2015 06

Canada $6.
95
$5.95
AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER JUNE 2015 MAD MAX: FURY ROAD AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON TOMORROWLAND EDEN ASC TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE VOL. 96 NO. 6
JUNE 2015
An International Publication of the ASC
On Our Cover: Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) is mad as ever while navigating a postapocalyptic desert wasteland in Mad Max: Fury Road, shot by John Seale, ASC, ACS.
(Photo by Jasin Boland, SMPSP, courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow
Pictures.)
FEATURES
32
50
66
78
90
Max Intensity
John Seale, ASC, ACS shifts into high gear for
Mad Max: Fury Road
Avengers Re-Assemble
Ben Davis, BSC captures the superhuman action of
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Picturing Tomorrow
Claudio Miranda, ASC envisions a promising future
for Tomorrowland
66
Trapped in a Groove
Denis Lenoir, ASC, AFC frames a DJs highs and lows
in Eden
Stewards of Technology
The ASC Technology Committee leads the charge on
a broad range of industry initiatives
78
DEPARTMENTS
10
12
14
20
98
106
107
108
110
112
114
116
50
Editors Note
Presidents Desk
Short Takes: The Way of the Dodo
Production Slate: Bessie Far From the Madding Crowd
New Products & Services
International Marketplace
Classified Ads
Ad Index
ASC Membership Roster
In Memoriam: Miroslav Ondrcek, ASC, ACK
Clubhouse News
ASC Close-Up: Mauro Fiore
VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM
LOOK FOR MORE AT WWW.THEASC.COM
Coming soon
The Dawn of Technicolor, 1915-1935
Photos courtesy of George Eastman House, the Margaret Herrick Library/AMPAS, Robert McKay,
the Library of Congress, and the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Q&A with authors James Layton and David Pierce
www.theasc.com
J u n e
2 0 1 5
V o l .
9 6 ,
N o .
Visit us online at www.theasc.com
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF and PUBLISHER

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

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

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

ASC EVENTS COORDINATOR Patricia Armacost
ASC PRESIDENTS ASSISTANT Delphine Figueras
ASC ACCOUNTING MANAGER Mila Basely
ASC ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE Nelson Sandoval
American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 95th year of publication, is published monthly in Hollywood by
ASC Holding Corp., 1782 N. Orange Dr., Hollywood, CA 90028, U.S.A.,
(800) 448-0145, (323) 969-4333, Fax (323) 876-4973, direct line for subscription inquiries (323) 969-4344.
Subscriptions: U.S. $50; Canada/Mexico $70; all other foreign countries $95 a year (remit international Money Order or other exchange payable in U.S. $).
Advertising: Rate card upon request from Hollywood office. Copyright 2015 ASC Holding Corp. (All rights reserved.) Periodicals postage paid at Los Angeles, CA
and at additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA.
POSTMASTER: Send address change to American Cinematographer, P.O. Box 2230, Hollywood, CA 90078.
American Society of Cinematographers

The ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but
an educational, cultural and professional
organization. Membership is by invitation
to those who are actively engaged as
directors of photography and have
demonstrated outstanding ability. ASC
membership has become one of the highest
honors that can be bestowed upon a
professional cinematographer a mark
of prestige and excellence.
OFFICERS - 2014/2015
Richard Crudo
President
Owen Roizman
Vice President
Kees van Oostrum

Vice President
Lowell Peterson
Vice President
Matthew Leonetti
Treasurer
Frederic Goodich
Secretary
Isidore Mankofsky
Sergeant At Arms
MEMBERS OF THE
BOARD
John Bailey
Bill Bennett
Curtis Clark
Dean Cundey
George Spiro Dibie
Richard Edlund
Michael Goi
Matthew Leonetti
Stephen Lighthill
Daryn Okada
Michael O Shea
Lowell Peterson
Rodney Taylor
Kees van Oostrum
Haskell Wexler
ALTERNATES
Isidore Mankofsky
Karl Walter Lindenlaub
Robert Primes
Steven Fierberg
Kenneth Zunder
MUSEUM CURATOR
Steve Gainer
8
One of this springs hottest movie trailers was the

thrill-ride preview for Mad Max: Fury Road, which
promised viewers a deliriously unhinged demolition
derby amid a sand-and-dust sci-fi dystopia last seen
onscreen in 1985, when the third film of the original
trilogy, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, was
released. Movie technology has advanced in every
area since then, but director George Miller and cinematographer John Seale, ASC, ACS aided by a
crackerjack crew and an intrepid stunt team
wanted to lend the movies epic car chase a realism
that could only be achieved with live performers and
real vehicles.
George and action-unit director and stunt
coordinator Guy Norris had spent the better part of
a decade developing and honing every aspect of the
film, as evidenced by the meticulous 3,500 storyboard frames, Seale tells Simon Gray (Max
Intensity, page 32). Action-unit cinematographer David Burr, ACS reveals that custom-built
cars werent the only casualties of the shoots carnage, noting that car-mounted, Habbycamcaged Canon 5D Mark II cameras were often going to get wiped out.
More summer-blockbuster mayhem is on offer in Avengers: Age of Ultron, a darkertoned sequel to the highest-grossing superhero movie of all time. Director Joss Whedon
tapped Ben Davis, BSC to shoot, and as Davis relates in Mark Dillons coverage (Avengers ReAssemble, page 50), the filmmakers took a new visual tack. The first [Avengers] was a huge
success, so you dont want to remove yourself entirely from it, Davis says. But this film has
a darker visual core that reflects the script, which is more about bad times and things coming
apart than things coming together. The tone is grittier and rougher.
On Tomorrowland, ASC member Claudio Miranda was tasked with helping director
Brad Bird achieve the rich look he sought for the visually ambitious sci-fi movie. Extensive
testing led Miranda to shoot 95 percent of the picture with Sony F65 CineAlta 4K digital
cameras. We also had all these visual effects, and I was planning to use lots of low-level lighting and practical lighting tricks, Miranda tells Michael Goldman (Picturing Tomorrow, page
66). In these tests, you saw the strength of digital with available light. This movie is not about
being soft and mushy and squishy its really about an Imax-type, big-negative experience.
Denis Lenoir, ASC, AFC was after a more naturalistic look for Eden, a drama depicting
the life struggles of a Parisian DJ (Trapped in a Groove, page 78). Although Lenoir crafted
colorful, stylized lighting schemes for the movies dance-club scenes, he tells New York writer
Iain Stasukevich that the projects director, Mia Hansen-Lve, has a very naturalistic idea of
beauty. She doesnt want anything too flattering or too enhanced, so the interior days and
nights were filmed without movie lights coming through the windows. There was no money
and no time [for movie lighting], but it was also an approach I was happy to take.
This issue also offers Debra Kaufmans update on the activities of the ASC Technology
Committee (Stewards of Technology, page 90), a forward-thinking group that has helped
set the agenda for many significant industry advances.
Stephen Pizzello
Editor-in-Chief and Publisher
10
Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.
Editors Note
If any good is to be derived from the death of Sarah Jones, part of it will have to include a
renewed sense of purpose toward guarding the well-being of crewmembers. While our
work is rarely conducted under overtly perilous or unsafe conditions, whenever occasions of
negligence do occur, each of us must be courageous enough to step forward and call them
out, regardless of the consequences. But even as it seems that a page has been turned,
every crewmember currently remains subject to an insidious form of abuse thats potentially
as deadly as any train thundering down a track: the practice of working excessive hours.
I have written about this topic several times in this space, and since nothing has
changed in the interim its well worth bringing up again. Working excessive hours is an
industry-wide and industry-approved policy. Speaking from my own considerable experience, its a miracle that the extreme exhaustion my fellow crewmembers and I have endured
on innumerable occasions hasnt led to disastrous consequences. I shudder to think of what
yet may come to pass, starting with the next job.
As Directors of Photography, our responsibility is to the visual image as well as the
protection of our crew. The continuing and expanding practice of working extreme hours
seriously compromises both the quality of our work and the health and safety of others.
It is our obligation to oppose a situation that threatens the well-being of every member of
the crew.
When the late ASC legend Conrad Hall expressed those sentiments in 2002, he had
just survived an arduous but not particularly uncommon schedule on the feature Road To Perdition. He returned home with a
desire to alert the industry and incite reform of the practice that had taken an enormous toll on his health, and he put forth the
notion that excessive hours had become a form of officially sanctioned abuse.
We all know that feeling of walking around without having had proper rest; its like living in a state of constant, impenetrable
jet lag. But beyond the requisite sluggishness, you might not be aware of the serious toll it takes. Reaction time is slowed, thinking
gets foggy and physical health declines. Personal relationships and quality of work suffer. And safety on set is compromised.
Everyone is aware of what happened to Sarah Jones, but they should also remember assistant cameraman Brent Hershman.
In 1997 he was killed while driving home from a shoot in a sleep-deprived state. Countless others have avoided a similar fate merely
by luck or the hand of God. It remains a black mark on the industry that no substantive action has been taken to rein in these punishing hours.
The reasons why were putting in such regularly draconian amounts of time on the job are varied and generally uncalled for.
Certainly poor planning and incompetent scheduling are major factors. Unchecked greed is also a big part of it. But whats happening
to us is similar in many ways to the frog in the pot of water whos unaware until its too late that the temperature has been incrementally turned up to the boiling point. Just compare the amount of work fit into the average day on any production a mere decade
ago and youll see what I mean. Were now doing higher page counts in less time than ever before, so something has to give. That
something, of course, is the amount of time we devote to sleep.
Another ASC legend, Haskell Wexler, screened his documentary Who Needs Sleep? to great acclaim at the 2006 Sundance
Film Festival. Haskell and his co-director, Lisa Leeman, came to the same conclusions as Conrad Hall. You would think that in the
ensuing period some progress would have been made on the issue. It hasnt. And thats why its more imperative than ever before
that we keep the subject in the forefront of peoples minds.
When you strip away the emotional attachments and artistic pretensions surrounding what we do, this thing we spend so
much time on can only be seen for what it is: a job. Richard Jones, Sarahs father, perhaps put it best: No TV show, no movie, no
job opportunity is worth the sacrifice of a human life.
Plainly, something needs to change. And it needs to change now.
Richard P. Crudo
ASC President
12
June 2015
American Cinematographer
Photo by Douglas Kirkland.
Presidents Desk
Short Takes
Small-Gauge Shangri-La
By Phil Rhodes
The subject of the short documentary The Way of the Dodo

is likely to be close to many AC readers hearts or any heart thats
stirred by the puttering sound of 8mm or 16mm film moving
through the gate. This nostalgia is not only the narrative basis of Liam
Saint-Pierres seven-minute documentary, but intrinsic to the creation
of Cin-Real, a non-profit film club based in East London. Established
by Saint-Pierre in 2011, the club specializes in small-gauge exhibition
and holds monthly screenings in Hackney. Without it, the documentary might never have existed.
My background is in still photography, says Saint-Pierre. I
started getting involved in moving images as a camera operator.
Then, living in Hackney and having an interest in film, one evening I
was wandering home and found a Super 8 projector in a bin. And I
thought, This should not happen. So I took the projector but I
couldnt get it working. I knew there was a shop in Hackney that
fixed these things, so I went in the next day with this Super 8 projector and asked him to fix it.
The shop in question was mit & Son, now run solely by the
indomitable mit Mesut, a man who, if the decline of photochemical motion-picture imaging continues its present course, must be a
great prospect for the worlds last film holdout. Various sources
14
June 2015
describe the shop as an Aladdins cave of small-format film, with

projection equipment and prints for sale. Its a small space packed
firmly with the paraphernalia of an increasingly defunct sector of
industry the kind of collection that raises passions in every quarter
of the filmmaking world. Saint-Pierre continues: While he fixed [the
projector], we were talking about film and how its sad that you
cant go and see film projected. And as well as his love of film, he
has a love of doing a deal. He said, Dont pay; its on the house. You
can have it, but if you really want to watch film, I have a 16mm
projector here for 200.
Even at this very early stage, the documentary potential of
the situation wasnt lost on Saint-Pierre. I said, This is a great story
can I film you? And he said no, that too many people ask and
theres no way. It was at this point that the idea of a regular film
show came into being. I thought, wouldnt it be interesting to put
on a film evening where we project 16mm? Saint-Pierre continues.
I said, Would you like to be the projectionist? And again he said
no, he didnt have time.
Undeterred, Saint-Pierre bought a 16mm projector and set
up a film night in Hackney. I did the first night with about 20
people there, and we showed a print of Jaws, he says. The technical realities of film projection, however, came as something of an
awakening to Saint-Pierre. There were points where I definitely
struggled, he relates. He went back to Mesut, and I said, Can you
All images courtesy of the filmmakers.
In an ever-evolving digital world, mit Mesut, an East London shopkeeper, fights to keep passion for
small-format film alive in the short documentary The Way of the Dodo.
Top and middle: Mesut runs a shop, mit & Son, which specializes in
8mm and 16mm film, cameras and projectors. Bottom: Mesut serves as projectionist
at screenings for those interested in enjoying the films.
16
June 2015
do the next one? Just once, to show me

how its done? Having finally gained
acquiescence, Saint-Pierre reports that the
following show went down really well.
And he asked, What time next month?
Eventually, after three years or so of association, Mesut became willing to allow SaintPierre to film him for the documentary.
The final edit of The Way of the
Dodo combines footage shot on a Canon
EOS 5D Mark II and a Blackmagic Cinema
Camera as well as a small amount of
Super 8, using Kodaks Vision3 500T 7219
and shot with a Nikon R8 Super Zoom
camera, although Saint-Pierre clearly wishes
there could have been much more. I shot
the three minutes, then I ran out of money
and time. I took it to the Widescreen Centre
[equipment retailer] and sent it off, and it
came back a month later. I was always
aware of the irony that I couldnt afford to
shoot on film. The 5D recorded
H.264/MPEG-4 files to Kingston 32GB Ultimate CompactFlash cards, and the Blackmagic Cinema recorded ProRes 4:2:2 to
Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB SSDs. Both
cameras shot at a resolution of 1920x1080,
and the digitally acquired footage was
stored on G-Technologys 2TB G-RAIDs.
Saint-Pierre opines that the Blackmagic Cinema Camera afforded him some
extra flexibility. You couldnt really move
[the look of] the 5D much, but you could
make the Blackmagic look like the 5D, he
says. Saint-Pierre was also faced with a difficult exposure compromise given the many
projected images shown, all of which were
photographed practically. Because of the
lights in the shop, if you exposed for the
shop you couldnt see the projection. So I
masked the area and then worked the
contrast and brightness to bring out the
blacks.
On both the Blackmagic and Canon
cameras, Saint-Pierre relied on the Canon EF
24-70mm f2.8 L II USM and 70-200mm
f2.8 L IS II USM zooms. The macro photography of the opening sequence was
achieved with a 9mm macro extension tube
that I bought for about eight pounds on
eBay, he explains. That took me many
tries pulling focus and [using] a Glidetrack slider. Ultimately, it would take nearly
two days to achieve the required shots.
Hollywood would have done that differ-
Filmmaker Liam
Saint-Pierre
preps the small
space for
shooting.
ently, muses Saint-Pierre, perhaps with a

hint of good-natured chagrin.
Production took place over the
course of approximately 10 non-consecutive days between January and October
2013, because I had to wait for the film
fairs, says Saint-Pierre. By necessity, much
of the production was shot under available
light, and a paucity of it at that. mits
shop uses about three energy-saving lightbulbs and thats it, he continues. I took a
650 [watt tungsten light], but if I did it again
Id have to take lots of lights. As a result,
much of the material was shot wide open at
f2.8, with only occasional excursions to
f5.6.
In postproduction, I just converted
it all to ProRes [4:2:2] HQ and edited in
[Final Cut Pro 7], Saint-Pierre explains.
People say that FCPX is okay now, but I
cant move on. I used DaVinci Resolve 9 and
did the grade myself. He cites the work of
18
June 2015
Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC; Gordon Willis,

ASC; and Christopher Doyle, HKSC as inspiration, alongside the films of Terrence
Malick. Beautiful photographic cinematography is, in a way, what got me into
film, Saint-Pierre notes. He adds that while
grading, I always think about the films I
like, and they have a timeless quality about
them. My reference points are more photographic.
Exhibition of short documentaries is,
as Saint-Pierre himself laughingly accepts,
always the tricky thing. Ive entered [The
Way of the Dodo] into three times as many
festivals as its gotten into. Its about how
much money youre prepared to spend traveling around. And the ones you think itll
get into, it doesnt. It didnt get into the East
End Film Festival made for people in East
London, by people in East London.
Perhaps less surprising, if a little technically adventurous, is Saint-Pierres ambiAmerican Cinematographer
tion to get a 16mm print made. I keep

getting that request, he reflects. If I could
get mit to project it, that would really be a
highlight for him.
Saint-Pierre
recognizes
that
appetites for nostalgia have an evolution of
their own, which is important to understand especially when considering a look
for a new work. Super 8 [as a look] has
been done to death, he opines. People
are now emulating Hi-8 and camcorders;
were far enough from it, with two decades
between us, that we can get nostalgic
rather than thinking its just bad. His
current and upcoming work embraces
these ideas, an example being a music
video Saint-Pierre recently shot on a Sony
Handycam. That was quite nice, in a way,
because it freed me up from thinking about
what lens we were going to use, he says.
I could be more impulsive.
Meanwhile, Cin-Reals firmly
analog exhibitions continue. Weve been
doing it monthly now for about three and a
half years, Saint-Pierre enthuses. The joy
that Mesut and Saint-Pierre find in the
projected photochemical image is infectious. Indeed, a couple of minutes into the
documentary, Mesut gazes at a projected
image and says with a sigh, Thats
Kodachrome. The colors are beautiful.
Apparently, as long as mit & Son remains
open, the dodo will be alive and kicking.
To view The Way of the Dodo, visit
www.liamsaintpierre.com/the-way-of-thedodo.
Production Slate
A Blues-Infused Biopic
By Iain Stasukevich
The silvery-blue stage lights rise on Bessie, and we find

ourselves face to face with the eponymous blues singer in the throes
of performance, her face awash with perspiration as she stands
before an enraptured audience. Directed by Dee Rees and
photographed by Jeffrey Jur, ASC, the HBO telefilm charts the storied
career and inner struggles of the Empress of the Blues, Bessie
Smith (portrayed by Queen Latifah). Our idea was to contrast the
public Bessie glamorous and shiny, with a big, raw voice with
her difficult internal life, and [illustrate] how those difficulties traveled
through her music, says Jur. This is why Bessie was so popular with
regular folk: She sang about real things from an authentic, emotional
place.
Rees selected Jur based on his work on Carnivle, another
period project for HBO. That series was shot on film, but for Bessie
which begins in 1913 and concludes in the 1930s Jur chose to
work with the Arri Alexa Classic, capturing HD ProRes 4:4:4:4 to
Sony 64GB SxS Pro cards. I felt the Alexa would best capture all the
color and tonalities I knew we would encounter, particularly the highcontrast theatrical environments, with dark, smoky backstage areas
and bright spotlights on stage, the cinematographer comments. I
love how this camera rolls into the highlights and reaches down into
the shadows in a natural way while still retaining character in the
20
June 2015
exposure. The two-camera package was obtained from Panavision

Atlanta, along with a set of Primo primes, Primo 19-90mm T2.8 and
24-275mm T2.8 zooms, and Panavision Flare lenses.
Much of Smiths story is told in flashback, and the filmmakers
strove to avoid an overly removed and reverent portrayal. We
wanted Bessie to feel alive and full of energy, Jur remarks. Indeed,
the image seems to shimmer with energy whenever Latifah is oncamera. Jur applied a range of Schneider Optics Classic Soft filters
for close-ups, and for Smiths childhood memories of her mother, Jur
hit the Flare Lenses with ellipsoidal backlights, imbuing the distant
moment with a vibrant immediacy.
Bessie was a bold character, and we shouldnt be timid in
how we approach her world, the cinematographer remarks. As an
example, he points to the relationship between Smith and her
mentor, the Mother of the Blues, Ma Rainey (MoNique). Dee
and I designed a color palette differentiating these two titans of the
stage, Jur explains. Ma often performed in a dress made of gold
coins, so we took that as a color cue, bathing her in a golden spotlight. The effect was enhanced with Roscolux 2003 Storaro Yellow
gel. To establish Smiths stage presence, Jur sought the aforementioned silvery-blue glow, with gaffer Dan Cornwall applying HMI
spotlights with 12 CTO while the cameras color temperature was set
to 3,200K.
When Latifah was on stage, Jur placed handheld cameras in
the audience to convey the energy of her connection with the
Unit photography by Frank Masi, SMPSP, courtesy of HBO.
The HBO telefilm

Bessie, starring
Queen Latifah,
brings Empress
of the Blues
Bessie Smiths
career and inner
struggles to
the screen.
The crew
captures
Latifahs
portrayal of
the artist in
her element.
crowd, but he also employed a Steadicam

operated by Joseph Arena, SOC, to move in
close and record the emotional nuances of
her expressions. The camera needed to be
physically close to her for the close-ups,
says Jur. You can be tight on a 100mm or
200mm, but you feel the disconnect, like
youre observing from afar. The wide shots
were done on a 21mm or a 27mm, and the
19-90mm is a beautiful lens even on the
wide end, which made it perfect for putting
on the Technocrane to get shots of the
audience and stage.
Arena adds, We used a good
amount of Steadicam [throughout the
production]. One of the directors goals was
22
June 2015
to follow Bessie on her emotional roller

coaster, and to make the audience feel
closely involved through continuous action.
We achieved some interesting oners with a
lot of choreography, stepping on and off
cranes with the Steadicam.
When it came to lighting actors,
equal attention was afforded to the men,
particularly Michael K. Williams, who played
Smiths husband and manager, Jack Gee.
Michael has incredible reflective skin that
gives back whatever you put onto him,
says Jur. You are going to see the sources
in his skin, so you have to take into consideration the shape and the size of your light
and the bounces.
Cornwall adds, After our camera

tests, we experimented with backlights
from high bead-board bounces using 750watt Source Fours. This kept the reflectance
of the source from getting too strong on
the sides of Michaels face. We also used
500-watt ECT bulbs with Chimera Pancakes
as his key. The spherical-type light source
wrapped around his features and allowed
the camera to see light in both eyes without
becoming too flat.
Principal photography for Bessie
lasted 35 days, on soundstages and on
location at many of the old theaters
throughout the Atlanta, Ga. area, including
the Tabernacle, the Strand Theatre and the
Fox Theatre. It was wonderful to film in
the South, a place that was such an integral
part of Bessies life, Jur notes. I feel the
film acquires a spirit from such places.
We did all the theatrical lighting
ourselves, the cinematographer continues.
I felt the style of the shows should be an
authentic part of the historical drama, not
overly stylized or contemporary in any way.
Dan Cornwall even researched lighting
fixtures used around that time, including
the limelights and carbon arcs, but they
were impractical not to mention unsafe
to use now.
In those days stage lighting was
limited to footlights and lights above the
stage that would wash down on the
performers, Cornwall adds. By the
1920s, the limelight or calcium light
had already been replaced by carbon arcs.
The HMI replaced the carbon arc and has a
similar color. For this reason, we decided to
use HMI spots. Footlights with 100-watt
household bulbs were custom-built for
each stage, and additional lighting was
provided by 1,000-watt Par cans for the
early years of Smiths performances
which were designed to be simple and
straightforward and LED Pars for the
more dramatic and saturated color of the
later years, as her star rises.
As an example of the simplified
lighting that marks the beginning of Smiths
career, Jur offers up the scene in which
Smith records at Columbia Records for the
first time. Shes standing in front of this
giant megaphone, he describes. It was a
cheap little set with curtains and four walls,
and we shot it in a Masonic hall, in the
same space where we would do the bigger

Columbia recording later in the film.
Cornwall employed a combination
of 10' 23-bulb and 4' 10-bulb battens to
light the small studio, using 130-volt 75watt spots for a warm tone and 110-volt
85-watt spots for a cooler tone. I loved the
simplicity of it, says Jur. Latifah looked
beautiful and the lighting felt real.
For Smiths triumphant return to
New York, Jur changed the lighting so it
would have less contrast. When she finally
gets her big recording contract and shes in
that beautiful Columbia recording studio
with all those musicians, I wanted an almost
shadowless feel, he points out. For this
scene, he employed 4K Umbrella Balls from
Filmwerks.
Almost every theater the production
occupied would double for a separate location. For example, the films opening and
closing performances were filmed at the
Fox Theatre in Midtown Atlanta, which also
housed the hospital room where Smith
awakes after being assaulted during a night
on the town. Rees had designed a continuous camera move that followed Latifah
from the hospital room to the stage. The
plan was to put her in a dress that would
look like a hospital gown from the back and
an evening gown from the front, says Jur.
During one of the more challenging
periods of Smiths career, she shares a tenement apartment with her older brother
Clarence (Tory Kittles). The interior was
constructed onstage in an Atlanta warehouse district. The sets had hard ceilings
and, in keeping with the 1920s, very few
practical lights, says Cornwall, who carried
a practical kit of period lightbulbs and
fixtures to help motivate the film lighting
provided by SourceMaker LED Blankets.
You can tape [the LED Blankets] to walls or
ceilings; theyre bi-color, dimmable and
come in many sizes, the gaffer continues.
Theyre one of the main reasons our
production designer, Clark Hunter, could
give us sets close to the actual size of a real
period apartment.
On more than one occasion, Jur
found himself on a set lit to period accuracy
and in need of a boost in exposure. Rather
than tweaking the Alexas sensitivity
800 ASA seems to be where its happiest,
the cinematographer offers he preferred
Top and middle:

The crew shoots
Bessies first
recording
session. Bottom:
Cinematographer
Jeffrey Jur, ASC
enjoys a break
from shooting.
24
June 2015
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.78:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa Classic
Panavision Primo, Flare
26
June 2015
In the countryside of 19th-century England, free-spirited Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan) is

pursued by three different men, including sheep farmer Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts), in
the film adaptation of Thomas Hardys novel Far From the Madding Crowd.
Pastoral Romance
By Jean Oppenheimer
Writing about 19th-century British

rural life, English novelist Thomas Hardy
became famous for drawing a link between
his characters and the physical environments in which they lived. Adapted from
Hardys novel of the same name, the feature
Far From the Madding Crowd relates the
story of Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan), an outspoken, sometimes haughty
free spirit, and the three very different men
who pursue her: Gabriel Oak (Matthias
Schoenaerts), a hard-working, principled
sheep farmer; William Boldwood (Michael
Sheen), an older, prosperous landowner;
and Frank Troy (Tom Sturridge), a dashing
but callous soldier. Bathshebas impulsiveness and naivet have dire consequences
for all.
One of the first things that struck
Danish-born cinematographer Charlotte
Bruus Christensen when she read the book
was that Hardy depicted landscape with the
same degree of intimacy and attention to
detail as he did the human face. The book
is page after page of these amazing descriptions, she marvels, speaking to AC from
her home outside Copenhagen. And they
are very specific and earthy, whether Hardy
is describing Gabriels weather-beaten face
or the regions topography. I kept the book
by my side throughout the shoot.

