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Affonso Beato, ASC, ABC

y fascination with moving
images began when I was
4 years old, when my
father took me to see the old
Superman, Flash Gordon and
Rocket Man serials. Years later,
at the beginning of my
professional career, I discovered
American Cinematographer,
which was my first exposure to
the techniques behind the art of
cinematography.
AC helped open the
door that brought me to this
country 40 years ago, and it
continues to be my window onto
the work of the cinematographers
I admire and respect.
photo by Owen Roizman, ASC
Affonso Beato, ASC, ABC
TO SUBSCRIBE BY PHONE:
Call (800) 448-0145 (U.S. only)

(323) 969-4333 or visit the ASC Web site
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The International Journal of Motion Imaging
On Our Cover: Covert operative Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) must run for her life in Salt, shot
by Robert Elswit, ASC. (Photo by Franois Duhamel, SMPSP, courtesy of Universal Pictures.)
FEATURES
28
42
56
68
Cat and Mouse

Robert Elswit, ASC gets ample support from collaborators
on Salt
42
Girl Trouble
Bill Pope, ASC creates wild battles for Scott Pilgrim vs.
the World
A Magical Manhattan
Bojan Bazelli, ASC conjures wizardly visuals for
The Sorcerers Apprentice
56
True Colors
David Boyd, ASC shoots Get Low for director and fellow
ASC member Aaron Schneider
DEPARTMENTS
8
10
12
16
76
80
82
90
91
92
94
96
Editors Note
68
Presidents Desk
Short Takes: Quiksilver ad campaign
Production Slate: Best-Shot Films of 1998-2008 The Kids Are All Right
Post Focus: True Blood Workflow
Filmmakers Forum: Steven Fierberg, ASC
New Products & Services
International Marketplace
Classified Ads
Ad Index
Clubhouse News
ASC Close-Up: Charles Minsky
VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM TO ENJOY THESE WEB EXCLUSIVES

DVD Playback: A Star Is Born The Only Son/There Was a Father
A u g u s t
2 0 1 0
V o l .
9 1 ,
N o .
The International Journal of Motion Imaging
Visit us online at
www.theasc.com
PUBLISHER Martha Winterhalter
EDITORIAL
EXECUTIVE EDITOR Stephen Pizzello
SENIOR EDITOR Rachael K. Bosley
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Jon D. Witmer
TECHNICAL EDITOR Christopher Probst
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Stephanie Argy, Benjamin B, Douglas Bankston, Robert S. Birchard,
John Calhoun, Bob Fisher, Simon Gray, Jim Hemphill, David Heuring,
Jay Holben, Mark Hope-Jones, Noah Kadner, Jean Oppenheimer,
John Pavlus, Chris Pizzello, Jon Silberg, Iain Stasukevich,
Kenneth Sweeney, Patricia Thomson
ART DEPARTMENT
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Marion Gore
ADVERTISING
ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Angie Gollmann
323-936-3769 FAX 323-936-9188
e-mail: gollmann@pacbell.net
ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Sanja Pearce
323-952-2114 FAX 323-876-4973
e-mail: sanja@ascmag.com
ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Scott Burnell
323-936-0672 FAX 323-936-9188
e-mail: sburnell@earthlink.net
CLASSIFIEDS/ADVERTISING COORDINATOR Diella Nepomuceno
323-952-2124 FAX 323-876-4973
e-mail: diella@ascmag.com
CIRCULATION, 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 Kim Weston
ASC ACCOUNTING MANAGER Mila Basely
ASC ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE Corey Clark
American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 90th 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. Article Reprints: Requests for high-quality article reprints (or electronic reprints) should be made to
Sheridan Reprints at (800) 635-7181 ext. 8065 or by e-mail hrobinson@tsp.sheridan.com.
Copyright 2007 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.
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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 - 2010/2011
Michael Goi
President
Richard Crudo
Vice President
Owen Roizman
Vice President
John C. Flinn III

Vice President
Matthew Leonetti
Treasurer
Rodney Taylor
Secretary
Ron Garcia
Sergeant At Arms
MEMBERS OF THE
BOARD
John Bailey
Stephen Burum
Curtis Clark
George Spiro Dibie
Richard Edlund
John C. Flinn III
Michael Goi
Stephen Lighthill
Isidore Mankofsky
Daryn Okada
Robert Primes
Nancy Schreiber
Kees Van Oostrum
Haskell Wexler
Vilmos Zsigmond
ALTERNATES
Fred Elmes
Rodney Taylor
Michael D. OShea
Sol Negrin
Michael B. Negrin
MUSEUM CURATOR
6
Steve Gainer
Its a wise cinematographer who recognizes the contributions of his crew, and Robert Elswit, ASC was quick to credit his
collaborators on the action film Salt. After agreeing to be interviewed, he asked that we bring other members of his team into
the foreground. Any large production that involves multiple
units working independently and shooting stunts, effects and
aerials is as big a logistical challenge as it is a creative challenge,
he tells Iain Stasukevich (Cat and Mouse, page 28). Thank
God I had [1st AC] Baz Idoine to take care of all the cameraequipment issues, and [gaffer] Andy [Day] and [key grip] Dennis
Gamiello to sort out all the other stuff. Our coverage also
details some of the contributions made by 2nd-unit director Simon Crane; 2nd-unit director
of photography Igor Meglic, ZFS; visual-effects supervisor Mark Breakspear; and visual-effects
supervisor/3rd-unit director of photography Robert Grasmere.
Comic-book aesthetics played a large part in Bill Pope, ASCs approach to Scott Pilgrim
vs. the World, in which a jobless hipster (Michael Cera) attempts to win the affections of his
new crush (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) by defeating her seven exes in video-game-style battles.
Pope, director Edgar Wright and their collaborators drew visual cues from the Scott Pilgrim
comic books, created by Bryan Lee OMalley. We took our initial inspiration off the books
full-color covers, Pope tells Noah Kadner (Girl Trouble, page 42). From there, we imagined what all the black-and-white illustrations [inside] would look like in color. Translating
OMalleys aesthetics to live action was more straightforward than adapting other comics
might be, because Bryan doesnt cheat perspective and use cartoon engineering.
Bojan Bazelli, ASC faced equally fantastic plot points on The Sorcerers Apprentice, in
which a New York-based conjurer (Nicolas Cage) trains a regular guy (Jay Baruchel) to master
real magic. Although the film is filled with sophisticated visual effects, Bazelli preferred to
capture as much of the look as possible on set. I believe strongly that you cannot create the
look in post, he tells David Heuring (A Magical Manhattan, page 56). In post, I finish
shaping the sculpture. I do use those tools extensively to take the look further, but I like to
carve the biggest, deepest cut in the wood at the moment of photography.
Amid all the summer pyrotechnics, ASC members Aaron Schneider and David Boyd
teamed as director and cinematographer, respectively, on the atmospheric period drama Get
Low. The Society chums first met 15 years ago, when Boyd operated camera for Schneider
on the pilot for the TV show Murder One. We made it our mission to do feature-quality work
on a television schedule, Schneider informs Michael Goldman (True Colors, page 68).
When it happened that Get Low shaped up as a $7.5-million movie with a 24-day shooting
schedule [on location], David was the first person I thought of. Our history was invaluable.
Speaking of history, this issue also spotlights the top 10 movies from our recent online
poll regarding the Best-Shot Films of 1998-2008 (Production Slate, page 16). More than
17,000 people cast votes in the poll, which serves as a follow-up to our 1999 survey of films
shot between 1894-1997. Everyone has his favorites, and were sure this new list will generate debate. Complete results from both polls are posted on the ASCs website
(www.theasc.com).
Stephen Pizzello
Executive Editor
Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.
Editors Note
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Presidents Desk
As I begin my second term as president of the ASC, the recent passing of Billy Fraker is very much
on my mind. When I wrote my first column one year ago, I included this statement among the musings
about the things I believe in: I believe William A. Fraker, ASC, BSC is no mere mortal, but a benevolent
angel sent to earth to remind us that we work in a magical, romantic industry. As with everything I say,
I said it because I believe it to be true. When that article ran, Billy called to thank me.
When I talked with Billy about his work on Heaven Can Wait, Bullitt or Looking for Mr. Goodbar,
Im sure his colorful stories were tinted with the nostalgic glow that we all tend to give our memories. But
watching his face and the twinkle in his eyes, it was clear that he loved the business as much as the creative
process. Just the fact that you were making movies was enough to make you feel good about yourself.
With Billys passing, another link to a crucial era in cinematography and the industry has faded. His
heyday was a time when the heads of studios met personally with cinematographers and directly hired
them for projects. The challenges of balancing the political agendas of the parties involved in getting a
picture into production existed then, as they do now, but it is far less common today for the person ultimately responsible for the success of his particular studio to feel that the choice of cinematographer is
important enough to warrant a face-to-face meeting.
That way of doing business boils down to the respect that was accorded not only to our craft, but also to all the major artistic contributors to a production. It recalls a time when the pride of getting it right in front of the camera was preferable to fixing
it in post; when the true skill of a producer was in assembling the right artistic mix of people for a production rather than hiring
whomever was willing to work with equipment the producer had already chosen; when making a big-screen movie meant that you
had to watch your dailies on a big screen to really know the effect of what youd created. That respect for the talent of a great
craftsperson translated into work of stunning originality. That originality translated into good box office and movies that are now
considered classics. And Bill Fraker was in the middle of it.
I brought my parents to Los Angeles for the ASC Awards in 2004, when I was nominated for my work on the TV movie
Judas. It was the first time my dad had ever worn a tuxedo. I had been an ASC member for only one year. As my family and I
approached the ballroom, we crossed paths with Billy, and I introduced him to my parents. Billy shook my dads hand and said, Mr.
Goi, we love your son. Hes going to be president of the ASC someday.
I will miss Billy. For me, he represented not only the artistry that was expected of a world-class cinematographer, but also
the dignity, romance and glamour of the craft. I firmly believe that the generations of cinematographers to come will do extraordinary things and create memorable images, but I hope they take to heart one quality that Billy possessed in abundance something
you cannot learn in film school or with a technical manual, something that is indescribable but understood: Mr. William A. Fraker had
class.
Goi poses for a snapshot with ASC greats Bill Fraker (left)
and Laszlo Kovacs.
10
August 2010
American Cinematographer
Top photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.
Michael Goi, ASC

