 500T 5218 (rated at EI
400) and 250D 5205 (rated at EI
200). In certain situations, Pfister
pushed the stock a stop to gain speed
while maintaining solid blacks. Im
not a guy who changes film stocks to
create a different look, he notes. I
like to have a simple set of tools and
change the look with lighting and
exposure. 5205 has a very solid grain
structure, and I usually use it all day
long with ND filters during the
brightest parts of the day. By the end
6/3/08
11:33 AM
Page 36
Batman Looms Larger
A Hybrid Finish
n their previous collaborations,
Christopher Nolan and Wally
Pfister, ASC chose a traditional
photochemical finish over a digital
intermediate, but their decision to
shoot portions of The Dark Knight
in 15-perf 65mm Imax for eventual
35mm and Imax exhibition necessitated a departure from that practice.
David Keighley, executive vice
president of Imax Corp. and president of its post subsidiary, DKP
70mm Inc., was integral to Dark
Knights post path. David oversaw
the process that brought Batman
Begins to Imax screens, and hes not
only very proficient technically, he
also has a very good eye for color
and density, says Pfister. Chris and
I knew that in Davids hands, our
material would not be over-manipulated or taken in the wrong direction.
During the shoot, the
productions Imax negative was
shipped to CFI Technicolor in Los
Angeles for processing, and DKP
70mm then made 35mm printdowns, screened them, and
discussed the results with Pfister by
phone; the printdowns were also
shipped to the set and projected as
dailies. Occasionally, Keighley made
70mm prints of this footage and
checked its quality on an Imax
screen.
Front-end lab work for the
productions 35mm material was
done at CFI, Astro Labs in Chicago,
and Technicolor in London.
Technicolors Hollywood facility
handled the back-end and release
prints; Pfister and color timer David
Orr timed the 35mm images using
the traditional photochemical
process.
After shooting was complete,
and after the editing process was
well under way, DKP 70mm
scanned select Imax takes at 8K
36 July 2008
resolution on a unique Northlight

scanner. Then, Pacific Title and other
facilities made 2.40:1 extractions
from the 1.33:1 Imax negative to
conform to the framing and movement decisions made in the Avid by
Nolan and editor Lee Smith. That
process resulted in a 35mm anamorphic negative, which was combined
with effects shots and used to generate 35mm release prints.
To bring scenes shot in 35mm
to Imax screens, where images are
projected in 1.43:1, DKP 70mm
scanned the 35mm interpositive at
4K, and an Imax team in Toronto
applied digital DMR (Digital
Remastering) processing to degrain
and sharpen the images. The process
stayed at 4K until the images were
filmed out onto 65mm back at
Keighleys facility and combined
with the Imax material for print.
The final Imax print combined the
4K DMR filmout, 5.6K and 8K Imax
filmouts, and 18K contact prints
from the Imax negative, says
Keighley.
People suggested Chris and
Wally should have covered themselves by shooting key sequences in
both 35mm and Imax, but the 2.40:1
extraction from the Imax frame
looks beautiful, he continues. In
fact, due to the oversampling, its
probably the best 35mm anamorphic image weve ever seen. If wed
had time to scan the original negative
at 6K, we could have produced even
higher quality. The information is on
the negative 35mm film captures
the equivalent of 6K and a color bit
depth of 14 bits plus.
As they did with the Imax
prints of Batman Begins, Keighley
and his team screened each of the 80
Imax prints of Dark Knight in real
time to ensure quality. Were a small
group of hands-on people who really
care about images, he says. We pay
attention to all the details all the way
to the screen.
David Heuring
of the day, the filtration is out, and

were not scrambling to change
stocks.
The first 66 days of the shoot
took place in Chicago, mostly on
location. Chicago is the most spectacular-looking city, and to be able
to shoot the smallest throwaway
scene in such large-scale, real locations adds grandeur and texture [to
the picture], says Nolan. A lot of
the key imagery in Batman Begins
was shot in Chicago, and the city was
very accommodating, so I wanted to
do as much of The Dark Knight on
location there as possible. Asked if
there was a connection between the
decision to shoot Imax and the vastness of many of the locations, Nolan
says, They were very much tied
together. I talked extensively with
Wally and Nathan Crowley about
using the full height of the Imax
screen, and when we scouted locations, we were very mindful of
getting a lot of height and scale to
really use that frame. One of the
biggest challenges I put to Wally was
that we would have a lot of nighttime photography where we put the
camera on the ground to shoot
people walking towards the camera,
yet wed still see the tops of the tallest
buildings. In terms of hiding lights
and keeping them out of frame,
thats an enormous challenge, but he
and his team came up with some
pretty innovative solutions for that.
One solution was to light the
action with fixtures that appear in
frame as practical sources. Also,
many of the basic decisions about
lighting were rooted in the locations.
Much of the story plays out in
bright, vast spaces, uncluttered
expanses that emphasize Batmans
solitary nature. Several major
Chicago locations were buildings
designed by Ludwig Mies van der
Rohe, including the IBM building at
330 N. Wabash. A number of locations from Batman Begins were
revisited, including Lower Wacker
Drive and the Old Post Office.
6/3/08
11:34 AM
The shoot began with the

bank-heist sequence, which was shot
in the Old Post Office. The scene was
a trial-by-fire of the Imax idea and
was chosen in part because it
unfolds in the daytime. Built in
1921, the Old Post Office features a
granite-and-marble lobby where
most of the heist action takes place.
Huge windows lined one wall, where
gaffer Cory Geryak and his crew
used a dozen 80' Condors with 7K
Xenon lamps to mimic shafts of
sunlight.
Additionally,
100K
Softsuns came through giant bay
windows at both ends of the space.
Existing
fluorescents
were
augmented by new high-output
fluorescent fixtures. Stylistically, it
was a fairly uncomplicated lighting
setup, but because of the size and
shape of the Imax frame, which left
very little room to hide lights, the
setup was huge in scale, says Pfister.
The most complicated exterior situations in Chicago were the
chases on Lower Wacker Drive and a
series of rooftop scenes. The filmmakers had shot a major chase on
the same two-mile stretch of Lower
Wacker for Batman Begins and knew
Page 37
the stacked thoroughfare would

offer several advantages: its effectively a covered set, so weather is less
of a concern, and the overhead
concrete offers places to mount
additional lights. Pfisters crew positioned Par cans to highlight the
arches that line the river side of the
street and stationed BeBee Night
Lights on Upper Wacker and the
overhead deck of lanes to throw light
on the background buildings across
the river.
With two miles of road to
light up, theres only so much you
can do, even on a budget like ours,
says Geryak. Wed shot anamorphic
on Batman Begins at a T2.8, pushing
the film half a stop, so we knew we
could get away with it. In situations
like Lower Wacker, sometimes its
better to create points of light. For
one section, we had a foundation of
existing sodium-vapor lights and
For a key scene

involving
Batman, Dent
and Police
Lieutenant
James Gordon
(Gary Oldman, at
left in bottom
photo), gaffer
Cory Geryak and
his crew had to
find a way to
light a circular
Steadicam move
that would show
the scenes
actors and
background in
360 degrees. Key
grip Mike Lewis
solved the
problem by
devising an
overhead rig
containing Kino
Flo tubes. The
rig was skirted
around the sides
and aimed
through Light
Grid.
6/3/08
11:34 AM
Page 38
Batman Looms Larger

Members of the
shows specialeffects team
prepare a
miniature truck
and driver for a
collision with a
miniature
remotecontrolled
Batmobile
(below) staged
in a scalemodel tunnel.
added some soft white tungsten

lights by strapping them to pillars.
For chase shots, that gives you a little
more life in the negative and the feeling of speed as they flicker and flash
by.
Typical of the interior situations in Chicago was Bruce Waynes
home, a vast penthouse apartment
that actually comprises a number of
38 July 2008
locations. The biggest scene there

depicts an elegant party for Dent that
is eventually crashed by The Joker.
The penthouse bedroom was filmed
in the top floor of Hotel 71, a
boutique hotel on the Chicago River.
The party scenes were filmed in a
ground-floor hotel lobby, ostensibly
Waynes living room; in order to
create the illusion of being on the top
floor, the production lined the

windows with greenscreen material
that was backlit by 40 2K tungsten
lights and later replaced with city
views. The art department created
large bookshelves along one wall to
hide the lobbys elevator banks and
hung cascades of tiny Christmas
lights between the shelves. There was
also a smattering of practical table
lamps.
Geryak floated four 8K cylinder-shaped tungsten balloon lights
to create a foundation. We could
move them around to keep the light
side-y or edgy, he says. There were
also existing ceiling lights that we
replaced with Par 38 cans, straight
down, with diffusion taped over
them to help with the ambience.
Pfister was the A-camera
operator, and on close work, he and
Geryak often worked in tandem,
with Geryak handholding a lightweight softbox containing Litepanels
LED lamps; diffusion frames are
interchangeable on the device. Our
light is often toppy or side-y, and
Wally wants to see a little ping of
light in the second eye, says the
gaffer. Because were often hand-
6/3/08
11:34 AM
Page 39
Left: Camera
rigs on trackmounted
platforms
captured the
action involving
the miniature
vehicles and
tunnel. Below:
Crewmembers
use a remote to
test out the
ultimate Bat-toy.
held, the eyelight cant go on the

camera, so well hold it off-axis on
the other side. Im always watching
him and his frame line, and he often
signals to push it in or pull it back as
hes shooting. He likes to judge that
light through the camera.
Several key scenes take place
on rooftops, including the roof of
police headquarters, where Gordon
lights up the Bat Signal to summon
Batman. These shots required some
of the most elaborate lighting
setups, with Geryak and his crew
spread out over multiple city blocks.
A week and a half of rigging,
followed by a 10-hour day of
prelighting, preceded the actual
shoot days.
Pfister shot as wide open as
possible to best capture the nighttime cityscape. To augment the
skyline, roughly a dozen buildings
were lit from inside through
windows Pfister chose. Points of
light were also emanating from the
tops of parking structures. Sodiumvapors and bare bulbs were scattered
across neighboring roofs. Color
temperature was varied for a realistic
urban look. At Geryaks request, Lee
Filters developed a combined Full +

Half CTS gel for the BeBee lights to
help us [avoid] the color fading of
gels when theyre doubled up on the
BeBee, says the gaffer. About 60
Maxi-Brutes were shooting light up
the sides of neighboring buildings.
We tried to create a streakier, architectural feeling this time, as opposed
to the more general washes we used
on Batman Begins. In the first movie,

Gotham tends to be a little more
gritty and seedy.
One important scene on the
roof of police headquarters provides
a glimpse into the efficient and flexible mode of working that Nolan and
Pfister maintained in spite of the
sprawling size of the production.
After putting their heads together
6/3/08
11:34 AM
Page 40
Batman Looms Larger

Right: In a frame
from the film,
Batman speeds
through the city
on his Batpod,
which is armed
with grappling
hooks, cannons
and machine
guns. An updated
version of the
classic Batcycle,
the Batpod was
conceptualized
by production
designer Nathan
Crowley and built
by special-effects
supervisor Chris
Corbould. Bottom
left: As on
Batman Begins,
the filmmakers
captured highintensity chase
footage using an
Ultimate Arm-Lev
Head
combination
mounted on a
Mercedes SUV.
Technician
George Peters
built a bigger,
stronger Lev
Head to
accommodate the
extra weight of
the Imax
cameras. Bottom
right: Batman
spins out during a
street skirmish
with the Joker
and his minions.
40 July 2008
about the best way to shoot several

pages of dialogue involving Gordon,
Batman and Dent, Nolan and Pfister
decided to do the scene in a single
circular Steadicam move, maximizing the Chicago skyline in the background. In the story, these three
men form a triumvirate, and it was
very important to bind them
together and show them in this
massive environment, says Nolan.
The question was how to
light the faces while seeing 360
degrees, says Geryak. We thought it
would be great to do a nice soft
toplight and then come in with an
eyelight, but there wasnt anywhere
to tether a balloon up there. We were
shooting anamorphic, so we did have

some headroom above the frame.
Key grip Mike Lewis suggested
rigging a truss coming over the top of
a stairwell door. We knew it would
take about 90 minutes to set up, but
we also knew that once it was
finished, we could burn through the
pages very quickly. Chris is really
smart about making those time
investments up front, and he agreed
to it. Mike used some very clever
counterbalancing on a rig that shot
out over the edge a good 15 or 20
feet. We built an 8-by-8 softbox
housing four Kino Flo fixtures
shooting through Light Grid and
skirted around the sides.
Im pleased to note that we

used the exact Steadicam master, the
first take of that scene, in the edit,
says Nolan. I try to be very realistic
about which coverage were going to
use, and I try not to put people
through that process if the results
arent going to be in the movie. If I
hadnt worked with Wally and Cory
for years before, Im not sure I would
have been prepared to make the leap
of faith and say, Okay, we wont film
for an hour and a half, but then well
have a very versatile setup. But I
knew from experience that they
could deliver. Similarly, they knew I
wasnt just changing the shot on a
whim. In preserving that creative
6/3/08
11:35 AM
Page 41
Left: A more
detailed view of
the customized
Mercedes SUV,
which also
served as a tow
vehicle. Below:
Other shots for
the Batpod
chase were
captured with
cameras
mounted on
motorcycles.
spontaneity, even on the grander

scale of a film like this, the experience
of working with people previously is
a huge advantage. That spontaneity
is possible because of trust and thorough preparation.
The production also filmed in
the United Kingdom for 53 days,
returning to the cavernous
Cardington hangar to film sets and
shooting on location at Battersea
Power Station on the outskirts of
London. Some set pieces from
Batman Begins were redressed, but
the street-exterior sets seen in the
first film were much less prominent
on the schedule. The exterior of the
Pruitt building, an eight-story structure built inside the 200'-high hangar
by fire brigades for practice and testing, makes an encore appearance in
The Dark Knight. This time, its interior also appears in a climactic
sequence.
Batmans sleek secret bunker
was built in the hangar at
Cardington, a walled open space that
measures 200' long by 60' wide and
has no support columns. Onscreen,
the entire ceiling of the bunker emits
light. Cardington is an enormous
space, and it took a bit of engineering

to light it from above, says Perry
Evans, a veteran of Batman Begins
who served as gaffer for the U.K.
shoot. Our lights couldnt interfere
with the construction that supported
the ceiling, so we brought in a rock
n roll-lighting company that built a
huge gantry that hung 40 feet above

the set.
Evans and his team hung 300
space lights about 15' above the
actual ceiling; each lamp had six 800watt bulbs, diffusion and silk skirting. The production tested various
materials for the actual ceiling to find
6/3/08
11:35 AM
Page 42
Batman Looms Larger