The picture marks the third feature
collaboration between Christensen and her
fellow countryman, director Thomas Vinterberg, following Submarino and The Hunt
(AC Aug. 13). The pair campaigned hard to
shoot Far From the Madding Crowd on film.
Thomas and I both felt that the texture of
film was [essential to capturing] Hardys
descriptions, notes Christensen, who operated the A camera on the primarily singlecamera production. All four Kodak Vision3
color stocks still being manufactured were
employed: 50D 5203, 250D 5207, 200T
5213 and 500T 5219.
The film was processed at iDailies in
London, and the 2K digital grade was
handled at Company 3 with colorist Adam
Inglis, who worked with Blackmagic
Designs DaVinci Resolve. Panavision
London provided the camera package: two
Panaflex Millenniums, plus an Arriflex 235
for one day; a set of Panavision Primo
primes; a 300mm T2 Nikon Nikkor; a 40mm
Ultra Speed; and a 17.5-75mm T2.3 and
24-275mm T2.8 Primo zoom. Christensen
tested anamorphic lenses and the Cooke
Panchros she had used on The Hunt, but
she says she fell in love with the Primos
due to the richness and consistency of their
color rendition throughout the range.
Shot entirely on practical locations
primarily in the southwestern region of
Unit photography by Alex Bailey, courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.
to open the cameras shutter angle. He

points to the scene in which Smith sings for
a crowd in a big tent show. The set decorators had hung strands of period lightbulbs
across the tent interior; rigging gaffer Tom
Fendley and his crew mounted 1K Par cans
to the tent poles and focused them at the
performance end of the tent, and bounced
Source Fours into the tent walls and ceiling
for fill. Even so, Jur recalls, it was so dark it
didnt even register on my light meter. I
opened up the shutter to 358 degrees,
which is the maximum for that camera. I
dont notice the motion blur that some
people talk about, but it definitely is a
longer exposure 124 of a second as
opposed to 148.
Jur kept an eye on things and
remained on set with a separate 17" monitor connected to a cart manned by digitalimaging technician Stuart Huggins. I like to
improvise a bit when working, feeling the
colors and look of a particular location, and
the DIT allows me to react to that, like jazz,
the cinematographer enthuses.
Without the use of live color-grading tools on set including a calibrated
Sony OLED monitor and a Leader waveform
monitor we would not have been able to
emulate the muted tones used throughout, Huggins adds. It would have also
been difficult to see the full potential of the
performance scenes without these same
tools and a base LUT and CDL combination.
Bessies color grade was performed
at Deluxe New York, with initial sessions led
by color timer Pankaj Bajpai who had
previously worked with Jur on Carnivle
and final work performed by Sofie Friis
Borup. Jur and Bajpai developed a LUT to
finesse the images texture, saturation and
contrast. Its very photographic and feels of
the period, says Jur. It was something we
just couldnt get in the camera. Ansel
Adams said the negative is the score and
the print is the performance. I think thats
especially true of our film.
Top: Oak and

Everdene
converse in the
graveyard after
the supposed
death of her
husband.
Bottom:
Cinematographer
Charlotte Bruus
Christensen lines
up a shot.
Dorset, where Hardy himself was born

the movie combines an earthy naturalism
with a sweeping romanticism. From the
beginning, Thomas wanted a warm film,
with skin tones staying true to the color of
candlelight, Christensen relates. Instead
of correction filters, I used different densities
of Tiffens Antique Suede on the lens,
because they have less orange. They were
removed only for moonlight and a couple
of day shots when I wanted to play with the
blue sky.
In addition to the Antique Suede,
Christensen employed Schneider Optics
Black Frost filters on nearly all daylight
scenes and some night scenes. For close-up
singles of Schoenaerts, however, she
frequently removed the filtration.
Matthias skin is so true to Hardys description of Mr. Oak that it would have been a
shame to add softness, the cinematographer says. When shooting Mulligan, Chris28
June 2015
tensen played with the level of softness in

order to support the character of
Bathsheba; when Bathsheba is alone on
screen in close-up or medium shot, Christensen also used the 40mm Ultra Speed,
shooting at T2 or T2.5 to isolate her in a
shallow depth of field.
Simplicity is how Christensen
describes her lighting philosophy. One
[primary] light source. When I light, it is to
create shadows, not the light. One of the
major decisions my fabulous gaffer, Alex
Scott, and I made was to go with tungsten
for both daylight exteriors and interiors. Our
aim was to achieve a rich, old-style romantic
look and feel; 5K, 10K and 20K Fresnels
really facilitated that. I wanted to achieve
the films look in-camera; I didnt want to
create it in the grade. For close-ups, I like to
muddle the light a bit on the faces and used
white poly board or tracing paper to
bounce, or wed put a Hampshire gel, with
its beautiful texture, in front of the lamp. Arri

Lighting Rental in London supplied the lighting package.
The film begins in total darkness. A
door opens to reveal Bathsheba standing
outside in a sunny garden. The camera
remains stationary as she steps into the room
and disappears into the blackness. Its not a
film black where you can see a little bit of
the room, stresses Christensen. Its [pure]
black. Bathsheba walks through the blackness and re-emerges in the center of the
room, where an open window reveals she is
in a stable.
The camera was on tracks, on the
11:1 zoom, the cinematographer explains.
As Carey steps into black, we start tracking
and zooming. When she reappears, I am on a
different focal length and the zoom has
stopped. We then cut to a tighter shot of her,
and I am hand-holding the camera, which
increases the sense of intimacy.
An 18K HMI was shone through the
window, just outlining Bathshebas face. It
was directed through the shrubbery outside
the stables, giving a dappled effect, says
Scott. Quarter CTS with Hampshire Frost was
used to soften the lamp and add warmth.
HMIs were generally used for moonlight, as in a night exterior in which Bathsheba
and Boldwood walk in the forest a scene
the filmmakers agreed should not feel romantic. An 18K on a Condor provided backlight
through the trees, but the key light was the
lantern Mulligan carried. The lantern was
pre-prepped with a double-wicked candle
and a small mirror to reflect the light, Scott
explains.
It was the only thing lighting Carey
and Michaels faces, adds Christensen.
Bathsheba again rejects Boldwood and walks
away; 4K and 6K HMI units gelled with 18
Blue partially light Bathshebas path, whereas
the disappointed suitor walks off into
complete darkness.
For night interiors, such as the candlelit
dinner that Bathsheba throws for the 20 or so
farmhands in her employ, Christensen used
what she calls one of my favorite stocks,
5213. Its quite a slow stock and falls into
shadows quickly, which is exactly what I
wanted for the dinner. Antique Suede on
the lens and CTS on the movie lights cast the
scene in soft, warm light. A black-skirted soft
box above the table contained four 2K Spring
Christensen
and crew
discuss a scene
with Mulligan.
Balls and four 1K Fresnels, one in each

corner of the room, were dimmed up or
down depending on the camera angle.
Boldwoods Christmas dance was
the one night interior shot on the 500T
stock. To accommodate shooting in 360
degrees, a helium-filled 4x2K tungsten
Airstar Tube was floated over the ballroom,
and 5K tungsten lamps, all on dimmers,
were positioned in the corners. For the first
part of the sequence, Christensen had the
camera on sticks or a dolly in order to keep
the movements smooth and formal, but
when a reluctant Bathsheba and Gabriel are
forced to dance, the cinematographer
switched to handheld.
Key grip Simon Thorpe built a 2meter round, wooden board that Matthias,
Carey and I stood on in the middle of the
room, while extras swirled around us,
Christensen recalls. I shot close-ups as the
two actors pretended to do their steps but
didnt actually move. A grip used a handle
to walk the board around and around,
creating the illusion that Bathsheba and
Gabriel were actually dancing. While the
board was circling, the two actors were
passing through harsh light that cast
shadows on their faces. I thought, Oh God,
this isnt going to work, but it added to the
reality.
Tension underlies another scene
between Bathsheba and Gabriel, this time
set inside a barn. He is sharpening knives on
a grinding wheel when she steps close to
him, forcing an intimacy that makes them
both uneasy. The first time we tried it, we
had the camera and 25mm lens on track,
but it felt too distant, observes Chris30
June 2015
tensen. It didnt capture the uncomfortable atmosphere. I needed to be closer, so I

switched to an Easyrig. It became a dance
between them and me, and suddenly you
really could feel the tension.
The scenes key illumination was a
black-skirted Spring Ball on the floor, motivated by a practical lantern on a table. Similarly, two practical wall lanterns motivated
the hard, three-quarter backlight, which in
fact came from two 650-watt tungsten
bulbs, one in each corner, both with full
CTS.
Christensen and Vinterberg share an
appreciation for zooming within stationary
shots. A zoom allows you to get closer to
a character without the sense of the camera
moving forward, the cinematographer
observes. One example in Madding Crowd
finds Gabriel awakened by a barking dog
just before dawn. He goes outside, finds
the sheep pen empty and runs into
the forest. The camera is stationary, on
sticks, with the 11:1 zoom, Christensen
describes. He has his back to us in a wide
shot and turns to the camera, listening for
sounds. The moment I feel Gabriel thinking,
Oh my God, the cliff! I zoom. Its a very
precise movement that starts and stops
within the shot, emphasizing that moment
of realization.
Roughly 60 percent of the picture
was shot on sticks or dolly, with the other
40 percent being handheld or on the
Easyrig. There was only one crane shot, and
a Steadicam, operated by Anders Holck,
was used sparingly, as when Bathsheba and
Troy rendezvous in the forest. The
Steadicams floating quality suggests her
swirling emotions as she is overcome by a

romantic longing she has never before
experienced.
Given Hardys attention to
geographic detail, shooting landscapes was
never simply a case of photographing a
view. Thomas and I were constantly
analyzing what Hardy saw, says Christensen. Was it the sheep in the distance or
the storm clouds rolling in? The answer
would dictate the type of lens we used, as
well as the framing and composition
how much sky to include, how much land.
Perhaps the most stunning shots in
the film are those of planting and harvesting
the wheat, which were directly inspired by
the 1978 film Days of Heaven (shot by the
late Nstor Almendros, ASC). Landscape
paintings were another important reference, especially the work of 19th-century
Danish artist Peder Severin Kryer. The final
harvest was planned for magic hour, a dicey
proposition given the unpredictable
weather. The scene took all day to set up
but, Christensen notes happily, the sun
came out exactly when we needed it.
When the sun set before the scene was
finished, magic hour was replicated with an
18K HMI directed over the wagon. The
fixture was on an easy-lift stand, as Scott
explains, and warmed with CTO.
Having grown up on a dairy and
wheat farm that has been in her family for
generations, Christensen brought an
unusual amount of her own life experience
to Far From the Madding Crowd. She had
witnessed firsthand the light in the fields;
she had seen the pools of sunlight and
black shadows inside the stables, and
recalls the silhouettes. I am fascinated with
the way light reacts in the real world, she
says. That simplicity is how I see things
naturally.
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
3-perf Super 35mm
Panaflex Millennium, Arriflex 235
Panavision Primo, Ultra Speed; Nikon Nikkor
Kodak Vision3 50D 5203, 250D 5207,
200T 5213, 500T 5219
Digital Intermediate
Max
32
Intensity
June 2015
Unit photography by Jasin Boland, SMPSP, courtesy of

Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures.
John Seale, ASC, ACS

and director George Miller
put pedal to steel on
Mad Max: Fury Road.
By Simon Gray
|
Wandering the post-apocalyptic wasteland, Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy, opposite) joins forces
with Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron, top right) to escape a savage warlord in the
action-adventure Mad Max: Fury Road. Bottom: Cinematographer John Seale, ASC, ACS on set.
ad Max first roared onto cinema

screens in 1979. Shot by David
Eggby, ACS, the film was set in
a dystopian near-future and
charted the dehumanization of police
officer Max Rockatansky (Mel
Gibson), whose wife and infant son
were taken from him by a brutal motorcycle gang. The burgeoning franchise
was supercharged with the high-octane,
Western-on-wheels 1981 sequel, The
www.theasc.com
Road Warrior, shot by Dean Semler,

ASC, ACS. The original trilogy
concluded in 1985 with Mad Max
Beyond Thunderdome, also shot by
Semler. Thirty years later, Max is back
(this time played by Tom Hardy) in a
reboot titled Mad Max: Fury Road.
George Miller, the director of the
original trilogy, took the helm (while
also writing the script and co-producing), and fellow Australian John Seale,
June 2015
33
Max Intensity
ASC, ACS signed on to shoot. Fury
Road was initially intended to be a 3D
project that would employ 4K Dalsachip cameras designed by Paul Nichola.
I continued testing and prepping these
systems, until one Monday morning
George announced that wed now be
shooting 2D with a 3D post-conversion, Seale recalls. I hadnt shot a digital
film, so when George asked what camera
Id like to shoot on, I replied, Well, Im a
Panavision man, George always have
been. Ill see what they have. Producer
and first assistant director P.J. Voeten
leaned over and whispered, Alexas. So I
added, Probably Alexas, George.
Fury Road carried four Arri Alexa
Ms and six Alexa Pluses into production.
ArriRaw was recorded to Codex units,
with a Log C ProRes 4:4:4 backup
recorded to SxS cards. Ten Codex CDX3010 onboard recorders, four transfer
stations and 30 512GB onboard data
packs rounded out the camera package.
The lens package included Seales
favored kit of Panavision Primo zooms
five 15-40mm T2.6, two 17.5-75mm
T2.3, four 19-90mm T2.8 and two 24275mm T2.8 as well as two LWZ2
17.5-34mm T2.8 zooms, two LWZ1
27-68mm T2.8 zooms, and two 2x
extenders. The only prime lenses were
four mini-lenses, including a 16mm T2
and a 15mm T4, built by ASC associate
Dan Sasaki, Panavisions vice president of
optical engineering, using old elements
and parts. Apart from IR filters
employed when necessary, no filtration
was used on the lenses. We carried a kit
of polarizers, but as they can alter flesh
tones and the skies were either white or a
deep, deep blue, they stayed in the box,
notes Seale.
Two Alexa Pluses were regularly
rigged on Steadicams, usually with a
15-40mm or an LWZ. Pluses mounted
on Performance Filmworks Edge arms
carried either a 19-90mm or a 17.5
75mm lens. Other Alexa Pluses and Ms
were typically fitted with SmallHD
onboard monitors. Canon EOS 5D
Mark IIs and Olympus OM-D E-M5s
were used as crash cams, in addition to
being operated by stunt performers and
Top: The Edge

arm helped
capture elaborate
chase sequences.
Middle: Max is
strapped to the
business-end of a
War Boys vehicle.
Bottom: A
tracking vehicle is
equipped with a
front-mounted
camera.
34
June 2015
occasionally by Seale.
First AC Ricky Schamburg and
2nd AC/camera coordinator Michelle
Pizanis assembled an international
camera crew. Ricky worked with Acamera operator Mark Goellnicht on all
the hard stuff, says Seale. Michelle is
amazing; shes been on several films with
me now. She found an ex-camera technician from Panavision South Africa
named Neville Reid who came up to
Namibia with his motor home and was
put on the payroll as camera technician.
He would often stay up all night not
only fixing things, but thoroughly cleaning all the working cameras and accessories. He was invaluable.
Principal location photography
for Fury Road comprised five months in
Namibia, the driest country in subSaharan Africa, during the Southern
Hemispheres 2012 winter. After a
hiatus, the beginning and end sequences
of the film were shot in Australia during
2013. Namibia provided a great variety
of desert landscapes and certainly filled
Georges requirement not to see a single
bit of green, explains Seale.
While Seales belief in the advantages of multi-camera coverage is well
documented, principal photography
began as a single-camera shoot not
only for the main unit, but, in an unusual
move, for the action unit as well. Single
camera is a bold idea for an action film,
but there are no boundaries with
George, explains Seale. He believes, as
do many others, that there is a perfect
spot for the camera to be in any given
scene. I thought it might work on this
particular film because George and
action-unit director and stunt coordinator Guy Norris had spent the better part
of a decade developing and honing every
aspect of the film, as evidenced by the
meticulous 3,500 storyboard frames
which we all referred to more than the
script.
As shooting progressed, however,
Seale felt that using additional cameras
would gain valuable shots for the edit. I
could see where a few more cameras
would be advantageous providing
cutaways to slow down or speed up a
Top: The Edge

vehicle tracks a
motorcycle
strapped to
cables for a
stunt. Middle:
Max is
restrained
during a chase
sequence.
Bottom: An
operator rides in
front to capture
the action.
www.theasc.com
June 2015
35
Max Intensity
The crew preps

and shoots an
action sequence
in which Max
catapults himself
over to Furiosas
War Rig to
escape Immortan
Joes gang.
scene, capturing moments of terror, and

so on, he says. George was understanding and a B camera was added.
Then I stuck in my C camera, dubbed
the Paparazzo, with the 11:1, and we
36
June 2015
often added a fourth where we could.

All 10 Alexas and more than a
dozen crash cams were used when the
scope of the action and stunt work
required a combination of the shows
main and action units. The result was a

cacophonous convoy of crew approximately 1,500 sat down for lunch on at
least one 10-camera day with
dozens of picture and support vehicles
kicking up dust as they drove up to five
miles through the desert, then turned
around to reset.
Another of Millers idiosyncratic
approaches to camerawork was the stipulation to center-frame actors in the
crosshairs of the 2.40:1 widescreen
frame. This, however, wasnt Seales first
experience with such an idea. Quite
early in my career I shot an episode of an
Australian television program in which
the director and I center-framed the
actors eyes during a rapidly edited fight
scene. The audiences eyes then didnt
have to find anything; the fight was just
presented to them bam, bam, bam,
says Seale, thumping the table with
enthusiasm. So I was most intrigued
with Georges idea. It was hard on the
operators at first. Its so against the grain;
whacking everything in the center and
not worrying about whats happening on
the edges of frame is counter-intuitive.
Early in principal photography, the operators would offer up a beautiful compo-
sition, only to hear George on the

comms yelling, Put the red dot on his
nose, put the red dot on his nose! It was
a great lesson, though, because as an
operator, you have to always keep
utmost in your mind what the essence of
the shot is. What is the shots core
moment? And Georges center-framing
is all so the rapid pace of the editing
unfolds with total clarity. My overarching belief as a cinematographer is that I
am helping the director keep the audience in the film, and you both use all the
tools of your trade to keep the audience
with you.
Establishing exactly what constituted a correct exposure with ArriRaw
sparked earnest on-set discussions
between Seale and digital-imaging technician Marc Jason Maier, as the cinematographers light meters were giving
quite different readings than Maiers
monitors. To my mind, the native ASA
of the Alexa is closer to 400 than 800,
explains the cinematographer. Also,
Marc was shifting the ArriRaw data up
or down the waveform to ensure the
maximum information was being
captured. I changed my meters to 400
ASA, and that seemed to address most
of the issues we were having.
To avoid further complications,
the cinematographer charged gaffer
Shaun Conway with the responsibility
Greenscreen, stunt cables and multiple cameras were used to capture an action sequence in which Max
dangles upside-down from the War Rig.
of analyzing exposures in the DIT van.