President
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Short Takes
Brain Farm Makes Waves with Quiksilver Campaign

By Noah Kadner
Wyoming production house Brain Farm, which specializes in

high-end action-sports cinematography, recently used the Phantom
HD camera for an ad campaign for surfwear and boardsports manufacturer Quiksilver that featured a number of world-famous surfers
catching waves in ultra-slow motion.
Brain Farm came to Quiksilvers attention through Thats It,
Thats All, a snowboarding feature co-sponsored by Quiksilver and
Red Bull, according to Chad Jackson, Brain Farms lead producer.
James Tierney, a producer for Quiksilver, calls Thats It, Thats All the
best action-sports film ever made. When Quiksilver was ready to
launch its Cypher line of high-performance board shorts, he continues, we wanted to showcase both [the Cypher shorts] and the top
global surfers in a truly groundbreaking way. We wanted to show
surfing like it had never been seen before.
As discussions began, director and Brain Farm President Curt
Morgan showed the Quiksilver team what the high-speed Phantom
could do. That sparked a lot of interest on their part into how those
ultra-slow-motion effects might look in water, says Morgan.
At that time, the Phantom had not yet been used for extensive water work, so no compatible underwater camera housing was
readily available. Before the project was even a go, we turned to
Erik Hjermstad at Del Mar Housing Projects in San Marcos, California, to inquire about a custom housing for the Phantom, says
Morgan. The housing took about six weeks to build and was
completed maybe a week before the shoot.
With the housing in hand, the Brain Farm team was off to
12
August 2010
Oaxaca, Mexico, where they met surfers Dane Reynolds, Kelly Slater,
Julian Wilson and Jeremy Flores. Because of their crazy schedules,
it had been four years since Dane, Kelly, Julian and Jeremy had all
been on a trip together, notes Tierney. Having them all surfing
together was huge, and they really pushed each other. We got a
ridiculous amount of footage in two days of surfing. Brain Farm
brought in Australian cinematographer Chris Bryan to handle operating responsibilities with the Phantom rig. Morgan recalls, We
were set up to take shots from the beach and right in the water with
the surfers. The very first shot we got was even cooler than we
thought possible. The waves, the water droplets everything was
moving so slowly, and you saw so much detail. We instantly felt like
kids in a candy factory whod just been cut loose by our parents!
Even on a small monitor, we could tell right away we had
something special, adds Tierney. You can really see the subtleties
of surfing: the way a board flexes when it lands on the wave after
an aerial, the way riders weight and un-weight during turns, the
way water drops fly off the rail. It was like seeing our sport with new
eyes.
To maximize shooting time on the beach and avoid having to
frequently re-open the underwater housing to change lenses,
Morgan shot mostly with a single Zeiss Ultra Prime 8R rectilinear
lens. It gives you a wide-angle shot with no barrel distortion, he
explains. Its a really funky look that added a lot to the image.
The latest iteration of the Phantom camera, the Gold, can
shoot at speeds exceeding 1,000 fps, depending on the resolution
thats selected. As Morgan points out, however, the cameras frame
rate also affects the aperture. When youre shooting at 1,000 fps,
as we were, youre typically at T2.8, even when youre outdoors in
Photos and frame grab courtesy of Brain Farm.
Kelly Slater
shreds in superslow motion for
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Above: Chris
Bryan wields a
custom camera
housing built
for the
Phantom as
Julian Wilson
gets airborne.
Right: Chad
Jackson (left),
Brain Farms
lead producer,
and Curt
Morgan (right),
director and
Brain Farm
president, flank
their Phantom
HD.
full sunlight, he explains. That means you

have a very shallow depth-of-field, and
when youre out there in those violent
waves, its pretty difficult to rack focus. The
8mm lens gives you more depth-of-field to
work with, and when those shots are done
right, they look really cool.
On average, the Brain Farm team
was able to capture about 19 takes on the
Phantoms CineMag recorder before the
camera needed to be reloaded. Jamie Alac
at Abel Cine Tech helped us set up the
camera controls so we could hit record and
the camera would shoot the full buffer and
save an entire take off to the CineMag,
explains Morgan. The camera would then
reset and go right back to recording mode
without our having to hit another button.
That enabled us to get our shots with the
camera in the water housing.
The Phantoms footage can be transferred as RAW data files or played out of
the cameras HD-SDI port. Dumping the
14
August 2010
CineMags RAW files takes a while, and we

knew we couldnt spare any time with the
surfers in the water, says Morgan. Having
the RAW footage as DPX files is great, but
Ive done side-by-side tests with HDCam-SR,
and theres not that much of a difference to
the eye. We had a Sony SRW-1 HDCam-SR
deck at our base camp on the beach, and
we decided to transfer the footage by playing out from the cameras HD-SDI connection directly to HDCam-SR tapes; it took
about 40 minutes to dump the whole
CineMag. This method was critical to maximizing our time.
In addition to the surfing footage,
Morgan notes, we added a bit of a documentary-style lifestyle element. For example, we placed three or four mirrors upright
on the beach and had the surfers run by
them. We tried to keep our approach simple
while still making a stylized piece. (Some
material was shot with a Panasonic AJHPX3700 VariCam.)
When production in Mexico

wrapped, Brain Farm headed back to the
Wyoming office to handle post. Depending on the type of final output a particular
client needs, sometimes well outsource the
final grading and sound, says Jackson,
but in this case, we did all the editing,
grading and sound for four complete
commercials. We also composed, recorded
and mixed the full sound score with our inhouse musicians.
Our post facility is based on Final
Cut Studio, he continues. We edit in Final
Cut Pro and grade in Color. We also have a
fully equipped sound studio with 36 channels of ProTools HD. Its not a massive studio,
but its more than enough to do some cool
sound design.
We use a RAID-based Ethernet
array to support seven edit bays, adds
Morgan. Its about 48 terabytes of total
storage running off a Mac shared server. We
generally do all our post work in Apples
ProRes HQ codec in 1080p HD, but if our
client requires a specific format deliverable,
we can go back and online to any other
format, such as uncompressed HDCam-SR.
When final color grading was
complete, Brain Farm delivered the four
spots as HD QuickTime files directly to Quiksilver via an FTP connection; the spots were
then pushed out to Quiksilvers website, Fuel
TV in the U.S. and other broadcasters worldwide. Were more than happy with the
final product, and the viewers reactions
have been incredibly positive, says Tierney.
Its been really rewarding to partner with
Brain Farm.
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Production Slate
AC Poll Names 10 Best-Shot Films of 1998-2008