The Joker
unleashes
mayhem on
Gotham. At right,
a spectacular
explosion
destroys the
citys hospital in
a scene staged
on Chicagos
west side at
Cicero Avenue
and Lake Street,
using a
redressed
building that
was once part of
a candy factory.
Below, left and
right: The
Jokers criminal
activities give
him money to
burn.
42 July 2008
a type of Perspex that allowed

enough light through while hiding
the actual elements. Around the
entire light rig, the crew hung a series
of 20'x20' white sheets to contain
and smooth out the light. The thorough prep, which included six weeks
of rigging, made for smooth shoot
days in the bunker. Evans kept a
couple of Image 80s on hand for
closer work.
The script called for a light gag

where the lights in the bunker come
on and off in dramatic fashion.
Possibilities discussed included
dimming lights up, starting in the
center and expanding concentrically,
or in a chase, one at a time. During
prep, Evans and his team
programmed a variety of options
and Nolan chose a method that
followed the action. As Batman
walks toward the elevator to exit, the
lights go off in rows moving away
from camera until Batman is seen in
dramatic silhouette, lifted out of the
frame by the elevator. Then the last
light goes out. That was a fun challenge, says Evans. It took a couple
of takes, but once we got it right, it
looked really good.
Shots done in the Pruitt building inside the Cardington hangar
were meant to intercut with shots
done from a helicopter as a SWAT
team slides out a window on a rope.
In the story, the building is under
construction, and that cued most of
the lighting decisions. Wally
decided to go with the harshness of
plain bulbs in the interiors, says
Evans. We tested some normal
bulbs and just couldnt get them to
6/3/08
11:36 AM
flare enough. In the fighting that

takes place there, we wanted a sense
of disorientation and a certain
brutality. We found a type of security
light, and the art department made a
little cage for it so it would look like a
light youd see on a construction site.
There were dozens of temporary
support posts in there, and we could
clip our lights to them quickly and
easily, depending on the shot.
Sometimes wed augment with a 1K
Par or a 650-watt bulb off-camera.
The iconic Battersea Power
Station was the setting for several
scenes, including a giant explosion.
Again, the vastness of the building
meant that lighting the entire
expanse was impossible, and 20Ks
and Wendy lights were scattered
about strategically to indicate the
Page 43
structures outlines and lend some

depth. We planned a really massive
fireball, and Wally didnt want to
overexpose and lose the detail of the
explosion, says Evans. So instead of
shooting wide open or near, we were
going to shoot with a T4.5 or T5.6.
That meant instead of one full
Wendy on a cherry-picker, we
needed much more.
Also, because the scene is in
Imax, you see so much area, he
continues. We had to have a lot of
light, and we needed to get it up to
where the shadows would be at the
proper angle. We ended up rigging
four Wendy lights together and
hoisting them 180 feet with a
construction crane. A full Wendy is
192 650-watt medium-angle bulbs
its the same size bulb used in a
Above: The
Jokers big-rig
truck is upended
in a spectacular
stunt staged on
LaSalle Street in
Chicago. The
truck was driven
by veteran
stuntman Jim
Wilkey, who
triggered an
explosive that
shot a large steel
post into the
ground, causing
the truck to flip
end-over-end. No
visual effects
were used in the
shot other than
removal of the
steel post, which
was visible
during the flip.
The stunt was
photographed
with three Imax
cameras and two
35mm cameras.
The height of the
flip and unusually
large Imax frame
made it a
challenge to hide
the lighting from
the five camera
positions, says
Pfister. Lights
were just outside
of the frameline
on most of the
shots. Middle:
Emerging
unscathed from
the wreckage,
the Joker opens
fire. Bottom: A
finished frame
from the film.
6/3/08
11:36 AM
Page 44
Batman Looms Larger
SWAT officers
crash through
the windows of
a building in a
stunt executed
on a
greenscreen
stage.
44
Mini-Brute. So altogether, we had

768 bulbs. We anchored the rig with
sailing line, which has no elasticity,
tied off to two industrial forklifts. We
could lock it steady by moving the
forklifts.
Putting the production in
perspective, Pfister notes that one

important difference between The
Dark Knight and Batman Begins was
that the filmmakers had a very
successful film behind them this
time around. We didnt have to
worry about pressure from the
studio or pressure from the audience

in terms of their expectations, he
says. Also, there were a lot of details
we sweated on the first film that we
didnt have to worry about this time
there was much we already knew
how to do. That allowed us to really
concentrate on the storytelling.
As for shooting Imax, he
continues, You face new technical
and creative challenges on every
film, and eventually, you find a way
to overcome them. We were so determined to make this a success that we
had to keep reminding ourselves no
one had done this before on this
scale. Weve broken new cinematic
ground in shooting a dramatic
feature using the best-quality imagecapture system there is. Chris had
the vision and the guts to fight for it,
and there were a lot of naysayers all
along the way. I think the film proves
them wrong, absolutely. Im grateful
to my crew and must also thank the
6/3/08
11:36 AM
Page 45
put together a great team and really

challenged them, and the results are
truly astounding.
I
For a related article, see Post
Focus on page 68.
Dent stands by
as the Bat
Signal is used to
summon the
Caped Crusader.
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Anamorphic 35mm and
15-perf 65mm
people at Imax, beginning with Greg

Foster, David Keighley, Lorne
Orleans and Mike Hendricks, for
their advice and assistance. I must
also mention that a good friend and
colleague lost his life during the filming of this movie, [special-effects
technician] Comway Wickliffe; he
was an exceptional artist whom we
will miss dearly.

Although Pfister is inclined to
add shooting Imax to the list of challenges any filmmaker might
confront, Nolan observes, I dont
know of anybody working on a
large-scale film project whos had to
do something so radically different
and do it with such efficiency. Wally
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45
AMC_0708_p046p047_R:b_feature
6/4/08
4:27 PM
Page 46
A
Not-So-Super
Hero
Hancock, shot by Tobias Schliessler, blends action and comedy

in the tale of a homeless man with superhuman abilities
and very human flaws.
by Jay Holben
Unit photography by Frank Masi, SMPSP and Scott Garfield
mong superheroes, certain
traits appear to be consistent:
noble intent, great power
tempered by great responsibility, and human alter egos.
But in the new film Hancock, the titular character (portrayed by Will
Smith) is a homeless alcoholic and
unlikely savior. Although he gets the
A
46 July 2008
job done, Hancocks special abilities

are a burden to him. His relationship
with the citizens of his hometown,
Los Angeles, is tenuous at best, and it
isnt until he saves a public-relations
executive, Ray Embrey (Jason
Bateman), that he begins to understand the importance of public
opinion to a superheros career.
Hancock is the third feature

collaboration between writer/director Peter Berg and cinematographer
Tobias Schliessler, following The
Rundown and Friday Night Lights.
This is a different kind of superhero
movie in that Peter wanted it to be
grounded in reality, says Schliessler.
We wanted a kind of heightened
Images courtesy of Columbia Pictures.
AMC_0708_p046p047_R:b_feature
6/4/08
4:28 PM
realism, but not something so overly stylized that you wouldnt believe
these events could be happening
right now. We increased the color
saturation slightly, adding some
brighter colors to the sets and more
colors to the lighting, but we did not
want it to feel like a comic-book
movie at all.
Berg decided to shoot the
movie completely handheld, with
two cameras (operated by Dave
Luckenbach and Lucas Bielan)
almost always running simultaneously. I wouldnt say it was shot like
a documentary because Peter
rehearsed the actors, but it was shot
very freely, remarks Schliessler.
After a rehearsal, Peter had Dave
and Lucas put the cameras up and
shoot the scene, and hed call out
directions as necessary asking
one operator to go in tighter, for
example but he pretty much let
the operators run freely with the
actors. If he didnt get what he needed, hed make adjustments for the
next take, but for the most part, the
coverage was achieved very organically.
Peter had worked with Lucas
and Dave before and was very comfortable with them, he continues.
For the most part, I concentrated
on lighting and Peter worked with
the operators. Peter and I have a
Page 47
common language and understand

each other very well, and I knew his
choices would be exactly what we
needed for this film. The operators
were also on that same page, and it
all fell in quite naturally.
Bergs penchant for long takes
required the use of 1,000' magazines
throughout the shoot. Further
adding to the operators load was the
camera the filmmakers chose the
Panaflex Platinum over the lighter
Millennium XL and the lenses,
Panavision Primo 11:1 and 4:1
zooms. It wasnt uncommon for
one camera to start on a 24mm, snap
in to a 275mm for a moment, and
then snap out wide again in a single
shot, says Schliessler, who estimates
each camera weighed 70-80 pounds.
Dave and Lucas were real troopers,
and I dont really know how they did
it. They were going with the flow,
creating a kind of dance between the
two cameras and the actors.
Sometimes the cameras would catch
each other, and sometimes theyd
run into each other, but for the most
part, it worked amazingly well.
To keep the action rolling for
particularly long periods, when one
camera rolled out, Berg would continue with the second camera while
the first was reloaded instead of cutting the scene. Then, with a fresh roll
of film, the first camera would slip
back into the mix and shoot through

the second cameras reload. To capture a four-page dialogue scene with
Hancock, Embry, and Embrys wife,
Mary (Charlize Theron), on the
patio of a restaurant in downtown
Los Angeles, three cameras worked
this way to maintain the intensity of
the scene. We just kept shooting,
moving around the table with the
three cameras, recalls Schliessler. It
took an hour and a half of constant
shooting, but we got the scene and
were wrapped by lunch!
To light the scene, Schliessler
placed an electric candle in the center of the table. It was 4 or 5 inches
high and about 4 inches around, he
explains. We put a bigger socket in
there with a stronger bulb, and it
created a really beautiful, warm glow
on all their faces. For scenes like that,
when I knew Peter wanted to shoot
without interruption and without
relighting, I would go into the environment and try to find a source
that would allow us to shoot 360
degrees and also look good on the
actors. The actors were always free to
move about and improvise their
blocking; Peter didnt want any
marks on the floor or anything to
lock anyone into a specific action.
Once we were lit for a scene, we
wouldnt change anything for closeups; wed just shoot and shoot until
Opposite page:
Unconventional
superhero John
Hancock (Will
Smith) leaves
his mark on the
city he protects.
This page: After
being saved by
the hero, PR
wizard Ray
Embrey (Jason
Bateman, in car)
helps Hancock
craft a new
image and
smooth over
relations with
his hometown of
Los Angeles.
AMC_0708_p046p053:b_feature
6/3/08
11:06 AM
Page 48
A Not-So-Super Hero
Near right: Bottle
of booze in hand,
Smith prepares
for liftoff. Unlike
most
superheroes,
who protect
themselves with
respectable alter
egos, the
homeless
Hancock is
always on the
job, and to take
the edge off, hes
prone to flying
under the
influence. Far
right:
Cinematographer
Tobias
Schliessler on
location.
48 July 2008
we were done.
Key grip Michael Anderson,
who had worked with Schliessler on
Dreamgirls (AC Dec. 06), created
two pseudo-dollies to take the load
off the operators legs during such
long takes while maintaining their
mobility. Peter was adamant that he
never wanted to see tripods or a dolly
on the set, so we came up with a couple of solutions, explains Anderson.
One, which we called the Silver
Bullet, was just a low frame about 2
inches off the ground with swivel
casters. We put a padded apple box
on the frame, and the operators
could still handhold the camera.
They could use the Silver Bullet as a
chair, or we could wheel them
around for a kind of handheld dolly
move. The second solution was a
small three-wheeled stool. We
attached arms, a back, and a little tray
where the operators could put their
feet, and we could move them
around. Both worked really well.
Usually maintaining a T2.8 on
interiors and a T5.6 or T8 on day
exteriors, Schliessler shot Hancock
with three Kodak Vision2 film stocks,
200T 5217 (day interiors), 500T 5218
(night exteriors and darker interiors),
and 50D 5201 (day exteriors). I really liked 5201 for the daytime work; it
had good contrast and finer grain,
and it looked sharp with our oversaturated look. He used a Schneider 1-
stop polarizer for day exteriors. It

enhances some colors without losing highlights, he notes.
One day exterior that proved
particularly
challenging
for
Schliessler and his crew took four
days spread over two weekends
to shoot. In the scene, Hancock stops
a bank robbery that involves
hostages and a shootout with police.
Schliessler had his hands full dealing
with the Southern California sunshine, which he describes as crazy
it comes in and out of clouds and
haze all day long! When it does stay
clear, its straight up in the sky until
about 6 p.m., when it drops very fast.
Wherever we could, I tried to bring
in diffusion to cut out the natural
sunlight and then use a BeBee Night
Light to create a lower-angle sunlight.
To execute Schliesslers plan,
Anderson brought in a 40'x30'
frame of light gridcloth carried on a
Champion driving crane, and gaffer
Bob Krattiger brought in two 15-6K
BeBees to push through the gridcloth. One was positioned at each
end of the block, and either light
could move out of the way if the
cameras were looking in its direction. It was a little crazy to coordinate, recalls Anderson, who also
had to worry about removing the
gridcloth whenever the sun ducked
behind a cloud. We only had one
block closed down, and there was

nowhere to put the crane when we
werent using it. Id have the driver
drop off the frame into these big
racks we created and then circle the
block with traffic until we needed
him again.
The bank interiors were shot
in an empty building in downtown
Los Angeles, in a 200'x100' lobby surrounded by 25'-tall windows. It was
a big building with a lot of glass, and
there was no lighting inside at all,
says Schliessler. We had to bring in
all the practical lighting. [Production
designer] Neil Spisak worked with us
to design huge practical ceiling fixtures that were beautiful and effective. Those units, Krattiger explains,
were about 16-by-16 feet, designed
around LumaPanels, and we had 60
of them in the location. We had three
Lumas in each fixture, which are all
DMX-dimmable, so we had complete control over them.
The windows were too wide
to gel, so we had to balance all the
interior lighting to daylight, he continues. Outside, I had a 15-light
BeBee out front and another out
back. Because of sightlines, the BeBee
in back was 150 to 200 feet away, so
we had to add a couple of Condors
with 18K HMIs to get equal punch
and hide them in the courtyard
5/31/08
8:43 PM
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6/3/08
11:06 AM
Page 50
A Not-So-Super Hero
Putting Viewers in Harms Way

ike most summer spectaculars,
Hancock opens with a high-octane
action sequence: the Los Angeles
Police Department is engaged in a
high-speed chase on the 105 freeway,
and Hancock arrives to save the day,
causing a great deal of damage in the
process. The shows 2nd-unit director/stunt coordinator, Simon Crane,
and 2nd-unit director of photography, Paul Hughen, wanted to put
viewers in the middle of the action
while preserving director Peter Bergs
mandate of entirely handheld camerawork.
Of course, placing camera
operators and assistants in cars that

will be hit by other cars isnt possible,
so Hughen approached Gary
Thieltges, president of Doggicam
Systems, to see if the production could
rig five of Doggicams wireless radiocontrolled Sparrow heads into five
cars for a one-shot stunt spectacular.
For a stunt like this, safety is paramount, says Hughen. The only way
to put operated cameras right in the
action safely was with remotely operated units. I had worked with the
Sparrow heads in a limited capacity
before, but never with five heads
working simultaneously.
Hughen, Crane and Thieltges
began planning the sequence, which
incorporated 12 cameras (including
the five that would be at the heart of
the action), two months before it was
scheduled to be shot. Our biggest
challenge was figuring out the radio
50 July 2008
frequencies, recalls Thieltges. With