Seale explains, I told Shaun, This is
your future mate, not mine. Can you sit
in there and explain to me why Marc
wants me to expose at 8 and not 5.6?
Its been such a big part of my life working out the exposure, I didnt want to
just hand that part of my job over. I tried
working without my meters for a couple
of days, but I felt like Robinson Crusoe
without any clothes on. However, once
www.theasc.com
I knew I was getting exactly what I was

seeing, I slept like a log, something Id
never had the luxury of doing when I
was shooting film.
Maier adds, My aim was to give
John confidence in the digital format by
ensuring he was recording well-exposed
ArriRaw data. We established how the
digital exposure relates to a one-light
work print via a calibrated print-filmemulation LUT created to our specifiJune 2015
37
Max Intensity
Various camera rigs and platforms were used to

capture scenes aboard the War Rig.
cations by FilmLight. This LUT was on

Johns reference monitor, and iPad
dailies were rendered as two versions:
Alexa Log C to Rec 709 and the other
with the print-film-emulation LUT.
Fury Road starts in high gear as
Max is captured by the half-crazed,
machine-worshipping War Boys, who
do the bidding of Immortan Joe
played by Hugh Keays-Byrne, whom
fans will recognize from his role as
Toecutter in the original Mad Max. Joe
is the malevolent ruler of the Citadel, a
38
June 2015
city built inside a mountain. A selfstyled demigod, he controls those below

him through the supply of water and
food. Joe is also determined to maintain
a kind of genetic purity in the Citadel,
and to this end he has taken five concubines, collectively referred to as the
Wives: Toast (Zo Kravitz), Capable
(Riley Keough), Splendid (Rosie
Huntington-Whiteley), the Dag
(Abbey Lee) and Fragile (Courtney
Eaton). Shot at Fox Studios in Sydney,
the Citadel is a combination of practical
sets and extensive greenscreen. Seales

basic premise for the lighting was shafts
of hot sunlight penetrating the otherwise dark spaces, with the added warm
glow of firelight.
After being strapped down and
tattooed by the War Boys, Max frees
himself and attempts to escape the
labyrinthine Citadel, running through
narrow tunnels within the mountain.
George wanted this disorientating
sequence to show Maxs fear and
desperation, so I used a combination
light coming from random directions
with 6K Pars aimed into 4'x4' mirrors to
provide light from below, recalls Seale.
To capture several close-ups of Hardy,
key grip Adam Kuiper mounted a 2.5K
Blackmagic Cinema Camera with a
Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 zoom on a Movi
operated by Peter Barta. The Movi rig
was attached to a body harness with a
mini spring arm, with the stabilized
camera rigged to Bartas back and
facing behind with Barta running in
front of Hardy. The same rig was then
repurposed and worn by Hardy to

capture a close-up with different movement.
As Max runs through a workshop, he hurtles over his beloved
Interceptor vehicle, which is being
repurposed. Lightning Strikes 8K
Paparazzi Flash units simulated the
staccato spark-light of the welders and
grinders used by the mechanics. The
iconic car was given a large, soft glow via
4K and 6K HMI Pars pushing through
an overhead Half Grid Cloth, complemented with a 4K Molebeam pointing
straight down on the vehicle.
Max continues his headlong
flight and tears into the Citadels winch
room. Powered by people clambering
like hamsters in a wheel, the winches
raise and lower a huge platform that lifts
the War Rig an immense truck used
to collect supplies into the safety of
the Citadel.
The winch room, Seale recalls,
was the biggest studio set. Two 18K
Arrimaxes with CTO lit the two
winches, with a large center divider
isolating the light onto each. To imitate
sunlight pouring through the fissures in
the rock, additional 18Ks were directed
into 20'x20' Ultrabounces hung from
the studio rigging. Multiple 12K MaxiBrutes bounced into muslin on the floor
provided uplight for the sets structures
and gave a sense of height to the space.
(Sydney gaffer Paul Johnstone looked
after this and other studio sets.)
As befits the franchise, the
centerpiece of Fury Road is a frenzied
chase sequence: Imperator Furiosa
(Charlize Theron) a senior member
of the Citadel hierarchy and Max
drive the War Rig, pursued by a maelstrom of bizarre vehicles known as the
Armada, driven with reckless and
violent abandon by the berserk War
Boys. All the while, Furiosa has food,
weapons and the Wives, one of whom is
pregnant, hidden inside the truck.
As almost half of the films
running time is spent in and around the
War Rig, several different types of vehicle equipage were used to capture the
action. To enable simultaneous use by
main and action units, the production

carried three fully detailed War Rig
trucks. Main unit used one of the trucks
for moving-vehicle sequences with the
main cast, with the vehicle controlled by
a stunt driver in a bespoke remote drive
pod. Another War Rig was used for
simulated travel in front of a greenscreen, with an air-bag system placed
under the rigs axles; air was constantly
redistributed throughout the bags to
create the travel effect. A partial War

Rig cabin, mounted on a low-loader
named the Buck, was used for front
angles, as it had no hood. Finally, stunt
sequences with the moving War Rig and
many other vehicles were shot by the
action unit.
At least three and often four
Alexa Ms covered the action in the War
Rigs cabin, their configuration dependent upon which iteration of the truck
Max Intensity
was being used. The cameras were
employed inside the cabin with the
15mm and 16mm lenses made by
Sasaki. Dan had refocused the lenses so
the hyperfocal distance at T5.6 was
from the front element to 9 feet, so
everything in the cabin would be sharp,
recalls Seale. To suspend the Alexa Ms
from the cabins ceiling, Kuiper repurposed track, bungee and pulley systems
from American yachting supplies
company Harken. The track could run
in any direction [along the] x, y and z
axis, explains Kuiper. The camera
operators were also able to take their
cameras off one picture-vehicle rig and
move straight onto another.
Compact LED light bars,
supplied by the Australian company
Enttec, were fitted into the interior of
the trucks cabin. Conway notes, At the
time, Enttec Aleph units were the
smallest and brightest LEDs we could
find. While smaller adhesive strip lighting was available, nothing had enough
output for our needs. I went for the
daylight spot units that were the most
heavily populated. A laminated Minus
Green and 251 diffusion gel was put on
each of the 600mm-long units, which
were mounted to the cabin ceiling to
light the Wives in the backseat, with
additional units positioned above the
windscreen to light anyone in the front
seats. The LEDs were also attached
vertically down the pillars between the
front and rear doors to provide a back
edge light on the actors. The cab was lit
to a shooting stop of T5.6.
Four
360-watt,
140-light
Creamsource Doppio LED units and
two 155-watt, 60-light Mini Doppio
units made by Australias Outsight
Lighting were attached to scaffold rigs
outside the cabin and pushed through
the windows or handheld when
required for side key or fill. As needed,
backlight was provided by an Arri M40.
Cinematographer David Burr,
ACS; driver Dean Bailey; arm operator
Mike Barnett and camera operator
Brooks Guyer were integral to Fury
Road s action unit, which shot elaborate
stunt sequences covered by Edge arms
Camera and
lighting setups
for a scene in
which Rictus
Erectus
(Nathan Jones)
rides atop a rig
driven by Nux
(Nicholas
Hoult).
40
June 2015
Max Intensity
The Edge vehicle captures an explosive chase sequence.
mounted with Alexa Plus cameras, two

custom-built
vehicles
dubbed
Truggies mounted with Libra heads
and Alexa Pluses (one front-mounted
and the other rear-mounted), a
purpose-built Ledge mount that
either carried a Libra head or a handheld Alexa M, and numerous Canon
5D Mark IIs with the Technicolor
CineStyle setting. The 5Ds were given
at least a fighting chance with their
placement in Habbycam cages, which
enabled them to be rigged anywhere on
42
June 2015
the vehicles, including with a Libra

head running on a short track underneath the War Rig. We knew the 5Ds
were often going to get wiped out, says
Burr, but they were used in positions
where only a six-, eight- or 12-frame cut
was needed, like the often-cited eyeball
shot in the first Mad Max, so the difference in image quality to the Alexas
wasnt a major concern.
Burr has high praise for the
productions extensive stunt crew.
Other than the use of the Edge, coverAmerican Cinematographer
age of the stunt sequences wasnt particularly out of the ordinary, as the action
itself was so fantastic and varied, he
recalls. One sequence involved stunt
performers on top of 20' oscillating
poles swinging from one fast-moving
vehicle to another as they try to retrieve
the Wives from the War Rig. Each pole
vehicle had a driver, a climber and two
performers acting as counterweights to
get the pole oscillating. Months of
rehearsal enabled the stunt crew to
perform their choreographed sequences
while the vehicles traveled at speeds up
to 50 miles an hour. The action was
primarily captured with a combination
of Edge arms and traditional camera
placement, with the Canon and
Olympus cameras thrown in to add
some spice, according to Burr.
Action-unit key grip J.P.
Ridgeway and the stunt-rigging department commandeered a picture vehicle
as a base for a 30'-high tri-truss tower
with a platform on the top, and Norris
operated a bungee-supported Alexa M
as the vehicle moved at speed. Guy got
some great shots, except there was a
degree of float, recalls Burr. That was
solved by mounting the Edge suspension arm and a stabilized Libra head on
the tower. [That] wasnt something we
used every day, but it was a great piece of
equipment when high angles were
required.
Max Intensity
Top: The crew

moves into
position to capture
a scene between
Joe (Hugh KeaysByrne) and
Furiosa. Bottom:
Joe in pursuit of
Max, Furiosa and
their comrades.
For a high-to-low-angle shot of

the approaching Armada, a GF-6 crane
supporting an Alexa Plus on a wirelessly
controlled Libra head operated by Burr
was lowered into a purpose-built hole in
the Namibian desert. The hole was
walled with reinforced blocks on a
concrete base. The starting camera position was over 15' in the air as the
Armada approached at speed led by
the Gigahorse, a double-bodied 1959
Cadillac with two supercharged 502
V8s atop a monster-truck chassis.
44
June 2015
Dynex cables ran from a bridle on the

GF6 through holes in the concrete wall,
through underground piping to a rig
approximately 50' away, where a
connected platform dolly sat on 25' of
fast track. At the right moment, actionunit grip Brett McDowell pushed the
dolly forward, which in turn lowered the
crane to slightly below ground level,
finishing with the camera looking up at
the vehicles roaring overhead.
When a three-week night shoot
on the Namibian coast was changed to
day-for-night, it required some counterintuitive thinking from Seale. The

visual-effects guys were always shooting
stills on location and then mucking
about with the image, recalls the cinematographer. One day, visual-effects
supervisor Andrew Jackson showed me
an image hed taken in the middle of the
day and thought might work for the
upcoming day-for-night shoot. It
looked great to me, but when Andrew
said it had been taken in the middle of
the day and it had been shot two stops
overexposed and pulled back, and thats
how he wanted me to do the whole
sequence well thats a shattering
thing to say to someone who has been
doing exactly the opposite all his life.
Jackson explained that if the sequence
was overexposed without clipping the
highlights, there would be enough
retention of the dark-toned truck and
wardrobe after the image had been
pulled down in post to selectively bring
up the shadow areas without any digital
noise or artifacts.
The result doesnt look like
normal day-for-night, Seale notes.
Max Intensity
Seale and his crew ready an action sequence with Hardy.
46
June 2015
But in the context of the world in

which Fury Road takes place, as long as
the audience accepts the first few shots
as night, it will work. During production, a couple of American cameramen
rang me and said, Johnny, we hear
youre doing day-for-night on digital.
How are you doing it? When I replied,
Im overexposing it, all I heard was the
dial tone.
Color timing was undertaken on
a FilmLight Baselight system at
Kennedy Miller Mitchells postproduction facilities in Sydney. Senior colorist
Eric Whipp was brought onto the
project more than a year before the films
release. The final look of Fury Road is
akin to a graphic novel, Whipp
explains. Because the imagery was
going to be pushed quite far, it was
important to see the visual-effects work
under the grade as early as possible. The
day-for-night sequences were also going
to require a lot of fiddly, detailed roto
scope work.
Max Intensity
Seale (holding
the camera) and
his crew shoot
a scene atop
a vehicle.
The colors of the Namibian

desert and the restriction of the artdirection palette to brown and beige
tones provided Whipp with a challenge.
The desert sand in Namibia is, in reality, closer to a gray color, but pushing it
toward rich gold colors complemented
48
the characters and vehicles, providing a

strong, graphic look. The only other
dominant color in the film was blue sky,
which we embraced. In some scenes
however, we specifically avoided blue
skies or even added stormy skies to
break up the visuals.
Given the different weather

patterns in the two main locations a
beach half an hour from production
center in Swakopmund and the inland
Namib Desert Seale was initially
quite concerned about continuity of
light direction and quality. The
Benguela Current of the Atlantic Ocean
runs down the coast of Namibia, resulting in dense fog in the mornings and
afternoons, much like the marine-layer
fog in California, explains the cinematographer. Inland, however, the sun
shines all day, unless there were sandstorms, which are frequent in the winter.
Id be shooting on the coast in
white-sky fog while Davey Burrs action
unit was inland shooting in bright
sunshine, and the footage had to intercut, Seale continues. The challenge of
lighting continuity is learning what you
can get away with, not what you cant
and given the speed with which the
action unfolds in the edit and the
awesome stunts and special effects, plus
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa Plus, Alexa M;
Canon EOS 5D Mark II;
Olympus OM-D E-M5;
Blackmagic Cinema;
Nikon D800
Panavision Primo, LWZ,
custom prime; Canon L-Series;
Tokina; Olympus; Nikon Nikkor
Director George Miller plans a chase scene with model vehicles.
the aggressive treatment of the images

in the timing, the audience wont have
time to analyze inconsistencies in the
lighting continuity. I was eventually
able to throw away 40 years of worrying
about continuity of light and share in

Georges amazing confidence.
49
Avengers
Re-Assemble
Ben Davis, BSC joins

director Joss Whedon for
Avengers: Age of Ultron, a bigger,
darker sequel to Marvels
superhero smash.
By Mark Dillon
|
50
June 2015
hen Earths mightiest heroes last assembled in 2012s

The Avengers, they saved New York from an attack by
Thors adopted brother, Loki, and an alien race called
the Chitauri. In the sequel, Avengers: Age of Ultron,
billionaire inventor Tony I am Iron Man Stark (Robert
Downey Jr.) activates the Ultron program, a system encoded
with artificial intelligence intended to safeguard the planet
against a repeat of any such threats. The system goes off the
rails, however, when the now-sentient Ultron ( James Spader),
having determined that the only way to achieve peace is to
wipe out the human race, takes command of Starks Iron
Unit photography by Jay Maidment, SMPSP, courtesy of Marvel Studios.
Far left: Earths

mightiest heroes
reunite to battle an
artificial intelligence
run amok in the
feature Avengers:
Age of Ultron.
Top: Ultron is
determined to
achieve peace by
exterminating the
human race.
Bottom:
Cinematographer
Ben Davis, BSC (left)
and director Joss
Whedon line
up a shot.
Legion and attacks the superhero team

which also includes Steve Rogers/
Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor
(Chris Hemsworth), Dr. Bruce
Banner/Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Natasha
Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett
Johansson) and Clint Barton/Hawkeye
( Jeremy Renner). Internecine conflicts
soon cause the heroes to separate, but
they later reunite to save humankind.
Returning writer-director Joss
Whedon reached out to Ben Davis,
BSC to serve as director of photography,
taking the baton from Seamus
McGarvey, ASC, BSC, who shot the
original (AC June 12). Davis is no
stranger to the Marvel Cinematic
Universe, having shot last summers
blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy (AC
Sept. 14). We met when [Whedon]
was on a Guardians set visit, and it all
happened quite quickly, recalls the
U.K.-based cinematographer. We got
on well from the very start, which was
great. I really like working with writer-
directors because theyre so in control of

the material. They know it better than
anyone.
The first [Avengers] was a huge
success, so you dont want to remove
yourself entirely from it, Davis continues. But this film has a darker visual
core that reflects the script, which is
more about bad times and things
coming apart than about things coming
together. Its about destruction and the
end of things. The tone is grittier and
rougher.
The movie incorporates approximately 3,000 visual effects supplied by
20 vendors. It is Marvels most visualeffects-heavy production to date
which is unsurprising given the number
of superhero characters involved,
including a pair of newly introduced
siblings: the fleet-footed Pietro
Maximoff/Quicksilver (Aaron TaylorJohnson) and the magically gifted
Wanda/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth
Olsen), as well as Vision (Paul Bettany),
www.theasc.com
an android that Ultron creates as an

ideal of the perfect human.
The challenge, as always, was to
make all these fantastical beings credible. This film is grounded in realism,
Davis says. Its very earthbound, but it
so happens that these larger-than-life
superheroes exist within this world. Its
like were immersing them in a war
movie.
The director of photography had
10 weeks of preproduction, which
sounds luxurious until one factors in the
numerous global locations and the scale
of a movie with an estimated $250
million budget. The production built
massive sets at the Shepperton and
Longcross studios in Surrey, England,
and had access to a large housing area
with abandoned buildings in the
London suburb of Hendon for the
climactic showdown with Ultron and its
minions. Davis says he was hands-on
with the rigging plans for the sets and
locations: Working through it on a
June 2015
51
floor plan and a model is a good exercise

in understanding the set and where the
light should come from, and thats
time-consuming.
January 2014 was spent doing
camera and screen tests. Working with
Technicolor, Davis crafted a look he
describes as a print emulation LUT
with a bit of oomph. And on top of
that, each of the disparate locations
called for its own style and color-decision list.
The main units 93-day shoot
started in March 2014 in Italys wintry
Aosta Valley, which stands in for the
fictional country of Sokovia, where the
Avengers try to retrieve Lokis powerful
scepter. Whedon and Davis also
planned the second-unit locations,
scouting in Johannesburg and Seoul,
where Captain America and Ultron
battle over control of Vision aboard a
moving truck on the Mapo Bridge.
Meanwhile, a helicopter unit captured
images of Bangladeshs Chittagong
Ship Breaking Yard.
The crew shot primarily with
Arri Alexa XTs, running two and often
three cameras on the main unit. A, B
and C cameras were operated by Julian
Morson (whose Steadicam was also
always on hand), Luke Redgrave and
Sam Renton, respectively, capturing
ArriRaw files to 512GB Codex
Capture Drive XR media. A custom
2.39:1 frame was extracted from Open
Top: The Avengers

launch into battle
in a scene shot in
Italys Aosta
Valley. Middle:
Captain America
(Chris Evans)
springs into
action. Bottom:
Hawkeye (Jeremy
Renner) steers
clear of an
explosion.
52
June 2015
Gate 1.55:1, leaving extra image space

for visual-effects flexibility. The option
of shooting film wasnt really there, says
Davis. It had to be digital, and I prefer
to work with the Alexa camera system
and my crews do as well.
Canon Cinema EOS C500
cameras with Canon Cinema CN-E
prime lenses were used in rigs and crash
boxes and for run-and-gun handheld
work, capturing in 4K Canon Raw to
Codex Onboard S recorders. For a scene
in which the Avengers try to evacuate
Sokovians from an island that is
propelled into the sky, Davis in
costume picked up additional shots
while appearing onscreen as a war
reporter. That was the best use of the
C500, he says. It cuts in perfectly.
Blackmagic Pocket Cinema
Cameras
shooting
compressed
CinemaDNG Raw also proved useful
for grab-and-go functions. Some of the
cameras were paired with small
Panasonic Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm
f2.8 ASPH zooms or Lumix G 14mm
f2.5 ASPH II pancake lenses, and
another with a PL-mount adapter was
fitted with Super 16mm Zeiss Distagon
primes ranging from 8mm to 16mm.
The second unit also employed multiple
Red Epic Mysterium-Xs in an array for
360-degree visual-effects plates in
South Korea, as well as a couple of
GoPro HD Hero3s.
Top: Captain
America navigates
the battleground
on his motorcycle.
Middle: Thor
(Chris Hemsworth)
plans his next
move. Bottom:
Captain America
and Thor assess
the situation.
www.theasc.com
June 2015
53
Top and middle: A

celebration in
Avengers Tower is
interrupted by the
arrival of Ultron.
Bottom: Tony Stark,
a.k.a. Iron Man
(Robert Downey
Jr.), realizes he
made a terrible
mistake with the
creation of the
Ultron program.
The movie was initially planned

to be framed for 1.85:1 exhibition the
same aspect ratio as The Avengers
until Whedon suggested otherwise five
weeks before production. He and Davis
agreed on the change after considering
concept art, the concluding battle scene,
54
June 2015
and the sets that were being constructed

under the supervision of production
designer Charles Wood, another
veteran of Guardians of the Galaxy. It
all seemed broad and wide, Davis
notes. 2.39:1 just seemed to suit the
action and multiple characters. It
allowed us to put, say, Thor in close-up,

and then I could roam around the edges
of the frame and play some of our other
characters. Thats trickier with 1.85:1.
The crew used a full Panavision
Primo prime lens package with the
Alexa cameras, and Davis notes that the
21mm and 27mm (both T1.9) were
most often tapped for dramatic
moments among the group and master
shots, such as when an enraged Thor
grabs Stark by the throat. We wanted
to put the audience closer to that, so we
used wider lenses, he explains. For
action sequences, it was a question of
where we wanted to put the audience at
that particular point: uncomfortably
close so theyd be immersed in it, or did
we want them to sit back and watch it?
I like to control depth, he notes.
You dont build hugely expensive sets
and then photograph them as some sort
of blurry mush you want to see
where you are. But there are times when
its intense and not about the set, but
rather about whats going on in someones eyes, so then you want to minimize
the depth of field and let everything else
fall off.
Davis generally shot exterior
action scenes at T5.6, and says that he
challenged ACs David Cozens (A
camera) and Leigh Gold (B camera)
whom he lauds as two of the best in the
world by insisting on a stop of T2.8
for nighttime interiors. Additionally, the
crew experimented with Tiffen Black

Satin lens diffusion, most often at 14
density. I like to use smoke for atmosphere on set, and those filters further
keep the image from looking too digital, the cinematographer says. They
put air in the blacks and soften the
highlights.
The H stage at Shepperton
housed Marvels largest-ever set: a
multilevel Avengers Tower that
included a lounge, labs, machine room
and gym. Surrounding the set was a
large greenscreen over which a view of
the Hudson River and New York
skyline would be composited. A bank of
15 24-light Dinos behind a long soft
box was rigged in front of the east side
of the greenscreen. I needed that for a
punchy daylight that would penetrate
into the deepest part of the set, Davis
notes. In front of the Dinos, a pair of
Half Wendy lights on a rail could be
tracked around to represent the suns
shifting position for various scenes.
Big scenes in that space, such as a
party thats followed by Ultrons initial
ambush, required many fixtures, some of
which were tucked away above the sets
20'-high ceiling to keep the floor clear.
The 14 30'x5' ceiling pieces were hinged
and could be opened up to allow the
crew to drop down motorized trusses
rigged with 25 Image 80s. Joss likes to
move the camera, Davis notes. In one
shot we could turn 180 to 360 degrees,
so I had to have the versatility to allow
him that and allow for multiple cameras
shooting particularly because we
have multiple characters to cover in any
[given] scene and we wanted to keep
this fresh and spontaneous.
In the wee hours, after their party
guests have left, the Avengers kick back
in civilian clothes and playfully take
turns trying to lift Thors hammer.
Moonlight is provided by the diffused
Dinos with 12 CTB and 14 Plus
Green. The crew also had to create the
sense of ambient light from the streets
and neighboring buildings filtering into
the skyscraper. U.K. gaffer David Smith
explains, We used sodium-vapor gel on
2K Fresnels placed along the outside of
Top: Working on
the Mapo Bridge
in Seoul, South
Korea, the crew
readies an action
scene featuring
Captain America.
Bottom: Evans
catches his breath
between takes
while filming
another action
scene.
the window to light the edge of the

glass, and stanchions to make sure there
was some definition, as though it was
high up and there was some light
coming from underneath.
The space also had a balcony on
which the crew created a large soft
source with 2K Blondes on a 12'x12'
bounce with a 12'x12' egg crate in front
56
June 2015
to minimize spreading. Further motivation inside the room came from two
illuminated bars, one with hot spots
from 50 custom bulbs behind a Perspex
screen and the other lit by fluorescents.
There were also various lamps around
the table where the characters sat. I
kept those on to try to create a sense of
intimacy, Davis says. Source Fours on
an overhead truss bounced soft light off

the table for an eye light and definition
on the actors faces.
When possible, Davis would
bring in 1K or 2K Rifa lamps for actor
close-ups. Its a flattering lamp that
works particularly well with the Alexa,
he says. The challenge [in shooting]
with multiple cameras is to keep the
light interesting and directional on all
the characters without smothering it in
an overall source.
Intensive preparation went not
only into rigging the movie lights
which were complicated by the sets
many reflective surfaces but to
setting the practicals as well. We had
guys wiring the practicals for five
weeks, Smith recalls. The art department turned up with 200 standard fluorescents and we rewired them so we
would have DMX-dimmer control of
every tube. We could supplement them
or use them as a standalone lighting
source. It saved so much time. Youre
not putting on .6 or .9 ND filters and
gelling a different color; you can do all
that on the dimmer.
Ultrons appearance was shot at
The second unit shot in Johannesburg, South Africa, to capture the donnybrook
that erupts between a rampaging Hulk and Stark, with the latter clad in the Hulkbuster
iteration of his Iron Man armor.
58
June 2015
the same time as the Avengers afterparty, with Spader clad in a fractal
motion-capture suit and a head rig with
two built-in cameras, its own lighting
and a pair of small poles with lights on
them to signify the androids greater
height. The CGI Hulk was similarly
built on Ruffalos mocap performance.
Motion-capture expertise was
provided by the Imaginarium, the
British studio co-founded by mocap
performer Andy Serkis, who also
appears in Age of Ultron as villain
Ulysses Klaw. We were trying to create
an atmosphere in which James and
Mark felt comfortable in the motioncapture suits, says visual-effects supervisor Chris Townsend. They couldnt
look in the mirror and see their characters, so we showed them tests of what
their characters would look like and
how their movements would translate
to their characters. Andy guided them
and helped them break down mental
barriers so they could give incredible
performances.
Lead visual-effects provider
Industrial Light & Magic, which
contributed approximately 800 shots,
did much of the Hulk and Ultron
animation. Sometimes the crew would
shoot clean background plates onto
which the characters would be composited, and in other shots the actors in
frame would be replaced by the
animated characters.
Thor, Iron Man and Captain America confront Ultron and the super-powered siblings Scarlet Witch
(Elizabeth Olsen) and Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson).
60
June 2015
Principal photography was