By Rachael K. Bosley
Bucking the conventional wisdom that says comedies do not

present cinematographers with as many creative opportunities as
dramas do, the French comedy Amlie, shot by Bruno Delbonnel,
ASC, AFC, was voted the best-shot film of 1998-2008 in a recent
American Cinematographer poll. Cinematography is a desire, the
desire to challenge yourself and the desire to give the audience a
visual experience, and this desire is the same whether youre shooting
a comedy or a drama, observed Delbonnel, responding to news of
the poll results via e-mail. I am very thankful to the readers of AC.
This is a real honor, especially considering the other movies on this list.
These are some of the finest cinematographers, and Im not sure I
deserve to be among them, but I am very happy to be. All of these
movies are visually stunning, but more importantly, all of these cinematographers are consistent. From the first frame to the last, they
stick to the look theyve chosen. And they are all explorers.
More than 17,000 people around the world participated in
the online vote, which updates the comprehensive reader poll AC
published in March 99 in honor of the ASCs 80th anniversary. (That
vote covered the best-shot films of 1894-1997.) For the new poll,
each voter chose 10 films from a list of 50 nominated by AC
subscribers. Heres the Top 10:
1) Amlie (2001): Bruno Delbonnel, ASC, AFC. Jean-Pierre
Jeunets comedy about a sheltered young woman (Audrey Tatou) with
an overactive imagination is a vivid example of the unusual looks filmmakers could achieve with early digital-intermediate technology.
However, given limited time for preproduction testing, Delbonnel
actually decided to create as much of the films unusual gold-green
hue as possible in-camera. In a Sept. 01 interview with AC, he
16
August 2010
explained, I thought that maybe this [post] process wouldnt really

work [and] I always believe in doing as much as possible during
the actual photography, because the result looks better than when
you do all the manipulation in post. Reflecting on Amlie today, he
says, Its difficult to remember how things started, [but] I had this
idea that it would be interesting to depart from the idea of following
what the script said in terms of effects day, morning, evening and
so on and work on a mood rather than an effect, a mood that
could reflect not only the story, but also the mood of the character. I
think Im like most cinematographers: we try something on a specific
movie that is based on our thoughts at a specific time in our life and
career. Today I see Amlie as a starting point in my way of thinking
about light, and since then Ive kept developing what is more or less
the same theory, pushing it a bit further every time. This was the first
film I shot where I started to think of the script as a music score. In
each movie, theres a melody I try to find [and] translate into light.
Amlie was probably a very light, not-so-fast melody with this single
note, which is the overall yellow-green color in the film. Delbonnel
earned ASC and Oscar nominations for the film, his first feature with
Jeunet. Super 35mm.
2) Children of Men (2006): Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC,
AMC. For his fifth film with director Alfonso Cuarn, Lubezki boldly
applied a documentary aesthetic to a science-fiction narrative,
employing a handheld camera and very few movie lights to tell the
story of a Londoner (Clive Owen) who is drawn into an underground
effort to save mankind in the wake of an ecological disaster. Its a
future that reminds you of the present, Lubezki told AC (Dec. 06).
The filmmakers eschewed traditional coverage, often staging shots
with complex action to play out in single takes. Of his minimalistic
approach to lighting, the cinematographer noted, It took me a long
time to go back to basics and say, I dont want this movie to look
Amlie photo 2001 Miramax Films.
The French
comedy
Amlie, shot
by Bruno
Delbonnel,
ASC, AFC,
landed in the
top spot in a
recent AC poll
to determine
the 10 bestshot films of
1998-2008.
More than
17,000 people
participated in
the online
vote.
Children of Men photo 2006 Universal Pictures. Saving Private Ryan photo 1998 DreamWorks SKG and Paramount Pictures.
conventionally beautiful. This is a movie I

couldnt have done when I was younger
the more I learn, the less lighting I want to
do. He won the ASC Award and earned an
Oscar nomination for the film. Super 35mm.
3) Saving Private Ryan (1998):
Janusz Kaminski. With a depiction of
Americas D-Day landing on Omaha Beach
that was unprecedented in its detail and
ferocity, Steven Spielbergs World War II
combat film immediately set the bar for the
genre several notches higher. The goal,
Kaminski told AC in Aug. 98, was to make
this look like it was shot in 16mm by a bunch
of combat cameramen, and to create that
sense of chaos, he used techniques that
included shooting with mismatched lenses,
varying the cameras shutter angle, and
using an Image Shaker to add vibrations to
shots. To desaturate the palette, he also
flashed the negative and applied Technicolors ENR process, his favorite lab treatment. Kaminski, who was collaborating with
Spielberg for the fourth time, noted, Weve
all got the ability to do groundbreaking
work, and nothing is stopping us from using
very experimental techniques in a major
Hollywood movie if the subject matter
allows it and the director is willing to go
there. He won the Oscar and earned an
ASC nomination for the film. Upon hearing
of its place in ACs poll, Kaminski said, I am
thrilled and honored. This is good company
to be in! 35mm.
4) There Will Be Blood (2007):
Robert Elswit, ASC. Tapping a creative
partnership that both men acknowledge is
often as fractious as it is fruitful, Elswit and
director Paul Thomas Anderson teamed for
the fifth time on this stark frontier drama
about a misanthropic oil prospector (Daniel
Day-Lewis) who makes his fortune in the
early 20th century. Cinematographers
want to control things as much as we can,
but what Ive learned from Paul is how much
better it can be to let accidents happen,
rather than try to force everything to be a
certain way, said Elswit (AC Jan. 08). The
mostly day-exterior shoot enabled the filmmakers to make the most of slow film
stocks, which Anderson favors, and, in a
notable break from todays norm, the team
screened 35mm dailies and did a photochemical finish. Elswit won the ASC Award
and the Oscar for the picture. Commenting
The science-fiction drama Children of Men (top), shot by Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC, and
the World War II combat film Saving Private Ryan, shot by Janusz Kaminski, placed second
and third in the poll, respectively.
on its place in ACs poll, he noted, Each of

the other films on this list is a remarkable
testament to the skills and talents of some
very gifted cinematographers, and its an
extraordinary and unexpected honor to have
my work included with theirs. Anamorphic
35mm.
5) No Country for Old Men
(2007): Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC. Deakins
landed on ACs ballot for four films, more
than any other cinematographer, and he
was voted into the Top 10 for this rigorous
cat-and-mouse tale involving a Vietnam
veteran (Josh Brolin) who absconds with
www.theasc.com
stolen drug money, the hit man (Javier

Bardem) who pursues him, and the Texas
lawman (Tommy Lee Jones) who is always a
few steps behind them. The film, Deakins
eighth collaboration with Joel and Ethan
Coen, also serves as a meditation on the
changing of the West, and this theme made
the project especially attractive to the cinematographer. I felt this was the nearest a
contemporary film might come to a Peckinpah Western, he told AC (Oct. 07). Pat
Garrett & Billy the Kid, The Wild Bunch and
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia are
much more than the sum of their stories.
August 2010
17
Top to bottom:
There Will Be
Blood, shot by
Robert Elswit,
ASC, placed
fourth; No
Country for
Old Men, shot
by Roger
Deakins, ASC,
BSC, fifth; and
Fight Club,
shot by Jeff
Cronenweth,
ASC, sixth.
18
August 2010
There Will Be Blood photo 2007 Paramount Vantage. No Country for Old Men photo 2007 Miramax Films. Fight Club photo 1999 20th Century Fox.
They address many different themes, and so

does this film. He earned ASC and Oscar
nominations for the picture. Super 35mm.
6) Fight Club (1999): Jeff Cronenweth, ASC. David Finchers mostly nocturnal drama about urban alienation and male
aggression, which focuses on a city dweller
(Edward Norton) and the charismatic
stranger (Brad Pitt) who changes his life, was
Cronenweths first feature as a cinematographer, but because he had previously worked
on a number of Finchers projects as a
camera operator, additional cinematographer or second-unit cinematographer, he
was undaunted by the challenge. I couldnt
think of a better movie to do as my first
film, Cronenweth told AC (Nov. 99).
Although I knew it would be rough, I had
so much trust in David as a filmmaker that I
had the confidence [to do it]. Contributing
to the films unique ambience were a desaturated palette, a heavy reliance on existing
light at locations, and an unusual approach
to lighting the leads. We didnt necessarily
want to be able to see directly into the
actors faces, said Cronenweth. It was
more interesting and appropriate for the
story to force the audience to pay attention. Delighted to hear of the films place in
ACs poll, he noted, In a way, Fight Club
challenged all notions of a big Hollywood
movie. Many scenes were lit by only one or
two practical sources, creating a tone that
was very unique and rarely seen in the industry at large. I think this was one of those rare
times when all the creative forces were in
sync; every element, from wardrobe to visual
effects, contributed to fulfilling Davids vision
of this most complicated story. The film
pushed some peoples buttons, but I think it
mostly tapped into some common
thoughts, shared journeys and similar frustrations. It certainly summed up the
Nineties. Super 35mm.
7) The Dark Knight (2008): Wally
Pfister, ASC. For their second Batman film,
in which the Caped Crusader (Christian Bale)
is nearly undone by the criminally insane
Joker (Heath Ledger), Pfister and director
Christopher Nolan achieved epic scale by
capturing about 20 percent of the movie in
Imax 15-perf 65mm, a first for a studio
feature. Many filmmakers are trying out
digital cameras that actually capture less
resolution and information, and were going
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in the opposite direction, upping the ante by

capturing images with unparalleled resolution and clarity, said Pfister (AC July 08).
The entire crew was new to large-format
filmmaking, but, as Pfister noted, You face
new technical and creative challenges on
every film, and eventually you find a way to
overcome them. We were so determined to
make this a success that we had to keep
reminding ourselves no one had done this
before on this scale. He earned ASC and
Oscar nominations for his efforts. Anamorphic 35mm and 15-perf 65mm.
20
August 2010
8) Road to Perdition (2002):