five cameras in five different cars, we
needed 10 radios that would have clear
signals. With the walkie-talkies on the
set, the helicopter communications,
and the wireless controls of two cars in
the pack in addition to the location,
which was about 100 yards from Los
Angeles International Airport finding clean frequencies took a lot of
research and testing.
Doggicam Systems holds two
FCC licenses on specific frequencies
and has more than 100 channels to
work with, from the lower ISM band
of 900 MHz up to microwave channels
in the 6.4 GHz range. These signals
also incorporate an encryption coding
(originally developed in World War II)
to help protect against other frequencies stepping into a specific Sparrow
Heads range.
The filmmakers used three
Sparrow Head 200s and two of the
new Sparrow Mini heads, all armed
with Arri 235 cameras. To keep the
human operators at a safe distance
while maintaining a solid -mile (or
less) radio distance to ensure a clean
signal, Thieltges outfitted a large bus
with five remote stations to hold the
operators, assistants and Sparrow
Head technicians for each camera. The
five radio towers were mounted to the
top of the bus, which blended in with
the dozens of vehicles featured in the
scene.
It was a big challenge to work
out all the frequency issues, but Gary
and his team were amazing, and the
sequence came off nearly flawlessly,
says Hughen. The Doggicam System
worked without a hitch.
The cameras werent locked
down, which helps give the sequence
an immediacy and sense of danger,
notes Thieltges. The cameras are right
in the action, capturing a subjective
point of view.
Jay Holben
behind the bank. The interior set and

fixtures had to be up for four weeks
for the pre-rig, and we were again
limited to shooting at the location on
weekends, so the entire rig had to stay
in place while we were shooting elsewhere.
Although hes clumsy, careless
and often drunk, Hancocks powers
are on par with Supermans: superhuman strength and speed, immunity from bullets, and the ability to fly.
However, Hancocks aerial acrobatics
performed with far less grace than
the Man of Steels put him closer
to the ground, weaving around
buildings and taking out chunks of
architecture along the way. To create
interactive lighting for the flying
scenes, which were filmed on a greenscreen stage with Smith suspended
by a wire rig, Anderson employed his
RT5, a silent remote-control rig that
travels on I-beam track and has controls to pan and tilt each individual
light. The Hancock rig held two 20Ks
on a 360-degree, 45'-long track. The
challenge was to get the fixtures to
move and articulate quietly so we
could actually roll sync sound on the
greenscreen stage, recalls Anderson.
We had to integrate all these sound
baffles for the tractors and get the
right texture of the wheels to roll on
the I-beam tracks. Its all controlled
by a single joystick, so its a lot like
playing a video game.
Because of the collateral damage caused by Hancocks actions,
Embrey convinces Hancock to turn
himself in to the police, hoping that
the show of remorse will improve the
publics opinion of the hero. To film
Hancocks incarceration, the production moved into an abandoned jail in
Whittier, California, where they faced
a daunting logistical challenge. We
werent able to turn on the power to
the facility because it was tied into a
specific state system and would set off
all kinds of alarms, explains
Krattiger. Basically, we had to power
this two-story facility completely with
our own fixtures. What makes that
6/3/08
11:06 AM
challenging is the cells; theyre physical structures designed to keep people in, so cabling is quite an ordeal.
Rigging gaffer D.J. Lootens
discovered we could run some
cabling through the air-conditioning
ducts, and then he also discovered
every two cells had their own small
water-heater between the walls,
Krattiger continues. We could get a
cable into the small shaft between
the cells where the heater sat, and
from there we were able to feed 100
amps into each cell to power a little
fluorescent fixture. In the rest of the
facility, we used [Kino Flo] Image
80s in the ceilings and some Par cans
to create pools of light.
After getting out of jail,
Hancock becomes entrenched in a
battle in a hospital, a sequence shot
onstage at Sony Studios in Culver
City. The set featured a 120'-long
corridor lined with about a dozen
rooms, and to light the hallway,
Spisak and Schliessler incorporated
1'-wide floor-to-ceiling fluorescent
banks behind frosted glass along the
walls. We came up with the idea that
as the fight progresses, the power
would get knocked out little by little,
and the corridor would get darker
until we were just down to emergency lighting, says Schliessler.
Since we were doing this lighting
gag, we wanted to actually see the fixtures go out one-by-one, and we figured if we worked them into the
walls, wed get a much better feel.
The fluorescent banks comprised 8' and 6' Kino Flo tubes.
Krattiger explains, Since the fixtures
themselves were going to be in the
shot, we didnt want them to overexpose too much, so we ran all the
lamps back to a dimmer board,
where Scott Barnes was running the
show. Scott programmed cues to
knock out some tubes and flicker
some others as the damage happens.
We added a few Image 80s to supplement the lighting and ran those back
to the board, too; because there are
eight independent channels on an
Page 51
Left: Too hurt to

fly after a
hospital punchup, a bruised
and battered
Hancock leaps
away from a
scene. Below:
To light the
action, which
director Peter
Berg wanted to
shoot on
location rather
than on a
greenscreen
stage,
Schliessler and
his crew hung
three 24' Airstar
Hybrid Tube
balloons from
60' Condors.
Image 80, you can DMX-control

each tube in the fixture, so Scott did
the same kind of effect [with the
Image 80s] as the action progressed.
It worked really well.
The filmmakers used 9-light
Fay globes for the hospitals emergency lighting. Schliessler notes, At
the end of the scene, the power is
out, the emergency lights are on,
and, of course, the fire sprinklers go
off its a very dramatic look.
Hancock makes his escape by
bursting through a ninth-story window and plummeting to the street
below. Injured and unable to fly, he
can still super-jump, and with a few
grand leaps, he makes his escape.
Peter decided he didnt want to
shoot that sequence against greenscreen; he wanted to do it for real,
says Schliessler. We shot the scene at
night in downtown L.A., just across
from City Hall. Hancock leaps out of
the hospital building, lands, is nearly
hit by a car, and then starts taking
bigger and bigger leaps to get away.
Its all covered in one continuous shot

after he lands on the street.
To capture the action, 2ndunit director/stunt coordinator
Simon Crane supervised the rigging
of two massive cable rigs 40' above
the street, one for Smith and one for
camera operator Bielan. Peter wanted to keep the [camerawork] handheld, explains Schliessler. We flew
our camera right alongside Will all
the way down the street. Krattiger
adds, The shot runs about three city
blocks hes basically leaping from
the Cal Trans building to the Los
Angeles Times building, right down
the center of the street.
Unfortunately, a new police station
was being built right there at the
time, and that structure was belowgrade, so we couldnt hide anything
behind it. That caused some
headaches!
You approach these kinds of
sequences with a wish list, muses
Schliessler. I tried to scout those
locations two or three times at night
6/3/08
11:06 AM
Page 52
A number of special rigs were employed to capture Hancocks

heroics (see sidebar, p. 50), including a Flying-Cam unmanned
helicopter (left) and various camera cars (right). To film POV
shots of Hancocks erratic flight path through the Los Angeles
cityscape, Flying-Cam pilots Emmanuel Previnaire and Bruno
Ziegler used the systems pilot-in-relay capability, trading
control of the helicopter back and forth to cover different
portions of one long take.
to get a feel for what we would need.

We were basically looking 180
degrees down three city blocks and
two cross-streets at night. I didnt
want to push the film, so I knew we
had to light most of the area
Hancock would move through to a
T2/2.8. Fortunately, we had amazing
support from [producer] Ian Bryce
on this; theres just no way we would
have accomplished it otherwise.

The setup required dozens of
cranes, starting with several 30-ton,
60' construction cranes to support
the two stunt-flying rigs. In addition,
Schliessler and Krattiger lined
Hancocks flight path with three 24'
Airstar Hybrid Tube balloons hung
from 60' Condors. The Hybrids
combine 12 1K halogen tungsten
FOCUS IN NEW DIMENSIONS

WITH THE PIVOTING HAND GRIP
FOLLOW FOCUS STUDIO
Adjustable hand knob sensibility

Adjustable overload savety
Unique operation-ergonomy
due to panable hand knob
45
40
www.denz-deniz.com Tel: +49 89 - 62 98 66 0 Fax: +49 89 - 62 98 66 20

52
Flying-Cam photo by Marc Asmode, courtesy of Flying-Cam, Inc.
A Not-So-Super Hero
6/3/08
11:06 AM
globes and four 1.2K HMI globes;

striking the globes in various combinations allows the user to dial in
the desired color temperature. The
Airstars took care of the area up
above the street level, explains the
gaffer. We never really got up in the
air with a meter; we just had to go by
eye and see what looked good. We
put a 20K on the roof of the Times
building, positioned four 15-6K
BeBees around the area, scattered
other Condors with 20Ks, and put
one Condor with a couple of 24light Dinos deep down the street.
We partially corrected all the
HMI fixtures with 12 CTO and let
the tungsten lighting stay clean to
get a little mix of color, Krattiger
continues. We had seven generators
placed throughout downtown to
power the whole setup, which was
quite large.
Schliessler notes that the
scene required about five days of
Page 53
pre-rigging, and when the night of

the shoot arrived, there were more
than 30 electricians on location.
When it gets that big, Im really in
the hands of my gaffer and rigging
gaffer, and I just have to hope that
everything is in place, says the cinematographer. We show up, turn
everything on, make a few adjustments and shoot!
During the production, the
filmmakers screened hi-def DVD
dailies, and Schliessler was often able
to view select print dailies at
Technicolor with colorist Mark
Sachen before heading to work in
the morning. DVD dailies are just
silly you cant judge anything off
them, he notes. I like to go straight
to the colorist. He can bring up the
negative and I can see exactly what I
have on film, and then I can help dial
in the look we want for the dailies.
Despite the challenges posed
by the production, Schliessler
describes the experience as great

fun. We had a great cast, I had a great
crew, and we had great support from
Ian Bryce, a producer who is very
knowledgeable and always has the
pictures best interest in mind. And I
love working with Peter Berg; hes a
great director and gives you a lot of
freedom. This was just one of those
films that everyone had a great time
making.
I
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Super 35mm
Panaflex Platinum
Primo lenses
Kodak Vision2
50D 5201, 200T 5217, 500T 5218
Printed on Kodak Vision 2383
53
AMC_0708_p054p063:c_feature
6/3/08
1:05 PM
Page 54
Spy vs. Spy

Dean Semler, ASC, ACS captures covert mayhem for the
action comedy Get Smart, an adaptation of the popular
1960s television series.
by Noah Kadner
Unit photography by Tracy Bennett
ostalgia buffs and re-run
junkies fondly recall the TV
series Get Smart, a spy spoof
that amused home viewers
from 1965-1970. Created by
Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, the
show satirized the Cold War and
James Bond movies, featuring
Don Adams as hapless Agent 86,
Maxwell Smart, and Barbara
Feldon as his considerably more
competent partner, Agent 99.
Together, they fought the crime
syndicate Kaos, often armed with
nothing more than sight gags and
one-liners.
After being revived as a feature in 1980 (The Nude Bomb) and
a short-lived TV series in the early
90s, Get Smart is back as a big-
54 July 2008
budget feature. The project reunited director Peter Segal and cinematographer Dean Semler, ASC,
ACS, who had previously collaborated on The Longest Yard and The
Nutty Professor 2. In this new version, Smart (Steve Carell) and
Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway), under
orders from The Chief (Alan
Arkin), set out to prevent the villainous Siegfried (Terence Stamp)
from unleashing nuclear war.
Get Smart is the fourth feature Semler has shot with
Panavisions
high-definition
Genesis camera, following Apocalypto, for which he earned an ASC
nomination (AC Jan. 07); Click;
and I Now Pronounce You Chuck &
Larry. Because we can see dailies
and judge focus instantly, we can

reshoot right away if we need to,
rather than two or three days
later, he notes. And directors like
it because they can keep rolling
and working with the actors.
Dean completely sold me
on the idea of doing Get Smart
digitally, says Segal. One of the
best parts was that the executives
from Warner Bros. could witness
his entire process in the color-timing tent on the set. And Steve
Carell said he felt subliminally
more relaxed and improvisational
because he didnt hear the clock
ticking as film ran through the
mag.
One key to Semlers success
with the Genesis is EFilms
6/3/08
1:05 PM
Page 55
Photos courtesy of Warner Bros.
Opposite: The
capable Agent 99
(Anne Hathaway)
and her bumbling
partner, Agent 86,
a.k.a. Maxwell
Smart (Steve
Carell), use their
heads to crack a
case. This page,
top: The kooky
spooks sprint
into action.
Bottom:
Cinematographer
Dean Semler,
ASC, ACS
continued his
exploration of
Panavisions
Genesis camera
on the shoot.
Colorstream Remote color-management viewing system, which

uses 3-D look-up tables (LUTs)
to process incoming digital
footage and emulate a specific
film look. Colorstream produces
an image on my HD monitor
with the same color and contrast
that will appear on a theater
screen, explains Semler. It perfectly matches both a negative
and print stock, in this case
Kodak [Vision2 500T] 5218 rated
at 500 ASA and printed on Vision
[2383] stock. Each morning, the
Genesis was plugged into the
Colorstream, and my 6-by-6-foot
tent was set up by camera utility
Tim Megasawa we had no
need for a digital-imaging technician [DIT] on this shoot. I was
in the tent riding the cameras iris
controls remotely while the operators worked; it was a very
unique and special system.
Semler had many of his
frequent collaborators on board
throughout the production,
which started in Los Angeles and
moved on to Montreal;
6/3/08
1:05 PM
Page 56
Spy vs.Spy
Top and middle:
In an homage to
an iconic gag
from the Sixties
TV series, Smart
and 99 use a
telephone booth
to discreetly
descend to the
underground
headquarters of
Control. Bottom:
Director Peter
Segal shows
Carell and
Hathaway how
to dial in for a
scene.
56 July 2008
Washington, D.C.; and Moscow.