preceded by a second-unit sequence
shot in Johannesburg in February, in
which Iron Man, clad in his giant
Hulkbuster armor, tries to stop a
rampaging Hulk. Whedon and Davis
were on hand for the first five days to
help establish a basic style before leaving
it to second-unit director John Mahaffie
and cinematographer John Gamble.
Davis notes, I didnt want to make too
big a statement of it, but the African
scenes have a hotter, sunnier look that
reflects what was there when we shot, as
well as what the story called for.
The second unit captured
onlookers reactions, as well as the
destruction of vehicles and other collateral damage. My theory is: get as much
of it [for] real as you can, Davis says. If
a fruit markets being destroyed, try to
get that in-camera, then add the visualeffects elements to it.
The Third Floor, which provided
services that included previsualization
for the main battle scenes, offered a
solution for the Hulkbuster sequence
using Ncam technology, whereby a
rough image of the animated characters
was piped into the viewfinder and
monitors and could be seen in the environment. The [camera operator] could
walk around the Hulk and Hulkbuster

he saw through the lens, point the
camera at any angle and the characters
would stay in place, explains Gerardo
Ramirez, previs supervisor at The Third
Floor. When cameras rolled, we hit
play on our machine and the characters
performed the previs action, and the
operator could move the camera to
follow them. Many shots using this
approach feel more organic because the
camera clearly is reacting to something.
For Quicksilver, the filmmakers
were challenged to represent the characters speed differently than Twentieth
Century Foxs X-Men: Days of Future
Past (AC July 14) an entirely separate
franchise that happens to share the
same character. While preparing for a
running sequence in the woods, the
special-effects teams Paul and Ian
Corbould devised a remote-controlled,
high-speed tracking system whereby a
camera travels along a high-tension
cable tied between two poles, trees or
forklifts. The resulting background
plates could be sped up or used in slow
motion and would be composited with
a shot of Taylor-Johnson running on a
treadmill in front of greenscreen. To
achieve that off-speed capability, the
crew would shoot at 120 fps with the
Arri Alexa XT (recording in 16:9
ArriRaw) or at up to 1,000 fps with the
Phantom Flex4K (recording in Cine
raw). The latter approach was specifically applied for a sequence in which the
speedster, who has switched allegiances
from Ultron to the Avengers, battles
multiples of the android. Primos were
used with both cameras.
At these frame rates we would
record more information from his
performance and use the extra frames to
build a wispy trail behind him as he
runs, Townsend explains. Sometimes
we would integrate a CG character into
the background to try to provide a
Pietro vision, where youre either seeing
through his eyes or were slowing things
down to capture what hes doing.
Gone are the days when visual
effects required locked-off shots. Much
of the action-packed first and third acts
Top, from left: Captain America, Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Bruce Banner/The Hulk (Mark
Ruffalo) and Thor ruminate aboard the Avengers Quinjet. Middle and bottom: The Quinjet launches
from its landing pad on Avengers Tower.
were shot handheld for a feeling of

immediacy, with dollies employed for
some of the bigger-scale scenes. Cranes
would be used for dramatic effect, as in
the earthquake sequence that results in a
segment of Sokovia moving skyward.
62
June 2015
We craned out over the precipice to

give the idea of things falling away and
a sense of vertigo, Davis recalls.
Octocopter drones with onboard
Red Epic Dragons (recording in 6K
Redcode Raw) were used frequently for
aerial work at heights too low for helicopters to fly, such as airborne battle
scenes shot in Hendon involving Iron
Man. The drones were about 3' in
diameter with a stabilized head.
Images were evaluated on set on
Sony PVMA250, PVMA170 and
PVM-2541 OLED monitors
although Davis maintains, If I find
myself spending all day inside the DIT
tent tweaking things, I am in the wrong
place. I need to be out on set.
Davis viewed the feed through
his Avengers ShowLUT, which
helped inform his lighting decisions.
When necessary, he also tapped digitalimaging technician Tom Gough to
push the image further using
FilmLights Truelight On-Set colormanagement system. Once Ben was
happy with the image, I would record
the CDL to my database, which I
would supply along with the footage to
the lab at Pinewood Studios and to
dailies colorist Vanessa Taylor, says
Gough. Vanessa would match all the
cameras to the look Ben created on set
for the Alexas, then export DPX files of
frames from each setup and send them
back to set for his approval. We would
view them on the screens in the DIT
tent, and then Ben would speak to her
about any changes or wed create a new
CDL to update the rushes. Dailies
were projected at days end for the
A remotecontrolled
camera vehicle
carrying a
Canon C500
rolls into
position for
the Mapo
Bridge
sequence.
department heads, either from Avid

DNxHD 120 MXF editorial media or
camera-native raw media.
Davis was present for three
weeks of finishing, which took place
from February to mid-April 2015 for
the 2D and 3D versions. DI producer
Michael Dillon relates that the
Technicolor Los Angeles crew
64
deBayered to 3414x2196 DPX 10-bit

files using Colorfront Transkoder and
delivered the plates to the visual-effects
vendors, who scaled and centerextracted to a DI working resolution of
2158x1214 (1.77:1). Imax formatted an
Imax 3D version as well.
Technicolor had pre-timed plates
so the visual-effects vendors could visu-
alize the final look. For the final grade,

ASC associate Steve Scott, the supervising finishing artist, used Autodesk
Flame 2015 Extension 3 Service Pack
1, while senior DI editor Bob Schneider
used the same software and version for
the conform. Scott was challenged with
finding a cohesive look among the many
locations and visual-effects sources.
Joss and Ben are always going for a
convincing, real world, he says. They
dont want a lurid, over-saturated, videogame type quality.
Whedon entrusted Scott to add
to the unique looks of three
flashback/dream sequences: a glimpse of
Black Widows tragic backstory, a
fantasy finding Steve Rogers and Peggy
Carter (Hayley Atwell) together in a
dance hall at the end of World War II,
and a nightmarish episode on Thors
home world of Asgard. The Black
Widow sequence has a more faded
look, Scott explains. For Thor, we
pushed the colors, contrast and sharp-
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.39:1
Digital capture
Arri Alexa XT;
Red Epic Dragon,
Mysterium-X;
Phantom Flex4K;
Canon EOS C500;
Blackmagic Pocket
Cinema Camera;
GoPro Hero3
Whedon and the crew line up the action using an Arri Alexa rigged with an
Ncam real-time camera-tracking system.
ness. The Captain America scene is

harsh and has a patina that could
suggest the past; we just tried to make it
more colorful and alluring.
Perfecting all the visual effects
and visual elements kept those involved
busy down to the wire, and for Davis

who will again step behind the lens for
Marvels Doctor Strange thats a good
thing. What I love about working for
Marvel is that the people in charge are
creative filmmakers, essentially, he says.
Panavision Primo,
Canon Cinema CN-E,
Zeiss Distagon,
Panasonic Lumix
Their priority is always about [doing]

the best possible work and [ensuring]
that the best possible result is put out
there.
65
Picturing
Tomorrow
D
Claudio Miranda, ASC helps
director Brad Bird envision a
potential future for humanity
in Tomorrowland.
By Michael Goldman
|
66
June 2015
irector Brad Bird calls his new science-fiction movie

Tomorrowland a very unusual film, both in terms of its
look and how it was made. Inspired by the section of
Disneyland with the same name, Tomorrowland tells
the story of a former boy genius (George Clooney) and a
teenage girl (Britt Robertson) who stumble into an alternate
future reality built on secret scientific achievements.
In visualizing the screenplay he co-wrote with Damon
Lindelof, Bird insisted on an image that would hold up to 4K
digital projection. I was looking for something that would
have a rich look, Bird says. We figured 4K digital projectors
would be the best way this movie would be exhibited. I
Unit photography by Kimberley French, SMPSP, courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures.
thought maybe 65mm could be used to

acquire the image, but we didnt feel
confident that the movie could be
projected [in 70mm]. I also thought
maybe we could shoot different formats
something I had done [on Mission:
Impossible Ghost Protocol] but at
the end of the day, it became too complicated to get everything mastered in 4K.
Helping Bird make the decision
was cinematographer Claudio Miranda,
ASC. I liked the way he talked about
film versus digital, Bird recalls. I knew
he would give me an honest assessment
about the best way to do this he was
very even-handed, which I liked. He
knew I had some issues with digital, and
when I talked to him about them, he
always had solid ways to help me avoid
the pitfalls and get what I wanted.
An extensive testing process ultimately led to the decision to shoot
primarily with Sony F65 CineAlta 4K
digital cameras. For their tests, Miranda
configured what he calls a big rig that
supported seven cameras that captured
various digital formats in addition to
35mm and 8- and 15-perf 65mm film.
All seven cameras rolled simultaneously
so that Bird could evaluate the same shot
in each format. I shot day and night
Opposite and this

page, top: Casey
Newton (Britt
Robertson) and former
boy-genius Frank
Walker (George
Clooney) embark on a
journey into an
alternate future reality
built upon secret
scientific
achievements in the
feature film
Tomorrowland.
Bottom:
Cinematographer
Claudio Miranda, ASC
finds a frame.
footage on Upper Grand Street [in

downtown Los Angeles] to see what the
cameras could do, and we projected each
one on a 60-foot screen in 4K, Miranda
relates. I took the labels off and asked
Brad what he was looking for. He
wanted a sharp, big image for a 4K
release, so I would have needed to be at
200 ASA on film. Imax 15-perf was
great for daytime, but it fell apart in low
light and besides, it would have been
impractical to shoot this kind of movie
with those cameras.
We also had all these visual
effects, and I was planning to use lots of
low-level lighting and practical lighting
www.theasc.com
tricks, the cinematographer continues.

In these tests, you saw the strength of
digital with available light. This movie is
not about being soft and mushy and
squishy its really about an Imaxtype, big-negative experience. The F65
was the best option for achieving all the
various needs of the movie.
Miranda estimates that 95
percent of Tomorrowland was shot with
F65s, with Sony F55s used for lighterweight applications such as cablecam,
Steadicam and certain visual-effects
requirements. (The finished film
includes 1,161 visual-effects shots.)
According to digital-imaging technician
June 2015
67
Picturing Tomorrow
Alex Carr, the filmmakers recorded 16bit linear raw files to the F65s internal
recorder with a 2.20:1 frame marker on
the footage, so that the movie could
then be configured for both standard
2.20:1 Brad wanted to honor the old
65mm format, notes Miranda and
Imax 1.90:1 presentation. The 2.20:1
frame marker was used for the F55
footage as well.
The films lens package
comprised Arri/Zeiss Master Primes
(ranging from 14mm to 150mm) and
Fujinon Premier zooms (14.5-45mm
T2.0, 18-85mm T2.0, 24-180mm T2.6
and 75-400mm T2.8-3.8) essentially
the same package Miranda paired with
an F65 for Oblivion (AC May 13).
Miranda opines that the combination of
Master Primes and Premier zooms is
the sharpest way to go when shooting
with an F65 for a 4K master.
First AC Daniel Ming adds that
the 4K mandate kept the focus pullers
on their toes. It became apparent that
what is generally considered to be
within tolerance for lens calibration was
not good enough for 4K, especially with
wider lenses, Ming says. An image that
looked good at 2K or HD could look
At the 1964
Worlds Fair,
young Frank
Walker (Thomas
Robinson) is
given a pin by a
girl named
Athena. The tip
of the Eiffel
Tower on the Its
a Small World
ride scans the pin
and the young
boy is routed to a
Tomorrowland
transport.
68
June 2015
Picturing Tomorrow
soft at 4K, so we had to keep a close eye
on things, especially when temperatures
started to vary wildly. When the
temperatures would drop at night to
below freezing sometimes [on location
in Vancouver] the focus markings on
the wide lenses went out the door, and
we had to check focus solely on the
monitor. Plus, Claudio likes to motivate
his light sources from practicals and use
realistic interactive light levels for visual
effects. We were at a T1.4 frequently in
those situations, which is always a challenge.
Carr built a workflow methodology for Miranda that allowed the cinematographer to view imagery on a
small, mobile monitoring cart that was
linked by fiber-optic connection to
Carrs main DIT cart. The smaller cart
which included a Sony BVMF250A Trimaster OLED reference
monitor, two Leader LV5330 test
monitors, two HME wireless base
stations, and basic video routing
controls could be maneuvered into
tight spaces while Carr stayed back with
his larger cart, from which he provided
a basic color grade, remote camera
control, fiber transmission and receiving, and video routing to VTR and
camera operators and assistants. Carr
typically transferred one take from each
setup to grade on set with Miranda;
then, at the end of each shooting day, he
sent XML metadata grades and reports
to a near-set lab operated by mobile
digital dailies vendor Sixteen19, which
handled archiving and processing.
All the footage went through my
system, Carr explains. Second-unit
media was always shuttled to me before
going to the lab, and I inserted each
card recorded from both units into my
machine for checking and downloading
selects. I used Colorfront Express
Dailies, limited only with a curve and
CDL. Secondary corrections were not
easily translatable, and were not recommended going through the dailies
pipeline. Sixteen19 brought an on-set
Colorfront system to handle audio sync,
reports and media generation for all the
various deliverables. Justin Staley was
Top: Young Frank

boards the
transport
between the
Worlds Fair and
Tomorrowland.
Middle and
bottom: Frank
uses a rocket
pack to travel
through
Tomorrowland.
70
June 2015
Bridgeway Plaza where travelers enter and exit Tomorrowland.
our dailies operator, who used

[Colorfront
On-Set
Dailies].
Colorfront is a powerful tool for bridging the set with dailies and editorial;
tied to a MySQL database to be used
with visual-effects pulls later on, it is a
very efficient way to create grades and
keep them throughout postproduction
and compositing.
Miranda often kept the cameras
on cranes and dollies, sometimes flew
them on cables, and made extensive use
of a 73' Hydrascope on a Titan base.
Tomorrowland is a place we havent
seen before, the cinematographer
notes, adding that scenes set therein
consequently have more hero shots and
vistas [than scenes set] in the real
world.
Bird sought to further distinguish
Tomorrowland with an interactive
lighting scheme that would suggest a
sense of living light and energy. For
particular sets and lengthy sequences,
Miranda made interactive lighting
effects the primary and sometimes
only lighting sources. In fact,
Miranda says the intent with virtually
all of the light in Tomorrowland was to
make it constantly move with a Tesla
type of energy, like electrical charges.
Claudio is very attuned to light,
how it reacts and how to keep it consis-
tent, whether we are in situations with

effects and bluescreen or not, Bird says.
He has this amazing ability to orchestrate the light from one scene to the
next, changing it in an almost musical
way.
One of the movies key locales is
the Bridgeway Plaza, where travelers to
and from Tomorrowland enter and exit
the reality. Crackling energy visibly
pulsates up and down the plazas power
tower which was built on an exterior
set in Vancouver in homage to the
work of the electrical pioneer Nikola
Tesla. Rather than relying on CG
constructs, the filmmakers created most
of the pulsating effect on set by
photographing various LEDs positioned behind lenticular lens sheets.
Lenticular is [the type of ] plastic sheet
on those old 3D postcards, Miranda
explains. It has an amazing look when
used as a screen in front of light
sources.
It is flexible, as its maybe 3
millimeters thick, notes rigging gaffer
Jarrod Tiffin, and it comes in different
magnification levels.
Miranda describes the constantly
moving and reshaping light as a kind of
in-camera energy-field effect. Gaffer
David Tickell adds that the goal was to
imbue a life force to the energy, to show
71
Picturing Tomorrow
The camera is readied for the scene in which Casey enters Tomorrowland.
72
June 2015
it was always moving, pulsing, never

stagnant. We incorporated a lot of
LEDs and media behind the lenticular
lens for a 3D effect. Depending on how
you set the lenticular, it would bend and
stretch the light in different directions.
Tiffin adds that the tower incorporated approximately 150 Barco
MiStrip LED units, with an inch
between each MiStrip. Using media
servers and custom content, our media
operator, Zach Alexander, created an
energy-wave movement, Tiffin
explains. With the lenticular lens, each
LED was stretched to about 6 inches.
The trick was that we had to invert
every other row, as the MiStrip LEDs
are linear, not clusters if they were all
hung the same way, you would always
see red or blue first, depending on which
way the camera was looking. By inverting the rows, you get a perfect blended
color from any angle.
The tower also includes forks,
where electricity jumps back and forth
between the tines. Tiffen explains, The
forks had [Environmental Lights]
PixelPro units built into them, with a
timed fade pattern that the console
operators ran. Above them were four
250K Lightning Strikes and two 70K
Lightning Strikes on the sides, which
served to create energy blasts. Off the
sides of the tower with the MiStrips
were two walls that were approximately
60 feet long and 24 feet tall each, and
they had approximately 560 Philips iW
Blast and ColorBlast [LED fixtures]
hung vertically every 3 feet and bounced
into a white wall. Between these vertical
light towers and in front of the white
bounce was a giant wood gobo, painted
black, and in front of that was another
lenticular lens, which stretched the
image and gave the sense of a major
energy field. On the sides of that was
the base of the tower, which had long
runs of PixelPros that matched the
program running the forks. To help with
the scope of this, every 20 feet of
PixelPro was a DMX universe, so the
entire set consisted of almost 100 DMX
universes. All of it was running at the
same time through the GrandMa2 and
Picturing Tomorrow
Frank, Casey, Athena (Raffey Cassidy) and scientist David Nix (Hugh Laurie) enter the monitor
room that hovers above Bridgeway Plaza.
74
June 2015
[network processing units], and the

media servers and console were
controlled by [Alexander and lightingconsole programmer Benoit Richard].
Practical interactive lighting
effects were hardly limited to the tower.
For example, Bird felt the futuristic ray
guns used in a number of important
sequences should emit a uniquely
organic and believable light. I asked
Claudio, Why, when people use
weapons like ray guns in a visual-effects
movie, do the light and shadows not
appear on people and around the
room? Bird relates. They always seem
to paint it in later in post, and it doesnt
really look like light moving through a
room. So I asked him about it, and
Claudio and his team promptly developed light arrays so that the light would
move through the set.
The solution involved 24
Chroma-Q Color Force LED strips
configured on 6' trusses that could be
positioned above or beside the set; the
trusses could be connected to extend the
chase, depending on how far the person
firing the gun was from the target. We
could create a big flash that began when
the actor pulled the trigger, but
controlled at the GrandMa2 lighting
console, giving us lighting effects in a
long line, Tickell explains. Visual
effects could then [embellish the effect]
later as needed.
Its nice that we have LEDs for
this kind of lighting interaction,
Miranda adds. I didnt want to just slap
a color onto the light coming out of the
guns we wanted the light to start full
white and then decay into a little blur of
color. One character fires a ray gun and
it ends up being a cyan color, and the
next one fires and its more of an amber.
LED gave us a flexible way to do that
without having to re-gel the whole [rig]
or trying to control it in post.
Tickell notes that the production
worked with Canadian company
Unlimited Design Ltd. to incorporate
LED technology into the prop ray guns,
and to configure the guns triggers to
wirelessly cue the lighting console to set
off the choreographed LED strips all
while keeping the props lightweight

enough to not burden the actors. With
the resultant props, pulling the trigger
would simultaneously emit a visible
white light followed by a color and
signal the lighting console to send
matching color combinations through
the rigged Color Force LEDs.
Perhaps the most complicated set
to rig was the monitor room, which
appears onscreen as a floating sphere
that hovers above the Bridgeway Plaza.
Inside the sphere is an immersive 360degree environment that shows the
characters events from anywhere in the
world and any time in the future.
Think of it like being inside a planetarium, surrounded 360 degrees by a
complete visual medium, Miranda
says. Its a true immersive space, with
video playing all around the actors,
wrapping around them.
Miranda adds that the environment itself provides all of the light. To
realize the effect, his team rigged two
custom ring frames each 5' tall and
52' in diameter, and each divided into
eight equal sections from aircraft
cable attached to a chain motor. Tiffin
says there were approximately 1,200
inverted MiStrips on each ring, and
each of the 16 sections could be raised,
lowered, or separated entirely to permit
cameras to access the set. The MiStrips
had a diffusion frame 1 foot off the
front, and in the center above the set was
a 30-by-30-foot truss rig with [Pixled]
F-11 LED panels, which we had to
bring in from Europe, Tiffin explains.
He adds that all of this rigging
combined to create the ability to have
two 360-degree rings that could become
one, or be separated to become two,
with an interactive top. Using custom
video content sent to our media servers,
Zach Alexander gave us the ability to
provide constant interactive lighting
that Claudio helped create to match the
changing tone as the scene evolved.
When the screens opened up for the
camera to poke through on one side,
Claudio would open the other side to
reveal a bluescreen lit by Kino Flo
Image 87s.
Picturing Tomorrow
Director Brad Bird (left, red hat), Miranda and crew line up a shot with Robertson.
Not all the lighting involved

interactive techniques, of course, but
there were other challenges to deal with
along the way. When the production
76
traveled to the Kennedy Space Centers

historic Launch Pad 39A the erstwhile launch point of dozens of Apollo
and Space Shuttle missions for a
night rocket-launching scene, there was

simply no way to light the pads 700'-tall
tower for a moonlit ambience. According
to Tickell, at the time Tomorrowland
visited the location, plans were already
underway to dismantle the tower after
the site had been leased to a private
company. They had disconnected the
power to it, Tickell says. In the end, the
production ended up paying to reinstate
the power [to specific sections of the
tower], and that made the tower self-illuminating.
We then purchased a bunch of
low-pressure sodium-vapor lights that
basically matched what was on the tower,
and placed them on the ground around
the different areas where we were shooting, moving them around as needed,
Tickell continues. We would put some
sources of light up on the platform, just
to create some odd little backlight here or
there. But for the most part it was just the
lighting of the tower and the positioning
of the sodiums that lit the whole area.
The movie also features a monorail system meant to evoke Disneylands

monorail. For those sequences, as well as
certain scenes in which characters fly
with the aid of futuristic jetpacks,
Miranda wanted to add realistic lightand-shadow effects to enhance the illusion of movement. Accordingly, on the
360-degree bluescreen monorail set, the
crew built six 32'x24' truss boxes that
were 4' deep and fitted with 270 Kino
Flo Image 87s in total. The boxes were
strung end-to-end and hung on I-beam
tracks. Twenty Martin Mac III
Performances were suspended on separate trusses on each side of the boxes,
with another 20 Vipers on each side on
the ground for a total of 80 lights.
Tickell says Richard was amazing at making a chase sequence out of
the [Image 87s], which is hard to do. A
lot of times when you are on and off
fluorescents, it gets very steppy. But this
was quite smooth you really felt the
motion of the train. And we added gobo
light wheels that were basically 12-foot

aluminum wheels, with half of them
blacked out and a motor on them that
the rigging grips designed and we could
control. We could black out, say, an 18K
Arrimax and then open it to create sun
in and out of clouds. We did the same
kind of gobo effect for the flying
sequences, when [the characters] are
traveling on jetpacks through the city.
At press time, Miranda and Bird
were working with Company 3 colorist
Stephen Nakamura on the final digital
grade using Blackmagics DaVinci
Resolve which afforded the filmmakers an opportunity to ensure the
films overall look adhered to Birds
thematic foundation for the story. In
contrast to the dystopian future often
visualized in modern science-fiction
films and literature, the director wanted
to show the brighter, more positive
future he remembers hearing about at
Disneyland when he was growing up.
One key to representing that optimistic
future was to make sure we were not

too overbearing or overly systematic
during the DI, says Miranda. We
didnt want to crush blacks. We forced
some cool tones and warm tones just to
play with mood a little bit, and we took
down some walls and created some extra
space, but it is all really subtle work. At
the end of the day, it is a pretty naturallooking movie. When you see
Tomorrowland, we want it to be a breath
of fresh air.
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.20:1 and 1.90:1 Imax
Digital Capture
Sony CineAlta F65, F55
Arri/Zeiss Master Primes,
Fujinon Premier
77
Trapped
in a
Paul (Flix de Givry) struggles to make his mark as a young Parisian DJ in Eden.
Denis Lenoir, ASC, AFC lets

the story lead the way on
Mia Hansen-Lves Eden, a tale
of a struggling Parisian DJ.
By Iain Stasukevich
|
78
June 2015
hotographed by Denis Lenoir, ASC, AFC, Mia HansenLves Eden chronicles more than two decades of French
electronic-music culture as seen through the eyes of Paul
(Flix de Givry), a young Parisian DJ struggling to make
music while still making ends meet. Hansen-Lve wrote the
script based on the real-life experiences of her brother (and cowriter) Sven, and her direction lends a truthfulness to the events
portrayed. Lenoir whose work includes such films as Still
Alice and Demonlover provides naturalistic imagery that
supports this perspective, wherein the actors drive his camerawork and the immediate environment dictates his lighting.
Images courtesy of CG Cinma. Photo of Denis Lenoir, ASC, AFC by Jean-Claude