Conrad L. Hall, ASC. Soft noir was how
Hall described the look he was after on this
Depression-era drama, his second collaboration with director Sam Mendes. The film
follows a hit man (Tom Hanks) who takes to
the road with his young son (Tyler Hoechlin)
in an attempt to protect the boy from criminal elements, including his own boss (Paul
Newman). I felt a less colorful palette was
best suited to the story, Hall told AC (Aug.
02). Its a stark story set in the Depression,
and it has a serious message. He underexAmerican Cinematographer
The Dark Knight photo 2008 Warner Bros. Pictures. Road to Perdition photo 2002 DreamWorks SKG.
The anamorphic
35mm/15-perf
65mm hybrid
The Dark Knight
(top), shot by
Wally Pfister,
ASC, landed in
seventh place,
while the
Depression-era
drama Road to
Perdition, shot
by Conrad L.
Hall, ASC,
placed eighth.
posed the negative and shot at the bottom

of the aperture, and the team undertook a
particularly grueling winter shoot in Illinois
that also contributed much to the cold
period look. This proved to be Halls last
film; he died in 2003. He was posthumously
honored with ASC and Academy awards for
the picture. Super 35mm.
9) City of God (2002): Csar Charlone, ABC. Offering a look at life in Rio de
Janeiros most notorious slum in the 1960s,
1970s and 1980s, Fernando Meirelles
drama presented Charlone with a new
challenge: Ive shot eight other features,
and this is the first one in which the main
concern was being real, being believable,
he told AC (Feb. 03). To tell the story of
an aspiring photographer (Alexandre
Rodrigues) who watches his friends lives go
in troubling directions, the filmmakers shot
on location in two favelas that were
deemed safer than the titular one, working
with a cast of non-professionals who actually lived in the slums. Charlone kept his
lighting to a minimum, in part to facilitate
the casts improvisation. Our entire
approach was dictated by whom we were
dealing with most of these kids had
never even seen a camera before, he
noted. He earned an Oscar nomination for
his efforts. Super 35mm and Super 16mm.
10) American Beauty (1999):
Conrad L. Hall, ASC. An affluent but miserable suburban family (Kevin Spacey, Annette
Bening and Thora Birch) is the focus of Halls
first collaboration with Sam Mendes, and
the cinematographer, who was always most
Above: The Brazilian film City of God, shot by Csar Charlone, ABC, placed ninth.
Below: American Beauty, shot by Conrad L. Hall, ASC, rounded out the Top 10.
attracted to character-driven stories, recalled

that he was initially concerned by how
unlikable the characters were. But once
the actors got hold of those wonderful
words and started to react to one another,
thats where the magic happened, he told
AC (March 00). His lighting approach was
the same sort of strategy I always do: I first
light for what I want to see by painting in
specific areas in values of black-and-white,
and then add room tone, a fill light that
brings up the shadows to where I want
them. The goal with composition was a
22
August 2010
sort of classicism. [This] allows the viewer to

just watch things happen in a very graphic
frame. Hall won ASC and Academy awards
for the film. Super 35mm. (Ed. Note: AC also
covered American Beauty in June 00.)
A full account of the poll results is
posted at www.theasc.com.
Original coverage of these films was
written by Benjamin Bergery, David Heuring,
Jean Oppenheimer, Stephen Pizzello,
Christopher Probst, Jon Silberg and Ray
Zone.
The definition of the modern American family has evolved over the past several
decades as non-traditional domestic
arrangements have become increasingly
common. Same-sex couples have gone
mainstream, a reality reflected in movies
and television, where the protagonists
sexual orientation is incidental to the universal themes being explored.
One of the latest examples of this is
Lisa Cholodenkos comedy The Kids Are All
Right, which focuses on a lesbian couple,
Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne
Moore), whose teenaged children, Joni (Mia
Wasikowski) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson),
decide to track down their biological father,
an act that elicits different reactions from
the Moms, as the kids refer to them. Nic
feels threatened by Paul (Mark Ruffalo),
whose sudden immersion in the family
brings marital tensions to the surface and
sparks a kind of mid-life crisis for Jules.
The most important thing was to
tell the story of a conventional suburban
family, says director of photography Igor
Jadue-Lillo, who recently met with AC in Los
Angeles. It doesnt matter if its two
women or two men; they go through the
same things that any other family does. Lisa
wanted the film to feel very natural; she
didnt want the filmmaking to intrude.
Everything was shot on location, and
because the palette and textures needed to
feel ordinary, we never pushed to enhance
the art direction, lighting or camerawork.
We didnt use cranes or any complicated
moves; everything was shot on a dolly or
handheld, and we usually stuck with focal
lengths between 20mm and 50mm. We
introduced a long lens to shoot Pauls arrival
at Nic and Jules home.
The camera Jadue-Lillo frequently
shouldered was an Arricam Lite, which he
chose because its small and lightweight,
so you can move fast. Clairmont Camera
supplied the package, which also included
an Arri BL-4, Zeiss Ultra Primes and no zoom
lenses.
When production began on the 23day shoot, the filmmakers intended to do a
traditional photochemical finish, but with
the Sundance Film Festival deadline loom-
City of God photo 2002 Miramax Films. American Beauty photo 1999 DreamWorks SKG.
A Contemporary Comedy
By Jean Oppenheimer
ing, they had to rethink their strategy. They

completed a two-day digital intermediate at
Technicolor, and after Sundance, they went
back to the lab for an additional day of
grading, according to Jadue-Lillo.
The story takes place in Los Angeles
over one summer and is set primarily
indoors. Cholodenko had a specific vision of
how Nic and Jules lived and what their
house looked like: a middle-class home in
suburban Sherman Oaks with big windows,
pastel-colored walls, white dcor, and
furnishings straight out of Restoration
24
August 2010
Hardware, recalls Jadue-Lillo. The only

problem was that the perfect location
proved to be in the hip waterfront enclave
of Venice, whose narrow canals gave the
community its name. There was no room to
park crew trucks on the street, and the
houses were close together, which made
positioning lights outside difficult.
The ground floor of the house is an
enormous room that is informally divided
into areas kitchen, dining room, living
room that are not separated by walls.
Windows are everywhere and sunlight
pours into the house, which proved both a

blessing and a curse. We wanted sunlight
but not hard light, says Jadue-Lillo. We
didnt want to blow out the windows. A
small practical porch out front provided
some natural diffusion, allowing light in the
windows but keeping direct sun out. Whenever possible, interior day scenes were
scheduled for when the light was good, and
when it wasnt, a 20'x40' piece of Grid
Cloth was hung over the windows. When
interiors had to be shot day-for-night, the
Grid Cloth was replaced by black material
and side flaps were added, completely sealing out the natural light.
Inside the house, Jadue-Lillo relied
on practicals to create atmosphere and
depth, and production designer Julie
Berghoff created built-in bookshelves that
presented an ample number of small hiding
places. Jadue-Lillo used Dedolights, small
Fresnels, Zip lights and China balls, all
diffused with Grid, Grid, 216, 250 or
Frost. Multiple NDs were usually on the lens,
and outdoors, Polarizers were often
required.
The dcor in the house is almost
exclusively white or pastel. You have to be
careful when lighting that kind of color
scheme if you want to keep the detail of the
architecture and the furnishings, which we
did, says Jadue-Lillo. Thats why the prac-
The Kids Are All Right photos by Suzanne Tenner, courtesy of Focus Features.
Right: In a
scene from The
Kids Are All
Right, longtime
partners Nic
(Annette
Bening, center)
and Jules
(Julianne
Moore, second
from left) enjoy
dinner with
their children,
Joni (Mia
Wasikowska,
right) and Laser
(Josh
Hutcherson).
Below: Joni
introduces her
brother to their
biological
father, Paul
(Mark Ruffalo).
Above: Director
of photography
Igor Jadue-Lillo
(at camera) and
his crew
prepare to film
a scene in
the familys
backyard. Right:
Paul meets Nic
and Jules for
the first time.
ticals were so important. In addition, you