These included gaffer Jim Gilson,
key grip William Bear Paul, Acamera 1st AC Tony Rivetti, Acamera operator Andrew Rowlands, and B-camera operator
Richard Merryman.
For Get Smart, Semler chose
to work mainly with Panavision
Primo zoom lenses. He recalls,
The A camera usually had the 4:1
[17.5-75mm T2.3] zoom on, and
the B camera used the 11:1 [24275mm T2.8]. I tend to keep the
lighting levels very low with the
Genesis. If Im shooting wide open
on A camera, I can go to a 270degree shutter or add +12 of gain
on B camera in order to get the
lenses to match.
When Im shooting outside, I normally use the Genesis as
I would a tungsten negative and
add 85 and ND.6 filters, which
brings it down to about 64 ASA,
he continues. I might use an 81EF
if the light is getting too warm
outside. Sometimes Ill use a
Tiffen Black Pro-Mist for beauty
lighting, and I also experimented
with Formatts new HD filter,
which is subtle and takes the edge
off very slightly. I always keep in
mind that when we print to film,
the image is going to soften up a
little anyway.
Semler screened dailies digitally in a specially outfitted trailer
operated by projectionist Bobby
Hatfield, who was also responsible
for cloning the HDCam SR tapes
to which the cameras recorded.
Bobby made the clones through
the Colorstream and down-converted to Avid for the editors, says
Semler. He could make slight corrections like a lab timer does
overnight, per my instructions.
For example, if I shot without an
85 filter, he could put it back in, or
if we shot under fluorescent light,
he could take a little green out.
Bobby was a very integral part of
the team.
6/3/08
1:06 PM
The original Get Smart TV

series opened with a famous credit sequence in which Smart walked
down a corridor with a seemingly
endless number of doors closing
just behind him. Paying homage
to this memorable staging, an
early scene in the film shows
Smart crossing the Reflecting Pool
in Washington, D.C., on his way to
the secret underwater corridor
that leads to Control headquarters. To capture the corridor
sequence, Semler shot Carell
walking down a set comprising
only a floor, with stacked greenscreens to provide lighting separations. Visual-effects supervisor Joe
Bauer worked with Zoic Studios
to add the walls, ceiling and
mechanically intricate doors as
Smart heads toward the Control
briefing room.
To light the Cone of Silence
set, Semler mainly employed practicals integrated into the walls
by production designer Wynn
Thomas. The room also featured
wet concrete floors meant to suggest its underwater location. The
actual location was an old warehouse in San Pedro, recalls
Semler. We put red practical
lights off in the distance just to get
Page 57
reflections on the water. The actors

were lit with soft light from Kino
Flos.
After receiving his orders,
Smart, now partnered with Agent
99, flies to Russia on a commercial
airliner to investigate. Never one
to keep things simple, he ends up
falling out of the plane through
the lavatory, and 99 follows with
a parachute. The parachute
sequence, led by aerial-stunt

coordinator Guy Manos, features
some extraordinary photography
captured by cinematographer
Norman Kent in the skies over
Florida, says Semler. In addition
to wide shots featuring stunt players, the aerial unit captured background plates; aerial-unit and second-unit plate work was supervised by Don McCuaig, ASC, who
Left: Prior to his

promotion, the
paper-pushing
Smart carries a
stack of work
through Controls
main corridor,
which was
created in post
by visual-effects
supervisor Joe
Bauer and a team
of effects experts
at Zoic Studios.
Below: On set,
the Control
corridor
comprised a
series of
greenscreens
that provided
lighting
separation for an
endless series of
sliding doors
added in post by
the effects team.
6/3/08
1:06 PM
Page 58
Spy vs.Spy
Right: A secretservice agent
(Cedric
Yarbrough, far
left) stands by
as the President
of the United
States (James
Caan) and
Controls Chief
(Alan Arkin)
brief Agents 99
and 23 (Dwayne
Johnson).
Below: Smart
fumbles his way
through a
meeting at
Control.
shot much of that material on

35mm (Kodak Vision2 50D 5201,
200T 5217 and 500T 5218) using
Panavision Panastars and Primo
lenses. The majority of the aerial
work was captured with a
SpaceCam operated by Dwayne
McClintock, says Semler. We
used a Flying-Cam [mini-helicopter] for the low and dangerous
stuff.
In photographing the principals for the skydiving sequence,
58 July 2008
Semler and Segal eschewed greenscreen photography whenever feasible, opting for digital rear-projection instead. The production
enlisted Curly Whittaker of
Staging Techniques to provide the
projectors and screens, which were
used onstage at Warner Bros. and
in Montreal. In order to provide
enough illumination to offset the
movie lighting on the actors,
Whittaker set up two Christie
Roadie 25K digital projectors
simultaneously converged onto a

22'x40' Screenworks rear-projection screen; the Roadies were
capable of projecting full 2K resolution at 25,000 lumens. Bauer fed
the projectors with 1080p material
transferred to D5 and processed
through a Thomson/Technicolor
LUTher color-space converter in
order to provide accurate gamma
and color matching between the
screen and the live action.
We used lots of 18Ks and
20Ks [daylight and incandescent
sources, respectively] as needed to
match the look and temperature
of the original plates, recalls
Gilson. We also used Softsuns,
and the grips put up 25 30-footlong cutters to keep light off the
screen. It got interesting at times
because the lights occasionally
needed to be right where the
screen was, which was impossible.
But Deans a real genius at cheating things around so they look
totally natural.
After landing safely, Max
and 99 enjoy a more relaxed
6/3/08
1:06 PM
moment as they stroll through

rural countryside at dusk, with the
outskirts of Montreal standing in
for Russia. The Genesis gave me a
huge advantage at magic hour,
notes Semler. I managed to have
the Steadicam pulling back with
the actors and the B and C cameras off to the sides, walking with
them. They also paused in two
positions, and the side cameras
stopped and did the over-theshoulder coverage. That enabled
us to get everything done at the
same time, with the actors feeling
totally free. We took it right up to
2,000 ASA on the Genesis with +1
gain and a 360-degree shutter. At
the end of the scene, I stepped out
of my tent and it was dark outside,
but the scene looked beautiful on
the monitor.
Montreals Olympic stadium stood in as the futuristic headquarters of Siegfried and Kaos.
For the stadium, we bounced a
dozen or so 18K HMIs into
UltraBounce frames to create an
overall ambience, says Semler.
Page 59
Left: Kaos
kingpins
Siegfried
(Terence Stamp,
left) and
Shtarker (Ken
Davitian) are
Controls key
enemies.
Below: The
masterfiends
finalize their
plans for world
domination at a
giant war table.
Kino Flo fixtures
were placed
beneath the
table to
illuminate its
missile map.
We shot two interior scenes with

Terence Stamp using the outside
light spilling in. In one, he sits at a
desk playing a violin, with only a
warm practical-light effect added;
in the second, we had a war table
that was actually an elevator stairwell closed off and covered with a
map of the world that was lit from
underneath by Kino Flos. We finished both scenes by lunch, and
Terence said he would fly home
the next day after the dailies
report. But then we took the tapes

off the cameras, cloned them in
the projection trailer, and had the
dailies report right away, so he was
able to fly home that afternoon!
Smart and 99 finally arrive
at their objective: a bakery on a
Moscow riverbank that is suspected of being a front for nuclearweapons manufacturing. The setting combines shots taken on location in Russia with additional
exteriors shot in Montreal and
6/3/08
1:06 PM
Page 60
Spy vs.Spy
Above: An
elaborate
sequence that
begins on an
airliner required
a full-scale
plane-interior
set. Top right:
Carell spruces
up beneath an
overhead
camera on a
lavatory set.
Column at near
right: 99 and
Smart ponder
a new
predicament
from their seats;
a trapdoor in the
lavatory sends
Smart hurtling
through the sky.
Semler praises
the shows
aerial unit
for the
extraordinary
photography
they contributed.
60 July 2008
interiors captured at the

Budweiser brewery in Los Angeles
and a vacant mail-sorting facility
in Montreal. To shoot 99 infiltrating the bakery through an air-conditioning vent, Semler tracked
Hathaway with a 50' Super
Technocrane fitted with a Libra
head. The Techno was expertly
operated by my longtime dolly
grips, Jeff Moose Howery and
John Murphy, notes the cinematographer.
On the bakery exteriors, the
production was able to use larger
equipment. Gilson recalls that for
a segment captured on location in
Russia, we had two lighting towers loaded with 12K Pars. They
were 80-foot Condors in a condition that probably wouldnt be
considered 100-percent usable
here in the States, but its fascinating to see how people do things in
other countries. When we
matched the exterior in Montreal,
we brought in a lot of big gear, like
Maxi-Brutes, and then did more
rigging and testing.
When the bakery explodes,
Smart and 99 leap from the roof to
the safety of a neighboring building. To accommodate the extensive stunt work and pyrotechnics,
the rooftop was re-created as a set
at Warner Bros. We originally
planned to use either Translites or
greenscreen, says Semler. As it
6/3/08
1:06 PM
turned out, all of the firelight from

the propane explosions really lit
up the background, so we decided
to just surround the set with black,
and Joe did a great job of adding
the Moscow skyline in post.
In addition to the bakery
exterior, the Russia sequences
include a nighttime trip through
Moscows picturesque Red Square,
where Semler was able to shoot
primarily with the locations existing lighting. Gilson details, I was
sent ahead to Red Square early
with a light meter and a digital
camera to determine the level of
lighting. There was a mixture of
sodium-vapor and incandescent
industrial-lighting units on top of
a large department store. Dean
was pretty confident there was
enough base-level illumination to
work with the Genesis, so we just
augmented that with small cosmetic lights on the actors.
Later, with the war against
Kaos still raging, Smart and 99
must try to prevent an assassination during a concert. The
sequence was filmed in downtown
Los Angeles at the Walt Disney
Concert Hall, an iconic building
designed by Frank Gehry. Semler
found the interiors existing
orchestra lighting to be suitable
for base-level ambience, which he
boosted with Airstar 8K tungsten
balloons. We didnt really have to
bring in any major lighting, he
says. I also loved shooting the
exterior of the hall; the reflective
metal gave us an incredible number of highlights. Those are sometimes a concern with digital, but
we never had any problems.
Get Smarts finale finds Max
and 99 in a speeding SUV, barreling down railroad tracks toward
an oncoming train. The Chief
attempts to rescue his endangered
employees with a low-flying propeller plane, which was realized
entirely via CGI. The sequence was
filmed in the Vernon train yards
Page 61
Above: The crew

captures
greenscreen
footage of Carell
for another
airborne gag
involving a
smaller airplane.
Column at near
left: Smart hangs
for dear life onto
the towline
pulling an aerial
ad, which
hurtles him past
a city bus and
an SUV.
6/3/08
1:06 PM
Page 62
Spy vs.Spy
Staging Techniques provided the production with rear projectors and screens for
sequences requiring process photography.
62
outside Los Angeles, along with

additional inserts shot onstage
using both greenscreen and digital
rear-projection; McCuaigs unit
covered the major stunts. We did
a good amount of driving at speed
with the main actors on top of the
SUV, recalls Semler. That was
exciting, and I think being outside
and in the action really helped
them out performance-wise.
The scenes denouement
shows Smart and 99 separately
searching the wreckage of the SUV
and train, with each convinced
that the other has met an untimely
demise. Because the sequence was
shot late in the day, Semler worried
about lighting continuity. Almost
everything else that had been shot
had been in full sun, so I was concerned this wasnt going to match.
I recalled my early days working
with director George Miller and
his producer, Byron Kennedy, on
6/3/08
1:07 PM
The Road Warrior. Their theory

was that when youre shooting
action, if the action is fast enough,
the audience is very forgiving. It
can almost be raining in one shot
and youll get away with it.
Ultimately, we had no
choice but to shoot, he continues.
Peter and I devised two threecamera setups that would give us
all the coverage we needed in the
short time we had. The sun went
behind a low cloud, and then it
was going to be gone. Once again,
I used +1 gain and a 360-degree
shutter for 2,000 ASA. I stepped
out of the tent and was once again
surprised by how dark it was I
guess I will eventually get used to
the Genesis ability to see in the
dark! When I watched the dailies
in the trailer, I saw wed gotten
away with it.
Semler carried out the digital intermediate (DI) at EFilm
Page 63
with colorist Steve Bowen. Steve is

sort of like a postproduction
policeman for me, offering advice
like, I think you went too far for
this, or, Next time, you should try
this, Semler says with a grin. I
learn a lot just watching things get
pieced together, and it was a great
experience. However, by the time I
got into actually finishing the
movie, it had already gone through
three or four temporary DIs for
studio previews. Thats a very different approach, and I think cinematographers should try to get in
there on the initial preview timings
just to make sure everyone is on
the same page.
Having done his part to
maintain Control and stave off
Kaos, Semler ponders the digital
path he traveled on Get Smart,
noting wistfully that he still shoots
film when a project calls for it, as
on the recently completed feature
Appaloosa. My crew is now very

familiar with the Genesis, and
theyve learned to discover the
camera. It is different, in that its a
computer instead of a film camera; the assistants really need to
learn the software and the menus.
But its 2008, and the digital era is
no longer the future were in it.
I
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
High-Definition Video and 35mm
Panavision Genesis, Panastar
Primo lenses
Kodak Vision2
50D 5201, 200T 5217, 500T 5218
Printed on Kodak Vision 2383
AMC_0708_p064p067_R:e_feature
6/4/08
3:01 PM
Page 64
Laugh
Factory
30 Rock, shot by
Vanja Cernjul,
immerses viewers
in the backstage
lunacy of a
network comedy
show.
by Jon Silberg
Unit photography by
Nicole Rivelli
anja Cernjul
had almost no
background shooting episodic
television when he became
director of photography on the
popular NBC comedy 30 Rock
midway through last season. His
experience shooting independent
features had landed him a job shooting the pilot for Ugly Betty, and that
gig led to 30 Rock. Accustomed to
lighting locations as opposed to
standing sets, Cernjul

brought an
approach to both projects that was
welcomed by creatives who wanted
their shows to avoid a traditional sitcom look.
Cernjul
graduated from the
Academy of Dramatic Arts,
Univeristy of Zagreb, in 1995, and
earned an M.F.A. in film at New York
University in 1998. I was one of the
few students at NYU focused on cinematography, and that worked out
great for me, he recalls. I shot a lot
and worked with some very talented
students, and when they went on to
64 July 2008
direct independent films, they asked

me to shoot them. Two such projects were Ill Take You There, directed
by the late Adrienne Shelly, and Rain,
directed by Katherine Lindberg. His
credits also include The Mudge Boy
and Wristcutters: A Love Story.
On 30 Rock, actress/writer/
producer Tina Fey presents a fictionalized and often bizarre take on the
world she inhabited when she served
as head writer on Saturday Night
Live. Her character, Liz Lemon, contends with a loony group of collaborators, including nerdy writers; an
insecure diva, Jenna Maroney (Jane
Krakowski); a loose-cannon comic,
Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan); and a
crusty corporate executive, Jack
Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), who mentors the ditzy Lemon despite their
different personalities.
The look of the 30 Rock pilot,
which was shot inside New Yorks
Rockefeller Plaza by Michael Trim,
reflected the original tone of the
writing: comedy rendered in a naturalistic style. When NBC picked up the

series, sets were constructed across the
East River at Silvercup Studios; these
included the writers room, Lemons
office, Donaghys office, cast dressing
rooms, and a backstage area where
viewers glimpse the production of the
SNL-like show-within-the-show. To a
great extent, these sets were lit from
grids above the action, resulting in a
look that was fairly typical for a sitcom.
Soon, however, the series
moved beyond that style as it ventured
onto real locations and explored everstranger plotlines. The second seasons
scripts delved deeper into Jordans
chemically induced perceptions, and
as fantasy elements were introduced,
even the real-life scenes began taking
on an increasingly surreal quality. By
the time Cernjul

joined the show, the
producers wanted the visuals to keep
pace with the oddball tone of the
scripts, and show-runner/director