Moineau, courtesy of the ASC archives, Raphael Cohen and Film En Stock.
Groove
Trapped in a Groove
Top: Cyril (Roman Kolinka) and Paul head home in the early morning after attending a
rave. Middle: Thomas (Vincent Lacoste, left) and Guy (Arnaud Azoulay) hang outside a club
in the early 1990s. Bottom: Stan (Hugo Conzelmann) partners with Paul to create the
musical duo Cheers.
80
June 2015
American
Cinematographer:
How did you come to be involved with
this film?
Denis Lenoir, ASC, AFC: Mia
is an old friend of mine. We met when
she was 18 and acting in the Olivier
Assayas film I was shooting, Late
August, Early September. When she
started directing, her first three movies
were all shot on film by other cinematographers, and this time she asked
me to work with her. She wanted to
shoot on film again, but the budget
didnt allow it.
Which camera system did you
shoot with?
Lenoir: My experience in digital
has almost always been with Alexa,
unless the project is so specific that I
would consider another digital camera
as if it were film and I [needed to
choose] another format like 16mm or
Super 8. For me now, though, the question is whether to shoot ProRes or if we
can afford ArriRaw, not just in terms of
money, but time. I remember doing
comparison tests between the two
formats and seeing a difference, but not
disliking the texture of ProRes. The
difference was so small that, assuming
Im exposing properly and not painting
myself into a corner, it was not enough
to justify the money, the time, and a
more complicated workflow to shoot
raw, so I shot this film in ProRes 4:4:4
June 2015
APATOW AND LIPES

CHOOSE CLASSIC LOOK FOR
Trainwreck is the latest Judd Apatow-directed comedy to hit

the big screen. As a director, Apatows smashing success in the
comedy realm includes The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Funny
People and This is 40. In the producer role, he has had a hand in a
long string of other hit comedies including Bridesmaids, Superbad,
Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Pineapple Express, and he is known as a
pioneer in the bromantic comedy genre.
This time around, Apatow has built a film around a female
lead. In Trainwreck, Amy Schumer, who also wrote the script,
plays a semi-autobiographical character who is extremely
commitment-phobic, tending to sabotage any budding
relationship. When she meets a good man, she must face her
fears. The cast also includes Tilda Swinton, Bill Hader, Brie Larson,
Colin Quinn, Marisa Tomei, and LeBron James. The shoot was
mounted in New York City over the course about 53 days.
Apatow is known for his preference for film, joining Martin
Scorsese, Christopher Nolan, J.J. Abrams and others in being vocal
about their support of the medium. According to cinematographer
Jody Lee Lipes, the decision to go with 35mm film on Trainwreck

was part of a strategy to give the movie a classic look and feel.
Lipes background includes indie credits like Martha Marcy
May Marlene, Tiny Furniture, and Afterschool, as well as the pilot
and first season of the television series Girls, where he has also
handled directing duties. His most recent film as a director
is the vrit documentary Ballet 422, released by Magnolia
Pictures, which is in theaters now. Its a film about a young
choreographer named Justin Peck creating a new ballet at the
New York City Ballet.
Regarding Trainwreck, Lipes says, It was important to Judd
that the movie feels like a classic, New York romantic comedy.
Its a kind of film that has gone away to some degree, where a
woman falls in love with a perfect guy, and theres a fairy tale
quality. We wanted to make it feel beautiful and slightly formal.
That formalism was balanced by the spontaneity of the
comedy. We sometimes let things play in wider shots, including
close-ups, in order to see more physicality, he says. Judd works
in a very improvisational way. Its very loose what were going

to accomplish on a given day, how its going to be shot, and what
the actors are going to say and do. I wanted to use the camera
to counter that. I kept things very locked down and static, with
carefully chosen compositions, and a decisive feeling.
The format was 3-perf 35mm, and the aspect ratio was a
widescreen 2.35:1. The cameras were ARRICAM LTs and the
lenses were generally Cooke 5/i in the medium range of focal
lengths usually 32mm or 40mm, and occasionally a 65 mm.
Because so many projects are

digital, shooting on film makes
the movie stand out. It just
feels more human, more analog,
more natural, and ultimately,
more stylized.
We did side-by-side tests with digital formats, and there
was just no comparison, says Lipes. It was very obvious to
everyone that film was the way to go. It felt better, and it
creates uniqueness about the film. Because so many projects
are digital, shooting on film makes the movie stand out. It just
feels more human, more analog, more natural, and ultimately,
more stylized. Its not as sharp its more pleasing. It wasnt a
scientific decision. It just felt like the right way to go.
The classic romantic comedy aesthetic comes with a
higher-key approach to lighting. This was definitely the most
bright and broad lighting Ive done for a film, says Lipes.
Thats what was appropriate.
The aspect ratio and format were a creative choice dictated

partially by the New York setting. The 3-perf format had the
additional benefit of saving 25 percent over 4-perf in stock
and processing.
Judd had shot his previous film digitally, and I think he found
the ability to keep rolling forever counterproductive, says Lipes.
After a certain point, the cast and crew get burned out. Being
able to take a break and reload for a minute is welcome.
The film stocks were KODAK VISION3 500T Color
Negative Film 5219 and KODAK VISION3 50D Color Negative
Film 5203. The majority of the film unfolds in day interior
situations, which were split between stage work and locations.
In one important scene, Schumer and Hader return to his

characters apartment after a first date. The environment
included a lot of glass and extensive city views. Even though
it was on the seventh floor, Lipes lit up the interior from the
outside. The lights were aimed up from the sidewalks, through
the big windows, and bounced off the apartment ceiling, thus
avoiding reflections in the glass and allowing the camera to
look in any direction.
Generally, the lighting was all very straightforward and very
traditional in a lot of ways, and it was good to go through that
exercise, says Lipes. I worked with a great gaffer (Andy Day)
and a great crew, and they really helped me get the film in the
right place. Coloring it in post was very simple, and Judd was
quite happy with the images in the end.
Trainwreck is in theaters this summer.
Photos: Previous page: Amy Schumer and Bill Hader star in Trainwreck. This page, top:
Schumer and Brie Larson. This page, bottom: LeBron James and Hader in a scene from
Trainwreck. Photos Universal Pictures.
Dwight Chalmers is a
filmmaker and musician who
divides his time between
professional sound work for
movies and television, and
small, personal films. His
most recent short film is Dim
the Lights, an impressionistic
collage that serves as a
travelogue for a recent trip
from the Midwest to the
Pacific Ocean along the old
Route 66. The films audio
track includes original music
along with sounds and
ambiences gathered and
edited by Chalmers.
At first, there were two
sides to my love for sound,
says Chalmers. One was
recording bands, and
the other was collecting
ambiences. For years, I have
gone out and recorded
interesting sounds
crickets, open air spaces,
air conditioners, a soda
machine with a strange
buzz. Twenty years later, I
might use sounds from that
library on a project like Dim
the Lights.
Chalmers looks at
shooting film in a similar
way. He collects Super
8 imagery and pieces it
into a film, working with
co-filmmaker Angie
Carpenter.
For Dim the Lights, our

goal was to be inspired by a
location and then figure out
the story when we got there,
he says. I always watched my
grandfathers trips on Super 8
and I liked how he could tell a
story within a couple rolls of
film. There werent hours and
hours of raw footage to sift
through. I even wanted to use
his camera moves and some
of his shooting methods. The
goal was to make these stories
feel like found footage, with a
timeless quality.
The Super 8 aesthetic, with
prominent grain and 18 frames
per second, was an important
factor. Chalmers has a dozen
or more Super 8 cameras,
many bought for a few dollars
at flea markets or garage sales.
They include Kodak, Argus,
Bauer, Bell & Howell and
Bentley models. He welcomes
the anomalies they sometimes
introduce.
Sometimes my footage
sits on the shelf for years
before I send it out for
development, he says. I
might find a little hidden
jewel, something that didnt
make sense when I shot it.
That makes it fun. Theres one
camera that I like especially
it has a loose gear in it, and
every now and then Ill hear it
making a certain sound. That
means the film is starting to
jitter a little bit, which gives it
a certain look, an in-camera
effect. If we need to get

back to normal, I reload the
cartridge. We consider it a gift
from the camera.
Editing was minimal, mostly
rearranging three-minute
reels, and deleting the
occasional unusable shot. We
limited ourselves to four or six
rolls of film, he says. That
way, were very cautious of
what we shoot. You have to
think about the next shot, and
how to tell the story. For Dim
the Lights, we had to save at
least a half a cartridge to shoot
when we reached the Santa
Monica Pier, where Route 66
terminates.
On the Dim the Lights trip,
Chalmers shot quite a bit of
KODAK VISION3 250D Color
Negative Film, repackaged by
Pro8mm in Burbank, Calif.,
but his cameras are also
loaded with KODACHROME
40 Film, KODAK Type G
EKTACHROME 160 Movie
Film, and KODAK TRI-X
Reversal Film. Pro8mm
scans the film at 1920X1080i
and colors it on a DaVinci
system. Chalmers gets the
images back on a hard drive.

Jon McCallum, a friend and
filmmaker best known for his
(recently re-mastered and
re-released) soundtrack for
the cult film Surf Nazis Must
Die, helps out in navigating file
formats, titles, frame rates and
other post puzzles.
Dim the Lights has screened
at the RxSM Self Medicated
Film Expo in Austin, Texas,
the Victoria Film Festival in
Victoria, Texas, and was an
official selection at the Los
Angeles Independent Film
Festival.
Photo: Left filmstrip: Scenes from Dim the
Lights. Background and top right: Dwight
Chalmers filming on Route 66. (Credit:
Angela Carpenter.)
In order to maximize spontaneous creativity in the filmmaking

moment, Steven Annis prefers to approach each assignment
with a minimum of planning.
Im a believer in organic filmmaking, he says. I like to give
my interpretation in the moment. If youre surrounded by good
production design, and you have a good director, cast, grader
and editor, everything just
seems to happen. Its a perfect
balance between just enough
planning and the director letting
his/her actors go, and then
you being there to capture
organically.
Annis is an in-demand
cinematographer who
specializes in unique imagery
for music videos and
commercials. His recent credits
include clips for Florence
and the Machine, Kwabs, Bryan Ferry and Gary Clark Jr. and
commercials for Powerade, UNIQLO, Sony and Adidas.
Another recent high-end project Annis framed is Every
Breaking Wave, a 13-minute visual essay set to U2s song of
the same name. Directed by Aoife McArdle, the film is set in
Belfast during The Troubles, the gray and desperate milieu in
which U2, now a worldwide phenomenon, got its start.
At the heart of the story is a young couples desperate love
as it blooms amid the desperation and violence. To depict that
bleak time period and setting, the filmmakers shot 35mm film
in the 2-perf format, which results in significant cost savings
in stock and processing, and delivers a widescreen frame with
more pronounced filmic flavor.
The 2-perf format made its resurgence as a money-saving
device, says Annis. But I think the format is a perfect balance.
You get all the benefits of 35mm the lenses, focal lengths,
great aspect ratio and its just beautiful. We had used the
format on the Bryan Ferry clip (Loop De Li) and the director
fell in love with the richness, colors, and the look.
When it came to the U2 project, the creative team went with
exactly the same tools: a 2-perf PANAVISION PLATINUM
camera with a set of Ultra Speed MKIIs, backed up with an
ARRI 435 camera on STEADICAM. I didnt look at any old
photographs of the 70s or 80s, I just went in there with an
image capturing device thats been around for over a century,
the cinematographer explains. Because of its nature, film needs
very little manipulation and I felt confident the KODAK stock
and the old lenses would put me on the right tracks.
The video played out over the course of six days around
Belfast. There were explosions, car chases and fire scenes.
Annis shot the entire promo on KODAK VISION3 200T Color
Negative Film 5213. He often underexposed to dig in and to
emphasize the grain. He gives credit to the grader, Simon
Bourne at Framestore, for perfecting the color and contrast.
Each frame of 35mm is

organic and alive! You put
some light on it and it plays
within boundaries. Its a
magical unknown quantity,
and I love it.
Underexposure works well if youve got extreme highlights

and some ability to control the light, Annis relates. In murky,
flat light, its harder to underexpose. But at the end of the day,
were dealing with a magical strip of chemicals. Does anybody
really, truly know whats going on? Each frame of 35mm is
organic and alive! You put some light on it and it plays within
boundaries. Its a magical unknown quantity, and I love it.
In one tense scene, a group of young toughs check their
weapons in a darkened room where strong daylight knifes
through a slit in the heavy curtains. A knock at the door proves
to be the female lead.
Regarding his approach to this scene, Annis says, I like a
single light source. I never ever put lights inside because it plays
hell with the directors vision. I think you have to be responsible
as a DP and think about the budget, the schedule and what youre
shooting. On a $50 million feature that scene would have been
shot over a whole day, and every time you turned the camera
around youd re-light. I didnt have that luxury. We had maybe
an hour to shoot that scene, and its like that on most music
video jobs. You go into the location, and you find the best way
to light without compromising the final image. You have to
have an understanding director. A single light source, a good
art department, the right curtains its simple, but it allows you
a kind of freedom to move quickly and efficiently.
Annis has also made extensive use of the Super 16 film
format. Examples include multiple Calvin Harris promos and the
new Florence and the Machine videos shot in the Scottish
Highlands with Vince Haycock.
Super 16, to me, is the only truly unique format on the planet,
and its an astounding thing, he says. When I saw the rushes
from the recent Florence and the Machine shoot, it took my
breath away. Thats the power of celluloid. Film is not the right
format for every job and every budget, but I think film can live
very beautifully alongside the digital formats.
Annis worked as a focus puller for eight years prior to
becoming a director of photography. He says he feels privileged
to work with talented collaborators.
For me, heaven is being put in a room with an actor or actress
who is going through some emotional strain, and filming this
person, he says. Im in this industry to be part of a process a
cog in the wheel. If someone out there in the world is affected in
a positive way by something I shot, thats me doing my job.
Photos: Top left and right, and bottom center: Scenes from Every Breaking Wave
(credit: Steven Annis); Left center: Steven Annis (credit: Jean Martin); Right center:
Behind the scenes on the music film (credit: Aoife McArdle)
BEN RICHARDSON
FINDS FREEDOM WITH FILM ON
DIGGING FOR FIRE
Joe Swanberg and Ben Richardson have made three movies

together Drinking Buddies, Happy Christmas, and now
Digging for Fire. The film is a dramedy, co-written with Jake
Johnson who also stars in it, about a man in a mid-wife crisis
and a woman trying to figure out where mother/wife ends
and she begins.
Weve got a good shorthand going at this point, Richardson
says, which makes us pretty efficient with shot design. So, this
time we decided to go all the way and shoot 35mm with the
camera on the dolly.
Digging for Fire was produced in 2-perf 35mm on KODAK
VISION3 500T Color Negative Film 5219 and KODAK VISION3
200T Color Negative Film 5213.
A formal shooting style isnt what Swanberg fans might
expect from the writer-directors usual aesthetics, where
theres a certain amount of handheld that goes on in order
to remain responsive to all the improvised performances.
But Richardson was able to maintain all those same reactive
elements while still going for something different.
Swanberg always works sans script, using instead an
outline developed in collaboration with his cast one of the
reasons that actors are really excited to work in his movies.
Since this was a bigger scale production than his last two
films, Swanberg and Richardson did have to involve a bit
more prep in order to think about the practical aspects of

production and lighting. Richardson adds, Although much of
the film takes place in one big location a hillside house in
LA it was still contained, fortunately.
In some ways Digging for Fire is more of a structured story,
Richardson continues, The mystery component suggested
we break with the pure naturalism of our previous films. We
talked about landing somewhere between the 70s world,
which is such a strong influence for Joe, and the great 80s
thrillers and action movies of our childhoods.
Using a dolly and having a bit more planning was a change
in pace for the duo. On most films you light a scene with a
very strong idea of what the blocking and performances will
be and then you structure the camerawork around that,
explains Richardson. Whereas, in this situation, I had to figure
out a way to allow the actors to make whatever choices they
wanted while we were rolling, and still get great footage. That
spontaneity is one of the keys to Joes films, and one of the
reasons Ill always enjoy working with him. Its challenging, but
a really fun way to work.
The location came to bear on the assignment as well. In
this case, at the poolside for example, we lit from the sides
and the roof of the main house, keeping a large area free for
the actors to explore, the cinematographer relates. We laid
track along the edge of the pool, and just went for it. Id look
for places to lose an actor out of shot, and then when we went
again on a longer lens, Id look for a way to pick them up again
that would work for Joes cut. It feels like coverage, but no one
ever does the same thing twice!
Choosing to shoot on film for Digging for Fire was twofold
for Richardson. Partly, its aesthetic. I dont want to say
tactile because that makes it sound like all you care about is
grain, he explains, but there is a certain visual integrity to
a film-derived image that is still lacking for me in most of the
digitally-derived imagery that we see.
The other aspect that Richardson is drawn to is the energy
in the way a film shoot operates. Because there arent large
monitors all around, everyones focus remains on the set, in
the moment, and on the performance. And for me, Im working
from the image in my mind to improve a shot because youre
not getting that instant feedback (that you get with digital).
Given that they wanted a sense of solidity and confidence
for the visuals in this movie, shooting on film wasnt
Because there arent

large monitors all around,
everyones focus remains on
the set, in the moment, and
on the performance.
really a question. From the early days of pre-production,

Swanberg and Richardson knew they were going to have
to figure out how to make it work on what was a very small
budget. Between film stocks, processing at FotoKem, and
the digital intermediate in Chicago with Nolo Digital Film,
Richardson feels they were able to pull off something that
looks tremendously high budget and high value with minimal
equipment.
version of night than is typical for an independent movie. To

be honest, we were aiming in the direction of Jurassic Park!
he notes. He used tungsten units bounced into muslins and
beadboard and created edges with Lee Soft Silver and a little
blue, while pairing the ARRICAM Lite camera with a small
set of Master Primes supplied by ARRI/CSC. With that
wonderful 500 film stock, he adds, you can work at very low
light levels, and still hold rich, detailed shadows.
Shot in large part at night, another of Richardsons

challenges was lighting a large area with relatively little
equipment, while still aiming for a more stylized, heightened
Photos: Left page: A scene from Digging for Fire. This page: Jake Johnson relaxing in Digging
for Fire. Photos by Ben Richardson/Courtesy of The Orchard.
Tacita Dean was born in 1965 in Canterbury, UK. She studied

at Falmouth School of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art before
moving to Berlin on a DAAD scholarship in 2000 where she
continues to live and work.
In 2011, she made FILM as part of the Unilever Series of
commissions in Tate Moderns Turbine Hall, which marked the
beginning of her campaign to protect the medium of photochemical
film (www.savefilm.org).
When Dean won the Kurt Schwitters Prize in
2009, her films were described as expressing
something that neither painting nor photography
could capture. They are purely film. () Deans
art is carried by a sense of history, time and place,
light quality and the essence of the film itself. The
focus of her subtle but ambitious work is the truth
of the moment, the film as a medium and the
sensibilities of the individual.
Her most recent film, Event for a Stage had its
world premiere at the 52nd Theatertreffen in
Berlin in May. The film originated as a work made
for a stage with the actor Stephen Dillane. The
crew of four, who filmed it on 16mm, became
part of the event as well as the film, highlighting such things as film
magazine length.
Here, Tacita discusses her decision to use film in her work:
Why is film your choice of medium?
When I left art school, I began working with film as an artist,
which is very different from using it as a filmmaker. It is essential to
understand that I use it as my medium, as you would use any other
artistic medium. Increasingly, as my medium became threatened, I
started to make films that could only be made on film, using all of its
internal qualities. Not only the relationship between the grain and
the visual side of it, but also all the disciplines that happen with film.
Youre always working with finite periods of time because of your
roll length, and in order to give even the appearance of seamless real
time, you have to go to the artifice of editing.
Can you tell us more about your process?
I do all of my own editing, and I still cut my films on a cutting
table, so I need print. I work the same way that a sculptor would
work with plaster or stone. I work with material, so I need the stuff
at that point in the process, the physical resistance of the material.
I work with sync sound sometimes so need to use mag. I record my
kodak.com/go/motion
@Kodak_ShootFilm
KodakShootFilm
KodakMotionPictureFilm
sound digitally but transfer it to mag to cut the film. Then the sound
design goes back to digital, but then in the end it becomes optical,
analogue again. I love working with film. Mainly I love cutting it.
Thats when I make the work. Its just the film and me.
Tell us a little about your project, FILM.
When I made FILM, which was the project I did for the Turbine
Hall at Tate Modern in London, I went back to the origins of
filmmaking, when it was an exciting new
medium. I looked at all of the things they
invented then, like aperture gate masking,
glass matte painting, illusion and mirrors
and backdrops. I wanted the whole film
to be exposed inside the camera, with no
postproduction. It was a 35mm, portrait format,
anamorphic film, which was projected 13 meters
tall. There was nothing done afterwards, except
for the editing. So its all about what is imprinted
onto the emulsion in that moment.
The Turbine Hall is a very high-profile event,
so a lot of journalists asked, Why cant this be
digital? And my argument was that maybe you
could copy it digitally, although Im not sure that
would be even possible, but you could never arrive at it digitally
because its entirely made as a result of the internal disciplines of
film with many things you cannot anticipate. These are the magical,
and Id say chemical or alchemical, qualities of film that are unique
to it. And no amount of imitation can ever produce the same things.
As an artist, its about the materiality, the experience, the encounter
with the original object, which is so essential. Its what museums and
artists do. It gives you the experience with the real object.
How important is it to you to know that the images youre
capturing will still be viable years from now? Do you believe that
people overlook this?
Oh God, yes. You only have to talk to someone like Christopher
Nolan, who puts it so perfectly when he says that film is resolution
independent. If you dont protect the original object, and you just
invest in making a 2K digital copy, very soon that 2K digital copy is
going to look crude. Then youre going to want to make a 4K, or a
10K, or a future-K of it, and youve lost the original object.
To read the full interview with Tacita Dean, go to In Camera online
at www.kodak.com/go/motion
Photo: The artist filming Teignmouth Electron in Cayman Brac, September 1998. Photo Kjetil Berge.
InCamera is published by Eastman Kodak Company. To see our expanded online edition, go to www.kodak.com/go/incamera. To be
featured in the magazine, please contact your local representative. You will find your Kodak representative contact information at
www.kodak.com/go/motioncontact.
Kodak, 2015. Kodak and Vision are trademarks of Eastman Kodak Company. OSCAR is a trademark of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences. EMMY is a trademark of, and copyrighted by, the National Academy and American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Imax is a registered trademark of the Imax Corporation.
The opinions expressed by individuals quoted in articles in InCamera do not necessarily represent those of Kodak Limited, Eastman Kodak
Company or the editors of InCamera. Because of our constant endeavour to improve quality and design, modifications may be made to
products from time to time. Details of stock availability and specifications given in this publication are subject to change without notice.
at 2.8K. [Eden was shot on the Arri