really need to balance your key lights and
be careful with exposure I was usually
around f2.2 in the house.
The kitchen looks out onto the back
yard, which is the site of the first meal the
family shares with Paul. To soften the light
and knock out unwanted shadows, the
grips erected a 20'x40' muslin overhang. A
couple of 18K Alpha lights were placed on
the ground or atop scaffolding. My
wonderful gaffer, Dayton Nietert, introduced me to the HMI Alphas, notes JadueLillo. Strings of small decorative lights crisscrossing the porch served as both a decorative touch and low-level fill.
Despite the challenges posed by the
Venice location, Jadue-Lillo notes that it
was actually the good house to shoot
Pauls was the real challenge. A laid-back
26
August 2010
restaurateur, Paul lives in a bungalow built

into the side of a hill. The property includes
a large back yard that is overgrown with
native plants, and Paul hires Jules to landscape it. Once again, the filmmakers found
the perfect location, this time in Echo Park,
but the road leading to it was winding and
so narrow that some crew trucks couldnt
make it up the hill.
Like Nic and Jules house, Pauls
place is airy and open. Floor-to-ceiling
windows and a sliding glass door look onto
the back porch. And, as in Venice, the
houses were built close together. To light
that house, whether night or day, was like
being on the 15th floor of a high-rise,
declares Jadue-Lillo. We didnt have the
budget for Condors or lifts, and there
wasnt enough room on the sides of the
house or on the back porch to set up lights.
We ended up placing Alpha lights on the

ground behind the house, at least 10 feet
below the porch, and leveled them as best
we could. We aimed the units toward the
ceiling in Pauls den, just inside the back
door, and bounced the light that way. We
didnt need bounce cards because the ceiling was white.
Another key location is the restaurant Paul owns, which has mostly outdoor
seating. We wanted to emphasize the
bohemian feeling of Pauls character,
recounts Berghoff, so we fabricated string
lights out of old mason jars and carnival
lights [and hung them] above the tables.
[We added a few] chandeliers that Paul
might have discovered in some funky thrift
shop.
The last sequence in the film finds
Nic, Jules and Laser taking Joni up to Berkeley, where she is starting college. Jadue-Lillo
describes filming the family in the car as a
good challenge, especially given the time
pressure. We only had three hours to film
four people in a car on a process trailer, and
we shot on a freeway in Los Angeles.
Initially, we were told we couldnt have the
wings down on the trailer. How in the world
were we were going to shoot this? Fortunately, the police relented and allowed us to
use the wings.
Jadue-Lillo, who was born in Chile
and raised in Argentina and Mexico, credits
high-school friend and future ASC member
Emmanuel Chivo Lubezki with introducing him to filmmaking. Chivo was already
making short films in high school, and
when he started film school, he dragged me
into writing, producing, acting and serving
as a camera assistant, he says. After catching the cinematography bug, Jadue-Lillo
moved to England to attend the London
Film School. His credits as director of
photography include The Hitchhikers Guide
to the Galaxy, Passengers and Disco Pigs.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
35mm
Arricam Lite, Arri BL-4
Zeiss Ultra Prime lenses
Kodak Vision2 Expression 500T 5229
Digital Intermediate
Multiple units and

an arsenal of
visual effects help
Robert Elswit, ASC
realize Phillip Noyces
action thriller Salt.
By Iain Stasukevich
|
Cat
and
Mouse
28
August 2010
n the new film Salt, American covert operative Evelyn Salt

(Angelina Jolie) is accused of spying for the Russians and
must draw upon all her skills to evade capture by her CIA
colleagues. She is also determined to prove her innocence,
something that becomes increasingly difficult to do as her
flight continues. The movie features a variety of ambitious
action sequences, but according to director of photography
Robert Elswit, ASC, director Phillip Noyce was not interested in spectacular scale, which runs counter to the way
action films are usually done. Phil pushed [production
designer] Scott Chambliss to design our sets to be small,
claustrophobic and authentic-looking, and he asked me to
provide a naturalistic lighting scheme.
However, he continues, Phil was also open to the
Unit photography by Andrew Schwartz, SMPSP and David Griesbrecht, courtesy of Sony Pictures.
world of Salt taking on a somewhat

stylized theatricality the story, which
is essentially a character-driven drama
with a somewhat unbelievable premise,
seemed to demand a slightly theatrical
approach. This allowed me to try to
find a lighting style that, though somewhat realistic, could also be shamelessly
flattering to the actors, allowing them
to look as attractive as possible even
when bruised, cut and covered in blood.
What that meant in practical terms is
that very often the character lighting
would dictate the set lighting. Luckily
for me, the actor playing Salt was
Angelina Jolie.
In modern films, trying to
maintain flattering lighting throughout
a realistic drama can be a tricky road to
go down, continues Elswit. At best it
can dictate the entire look of a film and
compromise every lighting setup; at
worst the actor can appear as if he or
she is in a different movie from everyone else. For all the actors, we tried to
find a way to blend a kind of movie-star
lighting with a theatrical realism that I
hoped would not contradict or call
attention to itself.
Over the course of the film,
Elswit gradually altered the quality of
light he used on Jolie to underscore her
characters predicament. I started with
a bright frontal or -frontal light on
her, and then, as the story progresses,
we begin to see her in half-light or
backlight, or shes keyed by light
bouncing off the floor, creating stronger
shadows and more contrast, he says.
We actually found that putting Angie
in half-light with strong contrast made
her look even more striking. We never
had to compromise the way the scenes
looked or felt when we were lighting
her. As long as I stayed away from
toplight, the harsher and more unusual
the angle, the more expressive the
results.
Elswit acknowledges that a
stunt-heavy thriller such as Salt looks a
bit anomalous among his recent credits,
which include Duplicity, There Will Be
Blood (AC Jan.08) and Michael Clayton,
and he defers much of the credit for
Opposite: When her CIA colleagues accuse her of being a double agent, covert operative Evelyn
Salt (Angelina Jolie) must go on the run. This page, top: Salt examines subway blueprints as she
wends her way through the service tunnels. Bottom: New Yorks finest arrest Salt, but the
filmmakers took creative liberty by cuffing her hands in front, a breach of normal police
procedure that enables her to make an escape.
www.theasc.com
August 2010
29
Cat and Mouse
Right: The
duality of Salts
situation is
reflected in
the two-way
mirror of an
interrogation
room. Below:
The spy springs
into action.
Salts visual style to his collaborators,

notably 2nd-unit director Simon
Crane; 2nd-unit director of photography Igor Meglic, ZFS (Slovene
Association of Cinematographers); and
visual-effects supervisor/3rd-unit direc30
August 2010
tor of photography Robert Grasmere,

who coordinated the work of 10 visualeffects facilities.
Crane, who also worked with
Jolie on Mr. & Mrs. Smith (AC July 05),
and Meglic, whose second-unit credits
include The Bourne Ultimatum (AC

Sept. 07), are well known in their
respective fields. Being a second-unit
cameraman requires a special set of
skills, Meglic remarks. You have to
have an understanding of how mass
moves through space, and you have to
be able to feel whats going to happen as
it does.
Meglic notes that Salt illustrates
how the second units responsibilities
have evolved on films in which action is
closely fused with character. He and
Crane often found themselves shooting
what might normally be considered
main-unit material, and that used to
be unheard of, says Meglic. Usually
the first unit handles the principals
while the second unit is off shooting all
the cars and other action. It takes the
right kind of director to gain the actors
trust, and Angelina trusts Simon to
direct her.
Grasmeres unit was tasked with
filming all of the background plates,
some aerial shots and the Russia mate-
Top: Reflections are

also used to artful
effect on the other
side of the twoway mirror during
the interrogation
of a Russian
defector (Daniel
Olbrychski).
Bottom: Inside
the room, director
Phillip Noyce
(leaning on
table) and
cinematographer
Robert Elswit, ASC
(wearing cap) work
through the scene
with Olbrychski.
rial. It was also up to Grasmere to

determine what could be achieved
practically without slowing down the
production, and what could be achieved
in post without compromising the
integrity of the other departments
work. There were big fixes and small
fixes [in post] the work was evenly
distributed, says Grasmere. We
finaled around 800 shots, which is a lot
when you consider the whole film has
2,500 shots.
On the set pieces where the
second or third unit simply had to
match first-unit photography, Elswit,
Meglic and Grasmere, along with
gaffers Andy Day and Greg Addison,
would walk the sets and discuss the best
way to match or re-create the original
lighting setup. At other times, the
secondary units worked autonomously
in other locations; if they shot a critical
dramatic scene featuring principal
actors, the dailies were sent to Noyce
and Elswit for approval. Any large
production that involves multiple units
working independently and shooting