30 Rock photos courtesy of NBC. Cernjul
photo by Ron Baldwin.
6/4/08
3:01 PM
Don Scardino was pondering a more

stylized visual approach that would
subtly sell some of the wilder gags. All
you have to do is follow the writing,
says Cernjul.
We dont have one
formula for the whole show because
the look is really based on the storylines. Even within an episode, we can
be very realistic for one storyline and
extremely stylized for another.
To illustrate this point, Cernjul

cites the episode Rosemarys Baby,
whose main plot concerns an aging
comedy writer, Rosemary (Carrie
Fisher), whose early work was inspirational to Lemon but whose life has
become rather desperate. To help out
her onetime idol, Lemon recruits
Rosemary for her own writing staff,
with unfortunate results. We did a
lot of location work with Carrie
Fisher in her characters run-down
neighborhood and in a bookstore,
and we lit those scenes very realistically, respecting all the natural sources,
says Cernjul.
Scenes in Rosemarys
apartment, a set built at Silvercup,
were shot in a similar style. By the
time Liz visits the apartment, she
no longer sees Rosemary as a hero,
but as a cautionary figure. The story
becomes almost tragic at a point,
which is what great comedy is able
to do be tragic and make you laugh
at the same time, says the cinematographer. We lit the apartment
with some big lights through the
windows and just a little bit of light
inside. It was all meant to look very
real.
In the same episode, there is
another storyline about the page-off,
which is a big battle of the NBC pages.
For those scenes, we used colorful
mixed lighting that was inspired by
the look of Fight Club, shot by Jeff
Cronenweth [ASC]. I thought the
styles of the two stories worked very
well together dramatically and stylistically, even though the approaches
were so different.
Much of the action in 30 Rock
involves the back-and-forth between
Lemon and Donaghy in the latters
Page 65
plush office. This set offers the

opportunity to alter the lighting
based on the time of day, and
Cernjuls
approach to the space helps
compensate for the stars significantly different skin tones. Tina is fairskinned and Alec is very tan, he
notes, adding that the primary issue
is not exposure, but rendering realistic color for each actor.
Near the end of the last season, the series began shooting on
Fuji Eterna 400T 8583, switching
from Kodak Vision2 Expression
500T 5229, and Cernjul

notes that
although both emulsions have more
than enough latitude to handle a
variety of skin tones, he still finds it
challenging to make the actors very
different complexions read naturally
onscreen. We try to even that out
with lighting so they dont have to
use heavy makeup, he remarks.
Baldwin is frequently positioned in or near the chair at his
characters desk, which allows
Cernjul
to light with 5K and 10K
tungsten units through the windows;
these units, as well as the lights illuminating the backdrop outside, are
often gelled with 12 CTB. Fey, on the
other hand, is usually placed in front
of the desk or in the doorway, and
her lighting is motivated more by
warmer fixtures in night scenes and
warm sunlight for day scenes. Gaffer
Kenneth Dodd creates this look with
4'x8' book lights, 2K Blondes gelled
with CTO (12 for the fill and 14 for
the key), bounced into beadboard
and then softened with 216 diffusion. Dodd explains, The fall-off is
faster using book lights than it is

when you just put light through diffusion. That approach helps us control the look in small sets.
We light Jacks office primarily with the big soft lights through
the window and the book lights
inside, says Cernjul.

Everything
else is practicals on the set, and we
use a lot of flags to shape that light.
(In a friendly jab at Cernjuls

ethnicity, Baldwin refers to this setup as
the Croatian forest, according to
the cameraman.)
The less luxurious sets the
writers room, other offices and
dressing rooms are motivated by
fluorescent lights, but the illumination for several of these areas is actually provided by diffused tungsten
lights. We have real Kino Flo fluorescents in the hallway, in the writers room and over the writers table,
but in some of the offices and dressing rooms, we have Redheads
clamped above a 12-by-12 gridcloth
overhead coming down through diffusion like a big bay light, says
Dodd. We popped out ceiling tiles
and installed the kind of grate peo-
Opposite page:
Jack Donaghy
(Alec Baldwin)
and Liz Lemon
(Tina Fey) enjoy
a tony gathering
in an episode of
30 Rock, which
goes behind the
scenes on a
popular comedy
series. This
page, top:
Comedian Tracy
Jordan (Tracy
Morgan)
performs in a
skit. Bottom:
Cinematographer
Vanja Cernjul
at
work on another
project.
6/4/08
3:01 PM
Page 66
Laugh Factory
Lighting is used
to even out
skin-tone
differences
between Fey,
who is fair, and
Baldwin, who is
tan, when they
are in the same
scene. In
Donaghys office
(far right),
where they
frequently meet,
Baldwin is often
keyed with cool
fixtures through
the windows
while Fey is
positioned
close to warm
practicals.
ple use with fluorescents, but as long

as its lit, you cant see what kind of
light it really is.
Unfortunately, we have a lot
of scenes in the hallway, where logic
dictates that the light come from
above, Cernjul
laments. I prefer to
light from the floor, so we sometimes use a few lights on stands,
adding diffusion to make them look
like one large source rather than
many smaller ones. For most of
these fluorescent settings, Cernjul

maintains a neutral tungsten ambience, but in a few key areas, such as
Lemons office and Maroneys dressing room, he adds some CTO and/or
Cosmetic Peach gel.
The look often becomes more
unusual in the studio and backstage
area. We can get a little funky in
those areas because the average
viewer doesnt know what really
happens backstage on a network
show, says Dodd. When were
doing one of the skits, we dont have
to do anything a specific way. There
was one bit where Tracy was playing
the Wolf Man in a Thriller-like
music video, and all we used were
hard backlights on the smoke and
some passive bounce behind the
camera as fill. Another time, we did a
dream sequence where Donaghy
becomes Richard Nixon, and all we
used were very hard 5Ks overhead
aimed through snoots and just blar66 July 2008
ing down on him.

In an episode in which Lemon
wants to present herself in an incredibly good light to a former
boyfriend, she waits for him on the
studio floor in light designed for one
of her performers. We lit her like a
supermodel, says Dodd. We used a
big soft source and then slightly
harder back edges. Its not at all how
wed normally light Liz Lemon.
Throughout the second season, the production spent more time
on locations, often shooting secondary plotlines concurrently with a second unit in order to be able to do the
location work without expanding
the schedule. Cernjul

notes, Were
proud that whenever we go out on
location, we try to show New York as
much as possible. We do some lighting outside but try to make the most
of existing light sources. I love mixing color temperatures, and we do
that on the street with sodium-vapor
and fluorescent lights and whatever
else we find. I always try to simulate
the color temperature of the source
in the frame rather than having
everything look [neutral]. Weve also
started mixing color temperatures in
the studio so that the difference
between the look of locations and
studio work isnt so noticeable.
The production has shot a
number of scenes in real restaurants,
where they also try to respect the
existing sources. The problem is

that restaurant lighting is often overhead, and its not nearly enough to
read, notes Dodd. So the production designer might put in some
sconces or lamps for us to use as
practicals, and then we use China
balls above the tables, usually with
250-watt tungsten bulbs dimmed
down. We dont often use locations
that feature windows, so we dont
have to worry about building our
light level up to match. We did do a
day scene in the Rainbow Room,
and we covered all the windows with
ND.3 and ND.6. I prefer that combination to ND.9 because it gives you
more control; if it gets a little darker
outside, you can just pull one gel. We
lit everything inside the Rainbow
Room with HMIs to build up the
light level so the film could hold
detail inside and out.
For an episode late last season,
the production had one of its most
complicated location shoots yet:
Lemon had to run through John F.
Kennedy Airport to try to catch up
with her ex. This was a day interior
shot in an active terminal at JFK that
had large windows everywhere. We
lit with HMI balloons an 8K and
a 16K and 18K, 6K and 4K
HMIs, recalls Dodd. We had to use
a lot of lights to build up the interior
because we could see out all those
windows. We had three hours to pre-
6/4/08
3:01 PM
rig and then 90 minutes to shoot, but

it worked well. Its fun to have those
kinds of challenges.
Another facet of 30 Rocks cinematography that has evolved is the
camerawork. When the series began,
Scardino leaned toward single-camera shooting, sometimes with elaborate masters, but he and other directors segued into covering almost
everything with two cameras one
wide, one tight. We usually have a
32mm lens on the A camera and a
65mm or 75mm on B, saysCernjul,

who uses Cooke S4 prime lenses. The
cameras, Arricam Lites, are almost
always handheld. Our A-camera
operator, Peter Agliata, spent years
on Law & Order and is one of the
best handheld operators in the
industry, says the cinematographer.
And Matt Clark, whos been with
me since my student days, operates
the B camera and is also the 2nd-unit
director of photography. Our camera
assistants, Jeff Dutemple on A and
Jonathan Beck on B, are also excellent.
They have to be, he adds,
because he likes to work at a T2.8 or
even a T2 in order to throw the walls
behind the actors out of focus. With
those wide apertures, handheld cameras that move all the time, and
65mm and 75mm lenses, the assistants have to be on top of their game
all the time, he says.
Don Scardino describes what
he wants from the camerawork as
catching lightning in a bottle, notes
Page 67
Agliata. Its about staying with the

actors and making it look like were
catching them live. Using two cameras all the time is a luxury that can
create complications sometimes,
theres one sweet spot that both
operators want to get to. But we
always work it out, like a little ballet.
The operators on 30 Rock, like
the actors, seek to help the material
but not overstate it. Its a comedy
show, but if you force a camera move
to punch a joke, you telegraph it, and
its not funny anymore, says Agliata.
Its about keeping up with the actor;
if he nails a joke, you want to be right
there with the camera movement.
Too much or too little can hurt the
joke, and you have to get it right
every time.
Cernjul
keeps a 12 Tiffen Black
Diffusion/FX filter on the lens unless
hes shooting a close-up, in which
case he sometimes switches to a #1.
Its my favorite diffusion. Its almost
undetectable, and it takes the edge
off and brings the highlights down a
bit without adding any kind of halo.
Its part of our whole look.
When production told
Cernjul
it would be switching to Fuji
film stock, he tested Eterna 500T and
400T. Even though wed been
shooting on a 500-ASA stock, I preferred Eterna 400; I really liked the
softness of the contrast and colors. In
fact, we were tweaking 5229 in post
to make the colors even more pastel
and soften the contrast. The 400speed Fuji is closer to what we want,
so we tweak it less.
Cernjul
communicates with
the shows telecine colorist at
PostWorks, Bobbie Thomas, via
Kodaks Look Manager System, into
which he has programmed his own
look-up tables. (The LUTs were
unaffected by the switch to Fuji, he
notes.) The grips built a station on
the camera cart for the Look
Manager equipment, he explains. I
take stills during the blocking
rehearsals, view them in Look
Manager, and make some decisions
about how I want them to go. I send
a Jpeg to Bobbie, and she can send
one back to me on my cell phone so
I can get an idea what shes up to. I
try to bring the look of the dailies as
close to the final look as possible.
Theres never enough time
for me to go to the telecine sessions,
but with this method, I can constantly communicate with the colorist
using pictures instead of words. My
cell phone has become as important
as my light meter!
I
The look of the

shows
backstage
scenes can vary
widely,
depending on
the action. Far
left: Kenneth
(Jack
McBrayer) and
Jenna (Jane
Krakowski) act
up behind the
scenes. Near
left: Camera
operator Chris
LaVasseur and
1st AC Jeffrey
Dutemple
capture a shot
of Krakowski.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.78:1
35mm
Arricam Lite
Cooke S4 lenses
Fuji Eterna 400T 8583
Telecine by PostWorks
AMC_0708_p068p073:00 post focus
6/3/08
1:52 PM
Page 68
Post Focus
The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference, held annually in
Las Vegas, Nevada, has become a main
stage for manufacturers to showcase
technological advancements that
impact a variety of audio-visual workflows through every phase of production, from prep through post. AC was on
the NAB show floor this year, and some
items about the tools that were
unveiled have already appeared in New
Products and Services. However, we
also examined some tools that directly
affect the cinematographers vision as
motion pictures travel down the post
pike. Our coverage will continue over
the next few months in these pages
and online (www.theasc.com). What
follows is a look at some of the most
noteworthy developments for post
professionals.
CineSync Streamlines
Dark Knight Effects
by Jon D. Witmer
Based on Apple QuickTime technology, the CineSync remote review
and approval system from RSR synchronizes the timeline and playback of
movies while offering drawing and
text-annotation tools, allowing users in
different corners of the world to
communicate clearly and efficiently.
The program, which received a Pro
upgrade in time for NAB, has proven
particularly beneficial in keeping
geographically distant visual-effects
houses on the same page.
Corresponding with AC via email, Rory McGregor, RSRs CineSync
product manager, writes from Australia,
CineSync is simply about allowing
people to have a fully interactive visual conversation, providing an absolute
visual context for everything being
discussed. You dont need to try to
describe something on the screen; you
68 July 2008
RSRs CineSync review-and-approval application was used during The Dark Knight s
postproduction to streamline communication between director Christopher Nolan in Los
Angeles and visual-effects facilities in London and Paris.
can point to it, circle it or play the

footage, and everyone else in the
review session wherever they are in
the world will instantly know what
you mean.
Since its introduction, CineSync
has been put through the paces on
dozens of features, including Blood
Diamond and Iron Man. After working
with the program on Superman Returns,
visual-effects producer Joyce Cox
recommended it to her collaborator on
The Dark Knight, visual-effects supervisor Nick Davis. My last couple of

shows had all been in London, so there
was no real need for it, says Davis. For
The Dark Knight, though, postproduction spanned half the globe; visualeffects work was divvied up among
Paris facility Buf and London facilities
Framestore CFC, Double Negative and
Cinesite, and director Christopher
Nolan remained in Los Angeles for
editing. Davis continues, [Based on]
6/3/08
1:52 PM
Page 69
5LJJLQ'HVLJQ,QF
WKHEHWWHUDOWHUQDWLYH
Screen grabs courtesy of RSR and Warner Bros.
While synchronizing QuickTime-file playback for all users logged into a session,
regardless of their location in the world, CineSync allows users to draw and write on
their screens, with the results appearing simultaneously in front of everyone else in the
session.
Joyces recommendation and the

recommendation of others on [The
Dark Knight] who had used it, CineSync
seemed to be the perfect tool. Im actually not sure we could have done the
post without it.
Visual-effects work on The Dark
Knight began in January 2007. As
Davis circumnavigated the world with
the production, he used CineSync to
stay in touch with his collaborators. I
used [CineSync] from Hong Kong,
Chicago, L.A., London and Paris, he
says. Wherever we were, I was able
to stay in contact with the director and
the vendors. It was my main communication with Buf. It really makes the
world a much smaller place.
Each of the facilities involved
acquired its own CineSync license.
Davis and his crew orchestrated when
sessions would happen, making sure
everyone would have access to the
sequences requiring review by posting
them to a secure FTP site. McGregor
notes this is crucial to both CineSyncs
efficiency and the studios peace of
mind: During a CineSync session, the
only information passing through the
CineSync servers are the synchronization commands. The CineSync server
sees someone drawing an arrow or
writing a note or hitting the play
button, and it then instantaneously
instructs all the other clients to do the
same. It doesnt require much bandwidth because its not trying to stream
the media or push huge amounts of

data around. It has been embraced by
the studios because it means they
retain control over the distribution of
their clips.
Working at QuickTime resolutions suited The Dark Knight s review
sessions, according to Davis. Our
focus was really on content do you
like the layout of this shot? Do you like
the animation? Do you like where
were taking it? When it came to
analyzing anything on another level
such as color and contrast we
did that on film.
In addition to eliminating the
need for collaborators to gather in front
of one monitor, CineSyncs QuickTime
support and smaller file sizes speeds
the dialogue between facilities by
creating a faster option than uploading
and downloading higher-resolution
footage to and from an FTP. It saves
time, and at the end of the day, thats
one thing you can never buy back,
Davis concludes.
McGregor notes that the new
CineSync Pro expands the programs
functionality by allowing users to
review stereoscopic material, both
projected and also on the desktop, and
to output mono and stereo HD images
to a projector or monitor. It also has
synchronized color, aspect-ratio and
masking controls; 3-D LUT [look-up
table] support; a standalone offlineannotation mode for marking up
6DOHV5HQWDOV&XVWRP'HVLJQ
6FRWW%XFNOHU