Alexa Plus, recording to SxS cards at 2K
ProRes 4:4:4:4 in Log C format.]
Which lenses did you use?
Lenoir: On almost every film Ive
shot, Ive used some light diffusion. I
didnt want to use any diffusion on this
film, though, because I knew that we
were shooting in dark clubs with strong
lights that I would not be able to protect
the camera from, as well as apartments
with windows that I would not be able
to tint down with ND gels, and I would
get artifacts and flaring beyond my
control. For this reason, I wanted to
have fast lenses and I wanted lenses that
are not so sharp lenses I would have
used during the actual period the movie
is set in so I picked the old Zeiss
T1.3 Super Speeds. I also had a 2876mm Angenieux [Optimo] T2.6 and
the 45-120mm [Optimo] T2.8.
The film opens in the late 1980s
and concludes in 2013. A lot changes
in that time: music, technology,
people. Did you want to reflect this in
your cinematography?
Lenoir: Typically, I would change
the palette slightly the range of colors
and the contrast and filtration in a way
that the audience doesnt notice. On this
one, though, I made the conscious
choice to film it all the same way. I didnt
do anything to show the passage of
time, because ultimately the main char-
Top: Paul has a brief romance with Julia (Greta Gerwig), an American girl in Paris.
Middle: Cyril and Louise (Pauline Etienne) attend Thomas costume party. Bottom: The friends
share dinner at Au Pied de Cochon after a night at a club.
www.theasc.com
June 2015
81
Trapped in a Groove
Top: The group

arrives in New York
City. Middle: Paul
and Louise take a
quick trip to
Chicago while in
the United States.
Bottom: Paul tries
to smooth things
over with Louise
after Julia shows
up at the club in
New York.
acter, Paul, doesnt change much he

doesnt seem to age, physically, although
mentally he does.
What kinds of creative conversations did you have with Mia? What
was her vision, and yours? How did you
resolve the two?
Lenoir: Mia made a shot list with
her continuity person, and because of
the amount of time we had until the
start of production two years and
three producers later! shed done it at
least twice. Fortunately, I was not
involved and I say fortunately
because as much as I can see that its
important for the director to think about
[his or her] film, I hate the process of
making shot lists without even knowing
the sets or the locations.
Later, I went through the shot list
with her, which was good because it was
a way for me to understand what she
had in mind and why. By doing that, I
not only learn about how the director
wants to shoot, but Im also able to sort
out how dark, how light, how contrasty
and how colorful the scenes ultimately
will be. You can only spend so many
hours with the shot list and doing film
tests before you go on location, but you
still have to know what equipment you
need and how much time you have
and if you will use a thick brush or paint
in detail. I see myself as a broad-strokes
82
June 2015
Trapped in a Groove
Paul spins at a party in New York.
guy, I think. I also have this theory that

no one knows exactly what the movie
will look like before day three or four of
filming.
How did Mia want to film the
movie, from a camera-oriented
perspective?
Lenoir: One of Mias goals with
84
June 2015
this movie was to move the camera

more than on her previous films, and
one of the reasons she was happy to
have me was that she had seen films Id
done with Olivier, and I am always
moving the camera. There was already
plenty of movement on her shot list,
and we ended up using a mix of tracks
and handheld. It was fascinating to see

how this talented young woman, who so
far had done movies mostly with a
locked-down camera, was suddenly not
only moving the camera, but teaching
me how to move it in new ways.
A side note: I operate the camera
when I can, and I was the operator on
Eden. I consider myself a very good operator, maybe a better operator than I am a
director of photography. What you learn
in classical cinema is that if you have a
character in frame, the second they start
to walk, you pan. Years ago I was working
with my director friend Jon Avnet on the
Boomtown pilot, and I remember him
asking me to wait and let the character
walk across the frame; then, when they
were about to bump the edge of the
frame, wed start to pan. That way, the
camera isnt anticipating the character;
the character is pushing the frame.
Working with Mia on Eden, we
have a shot where the character is walking toward the camera and the camera is
supposed to dolly back so the actor will
not bump into the lens. My key grip, Eric
Trapped in a Groove
Aupetit, and I start to dolly back the way
weve been doing it our whole careers,
and Mia said we were moving too early.
Second take, still too early. Third take,
still too early. And then suddenly I realized she was asking me for the same
thing Jon was asking for with the pan.
Mia wanted the character to push the
camera away. We started doing that, and
I fell in love with it and integrated it into
my personal grammar.
There seems to be a disparity
between the nighttime fantasy of the
clubs and the daytime reality of the
characters relationships, responsibilities and addictions. Is that something
you and Mia wanted to illustrate photographically?
Lenoir: Mia has a very naturalistic
idea of beauty. She doesnt want anything
too flattering or too enhanced, so the
interior days and nights were filmed
without movie lights coming through the
windows. There was no money and no
time for [movie lighting], but it was also
an approach I was happy to take.
At what time of year did you
shoot?
Lenoir: We shot our New York
and Chicago scenes all in New York
City in the summer of 2013, as well as
a few scenes in the southwest of France
by the ocean and two scenes in Paris. The
rest of the movie was shot later, in
December and January, almost all in
Paris, where we certainly didnt have
much sun but I had no equipment to
light with and no place to put lights in
these small apartments where we filmed.
If we had a balcony, maybe I would use a
Kino Flo [4-foot 4-bank].
Did you end up using a lot of
practicals for the night-interior scenes?
Lenoir: Mostly practicals on
dimmers no real movie lights. We had
a generator in the forest for the opening
scene, and even an HMI balloon, and in
all of our other locations we used regular
house outlets. In the case of the [Daft
Punk album-release party, which took
place in an apartment], we had two
Source Fours that my gaffer, Christophe
Dural, would bounce off the walls to add
some fill light.
Top: Paul tries to

strike up a
relationship with
Margot (Laura
Smet) after things
fall apart with
Louise. Middle: Guy
and Thomas form
the real-life duo
Daft Punk. Bottom:
Writer-director Mia
Hansen-Lve
surveys the scene
on the set.
86
June 2015
Trapped in a Groove
Cinematographer
Denis Lenoir, ASC,
AFC at work on
another
production.
In that way, it makes for a very

dark film.
Lenoir: I shot the film mostly at
800 [ISO], but with a night interior, for
example, I would turn on a table lamp
with a normal 75-watt bulb as my only
source of light, and Mia would find it
too bright. This is a new problem I am
finding with digital. Because digital is so
88
fast, directors are used to working in very

little light less than in real life!
which brings up another point: Because
of the dark lighting, the irises of the
actors eyes are wider, making the pupil
seem smaller, and you lose all of the
color in the eyes with blue eyes in
particular.
Did you take the same lighting
approach with the clubs?

Lenoir: Yes, the clubs already
had their own lights, so it was not too
difficult. One thing that was very clear
from the beginning was that Mia
wanted the clubs to be extremely dark.
She and Sven watched other films with
club scenes and they felt those settings
were all way too bright compared to
what a club actually looks like. It had to
be dark, and I was not ready for how
dark she actually wanted it; I was
reminded in almost every club that
things were too bright!
Because the clubs were dark, the
question was how we could identify
them and not make them look the
same. For that reason we decided that
every club would have its own colors
and that this theme would not change
much in the course of the scene. Three
years ago, I had spent time at Rosco
here in Hollywood and tested a bunch
of colored gels. The thing with colored
gels is that their exact color changes
depending on how you expose them. For

example, the same blue gel will either be
light-blue, medium-blue or dark-blue if
over-, properly or underexposed. I had
shot a bunch of tests with a Canon
[EOS] 5D and finally picked about 20
different colors that I really love even
when slightly over- or underexposed
which cover the whole spectrum of
blue-green, yellow-green, yelloworange, orange-red, red-magenta and so
on. So now when I need, say, a blue on
the warm side, i.e. a blue with some red
in it, I just go to my notes and pick the
[Roscolux] 79 Bright Blue 8-percent
transmission which is almost violet.
And I also know that I love the [Rosco
E-Colour+] 132 Medium Blue, which is
less violet but still warm. The palette is
quite restrained; in Eden clubs, you see
only three or four combinations, at most
not like when you go into a real club,
and in the course of 15 minutes you see
a lot of colors. In the submarine at the
beginning, I used 132 Medium Blue and
158 Deep Orange, and at the following

rave, on top of the strobes I had 124
Dark Green and 143 Pale Navy Blue in
the room, 132 in the corridor, and 124
and Lee 735 Velvet Green outside. At
another location, I combined the
[Roscolux] 2003 Storaro Yellow with 52
Light Lavender, as well as Lee 192
Flesh Pink and [E-Colour+] 323 Jade.
Im a big fan of the Gel Swatch Library
application [by Wybron, Inc.]; I have it
on my iPhone and it replaced all the
color swatches I used to carry around!
Did you do any color grading on
set?
Lenoir: I did some coloring on
set with my DIT, Lonard Rollin. Well
take maybe two or three LUTs that we
developed at the beginning of production and alter them scene-by-scene
very small changes. I also use Rec 709
color space to check my exposure,
because its unforgiving.
What kinds of image adjustments did you make in post?
Lenoir: I was able to get the

colorist Id worked with before, Peter
Bernaers a Belgian freelancer. We
[used] DaVinci Resolve in 2K to adjust
contrast, saturation and brightness a bit,
but Im totally in favor of supporting
what has been done on set. If you made
a mistake, you might be able to correct it
to a certain point in the grade, but if you
got it really wrong you need to acknowledge that, because forcing it will always
end in disaster. I find it more rewarding
to go with what you have not against
it.
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa Plus
Zeiss Super Speed,
Angenieux Optimo
89
Left to right: Associate member Joshua Pines; Curtis Clark, ASC; associate member David Reisner; and David Register accept the Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences' Scientific and Technical Achievement Award for the ASC CDL on behalf of the ASC Technology Committee.
Stewards
Technology
The ASC Technology Committee
keeps pace with the breakneck
speed of industry progress.
By Debra Kaufman
|
90
June 2015
ver the past 12 years, the ASC Technology Committee

has been working diligently to integrate an unprecedented deluge of new developments into the complex
landscape of digital filmmaking. Among the
Committees extensive list of achievements are the ASC Color
Decision List (ASC CDL), the ASC-PGA CameraAssessment Series, the ASC-PGA Image-Control
Assessment Series (ICAS), the ASC-DCI Standard
Evaluation Material (StEM), and contributions to the
Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) and the
Photo by Michael Yada, courtesy of AMPAS.
of
Left to right: Clark, Pines, Reisner, Register and associate member Lou Levinson thank a (long) list of
collaborators at last year's AMPAS Sci-Tech Awards.
AMPAS/ASC Common LUT format.

ACES the result of 10 years of
work has just been officially launched,
and the ASC CDL has already won
three prestigious honors: an Academy
Scientific and Technical Achievement
Award, a Primetime Emmy Engineering
Award and a Hollywood Post Alliance
Judges Award for Creativity and
Innovation in Post Production.
Approximately 140 Society
members and associate members participate in the ASC Technology
Committees initiatives, which comprise
an extensive slate of ongoing projects.
Curtis Clark, ASC was charged with
leading the committee in 2002, carrying
on the work of John Hora, ASC, who
had headed the Technology Committee
during the pre-digital era. Clark, who
continues to hold the position of chairman, led the Committees first meeting
under his watch in January 2003.
At that point, we were facing a
disruption of the photochemical postproduction workflow due to the emergence
of the digital intermediate, Clark says.
Indeed, as the ASC Technology
Committee mission statement reads,
some of the most pressing issues that the
committee needs to address include an
array of digital technologies that have
been and are being progressively intro92
June 2015
duced into the motion picture imaging

workflow. The concern, notes the
statement, was that cinematographers
will become increasingly vulnerable to
certain industry trends that could
marginalize our creative contributions,
[which] have been the cornerstone of
filmmaking since its inception.
In addition to digital intermediate, at the time of its establishment the
Committee also examined the impact
of HD digital motion-picture cameras,
digital visual effects, digital source
mastering, digital cinema and digital
image compression. Anything that
disrupts the comfort level of convention
is always looked at with a bit of anxiety,
says Clark. We wanted to address the
issues, and figure out how to shape
[them] to better serve the art of cinematography.
The
ASC
Technology
Committee did in fact examine every
one of these issues. For example, the
advent of early digital cameras
including Panavisions Genesis and the
Thomson Viper was the beginning
of a digital evolution that would take
over image capture, says Clark. In
2004, Collateral was among the first
mainstream Hollywood films that
incorporated digital image capture and,
as such, it was a milestone. That led to
the first digital-camera assessments we

did, starting in 2007, in conjunction
with the PGA and Revelations
Entertainment.
The first rumblings of digital
cinema also prompted the Technology
Committee to research and develop the
appropriate tools. We created the
StEM not just to test digital projection,
but also to test compression technologies used in creating a digital-cinema
package [DCP], including JPEG 2000,
which won out among other compression schemes that were contenders,
Clark says.
The Committee frequently
works in partnership with other
Hollywood guilds and organizations.
In conjunction with AMPAS, we
created the Common LUT format,
which now has become a component of
ACES, says Clark. In addition, ICAS
which incorporated ACES as the
common color-encoding and colormanagement system for all participating digital cameras, including scanned
film was also accomplished with the
Producers Guild of America and
Revelations Entertainment.
The objective of these achievements was to create a unique forum that
addressed these digital-imaging technologies and influenced their development in a way that would better serve
the creative aims of cinematography
and filmmaking, says Clark. It
combines the creative filmmaker
perspective with an understanding of
the technology [in order] to harness the
disruptive threat. We saw our role as
helping to guide digital-imaging technology development in ways that would
help create effective toolsets for cinematography.
ASC Technology Committee
Secretary David Reisner who, before
becoming an associate, was the first
non-member to join or serve as an officer on an ASC committee describes
how subcommittees have furthered
the aims of the larger group.
Subcommittees have come and gone as
their importance has evolved, he says.
Camera was quite important while we
were trying to understand where we stood
with what digital cameras did and didnt
do and set goals for manufacturers. Now
digital cameras have gotten to the point
where theyre quite good. Focusing our
attention on DI was very important
because people needed to understand
what was required of it in order to be
effective for the creative side of making
movies.
And thats our touch point,
Reisner continues. What is the technology required and what do people need to
understand to let creatives make the
movies they want to make? In the first
eight years of the Committee, we had
some significant tasks where we could
identify their critical nature. It got people
motivated and kept them focused. Still,
there are critical issues that need to be
addressed and resolved.
In addition to the positions held by
Clark and Reisner, the Committees
current vice-chairs are Richard Edlund,
ASC and Steven Poster, ASC. Current
active subcommittees are Camera,
chaired by David Stump, ASC and vicechaired by Edlund and Bill Bennett,
ASC; UHDTV, chaired by Don Eklund;
Digital Archive, chaired by ASC associate Garrett Smith; Digital Restoration &
Preservation, chaired by associate Grover
Crisp and vice-chaired by Michael
Friend; Joint Technology Subcommittee
on Virtual Production, chaired by David
Morin and vice-chaired by John Scheele;
Laser Projection, co-chaired by Michael
Karagosian and associates Eric Rodli and
Steve Schklair; Advanced Imaging,
chaired by associate Gary Demos and
vice-chaired by Jim Fancher and associate Phil Feiner; Digital Finishing,
chaired by associate Lou Levinson and
vice-chaired by associate Joshua Pines;
Motion Imaging Workflow, chaired by
Al Barton and vice-chaired by associates
George Joblove and Bill Feightner, along
with Greg Ciaccio; Metadata, chaired by
Stump and co-chaired by Jim Houston;
and Professional Display, chaired by Jim
Fancher and vice-chaired by associate
Gary Mandle.
Another important matter is Ultra
HD TV, a.k.a. 4K TV, with wide color
94
June 2015
gamut and high dynamic range

[HDR], Clark says. UHDTV needs
to be better defined regarding mastering
and content delivery, especially for the
new HDR mode of image reproduction.
As Reisner points out, The idea
when we started work on digital cinema
was to try to come up with, ideally, a
single source master. And this single
source master, Clark adds, is what our
UHDTV subcommittee is currently
assessing, with active participation from
several major consumer TV-display
manufacturers.
The idea when we

started work on
digital cinema was
to try to come up
with a single
source master.
Levinson describes how the original Digital Intermediate subcommittee

segued into a subcommittee focused on
digital finishing. We struggled with
issues surrounding the ASC CDL, and
then ACES, so weve had a more
behind-the-scenes effect than anything
else, he says. Now that weve garnered
those awards, well have to find a new
morass to jump into, and theres no
shortage of those!
The Advanced Imaging subcommittee also grew out of the original DI
subcommittee, says Demos. When we
split off from [DI], that allowed them
to independently work out a system
architecture without the calibration and
linearization goals that we were pursuing, he explains. Almost immediately,
the Digital Intermediate subcommittee
began pursuing the ASC CDL.
Meanwhile, the newly formed
Advanced Imaging subcommittee

started its work with a fairly broad
survey of linearized color science, says
Levinson. There was a disconnect
between digital movie processing in
RGB and CIE 1931-based colorscience models, which had dominated
TV system specifications. There was
deep respect for camera-negative film
and prints, especially prints from original negative, and for films aesthetic
behavior. The subcommittee looked
into printer points and logarithmic
representations, including film density.
However, film has the property of
desaturating colors at both bright and
dark exposure, and this raised a number
of issues for us to consider, he says.
A turning point came with a
presentation by Mark Fairchild, professor of color science and imaging science
at Rochester Institute of Technology.
Fairchild was discussing color-appearance modeling, which touched on many
of the issues that subcommittee
members had been dealing with, and
the presentation led to Fairchilds ongoing contributions to the subcommittee.
After studying many textbooks
and journal articles, the picture finally
began to come together when Mark
told us about the CIE 170-1:2006 work
by Andrew Stockman and others to
create a parametric color model for
vision, Demos continues. From this
point in time, we considered that
Advanced Imaging had found what we
were looking for, and that we had
completed one of our major projects.
At the same time, the Image
Interchange Framework (IIF) project
was gaining momentum at the
Academy. IIF was later renamed
ACES, the Academy Color Encoding
System, says Demos. The [AMPAS]
IIF committee adopted the OpenEXR
half-float and linear light, which were
both consistent with the goals and work
of Advanced Imaging. CIE 1931 was
also adopted, which was more of a
concern. However, the high level of
synergy in linear system architecture
compelled Advanced Imaging to
suspend most of its independent activi-
ties and begin to be involved with
supporting the explorations and test
models being pursued in the IIF.
More recently, the Advanced
Imaging subcommittee has turned its
attention to support the UHDTV
subcommittee. With the advent of
UHDTV, television systems began to be
reconsidered with respect to architectural
issues that might support increased
dynamic range and widened color
gamut, says Demos. All the previous
issues for Advanced Imaging, including
consideration of CIE 1931 and its limitations, have come under discussion, he
adds. The idea of a high-dynamicrange, wide-color-gamut digital intermediate as a master for future UHDTV
brings up many of the Advanced
Imaging considerations, he concludes.
The Laser Illumination subcommittee focuses on the study of new lightsource technology and the projectors that
utilize them, explains Karagosian.
Direct-laser illuminators [are] a new
96
light source for high-end projection that

attracts the most attention, he says.
But other laser-originated light sources
are also emerging, such as laser-illuminated phosphor. Other areas of focus
include the metameric variability that
can be attributed to laser-light sources.
Metameric variability is when a different perception of color occurs across a
population of viewers, he explains.
Also of interest is the degree of
speckle that a light source may
produce, Karagosian continues, as well
as wide color gamut and the selection of
primaries with some light sources and
the high dynamic range possible in
some designs. To shine a light on these
topics, the group is preparing a Request
for Information RFI to be sent to
each of the manufacturers of laser-illuminated projectors, he adds. The
immediate goal of this group is to gather
as much factual information as possible
to best educate members of the ASC
Technology Committee.
Another goal is to engage in critical viewing of laser-illuminated projectors, using test materials that the
subcommittee either selects or creates.
The purpose of this viewing is to assist
manufacturers in building good products, says Karagosian, who notes that
some members of the subcommittee are
in fact manufacturer representatives.
Innovators need a way to connect with
the Hollywood creative community and
know that their R&D money is going in
the right direction, he says. We are
working to establish a process they can
plug into.
The
Joint
Technology
Subcommittee on Virtual Production
was formed in April 2010 and
comprises more than 200 members
from six guilds and societies: the ASC,
the Art Directors Guild, the Visual
Effects Society, the Previsualization
Society, the International Cinematographers Guild and the Producers
Guild of America. The model, says
Morin, grew out of the Previsualization

subcommittee, which held 12 meetings
over a two-year period to analyze the
growing role of previs in modern filmmaking, and led to the formation of the
Previsualization Society. When Avatar
came out, we were done with Previs, he
says. Then we began to focus on
Virtual Production.
The subcommittees first two
meetings addressed the feature Avatar,
which had utilized virtual-production
techniques and processes. Morin says
the focus for all the meetings, which
incorporate case studies, has been more
practical than theoretical. Case studies
have included The Adventures of Tintin,
Real Steel, Gravity and Dawn of the
Planet of the Apes. Then we took it upon
ourselves to analyze the process of
virtual production and answer questions
about best practices, says Morin. We
foster an environment where filmmakers can talk about the good and bad
without feeling that their comments
especially the candid ones will be

reported out there. Its by the industry
for the industry, helping to develop a
shared understanding of how real-time
computer graphics on set is impacting
filmmaking. At press time, this
subcommittee had recently completed
its ninth meeting.
The ASC Technology Committee started as a way to examine and
help guide the future of digital capture
and digital intermediates. What it has
become is a comprehensive group
whose members focus deeply on all
current and nascent digital-imaging
technologies that promise to have an
impact on the creative process. The
goal is to stay ahead of rapidly advancing digital-imaging technologies, says
Clark. These are hugely relevant,
immediate issues were dealing with.
Going
forward,
Clark
concludes, our Technology Committee
continues to emphasize the importance
of establishing standards-based digital-
imaging parameters that will best

support the creative intent of cinematographers and their filmmaking
collaborators. As we have already been
doing with laser-projector manufacturers, we are now making tangible
progress in gaining recognition and
respect from several major consumerdisplay manufacturers for our
Technology Committee initiative on
HDR reproduction from image capture
through mastering to content distribution. They see the value we provide of
being able to interface engineering specs
with
cinematographer/filmmaker
creative interests. As a result, they are
actively participating in our Technology
Committee.
Industry professionals interested in

becoming active in the ASC Technology
Committee or one of its subcommittees
should contact Holly Lowzik at
holly@theasc.com. Please indicate in which
area you would like to participate.
97
New Products & Services