stunts, effects and aerials is as big a
logistical challenge as it is a creative
challenge, Elswit observes. Thank
God I had [1st AC] Baz Idoine to take
care of all the camera-equipment
issues, and Andy [Day] and [key grip]
Dennis Gamiello to sort out all the
www.theasc.com
other stuff.
In one sequence that features a
complex combination of stunts and
visual effects, Salt is cornered on a freeway overpass by two CIA colleagues
(played by Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel
Ejiofor) and throws herself over the
guardrail, landing hard on a container
August 2010
31
Cat and Mouse
Top: Elswit (far

right) and
Steadicam
operator Scott
Sakamoto follow
Jolie while filming
a foot chase.
Bottom left: A
Technocrane is
used to capture a
character being
pushed off a pier
to sleep with
the fishes.
Bottom right:
2nd-unit director
Simon Crane (left)
and 2nd-unit
director of
photography
Igor Meglic, ZFS
coordinate
the action.
truck below. For the location work, Jolie

rolled off the overpass of a highway
interchange in Washington, D.C. Then
an amalgam of elements were
photographed on location in Albany,
N.Y., and on a greenscreen stage
erected in the former Northrop
Grumman buildings in Bethpage,
Long Island. Onstage, Jolie was
suspended from a 25' track on a stunt
wire and filmed at high speed as she
was flown laterally into a chroma-key
crash pad; Meglics camera was on a
scaffold on precision dolly track.
32
August 2010
Visual-effects
artists
at
Framestore in New York, led by visualeffects supervisor Ivan Moran and CG
supervisor Theo Jones, used Shake and
Nuke software to alter the truck plate
from Albany to sync the timing of
Jolies fall and to match the lighting
between the elements. (The plate was
scanned at 4K by Deluxes New York
facility.) Jones team created a CG
container for the truck, using geometric
data from a 3-D LIDAR scan made in
Albany, and then fine-tuned the lighting for the container and the rest of the
plate. The final composite is a quick,

overhead shot of Jolie spinning through
the air toward the truck.
When Salt hits the container, its
a stuntwoman standing on top of the
moving truck who completes the fall,
rolling over as Meglics camera
(operated by Jason Ellson) pans with
her. In the same shot, Salt regains her
composure, so a transition between two
handheld shots one with the stuntwoman, and one with Jolie was
hidden in the camera moves done on
location atop the moving semi. The
Soft overhead
lighting is
supplemented by
more direct
sources for a
major sequence
set within St.
Bartholomews
Church in New
York.
two actresses did their best to match

each others movements, and after that
it was just a matter of morphing the two
shots together over a few frames,
Moran explains.
The rest of the scene sees Salt
jumping from truck to truck before
hijacking a motorcycle and speeding
away. Crane and Meglic, along with
stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood,
used previs animations (by Proof Inc.)
and detailed beat sheets to determine
shots and the kinds of equipment theyd
need. The Arri 235 is a godsend for
this kind of work, says Meglic. Its
small, lightweight and has a great
viewing system. His lenses included a
70-210mm (T2.8) zoom lens that
Panavisions Dan Sasaki custom-built
for him, and a range of Panavision
Primo zooms and primes. Six operators
covered the action and worked handheld, employing a Libra-headequipped Supertechno 50 crane and a
Mercedes-mounted Russian Arm. To
heighten the sense of excitement,
Meglic employed an in-camera combination of shutter clipping and speed
ramping. Depending on the shot, wed
undercrank film by a couple of frames
to speed up the action just a bit, he
comments. If you do it any more than
www.theasc.com
August 2010
33
Cat and Mouse

that, it becomes obvious.
Jolie enjoys performing many
stunts herself, and it is actually she in
several shots of Salt riding atop the
trucks as they roll down the highway.
She was always wired to the vehicle,
and the artists at Framestore were
tasked with removing all traces of stunt
wire from each shot. Thats not always
the easiest thing to achieve, especially
when youve got a big cable passing in
front of the actors face, notes Moran.
The Framestore team and a team at
Tikibot, which also contributed some
shots, often had to reconstruct Jolies
face frame by frame, he adds.
At one point in the film, Salt
is captured and transported to
Its important to
keep the camera
rolling after the
impact.
another location via Manhattans

Queensborough Bridge. The New York
Police make the mistake of cuffing her
hands in the front, enabling her to
wreak havoc in the SUV. She headbutts one of her guards in the backseat
and then disables another guard and
steals his taser. After overpowering the
driver, she uses the SUV to smash her
way through a police escort, only to
find that the bridge off-ramp is blocked
by more police cars. The only way out is
to drive over the edge.
The trick was to place Jolie and a
camera inside the car when it hit the
ground. The crash was split into two
elements, a background plate of the
vehicle cab and Jolies foreground
element.
The actual crash was shot on
location at the Queensborough Bridge.
The SUV was rigged to jump the off-
Salt escapes a
tense situation by
clinging to the
exterior wall of an
apartment
building. Special
rigging (top)
allows the camera
to move while
capturing
overhead angles
of Jolie, who
often performs
her own stunts
(bottom).
34
August 2010
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More details on www.arridigital.com
Cat and Mouse
Top: A specially
built camera
platform allows
camera operator
Jason Ellson and
stunt coordinator
Wade Eastwood
to capture shots
of Jolie atop a
moving truck.
Bottom: Noyce
blocks out a
subway sequence
with Sakamoto.
ramps concrete barrier and crash into

the street below. Nine Arri and
Panavision cameras covered the crash;
one was on a Supertechno 50 crane that
extended over the side, flying next to
the car as it went over.
Crane wanted to have a moving
camera inside the car, so 2nd-unit key
grip Peter Chrimes installed a 5' camera
slider in the cab so that when the car hit
bottom, the camera, an Arri 235, would
slam forward with the impact, going
36
August 2010
from a medium shot of Jolie to a closeup. Its important to keep the camera
rolling after the impact so you see how
it affects the character, says Meglic.
We built a special cage for the camera
with two rods, one on top of the lens
and one on the bottom, to help prevent
the lens from being ripped out. The lens
had to be the lightest we could find,
which turned out to be a 24mm
Panavision Ultra Speed. The team also
had to make sure the crash didnt
disable the camera, so Chrimes figured

out a way to slow down the slider in the
last 4" of the move by hooking bungee
cords to the back of the camera platform and layering strips of tape onto the
sliders rail. The gradual thickening of
the tape slowed the platform enough
that it hit the end of the track with
much less force.
The vehicle-interior plate was
shot on the productions greenscreen
stages in Bethpage, with Jolie inside a
mockup of the vehicle. As she acted out
the moment of impact, Meglic
photographed her at high speed with
the same lens and camera slider used in
the crash. From there, it was up to
Framestore to marry the elements
together, but it wasnt a simple composite the artists filled the car interior
with all manner of digital debris,
including glass, dust and metal fragments. Without the proper atmosphere, it would have looked too clean,
says Moran. The final shot takes only a
few seconds of screen time. It happens
so fast, but its not like seeing a pushin, Meglic says. Its one of those little
things, the imperceptible things, that
Cat and Mouse
Elswit and Sakamoto capture various angles

for sequences set aboard a dinghy and in
the hold of a larger vessel.
enhance the action.

If an important scene was set in a
location that proved to be unavailable to
the production, CG artists re-created
the environment down to its tiniest
textures. CIS Vancouver visual-effects
supervisor Mark Breakspear oversaw
much of this work. Some people like
making CG creatures, but I love
making environments, he says. For
Salt, his team had to create two faades
of the White House, the front and the
back. The front appears in a night scene
that shows characters entering the front
gates and driving up to the building; the
back appears in a dawn scene that
shows Salt being taken away by helicopter. CG shots of famous locations
like the White House are definitely the
hardest to accomplish because if you
dont get it right, everyone will notice,
observes Grasmere. Initially, he and
38
August 2010
Breakspear attempted to capture background plates of the White House, but

the Secret Service wouldnt allow access
to the grounds. Plan B was to photograph the guards driving up to a
mockup of the White House gates in a
parking lot in Long Island, and then
build everything else digitally.
During his research phase,
Breakspear went so far as to dig up the
original White House landscaping
plans in a public archive. We also did a
lot of HDRI [high-dynamic-range
imaging], which allows us to record the
volume of light in the area, and we took
a lot of digital photos around the White
CG shots of famous
locations like the
White House are
definitely the hardest
to accomplish
because if you dont
get it right, everyone
will notice.
House which, when cleaned up, could
be used for textures on the CG model
of the buildings, he says.
When gathering data for CG
lighting references on set, Grasmere
prefers to use a fish-eye lens on a highresolution still camera and photograph
the location or set with 360 degrees of
overlapping coverage, shooting at a
depth of 5 to 6 stops (3 stops over and
3 stops under) to capture the full
dynamic range of anything touched by
light. I might not slavishly adhere to
that, but its a starting point, he says.
For the night exterior on the White
House back lawn, we lit the foreground
beautifully and backlit the actors, but
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Cat and Mouse
Salts cloak-and-dagger adventures are enhanced by Elswits eye for intriguing compositions.
when we added the building and the