ZZZ WHFKQRMLE FRP

69
At this
years NAB
conference,
RSR debuted
the new
CineSync Pro,
with color
controls,
stereoscopic
review and 3-D
LUT support
among its
upgraded
features.
6/3/08
1:52 PM
images prior to a synchronized review;

and magnification tools.
CineSync Pro is also the first
version of the system to be offered for
Linux as well as Mac and Windows,
and McGregor adds that the updated
program is already gaining traction as
an essential part of the internal workflow of many facilities. The new
features make it much more than an
international client review tool. For
more information, visit www.cine
sync.com or www.cinesync.com/pro.
PRESS RELEASES
MTI Correct v7
Among its slate of new releases
for NAB, MTI Film unveiled Correct v7,
an enhanced version of the companys
award-winning digital film restoration
and finishing software, Correct DRS.
Correct v7 allows restoration artists to
work more efficiently by eliminating
repetitive and routine tasks. Its a
major advance, says MTI Film CEO
Larry Chernoff. The goal was to
provide power and simplicity.
Among the improvements is a
streamlined user interface, including a
unified tool panel with all of the soft-
70 July 2008
Page 70
wares various plug-ins integrated into

a single screen. Artists can quickly
switch between tools for dust-busting,
paint, scratch removal and other
common functions. The new version
also features a revamped keyboard
layout with new hotkeys to speed
routine tasks.
MTI offers Correct v7 in
customized packages, with specialized
toolsets designed for specific applications and the skill level of the user. For
example, one package is tailored to
digital-intermediate (DI) work while
another targets television post. Additionally, the Restoration Artist Pack
offers basic tools for new and less
experienced users focused on routine
tasks, while the Restoration Expert
Pack boasts a full set of tools for senior
artists engaged in the most complex
and creative restoration assignments.
David McClure, MTI Film product
manager, notes, We recognize
restoration operations are complex,
with a lot of variation in both the character of the work and the experience of
the artists.
One highlight of v7 is the addition of Macros to the Paint and Scratch
Removal tools so that actions applied
to one frame can be reapplied to other
frames or sequences. Another advance
is improved Detection functions within
the Scratch Removal and Digital
Restoration System tools, which
allows scratches, blemishes and
chemical stains to be automatically
identified and eliminated. McClure
adds, The new Paint and De-warp

tools allow for the easy removal of
complex problems like splices and
tears.
A new feature in Animated
Masks allows users to add key frames
or moving regions within masks, and
new algorithms developed for AutoFilter can more easily detect and remove
dust. Additional features in v7 include
help functions attached directly to each
tool; an enhanced Clip Manager,
providing new fields for easy clip
naming; Metadata Server functionality,
making SAN operation more efficient
and flexible for workgroup environments; and an enhanced Stabilization
tool with improved tracking and
handling of camera motion with automatic edge replacement.
For more information, visit
www.mtifilm.com.
Thomson, FilmLight Demo
Telecine System
Thomson and FilmLight collaborated at NAB to conduct a show-floor
demonstration in which FilmLights
Baselight color-grading system interacted with a Thomson Grass Valley
Spirit system as a telecine controller.
According to Thomson, this marked the
first time a software-based color
corrector fully controlled a telecine
system.
The demonstration involved a
Baselight HD running version 3.3 of the
Baselight software while connected to
a Spirit 4K scanner. The FilmLights
6/3/08
Baselight version 3.3 software can be

employed with any Baselight system
and any model of the Thomson Grass
Valley Spirit product line, including
Spirit HD, Spirit 2K, Spirit 4K, the
Shadow telecine and the Spirit
DataCine.
Emphasizing the broad implications for all post workflows with a
particular impact on high-end commercials Jeff Rosica, senior vice president of Thomsons Broadcast & Professional Solutions, observes, Todays
post industry is changing rapidly, and a
telecine or film scanner has to integrate perfectly into the wider workflow
to make it a productive and profitable
workhorse. By integrating our products
with other equipment, were helping
our customers innovate and stay
competitive.
As a result of the collaboration
between Thomson and FilmLight, the
Baselight, via its Blackboard control
panel, can now emulate a hardware
grading system in a traditional linear
workflow, performing such functions as
primary and secondary color correction,
grain management and other filmstock-dependent settings. All of these
functions are then carried out in the
Spirit scanner using the Spirits signal
processing. Additionally, this new technology enables the Baselight software
to control the Spirit for ingest while
operating in a nonlinear environment.
Other hybrid modes of operation are
also possible.
www.thomsongrassvalley.com and
www.filmlight.ltd.uk.
1:52 PM
Page 71
ARRIFLEX 235 ON BOARD BATTERY SYSTEM

The new Oppenheimer 235 OB Battery System easily mates
to your Arriex 235 camera and allows the use of standard Anton
Bauer, IDX, PAG, or Frezzi batteries to power the camera at all speeds.
By using a standard battery, you reduce costs and increase run time.
The OppCam Riser Base provides additional 24V and 12V power
outlets. The system is simple, reliable and cost effective. Available now!
Problem solving
ideas and innovative
products since 1993!
marty@oppcam.com
Seattle: 206-467-8666
Toll Free: 877-467-8666
71
6/3/08
1:53 PM
AJA Video Cards

AJA has expanded its Xena
and Kona product lines, introducing
the Xena 3.5 software upgrade to the
companys Windows-based line of
video playback and capture cards
and the version 6.0 software update
for the Mac-based uncompressed
10-bit Kona 3 video card.
Following the recent incremental version 3.1.1 Xena upgrade
which featured extended support
for Adobe Production Premium CS3
applications, Vista 64 and Autodesk
Combustion 2008, as well as realtime cropping and matting of
RedCine 2K DPX material to
2048x1080 or 1920x1080 for editing
or output Xena 3.5 provides realtime DVCPro HD capture, playback
and editing support in Adobe
Premiere Pro CS3 and AJAs Machina
stand-alone deck-control, playback
and capture application.
Nick Rashby, president of AJA
Video Systems, says, We continue
to extend the capabilities of our Xena
family of products for Windows, and
with the introduction of DVCPro HD
support in version 3.5, we offer a
powerful, compressed, HD real-time
workflow, saving our customers time
and disk space in the process.
In an effort to optimize
support for Red Digital Cinema workflows, the version 6.0 software for
the Kona 3 video card adds Redspecific video outputs for some of
the unique frame sizes that RedAlert
and RedCine software applications
can create. Support for the frame
sizes that may be produced when
working with Red will also be
enabled for the AJA TV software
application, a stand-alone QuickTime
video player utilizing the Kona card
video outputs and providing a simple
way to play back and review clips.
The AJA TV application is a free utility that installs with the AJA software driver.
www.aja.com.
72 July 2008
Page 72
Digital Vision
Film Master v4.0
Visitors to Digital Visions NAB
booth were given a look at the upcoming Film Master v4.0 grading and
finishing system, which offers realtime 4K capabilities and the new
Turbine render accelerator. The booth
also showcased Film Master v3.6,
which is currently available and
features extended support for QuickTime, MXF and AAF with the ability to
natively grade DNxHD, IMX50, P2 and
XDCam media; a revised control
surface with a lower profile and faster
response times; and enhanced
support for the ASC Color Decision
List (CDL).
Version 4.0, slated for release
later this year, features significant
processing improvements, optimizations and grid-processing developments, enabling new performance
benchmarks in file-based finishing.
Film Master v4.0 will allow facilities
to begin editing, conforming, grading
and finishing 4K material instantly,
without any ingest delays. Direct SAN
grading will also simplify data
management by reducing the number
of project copies in the facility and
enabling users to offload tasks such
as conform, dust-busting, versioning
and titling to the back room, keeping
high-end grading theaters available
for client sessions.
Unlike 8- or 10-bit processing,
which can produce crushing and
banding in low-detail areas of the
color space, Film Master v4.0s floating-point processing eliminates clip-
ping, crushing or banding when

performing extreme grading or lighting changes. This feature particularly
benefits projects incorporating visual
effects, ensuring that all of the detail
in the rendered file is available in the
grade. Floating-point processing also
enables Film Master users to incorporate high-dynamic-range sources with
log and linear material for true-color,
resolution-independent workflows.
Powering Film Master v4.0s
real-time capabilities is Turbine, a
new high-performance render accelerator for all Digital Vision software.
With Turbine, facilities can assign as
many Intel CPU cores as are necessary to a project, creating a scalable
range from eight cores to 480 and
beyond. This performance boost
enables real-time 4K grade reduction
and other DVO image processing, as
well as the ability to run multiple 2K
or HD projects in faster-than-real
time.
The increase in 4K production
has put pressure on facilities to
provide fast, affordable 4K post and
DI services, says Simon Cuff, Digital
Vision president. There is a tremendous opportunity to improve efficiency
by enabling users to do more tasks in
parallel and by processing massive
files faster. We focused our efforts on
optimizing these tasks so that our
customers can offer clients the highest possible image quality without
risking their profitability.
www.digitalvision.se.
6/3/08
1:53 PM
Page 73
Celco Big Shot 65

Celco touted the newest addition to its line of motion-picture film
recorders, the Big Shot 65 large-format
recorder. Boasting pristine, ultra-highresolution images and increased
speed, the Big Shot 65 can support 5perf, 8-perf and 15-perf 65mm image
formats.
With a host PC running Red Hat
Linux (and including Gigabit Ethernet),
the Big Shot 65s operating software
comprises Celco Extreme Command
Line and the FilmOut
Pro Graphical User
Interface (GUI). The
FilmOut Pro GUI
controls the recorder
and includes imaging tools such as
sharpening, degrain,
image formatting,
resizing and colormanagement functions. FilmOut Pro
also features an
interactive
A/B
image comparison
slider,
allowing
users to view
images before and
after different image-processing tools
have been applied, and the FinalView
tool displays the final image and its exact
position on film.
With 36-bit color resolution, the
Big Shot 65 supports resolutions that
include high-definition 1920x1080, 2K,
3K, 4K, 6K and 8K, as well as userdefined resolutions. Supported file
formats include Cineon, DPX, SGI, TIF,
TIFF, TGA, ALS, JBT, JFIF, JPEG, JPG,
PCT, PIC, PICT, RGA, RGB, RLA, SHT,
YUV and BMP. Recording at 4K to 15perf 65mm Kodak Vision2 50D 5201
negative, the recorder can operate at 9
seconds per frame. (The recorder also
supports Vision2 200T 5217 and Vision
Color Intermediate 2245/5245 film
stocks.)
www.celco.com.
I
73
AMC_0708_p074p076:00 new products
6/3/08
11:52 AM
Page 74
New Products & Services

Panasonic Updates VariCam
Updating its popular VariCam HD
camera, Panasonic has unveiled the AJHPX3700 and AJ-HPX2700 P2 HD
camcorders. These new 23" P2 HD models
offer master-quality, full-resolution, 10-bit
4:2:2 AVC-Intra 100 recording; variable
frame rates in one-frame increments; HDSDI output of 23.98PsF/24PsF; and a multigamma function, including Film-Rec,
which simulates the latitude of film
stocks.
Panasonic has positioned the VariCam 3700 as the flagship model of the P2
HD VariCam line, delivering the camera
with full native 1920x1080 acquisition and
independent frame recording with 10-bit
4:2:2 sampling. Additionally, with three 23"
2.2-megapixel CCDs, the camera is capable of a 4:4:4 RGB dual-link live output,
resulting in pristine images ideal for visual
effects. Tailor-made for commercial,
feature-film and episodic-television
production, the VariCam 3700 is also capable of recording in AVC-Intra 50 and
DVCPro HD.
Designed for sports, documentaries and independent films, the VariCam
2700 also boasts three 23" CCDs, producing independent-frame 1080 and 720
images. Like the 3700, the 2700 can also
record in AVC-Intra 100, AVC-Intra 50 and
DVCPro HD. When shooting in 720p mode,
the camera can capture from 1 to 60 fps.
Both new VariCams are switchable
between 59.95-Hz and 50-Hz recording,
and each camera features five P2 card
slots, allowing continuous recording, card
74 July 2008
selection, hot-swapping, loop recording, pre-recording, interval recording

and one-shot recording. With five 32GB
P2 cards installed, operators can record
up to 200 minutes in AVC-Intra 100 at
1080/24p, 400 minutes in AVC-Intra 100
at 720/24p, 320 minutes in other AVCIntra 50 formats and 160 minutes in
other AVC-Intra 100 or DVCPro HD
formats. Additional image-enhancing
features found in both cameras include
14-bit A/D processing, Chromatic Aberration Compensation (CAC) to maximize
lens performance, Dynamic Range
Stretching (DRS) for wide variations in
lighting, unique shutter-angle settings,
built-in scan reverse and full control of
matrix and color correction for precise
image matching.
The 3700 and 2700 also share a
high sensitivity of F10 at 2,000 lux, and
both incorporate 48-kHz/16-bit, fourchannel digital audio recording. Text
memos and shot markers can be added,
and proxy data recording is possible
with the optional AJ-YAX800G board.
Other features include scene files, user
buttons, user-menu and focus-assist
functions and newly designed twowheel (ND and CC) optical filters.
Both the 3700 and 2700 VariCams are backed by Panasonics fiveyear limited warranty. For more information, visit www.panasonic.com
/broadcast.
Arri D-20 Turns 21
Based on feedback from field
users, Arri has significantly upgraded
the Arriflex D-20 film-style digital
camera, incorporating the new features
in the Arriflex D-21.
Combining the immediacy of
digital cameras with high-end film-style
functionality, the D-21 incorporates Arri
Imaging Technology (AIT) to produce
images with a cinematic look and feel.
Through its single Super 35mm-sized
CMOS sensor (with a native 1.33:1
aspect ratio), the D-21 offers the same

cinematic depth of field that characterizes 35mm-film footage, and the camera
is compatible with both spherical and
anamorphic 35mm-format lenses. The
camera also boasts a bright optical
viewfinder, variable-frame-rate shooting
and compatibility with Arri film-camera
accessories.
Images captured with the D-21
feature improved color saturation and
increased sharpness over those captured
with the original D-20 thanks to a higher
modulation transfer function (MTF)
achieved by rewriting the down-sampling