Blackmagic Adds Mini,
Micro Cameras
Blackmagic Design has
expanded its range of camera
offerings with the introduction of
the Ursa Mini, the Micro Cinema
Camera and the Studio Camera
Micro 4K.
The compact, lightweight
Ursa Mini is a Super 35 digital film
camera that is perfectly balanced
for handheld use and features
switchable global or rolling shutter, up to 15 stops of dynamic
range, a large 5" fold-out
viewfinder, and dual raw and
Apple
ProRes
recorders.
Customers can choose either an
EF or PL lens mount and a 4K or
newly introduced 4.6K sensor.
The camera features multiple
mounting points so it can be
easily accessorized, and an
optional Blackmagic Ursa Mini
Shoulder Kit features a quickrelease mounting plate so it can
go from handheld to shoulder or
tripod in seconds.
Further complementing
the Ursa range, Blackmagic
Design has unveiled the Ursa
Viewfinder, a high-resolution electronic viewfinder designed for the Ursa and Ursa Mini cameras. The
Ursa Viewfinder features a 1920x1080 color OLED display that has
been matched with precision glass optics and has an adjustable
diopter and built-in digital focus chart. The Viewfinder connects to
the camera using standard SDI and power connections; it includes a
built-in record indicator light and is adjustable for use with either the
left or right eye.
The Micro Cinema Camera is a miniaturized Super 16mm
professional digital camera with a new expansion port that lets
customers use PWM and S.Bus model-airplane remote controls for
wireless operation. The Micro Studio Camera 4K is an incredibly tiny
Ultra HD and HD studio camera designed for live production, with a
built-in color corrector, talkback, tally indicator, PTZ control output,
B4 lens control output, and an MFT lens mount that is easily
converted to other mounts via third-party adapters.
For additional information, visit www.blackmagicdesign.com.
98
June 2015
SUBMISSION INFORMATION
Please e-mail New Products/Services releases to
newproducts@ascmag.com and include full contact
information and product images. Photos must be
TIFF or JPEG files of at least 300dpi.
Cooke Announces
Anamorphic Zoom
Cooke Optics has
announced that it is working
on an anamorphic zoom lens.
Like the Cooke Anamorphic/i
prime set, the anamorphic
zoom will be a true frontanamorphic lens with 2x squeeze.
ASC associate Les Zellan, chairman and owner of Cooke
Optics, notes, In the storied tradition of Cooke 5:1 and 10:1 zooms,
this is the first in a series of front-anamorphic zoom lenses that will
complement Cookes set of Anamorphic/i prime lenses.
For additional information, visit www.cookeoptics.com.
Transvideo, Arri Offer Camera Control via Monitor
Transvideo and Arri have collaborated on a specially adapted
version of Transvideos StarliteHD 5" OLED monitor. The resulting
StarliteHD5-Arri is able to
control Arris Alexa Mini and
Amira cameras via a touchscreen interface.
Constructed from aviation-grade aluminum, the StarliteHD5-Arri monitor is the size
of a smart phone and weighs
less than 200 grams (0.44
pounds). Its compact form
factor makes it ideal for sizeand weight-critical shooting situations. Retaining all of the original
StarliteHDs functionality including waveform, vectorscope and
histogram displays, as well as a built-in recorder for H.264 rushes on
SD cards the monitor will also be compatible with other cameras.
Transvideo is one of the most renowned monitor manufacturers in the industry, says Stephan Schenk, Arris managing director. The high standards of engineering and build quality at Transvideo will ensure that the StarliteHD5-Arri is as robust and reliable as
any other product carrying the Arri brand.
Transvideo President Jacques Delacoux adds, We are
extremely satisfied by the co-development with Arri, which merges
the creativity and know-how of our companies in their respective
areas of excellence. At Transvideo, we are proud to see our name
associated with Arri cameras.
The StarliteHD5-Arri will be sold exclusively through Arri sales
channels, while the standard StarliteHD 5" monitor will continue to
be sold through Transvideo and its distribution network.
For additional information, visit www.arri.com and
www.transvideo.eu.
Samsung Updates NX1s

Motion-Picture Features
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. has
announced a firmware update for its NX1
premium compact interchangeable-lens
camera. The new firmware enhances and
refines the NX1s capabilities, allowing it to
operate with greater precision and speed.
Key enhancements focus on movie functions and controls, the user interface, and
wireless capabilities.
Both budding and experienced filmmakers will enjoy the variety of professional
movie-mode refinements. Users can now
adjust audio levels while recording video,
control ISO, and choose from two gamma
modes with master black level control and
three luminance levels, enabling greater
control over the look of the footage. Autofocus controls in movie mode have also
been enhanced, allowing users to select
from three AF speeds. A new feature for
controlling continuous AF behavior also
helps track focus on a moving subject while
shooting.
The NX1s interface has also been
upgraded, making it easier to navigate
through the range of features. Users can
now set the AEL button to lock focus and
use manual focus in AF mode during
recording. The customizable UI refinements
provide a host of benefits, including reversing the functions of the Mobile and Record
buttons, reversing the functions of the AF
On and the AEL buttons, and reversing the
direction of the command dials based on
preference.
The NX1s connectivity options have
also received a boost. Users can now activate Bluetooth as a simple remote trigger,
allowing users to trigger the shutter release
as well as start and stop video via Bluetooth
rather than Wi-Fi. The NX1 can now also
store multiple paired smart devices with no
need to re-register when moving between
them.
Other updates include Trap Shot, an

addition to the Samsung Auto Shot mode;
users can now adjust the settings so that
when a moving object hits this line, the
camera will automatically take a picture.
Additionally, PC tethering via USB is now
available for those using Samsung Remote
Studio software, and developers can take
advantage of Samsungs Software Development Kit for Windows PC.
Launched last fall, the Samsung NX1
incorporates a DRIMe V Image Processor
that boasts exceptional color reproduction
and noise reduction and utilizes powerful
cores for the high-speed imaging
demanded by serious photographers. The
camera is also equipped with Samsungs
newly designed 28MP APS-C CMOS sensor,
which features an innovative Back Side Illumination structure with a micro lens array
to more effectively reduce noise by keeping
the path between the lens and sensors
clear, so more light can hit each pixel. The
camera supports both 4K and UHD video
recording and can capture up to 120 fps in
Full HD.
For additional information, visit
www.samsung.com.
SmallHD Re-Imagines EVF
SmallHD has introduced the
Sidefinder high-definition, fully featured
electronic viewfinder, which also boasts a
5" fold-out Full HD display that can be used
as a field monitor.
The Sidefinders patent-pending
folded shape allows for a footprint
smaller than many of todays third-party
EVF solutions while providing a larger
screen. Its shape also enables operators to
slide the viewfinder closer to the camera,
eliminating
a
common source of
neck strain during
shoulder-mounted
operation.
The foundation of the Sidefinder is
SmallHDs new 502 field
monitor, which boasts an
immense tool set and
simple user interface in addition to several unique settings
including an adjustable field of view
that can be customized based on user pref100
June 2015
erence. The 502s simple interface has been

transplanted onto a tiny omni-directional
remote that can be mounted at the users
fingertips, so operators never need to move
their hand away from the camera to see
focus and exposure tools. For added versatility, the slim-line 502 monitor swiftly
detaches from the Sidefinder optical system
and can be used as a standalone compact
monitor on a jib arm, gimbal rig, slider or
other support.
The Sidefinder ships standard with a
specialized side-mount bracket, and it can
be fastened to any camera setup using a
15mm rod system, -20-based EVF mount,
NATO rail clamp and Arri-style rosette
mount. Using a built-in LP-E6 battery
bracket, the Sidefinder accepts power from
rechargeable Canon LP-E6 batteries. External power may be provided via D-tap using
a regulated LP-E6 adapter cable, or from an
AC adapter that also snaps into the monitors battery plate.
www.smallhd.com/sidefinder.
Deluxe, Technicolor Partner
for Digital Venture
Deluxe and Technicolor have entered
into a binding agreement to create a new
digital-cinema joint venture, Deluxe Technicolor Digital Cinema, which will specialize in
theatrical digital-cinema mastering, distribution and key management services.
This joint venture in digital cinema
will bring together best-in-class technologies, personnel, work processes and facilities
to provide seamless and exceptional services
to its customers on a greater global scale.
Both Technicolor and Deluxe will be committed to the operational and financial success
of the new business, which will be managed
by Deluxe and based in Burbank, Calif. All
other lines of business will continue to operate independently of one another.
As the global entertainment industry continues its transition to 100-percent
digital distribution and delivery, this transformational partnership will be optimally positioned to offer our companies existing and
future customers industry-leading digitalcinema services with greater efficiencies,
says David Kassler, CEO of Deluxe Entertainment Services. Tim Sarnoff, president of
production services at Technicolor, adds,
This partnership puts us in a stronger position to offer industry-leading digital cinema

services around the world.
This joint venture is subject to
customary closing conditions and is
expected to close in the second quarter of
2015.
www.technicolor.com and www.by
deluxe.com.
Cineverse Atlanta Opens

Cineverse, the digital-cinema division of VER, has opened the doors of its
new Atlanta facility. The companys 18,500square-foot space is located in the heart of
Georgias midtown Atlanta production
community.
Cineverse Atlanta is a state-of-theart camera-rental facility boasting an
impressive collection of cameras, optics and
evaluation equipment, along with an
accomplished team of technicians led by
veteran marketing manager Mindy Bee. The
facility offers a 40'x50' prep floor, two
28'x40' feature prep suits, a hair-andmakeup test insert studio, an optical test
and evaluation room, a machine shop, and
AC cart storage. Cineverse Atlanta also
features a Content Driven LED Lighting
showroom, which showcases the LED technology incorporated on such features as
Gravity and Furious 7.
Cineverse Atlanta, 2301-A DeFoor
Hills Road NW, Atlanta, Georgia 30318. For
additional information, visit www.cinev
erse.net.
Gamma & Density Enables
Image Control
Gamma & Density Co. has introduced Image Control software, which has
been designed to maximize control over the
creation of digital images with modern
camera systems.
Image Control is a robust, easy-touse, all-in-one software solution compatible

with most popular camera systems. All
Image Control tools including data
management, live color correction, look
management and dailies generation are
optimized for use on set. Additionally, the
program includes tools for cinematographers preproduction and previs processes,
including a digital spot meter for image
analysis, lens filtration previs, and manipulation and creation of on-set LUTs.
To support the growing role of the
digital-imaging technician, Image Control
also offers an array of color-correction and
image-management tools, including resizable UI elements, 32-bit floating-point pixel
processing for extended highlight range
and precision, and 64-bit native application
processing for improved performance and
memory utilization.
Image Control software is compatible with Mac OSX 10.9+ operating systems
and can be purchased as a yearly license
through the Gamma & Density Co. website,
where prospective users can also download
a free Demo Version with limited features.
Existing users of the 3cP Set + Post system
have the option to convert their licenses to
Image Control for an added fee.
www.gammadensity.com.
Broncolor Illuminates FT System

Broncolor has added the Focusing
Tube system to the companys family of
continuous light and Para products.
Since its introduction in 2002, the
Broncolor Para system has been renowned
for its quality of light and rapid setup and
breakdown. The Para is a true parabolic
light bank that provides focus and the
control to create a sculpted, soft and beau-
tiful effect. The new Para Heat Resistant

reflectors support powerful light outputs,
and the new Para Focusing Tube lamp-head
design streamlines the operation, allowing
the use of HMIs, tungsten heads and strobe
heads in parabolic light banks that can be
set up in just minutes.
The Broncolor HMI FT1600 is
dimmable with constant color and a CRI of
95+. The light is absolutely flicker-free and
ideal for high-speed shooting. The FT focusing rod also accepts 1K or 2K tungsten
heads, and an optional F focusing rod
provides a firm mount for Broncolor strobe
heads as well as strobe heads and standard
stud-mounted lights from other manufacturers. New heat-resistant materials make it
possible for both the 88 HR and the 133 HR
Paras to handle the high output from the
HMI 1,600-watt FT and 2,000-watt tungsten-halogen light sources.
Initially, there will be four sizes of
Para FT system reflectors: 88HR, 133HR,
177 and 222. Modular light sources will
include a choice of 1,600-watt HMI daylight
and 2,000-watt tungsten-halogen lamps.
The FT System is as easy to customize as it is
to use, and it will be adaptable to work with
other brands of products as well.
www.bron.ch/broncolor.
Telecine &
Color Grading
Jod is a true artist with
a great passion for his craft.
John W. Simmons, ASC
Contact Jod @ 310-713-8388

Jod@apt-4.com
102
Power Gems Expands

Ballast Range
Power Gems has introduced the
EB1812P modular electronic ballast, which
is capable of operating any lamp in the
range of 6-18K; 300Hz operation comes as
standard. The ballast also
features built-in compensation of lamp-cable volt
drop. The power components can be interchanged
in a few minutes, and slidein modules enable easy
maintenance.
The
EB1812P
boasts a completely new
design concept that incorporates the latest silicon
carbide power device
technology.
The
advanced design is
the realization of
feedback from users
around the world and data gathered

through extensive testing, says Dr. Phil
Ellams, director of Power Gems. In direct
response to new working practices, we are
able to offer a smaller, lighter ballast packed
full of features such as DMX remote control
and high-speed operation as standard.
www.powergems.com.
BBS Spotlights Pipeline System

BBS Lighting has introduced the
Pipeline Remote Phosphor
LED System, which boasts
a versatile form factor,
excellent color rendering, heatless and fanless operation, wireless
DMX control, and AC
or DC operability.
The Pipeline System provides
soft, projected light that is fully controllable and dimmable with no color shift or
flickering, and an ultra-high TLCI (colorfidelity index) rating of 95+. Additional
features include low power draw, high light
output (more than 1,000 lumens per foot),
180-degree light dispersion, long lamp life
and optional wireless DMX 512 control.
Available in 3,200K, 4,300K and 5,600K
color temperatures, the lamps can be used
in a bi-color arrangement that mixes different lamps to achieve mid-range color
temperatures.
The Pipeline System offers a convenient cylindrical form factor 1" in diameter
and in lengths of 1', 2', 3' and 4'. Unlike
standard LED lighting where phosphor is
applied directly onto the light-emitting
diodes, BBS Pipes utilize a phosphor layer
positioned away from the LEDs, providing
brighter and higher-fidelity light emission.
The Pipeline Remote Phosphor LED
System offers one-, two- and fourPipe reflector housings for each
length. Pipes quickly snap into
the housings via magnetic locks
on each end. Control is provided
by manual dimmers or wireless
DMX. The optional Smart
Control automatically senses indi-
vidual color temperature, operates up to

eight Pipes simultaneously, and offers DMX
512 in and out and DC input. With a low
draw of 10 watts per foot, the system can
be powered from standard AC outlets (100240 volts, 50-60Hz) or 14-volt DC batteries.
www.bbslighting.com in the Americas or
www.brothers-sons.dk in Europe.
Filmotechnic Rolls out

Russian Arm 6
Filmotechnic USA has announced
the arrival of the Russian Camera Arm 6
a.k.a. Autorobot Camera Crane 6 to its
stable of camera-car-system offerings.
Five years in the making, the Russian
Arm 6 is a gyro-stabilized camera-crane
system capable of mounting on a roof of a
camera car or other specialized vehicle. It
enables 360 degrees of camera movement
while tilting up and down. The arm was
engineered and developed to allow filmmakers to shoot from nearly any angle with
complete stability and accuracy. Remotely
operated and fully controllable, the arm is
capable of on-the-fly tracking shots for the
creation of dynamic sequences.
Key features of the Russian Arm 6
include: presets for various camera-package
payloads, individual presets for camera-arm
operators, programmable limits, a variety of
arm-length extensions, a linear vibration
isolator capable of absorbing vibration, high
torque and speed, smooth and precise
camera movement and response, and quiet

arm movements.
John Urso, Filmotechnics manager,
describes the Russian Arm 6 as a high end,
versatile filmmaking technology that allows
our clients unprecedented performance in
speed, image stabilization, flexibility and
control. This new technology is based on
feedback on film sets worldwide from our
customers, partners and camera technicians. The new arm fits on all our camera
cars, [including] the Ford Raptor, Porsche
Cayenne, Mercedes ML63 AMG, the
Hummer H1 and the Ferrari 360.
www.filmotechnicusa.com.
Cartoni Grows Fluid-Head Family

Responding to the need for a rugged
and reliable fluid head for todays wide variety of ENG cameras, Cartoni has introduced
the Tracker, which can support cameras
from 4.4-44 pounds.
The Tracker offers a sleek, compact
design with an array of top-end features,
including Cartonis patented wing continuously adjustable counterbalance system
and labyrinth system for smooth, precise
pan and tilt movement. Ergonomically
designed knobs and levers make the head
easy to use. Weighing only 8.8 pounds, the
head is extremely durable thanks to its lightweight magnesium-alloy construction. The
Tracker is also backed by Cartonis 5-year
warranty.
Cartoni has further expanded its line
of pan-and-tilt heads with its largest-capacity product to date, the Magnum, which can
carry a payload of 55-210 pounds.
Combined with reliable operation, a fluid
feel with no transition tilting and a 5-year
warranty, the Magnum is an ideal choice for
studio and outdoor broadcast cameras with
long-lens configurations or bulky accessories.
103
As with all Cartoni fluid heads, the

Magnum employs the companys patented
technology to deliver perfect counterbalance at any tilt angle +/- 65 degrees. Highperformance, continuous-drag fluid
modules ensure maximum flexibility in drag
intensity. A wide camera platform, incorporating a standard wedge plate, allows quick
and safe attachment of the camera, and a
micrometric sliding plate, operated by an
accessible crank wheel, ensures the perfect
centering of any configuration. The head is
also equipped with a positive horizontal lock
for safe setup. The Magnum can be
attached to Mitchell-mount tripods,
pedestals and other flat-base supports.
With 80 years of industry experience,
Cartoni exports from its headquarters in
Rome to 65 countries on five continents
through a network of agents and distributors. Formed in 1992, Cartoni USA a division of Manios Film & Digital is the North
American source for Cartoni fluid heads,
tripods and pedestals.
www.cartoni.com and www.maniosdigi
tal.com.
Willys Widgets Boosts
Leveling-Head Offerings
Willys Widgets has announced the
addition of two new heavy-duty four-way
leveling heads for cranes and jib arms,
increasing the types of leveling heads the
company offers to 11.
Four-way leveling heads are now
available for the Technocrane I and II as well
as Mitchell heads, top- and bottom-bolt
heads for jib arms, and the recently released
Euro heads, which fit Egripment, Moy and
Panther products.
www.willyswidgets.com.
International Marketplace
106
June 2015
Classifieds
CLASSIFIED AD RATES
EQUIPMENT FOR SALE
All classifications are $4.50 per word. Words

set in bold face or all capitals are $5.00 per
word. First word of ad and advertisers name
can be set in capitals without extra charge. No
agency commission or discounts on classified
advertising.PAYMENT MUST ACCOMPANY ORDER.
VISA, Mastercard, AmEx and Discover card are
accepted. Send ad to Classified Advertising,
American Cinematographer, P.O. Box
2230, Hollywood, CA 90078. Or FAX (323)
876-4973. Deadline for payment and copy must
be in the office by 15th of second month
preceding publication. Subject matter is limited
to items and services pertaining to filmmaking
and video production. Words used are subject
to magazine style abbreviation. Minimum
amount per ad: $45
4X5 85 Glass Filters, Diffusion, Polas etc. A

Good Box Rental 818-763-8547
14,000+ USED EQUIPMENT ITEMS. PRO
VIDEO & FILM EQUIPMENT COMPANY. 50
YEARS EXPERIENCE. New: iLLUMiFLEX
LIGHTS & FluidFlex TRIPODS.
www.UsedEquipmentNewsletter.com AND
www.ProVideoFilm.com
EMAIL: ProVidFilm@aol.com
CALL BILL 972 869 9990, 888 869 9998.
Worlds SUPERMARKET of USED MOTION
PICTURE EQUIPMENT! Buy, Sell, Trade.
CAMERAS, LENSES, SUPPORT, AKS & MORE!
Visual
Products,
Inc.
www.visualproducts.com Call 440.647.4999
www.theasc.com
June 2015
107
Advertisers Index
Aadyn Technology 61
Abel Cine Tech 59
Adorama 25, 55
Aerial Mob, LLC 71
Aerocrane Sales & Leasing
102
AJA Video Systems, Inc. 21
Alan Gordon Enterprises 107
Arri 9, 29
ASC Master Class 109
Aura Productions 102
Backstage Equipment, Inc.
103
Barger-Lite 8
BBS Lighting 31
Birns & Sawyer 101
Blackmagic Design, Inc. 11
Cavision Enterprises 106
Chapman/Leonard
Studio Equip. 87
Chrosziel 99
Cinelease 31
Cinematography
Electronics 75
Cinekinetic 106
Cineo Lighting 91
Convergent Design 43
Cooke Optics 15
Creative Handbook 115
CTT Exp & Rentals 75
CW Sonderoptic Gmbh 57
DPS 69
Duclos Lenses 83
Eastman Kodak 80a-h, C4
Filmgear, Inc. C3
Filmotechnic USA 45
Gamma & Density 48
Grip Factory Munich/GFM 101
Glidecam Industries 85
Hertz Corporation 41
Hexolux/Visionsmith 61
Hollywood PL 104
Hollywood Rentals 23
Horita Company, Inc. 107
J.L. Fisher, Inc. 89
Jod Soraci 102
Jonathan Kutner 107
K5600 79
King Film USA Group 106
Kino Flo 77
Koerner Camera Systems 8
Lee Filters 76
Lights! Action! Co. 106
Litegear 64
Maccam 47
Mac Tech LED 27
Manfrotto Distribution 39
Matthews Studio
Equipment/MSE 65
Microframe Corp. 106
Mole-Richardson /Studio Depot
106
Movie Tech AG 106, 107
NBC/Universal 27
Nila, Inc. 99
108
Ovide Broadcast Services 88

P+S Technik
Feinmechanik Gmbh 107
Panavision, Inc. 17
Panther Gmbh 49
Performance Filmworks 95
Pille Filmgeraeteverleih
Gmbh 106
Professional Solutions
Americas 73
Pro8mm 106
Rag Place, The 104
Red Digital Cinema C2-1
Revolution/Bolt Stage
Mexico 19
RTS, Inc. 93
Samys DV & Edit 7
Schneider Optics 2
Selected Tables 108
Servicevision 96
Siggraph 113
Sony Electronics 73
Sumolight Gmbh 63
Super16, Inc. 107
Teradek, LLC 5
Thales Angenieux 13
TNS&F Productions 107
TV Logic 97
Ushio America, Inc. 8
Visionary Forces 107
Welch Integrated 105
Willys Widgets 106
www.theasc.com 104, 108
American Society of Cinematographers Roster