lawn, we had to add a CG light source
to justify the foreground illumination.
Artists at CIS had to create a
sizeable section of Washington, D.C.,
for the sequence that shows Salt being
taken away in a helicopter. Grasmere

shot a moving aerial foreground
element of the Blackhawk taking off
from a Long Island park, and CIS was
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instead of 3-D] was a corner we didnt
want to cut, so we found a simple 3-D
model of D.C. online that was available
for download the data set was
provided by the U.S. government,
recalls Breakspear. CIS used the data to
create corresponding 3-D blocks within
their software (Maya and Houdini),
and then skinned them with textures
and twinkling lights. We went to
Washington and studied 30 or 40
buildings, shot textures, and fed those
elements into a computer, explains
Breakspear. We added air-conditioner
units, antennae and water tanks to the
rooftops, and with the camera movement and the parallax, it looks
absolutely stunning.
Optical performance is a critical
element of all visual-effects work, and
CIS matched a set of CG lenses into its
Maya and Houdini software based on
the lenses Elswit and his collaborators
used for principal photography.
Breakspear explains, When youre

tracking a shot, you have to negate the
distortion the lens gives you. Before
production starts, we shoot lens grids,
which are big white boards with a black
grid. The lens we use to shoot the grid
takes the square geometry and distorts
those lines. We scan the test shots,
using the lens grids to show us how to
undistort the original photographic
elements. When weve added our [CG]
elements to the shot, we then use a
secondary piece of software to redistort the final composite so it
matches the original.
Principal photography on Salt
wrapped in June 2009, and as the
visual-effects team finalized shots, they
referenced Elswits dailies, which had
been timed by Nolan Murdock at
Deluxes New York facility. Elswit
supervised the films final digital grade
at Sony Colorworks, where he worked
with colorist Steve Bowen. After again
passing most of the credit for the films
look to his collaborators, Elswit sums

up his DI work in an equally humble
fashion: There are many cinematographers who do wonderfully creative
work in the DI, but I spend most of my
time fixing things I screwed up in principal photography.
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An unlikely hero
fights for his woman
in Scott Pilgrim vs.
the World, directed
by Edgar Wright
and shot by
Bill Pope, ASC.
By Noah Kadner
|
Girl Trouble
A
dapted from an irreverent comic-book series, Scott Pilgrim

vs. the World chronicles the attempts of its titular character (Michael Cera) to woo a young woman (Mary
Elizabeth Winstead) by defeating her seven evil exboyfriends in video-game-style fights. The film is directed by
Edgar Wright, who decided to team with Bill Pope, ASC after
the cinematographer, a comic-book aficionado, made a
convincing pitch for the job. Bill really impressed me because
he wanted to talk about the script rather than the look, recalls
Wright. Hed already read the books and was really into them.
When the pair began discussing the films look, says
Pope, we took our initial inspiration off the books full-color
covers. From there, we imagined what all the black-and-white
42
August 2010
illustrations [inside] would look like in color. Translating [Scott

Pilgrim creator] Bryan Lee OMalleys aesthetics to live action
was more straightforward than adapting other comics might
be, because Bryan doesnt cheat perspective and use cartoon
engineering. Also, he drew a lot of the comic [referencing]
actual photos of Toronto, where the story is set.
Edgar wanted to stay true to the linear lines of the
books while taking things a step further, notes production
designer Marcus Rowland. The comic pages have no texture
or color, but you get a real sense of geography. Edgar, Bill and
I extrapolated a look that would start with mundane browns
and muted tones and evolve into a progressively more colorful
palette.
Unit photography by Kerry Hayes, SMPSP. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Universal Pictures.
The filmmakers began principal

photography in Toronto in July 2008,
working on location and onstage at
Cinespace Film Studios. A chief
element of the style they envisioned was
extreme changes to aspect ratios and
framing in order to approximate both
the multi-panel graphic manga comic
aesthetics and video-game styles used
throughout the source material. The
movie is structured around the seven
fights Pilgrim must win each being
more intense than the last and intermingles naturalistic dialogue and transitional scenes. We generally shot the
realistic scenes with spherical lenses and
the fight scenes with anamorphic
lenses, explains Pope. Anamorphic
established a more heightened reality
with incredible contrast, shortened
depth-of-field and often a wider aspect
ratio. We broke the rules a lot and sometimes had 1.85 shots with anamorphic
lenses [using a custom 1.85 anamorphic
ground glass supplied by Panavision],
and we also framed [2.40:1] shots with
spherical lenses. Often the aspect ratio
changes within a shot in order to
emphasize the action or a particular
detail. The final print is in 1.85, with
the anamorphic footage digitally
unsqueezed and presented both as filling the frame and with a hard 2.40:1
matte. (The spherical material was shot
in 4-perf Super 35mm.)
Popes principal crew included 1st
Opposite: Lovestruck hipster Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) attempts to chat up his dream girl, Ramona V.
Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). This page, top: To win Ramonas affection, Scott must battle and
defeat her seven evil exes. Middle: Scott is held in the grip of an ornery enemy. Bottom:
Cinematographer Bill Pope, ASC (left) and director Edgar Wright position themselves for the next take.
www.theasc.com
August 2010
43
Girl Trouble
AC Russel Bowie, camera operator
Angelo Colavecchia, chief lighting
technician Jean Courteau and chief
rigging gaffer Stephen Spurrell. Many
of the crew had worked together before
but were collaborating with Pope for the
first time. Lighting gear was sourced
from William F. White Equipment in
Toronto, and Panavision Toronto
supplied the camera package. Panaflex
XL2s were the main cameras, and an
Arri 435ES was used for additional
coverage and some high-speed work. To
capture higher frame rates, Pope used a
Phantom HD digital camera
customized with a Panavision mount.
To get higher resolution for certain
visual-effects shots, the production
utilized a Beaucam VistaVision camera.
The filmmakers carried a large
array of lenses in order to capture the
films varied visuals. Spherical optics
included Panavision Primo primes
ranging from 10mm to 150mm,
complemented by Primo 4:1 and 11:1
zooms. (Popes favorite close-up lens
was the Primo 50mm.) The anamorphic
lenses included a set of Panavisions GSeries primes and E-series 135mm and
180mm lenses. For anamorphic zooms,
Pope utilized Panavisions 40-80mm
and 70-200mm lenses, nicknamed the
Video-game
graphics, visual
effects and a
good, oldfashioned wall
of lights enhance
Scotts epic
battle with
Gideon Graves
(Jason
Schwartzman)
on the Chaos
nightclub set.
44
August 2010
Short Bailey Zoom and Long Bailey

Zoom, after John Bailey, ASC, who
actively campaigned for their development.
Pope shot most of the picture on
Kodak Vision3 500T 5219, which he
rated at ISO 400. For a handful of
snowy day exteriors, he switched to
Kodak Vision 200T 5217. Dailies were
processed normally at Deluxe Toronto.
Lens filtration was limited to 81EF and
85 filters, with a very occasional use of
18 Schneider Classic Soft.
Our typical stop was a T4 for
most of the film-based work, says
Bowie. On anamorphic lenses, the
exposure curve looks much nicer at T4
than wide open. We tried to keep to that
stop on day exteriors as well; for night
exteriors, wed sometimes go down to
T2.8. For high-speed work of up to 500
fps, wed drop down to a T2 on location.
When we got back into the studio, Bill
was able to light some high-speed shots
all the way up to a T5.6, depending on
how tight we got and how critical the
focus became. One second out of focus
at 500 fps becomes an eternity!
Pope and Wright chose to work
with a single camera as much as possible. Of the 4,000 or so setups we did
during principal photography, about 800
featured more than one camera, says
Pope. I think we used more than two
cameras just two or three times. Edgar
and I favor a tight eyeline for the actors,
and thats hard to pull off once you go
into multiple cameras.
The filmmakers set a fast pace for
the production, which comprised 104
principal shoot days. We went through
more than 200 setups the first week,
which is faster than music videos Ive
done, remarks Pope. The Matrix [AC
April 99] had a lot of visual-effects
work, but the camera moves were relatively simple, and the same was true of
Spider-Man 2 and 3. But Scott Pilgrim
was a lot more in-camera and complex,
like swish pans on specific lines of
dialogue and intricate choreography.
There were lighting cues and dolly
moves on almost every shot.
To facilitate the brisk pace, Popes
Scott takes evasive action while running down the side of a three-story pyramid in the club. A
Technocrane (bottom photo) was used to capture tricky angles and moves on the set, which
required complex rigging supervised by key grip Rico Emerson.
www.theasc.com
August 2010
45
Girl Trouble
Some 1,200 visual-effects shots were contributed by Londons Double Negative, including comic-book
text, cartoonish weapons and video-game icons. Pope (upper right) strove to create live-action images
that would integrate smoothly with the extensive effects.
46
August 2010
crew prelit every set and often devised