algorithm from scratch and carefully finetuning the interaction of the optical lowpass filter to the new algorithm. A cleaner
signal path, improved internal power
management, Defect Pixel Correction
(DPC) and the elimination of various artifacts have also led to improved low-light
performance. Additionally, color management look-up tables are now available for
ASAs 100, 200, 250, 320, 400, 500, 640
and 800.
The D-21s raw sensor information
can be transported in the new ArriRaw
format via the cameras HD-SDI link,
embedded in the standard RGBA 4:4:4:4
transport protocol. Arri software tools
currently undergoing beta testing can
process the ArriRaw files through
advanced de-Bayering algorithms and
output either an HD image or a 2K data
file.
Completing the D-21 camera pack-
6/3/08
1:18 PM
Page 75
age, Arri has introduced a number of

new hardware pieces, including the S-5
shoulder set and ground glasses for
1.33:1, 1.78:1, 1.85:1 and 2.39:1 formats.
All D-21 cameras come equipped with
the FEM-2 addition, which provides a
built-in radio for wireless lens and
camera control and enables the use of
Arri Controlled Lens Motors (CLMs)
without any additional boxes.
As with the D-20, the D-21s
modular architecture allows upgrading
when advances in sensor, electronics
or firmware technology become available. For more information, visit
www.arri.com.
Clairmont Increases
High-Speed Inventory
Clairmont Camera recently added
specially modified high-speed NAC
Memrecam fx K4 cameras to its rental
roster of digital cameras and support
equipment. Able to record up to 1,000
fps while maintaining 1280x1024 resolution (and up to 168,000 fps at lower
resolutions), the camera system
features a 35mm progressive-scan
CMOS imaging sensor with ultra-high
light sensitivity.
NACs Memrecam fx K4 is capable of recording and storing mega-pixel
images for up to 14 seconds while
shooting at 1,000 fps, and once the
cameras internal memory is full, it is
easily downloaded to the supplied
portable PC computer for data storage
and rendering to postproductioncompatible file formats. Clairmont also
offers portable external storage drivers
for transporting downloaded image data
from location to the post facility.
The camera continually records
while it is powered on, though it only
saves the image data when triggered;
75
6/3/08
11:53 AM
the cameras trigger can be set to start,

center, end or any position in between.
When set to center, for example, the
camera saves 4.9 seconds of data
before and after the trigger point. The
footage can then be quickly reviewed via
the cameras NTSC-video output.
Clairmonts technicians have
equipped the NAC camera with a PL
mount, enabling compatibility with a
wide range of popular 35mm cinema
lenses. A custom riser/power
converter has also been added to the
bottom of the camera to facilitate the
use of Arri matteboxes and follow-focus
systems while providing power for onboard monitors and other electronic
accessories.
The camera and all required
accessories are available through Clairmonts Hollywood, Toronto, Vancouver
and Albuquerque offices. For more information, visit www.clairmont.com or call
(818) 761-4440.
JVC Expands Pro Lineup
JVC Professional Products
Company has extended its reach in the
professional HD marketplace with the
720p/1080i signal-selectable GYHD200UB ProHD camcorder.
The new camcorder provides a
selectable live-transport-stream output
capability of 1080/60i and 50i signals or
720/24p, 25p, 30p, 50p and 60p through
its IEEE 1394 connection. The selected
output signal can be recorded into JVCs
ProHD DR-HD100 hard-disk recorder or
the new MR-HD200U camera-mounted
media recorder as either MPEG2 transport-stream files (.m2t) or QuickTime
files (.mov).
The GY-HD200UB also offers fullframe 1280x720 progressive imaging
76 July 2008
Page 76
and 720p recording as well as a 14-bit

A/D converter and a 14.4v powersystem standard. The selectable 60p
and 60i acquisition capability of the GYHD200UB is ideally suited for HD news
and sports acquisition, and filmmakers
benefit from the native progressiveimage capture and the overcranked
recording for slow-motion images during
24p final output.
JVCs GY-HD200UB is currently
available with a suggested list price of
$5,995, which includes a 16:1 Fujinon
lens and Anton-Bauer battery system.
Additionally, the camcorder head can
be purchased alone (model GYHD200CHUB) for a suggested price of
$5,695. For more information, visit
http://pro.jvc.com.
Sony XDCam Family Grows
Hot on the heels of its PMW-EX1
camcorder, Sony has unveiled the
upgraded PMW-EX3, featuring similar
functionality to the earlier version while
allowing users to make lens choices
through a new interchangeable-lens
system. Sony has also introduced the
PMW-EX30 deck and the PHY-60K
professional hard-disk unit.
Features of the EX3 camcorder
include genlock and timecode in/out
for multi-camera operation. The
camcorders 8-pin remote connector
allows the RM-B150 or RM-B750
remote controllers to adjust basic
camera parameters such as gain, iris,
white balance, pedestal and gamma for
use in studio configurations.
Specifically designed for use
with the XDCam EX camcorders, the
1.8", 60 GB PHU-60K external-storage
unit features a USB 2.0 interface, giving
users approximately 200 minutes of
recording time in 35 Mbps HQ (highquality) mode and 260 minutes in 25
Mbps SP (standard-play) mode. A new
dumping system, powered by a 3-D G
sensor, protects the unit from a 1.5m
drop, and buffer memory is used to
allow recording immediately after
powering on the unit. Additionally, a
salvage function enables restoration of
content damaged by battery/cable
disconnection or other accidental power
losses during recording. Approximately

12 hours of continuous operation are
possible with a small-size BP-U30
battery.
When attached to a camcorder,
the PHU-60K hard-disk unit functions
like an SxS Pro card, offering thumbnail
views on the LCD panel of the
camcorder or the new PMW-EX30 deck,
a solid-state memory recorder/player.
The 1080i/720P-switchable EX30
includes an HDMI digital connection for
use with an external monitor in addition
to an HD-SDI in/out for recording live HD
content or dubbing to other formats. The
deck can also be used as an SxS Pro
card reader/writer or to feed content to
existing HD or SD nonlinear editing
systems.
Lastly, Sonys Clip Browser software, which ships for free with each
XDCam EX camcorder, is receiving a
version 2.0 upgrade, enabling XDCam
EX content to be used within a DV editing workflow. Optional plug-in software
for Clip Browser 2.0 will export XDCam
EX files on SxS memory cards to Professional Media discs, allowing XDCam HD
optical-disc products to seamlessly
interoperate with content shot by an
XDCam EX camcorder. Other plug-in
software will enable XDCam EX files to
be viewed on a range of portable
consumer devices or to be uploaded to
video-sharing websites.
www.sony.com.
I
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.
5/31/08
8:58 PM
Page 1
AMC_0708_p078p080:00 marketplace&ad index
6/3/08
11:54 AM
Page 78
International Marketplace
FEATURES:
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. MODULAR DESIGN
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www.DonanCamera.com
78 July 2008
6/3/08
11:54 AM
Page 79
EW
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Classifieds
EQUIPMENT FOR SALE
EQUIPMENT FOR SALE
EQUIPMENT FOR SALE
Lighting: Mole 20K, Mole Baby 10Ks, Mole Baby 5KS, 4K

Softlights. Call Visual Products, Inc for complete list. (440)
647-4999
SWISS JIB camera crane. 35 - Portable and versatile with 5

Lightweight Carbon Fiber sections. Reach of 9 to 35. Excellent Condition. Includes heavy duty western style dolly/base
with off road tires/ studio wheels and track wheels. Crane
and weights in shipping cases. Many spare parts. $16000.
Call for photos and specs 800 316-0067.
PRO VIDEO & FILM EQUIPMENT COMPANY. providfilm@aol.com.
USED EQUIPMENT. PRO VIDEO & FILM EQUIPMENT

COMPANY. (888) 869-9998.
New
and
Used
Steadicam
equipment
www.whitehousesteadisales.com or call 805-498-1658.
USED EQUIPMENT. PRO VIDEO & FILM EQUIPMENT
COMPANY.
(888)
869-9998,
providfilm@aol.com.
www.ProVideoFilm.com.
6/3/08
EQUIPMENT FOR SALE

8,000 USED ITEMS. PRO VIDEO & FILM EQUIPMENT
COMPANY. (888) 869-9998.
PRO VIDEO & FILM EQUIPMENT COMPANY. USED EQUIPMENT. (888) 869-9998.
Arriflex 435ES, 535B, 35 BL1, BL2, BL3, BL4 and BL4S, Moviecam
Super America MK IIs Camera Packages for sale. Call Visual Products, Inc. (440) 647-4999.
NEED USED EQUIPMENT? PRO VIDEO & FILM EQUIPMENT
COMPANY. (888) 869-9998. www.ProVideoFilm.com.
WORLDS SUPERMARKET OF USED MOTION PICTURE
EQUIPMENT VISUAL PRODUCTS, INC. CALL (440) 647-4999
www.visualproducts.com
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ACCESSORIES.
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LENSES, TRIPODS, DOLLIES, CRANES, LIGHTING, EDITING.
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80 May 2008
Page 80
Advertisers Index
Classifieds
WANTED
STEADICAMS
AND
dw@whitehouseav.com or 805-498-1658.
11:54 AM
AC 16a-b
Alan Gordon Enterprises
78, 79
Arri 49
Backstage Equipment, Inc.
73
Burrell Enterprises 78
Film Emporium 79
Filmtools 71
Flying-Cam 53
FTC/West 79
Fuji Motion Picture 15
Full Sail 29
Glidecam Industries 11
Cavision Enterprises 27
Chapman/Leonard Studio
Equipment Inc. 19
Cinebags 78
Cinekinetic 4
CinemaGadgets.com 78
Cinema Vision 78
Cinematographer Style 62
Cinematography
Electronics 71
Cooke 6
CPT Rental Inc. 79
Creative Industry Handbook
77
Hollywood Post Alliance 73

Hybrid Cases 78
IBC 85
Donan Corporation 78
New York Film Academy 25
Eastman Kodak C2-1, C4

Entertainment Lighting
Service 79
Equipment & Film Design 44
Oppenheimer Camera Prod.

71, 78
K 5600, Inc. 13
Kino Flo 63
Laffoux Solutions, Inc. 78
Lights! Action! Company
78
Lite Panels 2
Los Angeles Film School 21
Matthews Studio 79
MP&E Mayo Productions
79
PED Denz 52, 78, 79

Pille Film Gmbh 78
Postworks Los Angeles 7
Pro8mm 78
Professional Sound 69
Riggin Design 69
Samys DV & Edit 45
Siggraph 81
Sim Video 23
Stanton Video Services 6
Super16 Inc. 79
Superflycam 6
Sydney Film School 75
Technicolor 5
Telescopic 75
Tiffen C3
Vancouver Film School 9
VF Gadgets, Inc. 79
Videocraft Equipment Pty
79
Willys Widgets 78
www.theasc.com 75, 80
Zacuto Films 79
ZGC, Inc. 6
5/31/08
9:00 PM
Page 1
AMC_0708_p082
p083:00 memoriam
6/3/08
11:55 AM
Page 82
In Memoriam
n a letter dated Sept. 9, 1975,

ASC President Lester Shorr
wrote to new associate member
Bud Stone, Please feel that you
are a full-fledged member in the
ASC, and that we will be happy to
cooperate with you in every way
possible to make your membership
of value to you and the Society.
During the three decades that
ensued, Stone went out of his way
to likewise cooperate with the
Society, selflessly donating his
time and energy and inspiring
countless others to do the same.
Only 24 people have been named
honorary members of the ASC, and
by the time Stone died, in April
2008, he was one of them.
Burton Bud Stone was
born in Englewood, N.J., on Feb.
16, 1928. His father, the chief engineer at Consolidated Film Industries (CFI) in Fort Lee, introduced the
young Stone to the film business at an
early age, giving him the chance to work
as batboy for the CFI baseball team and
later as can boy in the lab.
After serving in the U.S. Navy
from 1945-1947, Stone attended Florida
Southern College on the G.I. Bill. With a
degree in hand, he returned to the New
York area, taking a job at Hollywood Film
Service as an apprentice film editor. In
1953, Stone became CFIs East Coast
service manager and was soon
promoted to sales manager, then general
manager. He was hired by Movielab as
the national sales manager, and he
formed his own company, All Service
Film Labs, in 1963. In 1971, after a stint
as vice president of Technicolor in New
York, Stone became president of Precision Film Laboratories, an affiliate of
Deluxe General Inc., Hollywood.
Stone began making the occasional jaunt to Hollywood to check in
with the Deluxe home office. Bruce
82 July 2008
Berke, an ASC associate member who

worked for Deluxe at the time, recalls,
Bud would show up from New York
with a bouquet of flowers and walk
from desk to desk, stopping to hand a
flower to every female employee. Of
course, he also stopped to shake hands
with all the men. That was Bud
always very one-on-one with his
people.
Stones personal touch did not
go unnoticed at Deluxe, and in 1978, he
was brought to Hollywood to serve as
the companys president, a position he
held for the remainder of his career.
Stone worked harder than ever on the
West Coast, but his business acumen
never clouded his relationships, according to ASC associate member and
retired Deluxe employee Ron Koch:
The luckiest day of my life was when I
met Bud. I went to work for him thinking
it was just going to be another job, but I
became part of the family. I never felt
like I was going to work in the morning.
Berke adds, Bud was really

concerned about the people he
worked with regardless of whether
they were vendors, employees or
customers. He was as nice to the
parking valet as he was to the chairman of the board.
Daryn Okada, ASC, recalls meeting Stone at Deluxe in the late
1980s, when the cinematographer
was watching dailies for an independent film hed shot. Bud was
genuinely interested in making sure
I didnt feel intimidated, which was
a fantastic quality of his, Okada
recalls. He was a very powerful
man, but he brought it right down to
the individuals. Owen Roizman,
ASC, who met Stone on the East
Coast and got to know him after
both men relocated to Los Angeles,
says, He was the epitome of the
word executive.
In 1986, when the ASC inaugurated its Outstanding Achievement
Awards, Stone was one of the associate members to come aboard immediately, and he was very supportive and
very generous, recalls Michael
Margulies, ASC, who co-chaired the
event with Woody Omens, ASC.
Margulies eventually tapped Stone to
take over the Awards Chair position
the only time an associate member has
ever chaired an ASC committee and
in Stones hands, the awards moved to
the level theyre at now, and Im very
proud of that, says Margulies.
Buds talents as a raconteur,
mixer and friend helped popularize the
ASC Awards, says Omens. I looked at
him as a spiritual leader in terms of
getting people motivated; he had so
much charisma and persuasive charm.
Roizman, who eventually became
Stones co-chair on the Awards Committee, adds, He wanted to have a class
act, and he turned the awards into what
Photo on this page by Douglas Kirkland. Additional photos courtesy of Bruce Berke.
Burton Bud Stone, Honorary ASC, 1928-2008
AMC_0708_p082
p083:00 memoriam
6/3/08
12:00 PM
Page 83
Top left: Burton Bud