OFFICERS 2014-15
Richard Crudo,
President
Owen Roizman,
Vice President
Kees van Oostrum,
Vice President
Lowell Peterson,
Vice President
Matthew Leonetti,
Treasurer
Frederic Goodich,
Secretary
Isidore Mankofsky,
Sergeant-at-Arms
MEMBERS
OF THE BOARD
John Bailey
Bill Bennett
Curtis Clark
Dean Cundey
George Spiro Dibie
Richard Edlund
Michael Goi
Matthew Leonetti
Stephen Lighthill
Daryn Okada
Michael OShea
Lowell Peterson
Rodney Taylor
Kees van Oostrum
Haskell Wexler
ALTERNATES
Isidore Mankofsky
Robert Primes
Steven Fierberg
Kenneth Zunder
110
June 2015
ACTIVE MEMBERS
Thomas Ackerman
Lance Acord
Marshall Adams
Javier Aguirresarobe
Lloyd Ahern II
Russ Alsobrook
Howard A. Anderson III
Howard A. Anderson Jr.
James Anderson
Peter Anderson
Tony Askins
Christopher Baffa
James Bagdonas
King Baggot
John Bailey
Florian Ballhaus
Michael Ballhaus
Andrzej Bartkowiak
John Bartley
Bojan Bazelli
Frank Beascoechea
Affonso Beato
Mat Beck
Dion Beebe
Bill Bennett
Andres Berenguer
Carl Berger
Gabriel Beristain
Steven Bernstein
Ross Berryman
Josh Bleibtreu
Oliver Bokelberg
Michael Bonvillain
Richard Bowen
David Boyd
Russell Boyd
Uta Briesewitz
Jonathan Brown
Don Burgess
Stephen H. Burum
Bill Butler
Frank B. Byers
Bobby Byrne
Patrick Cady
Sharon Calahan
Antonio Calvache
Paul Cameron
Russell P. Carpenter
James L. Carter
Alan Caso
Vanja ernjul
Michael Chapman
Rodney Charters
Enrique Chediak
Christopher Chomyn
James A. Chressanthis
T.C. Christensen
Joan Churchill
Curtis Clark
Peter L. Collister
Jack Cooperman
Jack Couffer
Vincent G. Cox
Jeff Cronenweth
Richard Crudo
Dean R. Cundey
Stefan Czapsky
David Darby
Allen Daviau
Roger Deakins
Jan DeBont
Thomas Del Ruth
Bruno Delbonnel
Peter Deming
Jim Denault
Caleb Deschanel
Ron Dexter
Craig Di Bona
George Spiro Dibie
Ernest Dickerson
Billy Dickson
Bill Dill
Anthony Dod Mantle
Mark Doering-Powell
Stuart Dryburgh
Bert Dunk
Lex duPont
John Dykstra
Richard Edlund
Eagle Egilsson
Frederick Elmes
Robert Elswit
Scott Farrar
Jon Fauer
Don E. FauntLeRoy
Gerald Feil
Cort Fey
Steven Fierberg
Mauro Fiore
John C. Flinn III
Anna Foerster
Larry Fong
Ron Fortunato
Greig Fraser
Jonathan Freeman
Tak Fujimoto
Alex Funke
Steve Gainer
Robert Gantz
Ron Garcia
David Geddes
Dejan Georgevich
Michael Goi
Stephen Goldblatt
Paul Goldsmith
Frederic Goodich
Nathaniel Goodman
Victor Goss
Jack Green
Adam Greenberg
Robbie Greenberg
Xavier Grobet
Alexander Gruszynski
Changwei Gu
Rick Gunter
Rob Hahn
Gerald Hirschfeld
Henner Hofmann
Adam Holender
Ernie Holzman
John C. Hora
Tom Houghton
Gil Hubbs
Paul Hughen
Shane Hurlbut
Tom Hurwitz
Judy Irola
Mark Irwin
Levie Isaacks
Peter James
Johnny E. Jensen
Matthew Jensen
Jon Joffin
Frank Johnson
Shelly Johnson
Jeffrey Jur
Adam Kane
Stephen M. Katz
Ken Kelsch
Victor J. Kemper
Wayne Kennan
Francis Kenny
Glenn Kershaw
Darius Khondji
Gary Kibbe
Jan Kiesser
Jeffrey L. Kimball
Adam Kimmel
Alar Kivilo
David Klein
Richard Kline
George Koblasa
Fred J. Koenekamp
Lajos Koltai
Pete Kozachik
Neil Krepela
Willy Kurant
Ellen M. Kuras
Christian La Fountaine
George La Fountaine
Edward Lachman
Jacek Laskus
Rob Legato
Denis Lenoir
John R. Leonetti
Matthew Leonetti
Peter Levy
Matthew Libatique
Charlie Lieberman
Stephen Lighthill
John Lindley
Robert F. Liu
Walt Lloyd
Bruce Logan
Gordon Lonsdale
Emmanuel Lubezki
Julio G. Macat
Glen MacPherson
Paul Maibaum
Constantine Makris
Denis Maloney
Isidore Mankofsky
Christopher Manley
Michael D. Margulies
Barry Markowitz
Steve Mason
Clark Mathis
Don McAlpine
Don McCuaig
Michael McDonough
Seamus McGarvey
Robert McLachlan
Geary McLeod
Greg McMurry
Steve McNutt
Terry K. Meade
Suki Medencevic
Chris Menges
Rexford Metz
Anastas Michos
David Miller
Douglas Milsome
Dan Mindel
Charles Minsky
Claudio Miranda
George Mooradian
Reed Morano
Donald A. Morgan
Donald M. Morgan
Kramer Morgenthau
Peter Moss
David Moxness
M. David Mullen
Dennis Muren
Fred Murphy
Hiro Narita
Guillermo Navarro
Michael B. Negrin
Sol Negrin
Bill Neil
Alex Nepomniaschy
John Newby
Yuri Neyman
Sam Nicholson
Crescenzo Notarile
David B. Nowell
Rene Ohashi
Daryn Okada
Thomas Olgeirsson
Woody Omens
Michael D. OShea
Vince Pace
Anthony Palmieri
Phedon Papamichael
Daniel Pearl
Brian Pearson
J U N E
2 0 1 5
Edward J. Pei
James Pergola
Dave Perkal
Lowell Peterson
Wally Pfister
Sean MacLeod Phillips
Bill Pope
Steven Poster
Tom Priestley Jr.
Rodrigo Prieto
Robert Primes
Frank Prinzi
Cynthia Pusheck
Richard Quinlan
Declan Quinn
Earl Rath
Richard Rawlings Jr.
Frank Raymond
Tami Reiker
Robert Richardson
Anthony B. Richmond
Tom Richmond
Bill Roe
Owen Roizman
Pete Romano
Charles Rosher Jr.
Giuseppe Rotunno
Philippe Rousselot
Juan Ruiz-Anchia
Marvin Rush
Paul Ryan
Eric Saarinen
Alik Sakharov
Mikael Salomon
Paul Sarossy
Roberto Schaefer
Tobias Schliessler
Aaron Schneider
Nancy Schreiber
Fred Schuler
John Schwartzman
John Seale
Christian Sebaldt
Joaquin Sedillo
Dean Semler
Ben Seresin
Eduardo Serra
Steven Shaw
Lawrence Sher
Richard Shore
Newton Thomas Sigel
Steven V. Silver
John Simmons
Sandi Sissel
Santosh Sivan
Bradley B. Six
Michael Slovis
Dennis L. Smith
Roland Ozzie Smith
Reed Smoot
Bing Sokolsky
Peter Sova
Dante Spinotti
Buddy Squires
Terry Stacey
Eric Steelberg
Ueli Steiger
Peter Stein
Tom Stern
Robert M. Stevens
David Stockton
Rogier Stoffers
Vittorio Storaro
Harry Stradling Jr.
David Stump
Tim Suhrstedt
Peter Suschitzky
Attila Szalay
Jonathan Taylor
Rodney Taylor
William Taylor
Don Thorin Sr.
Romeo Tirone
John Toll
Mario Tosi
Salvatore Totino
Luciano Tovoli
Jost Vacano
Stijn van der Veken
Theo van de Sande
Eric van Haren Noman
Kees van Oostrum
Checco Varese
Ron Vargas
Mark Vargo
Amelia Vincent
William Wages
Roy H. Wagner
Mandy Walker
Michael Watkins
Michael Weaver
William Billy Webb
Jonathan West
Haskell Wexler
Jack Whitman
Lisa Wiegand
Dariusz Wolski
Ralph Woolsey
Peter Wunstorf
Robert Yeoman
Richard Yuricich
Jerzy Zielinski
Vilmos Zsigmond
Kenneth Zunder
ASSOCIATE MEMBERS
Pete Abel
Rich Abel
Alan Albert
Richard Aschman
Kay Baker
Joseph J. Ball
Amnon Band
Carly M. Barber
Craig Barron
Thomas M. Barron
Larry Barton
Wolfgang Baumler
Bob Beitcher
Mark Bender
Bruce Berke
Bob Bianco
Steven A. Blakely
Joseph Bogacz
Jill Bogdanowicz
Mitchell Bogdanowicz
Jens Bogehegn
Michael Bravin
Simon Broad
William Brodersen
Garrett Brown
Terry Brown
Reid Burns
Vincent Carabello
Jim Carter
Martin Cayzer
Leonard Chapman
Mark Chiolis
Michael Cioni
Denny Clairmont
Adam Clark
Cary Clayton
Dave Cole
Michael Condon
Grover Crisp
Peter Crithary
Daniel Curry
Marc Dando
Ross Danielson
Carlos D. DeMattos
Gary Demos
Mato Der Avanessian
Kevin Dillon
David Dodson
Judith Doherty
Peter Doyle
Cyril Drabinsky
Jesse Dylan
Jonathan Erland
Ray Feeney
William Feightner
Phil Feiner
Jimmy Fisher
Thomas Fletcher
Claude Gagnon
Salvatore Giarratano
John A. Gresch
Jim Hannafin
Bill Hansard Jr.
Lisa Harp
Richard Hart
Robert Harvey
Michael Hatzer
Josh Haynie
Fritz Heinzle
Charles Herzfeld
Larry Hezzelwood
Frieder Hochheim
Bob Hoffman
Vinny Hogan
Cliff Hsui
Robert C. Hummel
Zo Iltsopoulos-Borys
Jim Jannard
George Joblove
Joel Johnson
Eric Johnston
John Johnston
Mike Kanfer
Marker Karahadian
Frank Kay
Debbie Kennard
Glenn Kennel
Milton Keslow
Robert Keslow
Lori Killam
Douglas Kirkland
Mark Kirkland
Scott Klein
Timothy J. Knapp
Franz Kraus
Karl Kresser
Chet Kucinski
Jarred Land
Chuck Lee
Doug Leighton
Lou Levinson
Suzanne Lezotte
Grant Loucks
Howard Lukk
Andy Maltz
Gary Mandle
Steven E. Manios Jr.
Steven E. Manios Sr.
Chris Mankofsky
Michael Mansouri
Frank Marsico
Peter Martin
Robert Mastronardi
Joe Matza
Albert Mayer Jr.
Bill McDonald
Dennis McDonald
Karen McHugh
Andy McIntyre
Stan Miller
Walter H. Mills
George Milton
Mike Mimaki
Michael Morelli
Dash Morrison
Nolan Murdock
Dan Muscarella
Iain A. Neil
Otto Nemenz
Ernst Nettmann
Tony Ngai
Jeff Okun
www.theasc.com
Marty Oppenheimer
Walt Ordway
Ahmad Ouri
Michael Parker
Dhanendra Patel
Elliot Peck
Kristin Petrovich
Ed Phillips
Nick Phillips
Tyler Phillips
Joshua Pines
Carl Porcello
Sherri Potter
Howard Preston
Sarah Priestnall
David Pringle
Doug Pruss
Phil Radin
David Reisner
Christopher Reyna
Colin Ritchie
Eric G. Rodli
Domenic Rom
Andy Romanoff
Frederic Rose
Daniel Rosen
Dana Ross
Bill Russell
Chris Russo
Kish Sadhvani
David Samuelson
Dan Sasaki
Steve Schklair
Peter K. Schnitzler
Walter Schonfeld
Wayne Schulman
Alexander Schwarz
Juergen Schwinzer
Steven Scott
Alec Shapiro
Don Shapiro
Milton R. Shefter
Leon Silverman
Rob Sim
Garrett Smith
Timothy E. Smith
Kimberly Snyder
Stefan Sonnenfeld
John L. Sprung
Joseph N. Tawil
Ira Tiffen
Steve Tiffen
Arthur Tostado
Jeffrey Treanor
Bill Turner
Stephan Ukas-Bradley
Mark van Horne
Richard Vetter
Dedo Weigert
Steve Weiss
Alex Wengert
Evans Wetmore
Franz Wieser
Beverly Wood
Jan Yarbrough
Hoyt Yeatman
Irwin M. Young
Michael Zacharia
Bob Zahn
Nazir Zaidi
Michael Zakula
Les Zellan
HONORARY MEMBERS
Col. Edwin E. Aldrin Jr.
Col. Michael Collins
Bob Fisher
David MacDonald
Cpt. Bruce McCandless II
Larry Parker
D. Brian Spruill
Marek Zydowicz
June 2015
111
In Memoriam
Czech cinematographer Miroslav
Ondrcek, ASC, ACK, who received Academy Award nominations for his work
on Ragtime and Amadeus, died on March
28 in the Czech Republic at the age of 80.
Born in Prague in 1934, Ondrcek
was 4 years old when he saw his first
movie. He was so captivated he tiptoed
behind the screen to find out how
these pictures were made, he told AC
(March 04). As he grew up, he spent
many hours watching movies from
America and other Western countries,
and after graduating from high school,
he landed an apprenticeship in the
laboratory at Barrandov Studios.
He worked at Barrandov for
several years, eventually moving up to
assistant on documentary crews and
then features. Between projects, he
attended FAMU, the Film and TV School
of the Academy of Performing Arts in
Prague. The most important aspect of
my development at that point was the
opportunity I had to assist the great
cinematographers of that era: Jaroslav
Tuzar, Jan Curk and Jaroslav Kucera,
Ondrcek told AC. These men were
the pillars of cinematography.
In 1957, Ondrcek was chosen
by Barrandov to join a small group of
filmmakers who would further their
studies in night school. The other participants included Milos Forman, Jan Nemec
and Ivan Passer, whose subsequent collaborations with Ondrcek would help to define
the Czech New Wave. These films
included Intimate Lighting, The Loves of a
Blonde and The Firemens Ball.
When the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, Ondrcek moved to
England, where he made three films with
Lindsay Anderson, The White Bus (a.k.a.
Red, White and Zero), If.... and O Lucky
Man! In 1970, he joined Forman in New
York to film Taking Off, and then George
Roy Hill came calling about SlaughterhouseFive. I never felt I had to change my ways
to make films in America, Ondrcek
112
June 2015
told AC. A person can have the American

feel even if he or she is born in Warsaw or
Moscow or Prague. It has to do with the
way you think, the way you express freedom in how you approach life; its a combination of this and the willingness to work
hard. Thats what I appreciate and love
about America.
Ondrceks collaborations with

Forman included three acclaimed period
pieces: Hair, Ragtime and Amadeus. Upon
receiving word of his Oscar nomination
for Ragtime, Ondrcek was amazed, he
told AC. I just couldnt believe all those
American cinematographers had looked at
my film and picked me as one of the nominees when there were so many wonderful
cinematographers in the United States.
Amadeus brought Forman and
Ondrcek back to Prague for an almost
entirely location-based shoot. Just four sets
were built for the production, and it took
months of negotiation with the Czech
government to secure one of the most
important locations, the all-wood Tyl
Theater, which Ondrcek wanted to light

mainly with candles. In an April 85 interview with AC about the project, Ondrcek
noted that his crew had to build a massive
metal scaffold that extended into the
theater through the dome in the roof in
order to support 11 700-pound chandeliers, each burning 40-60 candles. The fear
of fire was so great that firemen were
stationed every 15' throughout the
theater to watch the candles. We
were trying to create an atmosphere of
soft candlelight all over and all the
time, Ondrcek said. Shooting on Eastman Kodak 5293, he augmented the
firelight practicals with 250-watt
Chinese lanterns. When different
colored light was necessary, he used
spray-painted bulbs instead of gels.
Ondrceks
other
features
included The World According to Garp,
Silkwood, F/X, Distant Harmony and
Valmont. He became an ASC member
in 1996, after being proposed for
membership by John Bailey, George
Koblasa and Vilmos Zsigmond.
Late in his career, he teamed with
director Penny Marshall on four
features: Awakenings, A League of
Their Own, The Preachers Wife and
Riding in Cars With Boys. Penny has a
strong understanding of dialogue, and
she recognizes immediately any kind of
false tone, he told AC. She is an excellent
listener, and that makes her unusual.
Marshall presented Ondrcek with the ASC
International Award in 2004.
Ive always felt that the most
important thing is the story, and my only job
is to help tell it, Ondrcek observed. You
have to look at a movie the way audiences
do and see it as they do. It can be technically perfect and artistic, but if the audience
doesnt respond to the emotions, then the
film doesnt work.
Rachael K. Bosley
Photo by Douglas Kirkland.
Miroslav Ondrcek, ASC, ACK, 1934-2015
Clubhouse News
hangs at FotoKem, and another 20 at Alternative Rentals.
Top: The ASC co-hosted a

reception during the recent
Broadcast Education
Association Conference.
Bottom (from left): ASC
members Haskell Wexler, Joan
Churchill, Stephen Lighthill
and Frederic Goodich hold
court during the American
Documentary Film Festival.
Members Participate in NAB

Show, BEA Conference
The annual NAB Show was recently
held at the Las Vegas Convention Center in
Las Vegas, Nev. A number of ASC active and
associate members were seen scouting the
exhibition halls and participating in live
demonstrations hosted by many of the
shows vendors, including Band Pro and
Canon. Additionally, the ASC and AC partnered with NAB to present the Creative
Master Series session Checking into The
Grand
Budapest
Hotel,
which
featured Robert Yeoman, ASC in conversation with AC managing editor Jon D.
Witmer. Yeoman detailed the techniques
employed in the Kunstmuseum chase
sequence from The Grand Budapest
Hotel (AC March 14), discussed the evolution of his collaboration with director Wes
Anderson, and touched on the soon-to-bereleased features Love & Mercy and Spy.
Concurrently, the Broadcast Education Association held the BEA2015 Conference at the Westgate Las Vegas hotel, where
the ASC presented a Master Class featuring
Society President Richard Crudo and fellow
Society member Francis Kenny. The cinematographers discussed their work on the
FX series Justified. The ASC also co-hosted a
reception for BEA attendees.
114
June 2015
ASC Cinematographers at
American Documentary Festival
Appearing at the American Documentary Film Festival in Palm Springs, Calif.,
ASC members Stephen Lighthill, Haskell
Wexler, Joan Churchill and Frederic
Goodich addressed The Mating of Documentary and Narrative Cinematography.
During the session which was organized
by Goodich, who also served as a consultant
for the festival the cinematographers
discussed the impact newly devised visual
languages are having on both traditional
reality capture and formal fictional narrative,
the pros and cons of current digital image
capture, the modes that result from these
new tools, and what audiences understand
and expect.
EFilm Exhibits ASC Photography
EFilms Hollywood facility is currently
displaying 75 photographs by 55 ASC cinematographers in the For the Love of Stills:
ASC Photography Exhibit. The request for
the exhibit was initiated by associate
member Beverly Wood. Isidore Mankofsky, ASC then made the original selection,
and the photographs were hung by EFilms
Brian Shinkle.
In addition, a selection of about 60
photos taken by ASC members currently
Nowell Speaks at DCS Seminar

David Nowell, ASC recently spoke
at the joint Pictorvision-Digital Cinema Society seminar on aerial cinematography, held
at Pictorvisions headquarters in Van Nuys,
Calif. In conversation with DCS President
James Mathers, Nowell discussed how aerial
cinematography has changed over the
years, and spoke of his experiences on such
blockbuster feature films as the upcoming
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No
Tales, which combined manned-helicopter
and drone cinematography.
Schulman Joins MAC Group
ASC associate Wayne Schulman
has joined MAC Group as product strategist
for video and cine products. Schulman will
focus on developing new products for the
video and cine channel while playing a key
role in the sales and marketing of existing
products. Schulmans extensive industry
experience includes product development
and marketing and sales management at
Tiffen, Manfrotto and Ikan.
I am very excited to be able to bring
my experience to the MAC Group, says
Schulman. I am truly impressed with the
resources available here. Our capabilities in
product development, sales and marketing
are unmatched in the industry.
Photo of Clubhouse by Isidore Mankofsky, ASC; lighting by Donald M. Morgan, ASC.

BEA photos by Adam Frazier.
Lachman, Laskus, Zsigmond

Featured in Photo Show
Photography by ASC members Ed
Lachman, Jacek Laskus and Vilmos Zsigmond was featured in the show Concept to
Reality: Five Cinematographers, One
Moment in Time at The Loft at Lizs art
gallery in Los Angeles. Curated by Simon
Edery, the show also featured stills by cinematographers Phil Parmet and Peter Rodger
and behind-the-scenes photographer
Isabella Vosmikova.
Close-up
Mauro Fiore, ASC
When you were a child, what film made the strongest impression on you?
When I was probably 11, I saw the film The Red Balloon, which left
an impression on me because of its simplicity and complexity.
What has been your most satisfying moment on a project?

To capture that synchronicity of light and movement in a harmonious rhythm. To watch a great performance from behind the
camera. Being nominated for an Academy Award, and winning, for
Avatar.
Which cinematographers, past or present, do you most

admire?
Vittorio Storaro [ASC,
AIC], for his boldness
and bravado; Sven
Nykvist [ASC], for his
simplicity and naturalistic interpretations; Henri
Alekan [AFC], for his
brilliant black-and-white
mastery; Conrad Hall
[ASC], for his obsessions; Janusz Kaminski,
for his fearlessness I
was his gaffer and he
taught me to have a
voice.
What sparked your
interest in photography?
Black-and-white photography and darkroom experimentation.
Where did you train and/or study?
Columbia College Chicago and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Who were your early teachers or mentors?
High-school photography teacher Mr. Anderson; 3D-design teacher
Mr. Faust; Jack Whitehead [BSC], who taught my cinematography
class at Columbia.
What are some of your key artistic influences?
Art history: painters such as Caravaggio, for his dramatic use of
chiaroscuro; Vermeer, for his soft-light masterpieces; Di Chirico, for
his melancholy. Photographers such as Cartier-Bresson, Edward
Weston, Diane Arbus. Italian cinema, for its heart maybe its my
heritage. American cinema, for its lack of pretense, and French
cinema, for its analytical expression.
How did you get your first break in the business?
Janusz Kaminski called me from Los Angeles, after we had finished
film school in Chicago that year, to help out on a Roger Corman film.
There we met several new filmmakers and friends who are now a
very big part of the filmmaking community.
116
June 2015
Have you made any

memorable blunders?
When I was a gaffer, we
filmed a whole days work
with a flicker strobe,
which we would discover
the next day. The stage we
were on was run by a
construction generator
without a crystal governor.
What is the best professional advice youve
ever received?
My father once told me
that a true master only
needs a few tools. Pride in
your work is paramount.
What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you?
I have been intrigued lately by biographies of musicians, such as
Miles Davis, Chet Baker, Fela Kuti and James Brown.
Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like to
try?
I would love to be involved in a period film with a modern perspective and concept.
If you werent a cinematographer, what might you be doing
instead?
I never regret my choice, but maybe an architect or a craftsman of
some kind.
Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for
membership?
Janusz Kaminski, Phedon Papamichael and Wally Pfister.
How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?
The ASC brings a symbol of respect to our industry, and it creates a
community for sharing ideas with colleagues.

2015 06

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

2015 06

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

2015 06

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Canada $6.

An International Publication of the ASC

An International Publication of the ASC

LOOK FOR MORE AT WWW.THEASC.COM

The Dawn of Technicolor, 1915-1935

Q&A with authors James Layton and David Pierce

An International Publication of the ASC

Visit us online at www.theasc.com

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF and PUBLISHER

ART & DESIGN

SUBSCRIPTIONS, BOOKS & PRODUCTS

ASC GENERAL MANAGER Brett Grauman

American Society of Cinematographers

Kees van Oostrum

One of this springs hottest movie trailers was the

Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.

Photo by Douglas Kirkland.

The subject of the short documentary The Way of the Dodo

describe the shop as an Aladdins cave of small-format film, with

All images courtesy of the filmmakers.

do the next one? Just once, to show me

ently, muses Saint-Pierre, perhaps with a

Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC; Gordon Willis,

tion to get a 16mm print made. I keep

The silvery-blue stage lights rise on Bessie, and we find

exposure. The two-camera package was obtained from Panavision

Unit photography by Frank Masi, SMPSP, courtesy of HBO.

The HBO telefilm

crowd, but he also employed a Steadicam

to follow Bessie on her emotional roller

Cornwall adds, After our camera

same space where we would do the bigger

Top and middle:

In the countryside of 19th-century England, free-spirited Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan) is

Writing about 19th-century British

by my side throughout the shoot.

to open the cameras shutter angle. He

Top: Oak and

Dorset, where Hardy himself was born

tensen played with the level of softness in

its beautiful texture, in front of the lamp. Arri

Balls and four 1K Fresnels, one in each

tensen. It didnt capture the uncomfortable atmosphere. I needed to be closer, so I

swirling emotions as she is overcome by a

Unit photography by Jasin Boland, SMPSP, courtesy of

John Seale, ASC, ACS

ad Max first roared onto cinema

Road Warrior, shot by Dean Semler,

Top: The Edge

Top: The Edge

The crew preps

scene, capturing moments of terror, and

often added a fourth where we could.

main and action units. The result was a

sition, only to hear George on the

of analyzing exposures in the DIT van.

I knew I was getting exactly what I was

Various camera rigs and platforms were used to