Stone during his service
in the U.S. Navy. Top right:
Stone mans the phone on
the East Coast. Middle
left: Stone in the 1980s.
Middle right: With his
wife, Judy. Bottom left:
Kodaks Bruce Berke and
his wife, Darlene, flank
the Stones during the ASC
Awards. Bottom right: The
Stones mingle with Owen
Roizman, ASC and his
wife, Mona.
is probably the classiest awards show

in town.
By Stones side through everything was his wife, Judy, whom he
met in college and married in 1950.
Judy was his cheerleader, says
Koch. Omens adds, She deserves a
lot of credit for sharing her dearest
person with us. Shes been like a First
Lady, making tremendous contributions to the ASC behind the scenes.
During the 8th Annual ASC
Awards in 1993, the Society recognized Stones contributions by making
him an honorary member, a distinction
reserved for non-cinematographers held
in the highest regard by the Society. I
know that meant a lot to Bud; the ASC
was so important to him, says Berke.
Later, when Stone stepped down from
chairing the Awards Committee, he was
named Chairman Emeritus.
In 1993, Stone brought Cyril

Drabinsky into Deluxe as chief operating
officer. From the first meeting, he was
exceptional, recalls Drabinsky, an ASC
associate member and president of
Deluxe. He had an extraordinary
amount of energy and insight into the
business, and he always made everyone
feel comfortable. The lessons I learned

from Bud will always be part of me.
Well all miss him, says Okada,
but I hope he inspires others to be like
him. It was in his soul to be a very giving
person. I hope we were able to give him
as much as he gave us.
Stone is survived by his wife and
three children, Ron, Jeff and Barbara.
Jon D. Witmer
I
AMC_0708_p084p087:00 clubhouse
6/3/08
4:28 PM
Page 84
Clubhouse News
Fraker, Burgess
Judge Kodak Awards
William A. Fraker, ASC, BSC
will head the judging of the 2008
Eastman Scholarships for film-school
students and the Kodak Faculty Grant
Awards, and Don Burgess, ASC will
judge the Asia Pacific, Latin America
and European entries of the 2008
Kodak Filmschool Competition.
Fraker and fellow jurists Randy
Tack and Bart Weiss will assess applicants for the Eastman Scholarships
based on work submitted by the
students, recommendations from
faculty, and academic achievement.
84 July 2008
The Faculty Grant is awarded to a

faculty project that best cultivates a
learning experience; selection is
based on submitted proposals, treatments and samples of work. We are
humbled that [Fraker] would take the
time to lead the judging for us, notes
Wendy Elms, worldwide manager of
the Education Segment of Kodaks
Entertainment Imaging Division.
Now in its ninth year, the
Kodak Filmschool Competition is
designed to recognize the creativity
and skills exhibited by student cinematographers in the collaborative
process of visual storytelling. Don
Burgess has such a vast understanding of the art and craft of filmmaking
and understands the challenges
faced by students, says Elms. He is
a source of inspiration for young cinematographers all over the world, and
his willingness to judge the competition entries is very significant to the
participating students.
A Hot Ticket
Sweltering heat failed to keep
the crowd away from J.L. Fishers
Burbank facility on May 17, where a
mixer co-sponsored by the Society of
Camera Operators, the International
Cinematographers Guild, and the ASC
filled the house. Along with opportunities to check out the latest gear
from an array of vendors, the day
featured a camera-movement panel
moderated by George Spiro Dibie,
ASC, who also recently emceed the
Movies on a Limited Budget panel
during the Newport Beach Film Festival. At the Fisher event, Dibie kept
things lively on the panel of operators, grips and cinematographers;
participants
included
Society
members Ron Garcia, Richard
Kline, Frederic Goodich, Affonso
Beato, Isidore Mankofsky, Robert
Primes, Owen Roizman, Daryn

Okada, Richard Crudo, Michael
Goi, John C. Flinn III, Levie Isaacks
and Henner Hofmann.
BAM Salutes Lachman

The Brooklyn Academy of
Musics BAMcinmatek recently
hosted a 12-film retrospective of the
work of Edward Lachman, ASC. The
series kicked off with a screening of
Ken Park (2002), which Lachman codirected with Larry Clark, followed by a
a Q&A with Lachman. A few days later,
the cinematographer joined director/musician David Byrne (pictured) to
discuss their collaboration on True
Stories (1986). Screenings also
included Werner Herzogs How Much
Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck
(1976) and Todd Haynes Im Not There
(AC Nov. 07).
Good Advice
Society members Robert
Elswit, Steven Poster and Vilmos
Zsigmond are among the creative
advisers for the Sundance Institutes
annual June Directors and Screenwriters Labs. The labs provide filmmakers
with the opportunity to develop
distinctive new work in an environment that encourages innovation and
collaboration.
Photo courtesy of BAM Rose Cinemas.
New Associate Members

Stefan Sonnenfeld, president/managing director of digital post
house Company 3, and Jurgen
Sporn, vice president of manufacturing at Panavision, recently joined the
Societys roster of associate
members.
After working as a colorist at
Pacific Ocean Post, Stefan Sonnenfeld
founded Company 3 in 1997; the
Santa Monica-based company added
a New York facility in 2002. In addition to grading dozens of commercial
and music videos, Sonnenfeld was the
colorist on the features Collateral (AC
Aug. 04), 300 (AC April 07), and
Sweeney Todd (AC Jan. 08), among
many other titles.
Hailing
from
Hamburg,
Germany, Jurgen Sporn moved to the
U.S. in 1966, taking a job with the
Mitchell Camera Corp. In 1968, he
went to work for Panavision. As a
movement maker/machinist, Sporn
was part of the team responsible for
the design and development of the
first Panaflex cameras, and in the
1980s, he contributed to the development of the 16mm Panaflex and the
35mm Panaflex Platinum.
5/31/08
8:56 PM
Page 1
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Above: The
groundbreaking
ceremony drew a
large crowd of ASC
members and
industry associates.
Middle, from left:
ASC members Owen
Roizman, Daryn
Okada, Kenneth
Zunder and Amy
Vincent. Second
from bottom:
Society members
Isidore Mankofsky,
Victor J. Kemper
and Richard Edlund
enter the hard-hat
zone. Bottom:
Michael Goi, ASC
organized
volunteers to shoot
the days festivities.
Pictured from left
are Adam Wilson,
Goi, Charles Schner,
Josh Harrison, Mark
Gragnani and Seth
Eubanks.
86 July 2008
6/3/08
4:28 PM
Page 86
ASC Breaks Ground

The ASC hosted a groundbreaking ceremony on May 7 to launch the
renovation of its historic Hollywood
headquarters. Among the guests who
joined ASC members and friends for the
event were Los Angeles City Council
President Eric Garcetti, L.A. Councilman
Tom LaBonge, Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences President Sid
Ganis, and Hollywood Chamber of
Commerce President Leron Gubler. This
renovation is a continuation of our
historic commitment to fellowship and
progress in the art of filmmaking, said
ASC President Daryn Okada. It will
enable us to accommodate larger meetings and seminars for our members,
collaborators and students while
preserving the legacy of the original
building, which is a treasure trove of
early film history.
The Society purchased the Clubhouse, previously a private residence, in

1936, and, after a few modifications,
christened it with a grand-opening ceremony on Feb. 28, 1937. During the
recent groundbreaking, Owen Roizman, ASC, chair of the Building
Committee, noted, There is a lot of
history within these walls, and we will
be very careful to not disturb the ghosts.
Of course, no matter what, Im sure
Stanley Cortez [ASC] will still haunt us in
our new surroundings!
The building project will add
1,500 square feet to the Clubhouse and
will also provide a new three-story office
building at the rear of the property for
ASC and American Cinematographer
staff.
I
Photos by Jared Jordan, Danny Feld and Chris Mankofsky.
6/3/08
4:29 PM
Page 87
1
3
1. Seated left to right are Society

members Stephen Lighthill, William
A. Fraker, John C. Flinn III, Robert
Primes, Edlund and Woody Omens;
2. Ben Toguchi, the Societys
maintenance engineer since 1959,
digs the scene; 3. L.A. Councilman
Tom LaBonge and L.A. City Council
President Eric Garcetti present ASC
members Owen Roizman and
George Spiro Dibie with a
certificate honoring the Societys
long commitment to Hollywood;
4. Frederic Goodich, ASC (far left)
and Primes flank Mirisch Agency
reps Cecilia Banck (with scarf) and
Beth Reiter; 5. Okada, Hollywood
Chamber of Commerce President
Leron Gubler, LaBonge, Dibie,
Roizman, Garcetti, Wolcott
Architecture Interiors (WAI) senior
account executive Roy Huebner and
WAI project manager Gianluigi
Protano man their shovels; 6. WAIs
design for the Clubhouses entryway;
7. ASC Clubhouses venerable bar as
it appeared in 1937.
5
4
7
AMC_0708_p088:00 asc closeup
6/3/08
11:37 AM
Page 88
ASC CLOSE-UP
Bill Taylor, ASC
Which cinematographers, past or present, do you most admire?

You learn so much by watching a great cameraman work, and as a visualeffects supervisor, Ive had the priceless experience of working with many
of the greats, including ASC members Sven Nykvist, Jack Cardiff, Vilmos
Zsigmond, Haskell Wexler, Vic Kemper, Dean Semler, Chivo Lubezki,
Roger Deakins, Peter Deming and Walter Lindenlaub, and BSC members
Oliver Stapleton and Freddie Francis. Im still hoping for the chance to
work with ASC members Allen Daviau, Caleb Deschanel, John Toll or
Russell Carpenter, and I regret I wasnt able to work with Owen Roizman,
ASC before he retired.
What sparked your interest in photography?
Buying a Polaroid camera. I could do split-screens and tricky perspective
and see the image right away. Thats probably why I love digital imaging:
no waiting!
Where did you train and/or study?
I have no formal training; I was a philosophy major in my very brief college
career. Ten years of experience as an optical and tabletop/product shooter
at the Ray Mercer Co. taught me the basic technical skills, and 11 years
as a cameraman for Al Whitlock in the Universal Studios Matte Department taught me how to see. Theres no better way to learn the aesthetics of imagery than working around great artists like Al Whitlock and Syd
Dutton, not to mention Als friends Henry Bumstead, Bob Boyle and Harold
Michelson.
Who were your early teachers or mentors?
At Mercers, a great optical cameraman named Jim Handschiegl taught
me the basics of the bluescreen process. Petro Vlahos, the inventor of the
Color Difference Traveling Matte system and the creator of Ultimatte,
taught me the rest starting with how to get rid of that pesky blue blur
in a couple of classes at the University of Southern California, and the
friendship that followed continues to this day. But most of all, it was Al
Whitlock. I cold-called him after I saw some spectacular examples of his
work in a middling Universal comedy, That Funny Feeling (1965). It was all
shot on the backlot with the telltale reduced-scale buildings, but there are
these beautiful matte-painting shots that put the characters in a very
convincing Manhattan. The photographic quality was flawless; there was
none of the dupe-y quality I saw in matte shots from other studios. I had
to find out how that was done, and that phone call changed my life. Years
later, I wound up working as Als cameraman.
What are some of your key artistic influences?
More Whitlock influence: I love the English landscape painters, Constable
and Turner particularly. They have everything to teach about composition
and color. Turners last work leapt right into the 20th century, even though
he died in 1851. Ansel Adams and Elliot Porter are the photographers who
got to me first. I still think Adams Zone System is the best method of visualizing exposure, even in this digital age; Porter, whose meticulously
composed (and rarely cropped) 4x5 color images still pack a wallop, was
a master of pure craft.
88 July 2008
How did you get your first break in

the business?
I got a job as a driver at Mercers, and
over time, they moved me up to optical
line-up and camera. Another big break
was meeting John Carpenter, who was
shooting a student film on my doorstep.
What has been your most satisfying moment on a project?
Seeing the first screening of Lasse Hallstrms Casanova (2005). It was a
wonderful mix of visual effects that worked out just as we planned and
some that worked out of educated improvisation.
Have you made any memorable blunders?
As far as technical blunders go, Im trying to forget! But the worst business decision Ive made to date was falling in love with Casanova and
turning out 65 added shots for cost or less. We thought, Surely the studio
will love us theyll use us on everything! Ha. Im still very proud of our
work and of that film.
Whats the best professional advice youve ever received?
When I asked Freddie Francis for his secret to glamour lighting, he said,
Put a great big light right over the lens. And get Brooke Shields if you
can.
What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you?
Its not recent, but Jack Cardiffs autobiography, Magic Hour, is full of
wonderful stories from his very long career. At 85, he decided to give up
features and concentrate on short films and commercials! He himself is
an inspiration.
Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like to try?
Id love to work on a big historical epic, preferably with sea battles
something like Ben-Hur or The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964).
If you werent a cinematographer, what might you be doing
instead?
I might be a philosophy professor struggling for tenure at a tiny regional
college; a professional magician asking bar patrons to take a card, any
card; or a still photographer trying to shoot the perfect bean.
Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for membership?
Harry Wolf and Bill Fraker.
How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?
It was a great moment when I first saw my name onscreen with the
letters ASC after it. Membership has been a conduit for my continuing
education about movies and moviemaking techniques; I can find the
answer to almost any question by consulting an ASC member, and Ive
had the honor of contributing to that tradition. Ive also had the chance to
meet so many of my heroes in a social context, discovering they are not
only human, but also incredibly generous men and women. And I suspect
that being an ASC member gives me a little more credibility when I first
meet the team on a new film.
I
Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.
When you were a child, what film made the strongest impression
on you?
As a pre-teen would-be artist, I loved the classic Disney animated movies,
particularly Pinocchio (1940). For live-action, it was 20,000 Leagues Under
the Sea (1954), hands-down. When I was a young teen, I loved Ben-Hur
(1959) the past brought to life on an enormous scale.
AMC_1007_p005:AMC_1007_p
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12:58 PM
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AMC_0708_pCV4:Layout 1
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S I N C E

THE FILMMAKER IS READY TO

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AMC_0708_p006 _R2:00 board

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We make the movies

MEMBERS OF THE BOARD

07_08 editor's note:00 editor's note

Photo by Douglas Kirkland.

AMC_0708_p010p012:00 global village

egendary cinematographer Laszlo

there. The young cameramen borrowed

he introduced me to started telling me

duced Klaudia to Laszlo Kovacs, who

The filmmakers researched and

Russia and Italy. In discussing the right

AMC_0708_p010p012:00 global village

AMC_0708_p014p017:00 short takes

For the short film

ts a story about a couple getting

the San Francisco Bay Area and took film

distinctive for its native 1.77:1 aspect

AMC_0708_p014p017:00 short takes

Right: The extrawide frame

another layer of beauty to help capture

filmmakers were concerned the effect

many challenges as it did opportunities.

AMC_0708_p014p017:00 short takes

Cvetko and Smith share a moment with Nacker on location.

Tuesday was allowed to shoot there

almost wide open even on a bright day

AMC_0708_p018p029:00 production slate

forest and majestic mountains of Kerala,

Ray, as perhaps his greatest influence,

Before the Rains photos by Alphonse Roy, courtesy of MIP/Roadside Attractions.

AMC_0708_p018p029:00 production slate

Not surprisingly, the concept of