360-degree-lighting plots to enable
shots to be taken in all directions without a major relight. Edgar told me he
wanted to avoid cutting back to the
same shot twice, says Pope. There
were also lots of split-screen and multiple-panel shots. We brought in the
second unit where we could, but Edgar
wanted the main unit to shoot the key
parts because each fight has a story and
a character arc. Its not just a guy hitting
another guy; theres always a line of
dialogue or some bit of action in the
middle.
The movie opens at a diningroom table in the apartment of Stephen
Stills (Mark Webber), as Pilgrim and
his bandmates discuss his aimless
lifestyle and flawed romantic aspirations. We tried to shoot in continuity,
so that first scene was shot on day one,
reveals Pope. The set was a stage
version of Stephens apartment, which
we cluttered up as much as possible. We
made it look like it was lit arbitrarily by
bare bulbs and whatever else youd find
in the average bachelor pad. After the
kids are introduced to Knives Chau
[Ellen Wong], they all get up to
rehearse, and when they start to play, we
do our first big shift from realism to
magical realism.
Girl Trouble
Lighting and
visual effects
were combined
to turn a concert
sequence into a
rock n roll
tsunami.
The bands music is visualized

with notes flying out of their guitars as
the camera pulls back far beyond the
apparent physical confines of the room.
If Edgar can build it in the camera, he
will, so Marcus built the set with a
removable wall and multiplied the
rectangular length of the room by about
4, says Pope. We pulled back on the
Technocrane to what seemed like a
football fields distance from the band,
and then Young Neil [ Johnny
Simmons] and Knives pop up in an
over-the-shoulder shot on the couch, as
if theyre still in the same room the
couch was on its own track that traveled
under the camera and slid up into the
shot at the end of the pullback. We
pulled out the ceiling to accommodate
the Technocrane, so a CG ceiling was
added later. It was a lot of fun. We go
from that shot directly into the credit
sequence.
From the credits onward, Scott
Pilgrim alternates between magical realism shot on stages and more conventional-looking location work. Bill, Jean,
[key grip] Rico [Emerson] and I would
survey each location as early as possible,
recalls Spurrell. Some of the sets were
on busy streets at the cusp of rush hour.
Wed literally have an army of people
swoop down a couple of hours before
shooting to set up cables, rig Condors,
and swap out the mercury-vapor street48
August 2010
lamp bulbs for 2K tungsten mockups.

Wed place 12-light Maxi-Brutes and
20Ks in the Condors up to 80 feet up for
fill and backlight, and then Bill would
march in big bounces and direct transmissions with 12- and Nine-light
Maxis.
The filmmakers switched from
film cameras to the Phantom HD in
order to capture extreme-slow-motion
shots during fight scenes. Theres no
blood in this movie, so the only way we
could suggest a blows impact on a
person was in their face or the way their
hair reacted, notes Wright. The
not sure youve got the shot till the

dailies show up. The Phantom gives you
perfect hi-def playback immediately.
A Beaucam VistaVision camera
was used for shots where we nested a
close-up inside a wide shot and wanted
to optically zoom in while maintaining
sharp resolution, continues Pope.
Edgar wanted perfect continuity
between those shots, and the only way
to make that work was VistaVision.
www.sylvania.com
The only way we

could suggest a
blows impact on a
person was in their
face or the way
their hair reacted.
The Phantom was
perfect for this hair
porn effect.
Without OSRAM HMI lamps, it

would just be a shot in the dark.
In 1967 we made the first HMI lamp. Today we still make the only HMI lamps.
For more information, please go to www.sylvania.com or call toll-free in the U.S. 888-677-2627.
2010 OSRAM SYLVANIA
Phantom was perfect for this hair porn

effect, and we embellished it with wind
machines and air cannons. We also used
it for the big, power-move sort of shots
styled after Japanese animation. In a lot
of those films, they didnt have big
budgets, so theyd resort to things like
slow motion and freeze frames for
effect. Pope adds, We kept going back
to certain favorite Phantom frame rates,
like 388 fps. The latest iteration of the
camera is great because the memory is
fast, and theres no waiting for footage to
download. With the older high-speed
film cameras, youre looking at a video
approximation of each take, and youre
Bowie notes, [Beaucam creator] Greg

Beaumont also supplied a set of Leica
lenses beautifully re-housed with replicated Panavision movie-lens markings.
We shot 8-perf 35mm with 400-foot
mags, which gave us about two minutes
per load. The camera requires a lot of
maintenance you have to check the
gate every couple of takes and oil it after
every three mags but the results are
worth it.
Girl Trouble
The Phantom HD
camera was used
to capture the
movies ultraslow-motion
fight sequences.
Theres no
blood in this
movie, so the
only way we
could suggest a
blows impact on
a person was in
their face or the
way their hair
reacted, notes
Wright.
The movies climactic battle,

between Pilgrim and Gideon Graves
( Jason Schwartzman), takes place at the
Chaos nightclub, a set that features
three-story decorative pyramids. We
tried to work in continuity, not only
because these are fight scenes, which
can evolve on the set, but also because
Edgars blocking and shot design is so
intricate and specific that shooting out
of continuity is dangerous every time
we tried to shoot out a direction, we
regretted it later because of continuity,
says Pope. On the pyramid set, this
meant shooting on the top deck, the
middle deck, the bottom deck and back
every day as was needed in the story.
Our life became all about scaffold
management, and Rico Emerson
performed this Herculean labor. He
told me the other day he still has nightmares about it. Each level of the pyramid grew smaller and smaller toward
the top until the whole crew was working around a 12-by-12-foot area. We
built up side platforms and scaffolding
in order to accommodate dollies, crew
and equipment. The lighting was incorporated into the set as much as possible,
but it was a major logistical challenge
for the crew.
Wright wanted in-camera lighting effects whenever an impact
50
August 2010
snow dragons versus sound yetis, says

Churchill. We used digital stems of the
actual music tracks to drive the animation, and we added digital snow as a
fluid simulation. We shot the band
sequences with live playback because
Edgar is very specific about choreography, down to the millisecond.
Double Negative also had a hand
in facilitating the movies aspect-ratio
shifts. We did most of our work at 2K,
but we scanned the VistaVision material at 6K, says Churchill. For the
Phantom footage, we shot the cameras
raw Cine file format, which we
converted to 16-bit linear DPX files
using Glue Tools. Then we went DPX
to EXR floating-point linear color for
all the compositing and CG work.
Finally, we converted back to 16-bit
DPX log color for the digital intermediate with a neutral grade to leave Bill
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2010 OSRAM SYLVANIA OSRAM and KREIOS are registered trademarks of OSRAM GmbH Photo Credit: Image Source / Getty Images
occurred. For the long shots, we used

Lightning Strikes 25K and 75K
strobes, says Spurrell. In the close-ups,
wed switch to Paparazzi data flash
units, which are easier on the actors
eyes. For the rest of the set, we lit 360
degrees with [3'x6'] Midnite Hour
LED panels up to about 16 feet, all
interactively timed with the band and
the fighting. That was augmented with
about 1,600 conventional movie lights
running through a Grand MH dimmer
board. We had 140 bars of six in-the-air
Par can rigs that we could raise and
lower with chain motors and also play as
practical lights. We also set up 48 6K
overhead space lights for the base illumination. For backlight, we used
Dwight Scorpion pan-and-tilt heads
fitted with 36 650-watt DWE bulbs.
For camera moves, Pope
deployed dollies, tripods and cranes.
We only did about three handheld
shots in the whole show, notes Bowie.
Everything else was in studio mode
with a good number of 15-foot, 30-foot
and 50-foot Technocrane days. Since
you can get that floating sensation with
too much crane action, a lot of our shots
were done on a dolly. Bill likes to do fast
dolly moves with his eye on the
eyepiece.
Double Negative in London
contributed about 1,200 visual-effects
shots to the movie. Most of our efforts
were devoted to translating the comicbook aesthetic, explains Frazer
Churchill, Double Negatives visualeffects supervisor. It was tricky using
CG to make comic-book text and
graphics occupy space in the frame as
stylized photographic objects. We used
Shake for compositing, Maya for 3-D,
Houdini for effects animation and
RenderMan for rendering. We also
have proprietary tools for fluid simulations, audio-driven animation and creature effects.
In one sequence, Pilgrims band
squares off against the twin Katayanagi
brothers at a club, and their musical riffs
transform into floating notes and fighting creatures. We did Maya creature
shots of the bands music fighting as
KREIOS LED lighting shows true color.
OSRAM KREIOS lighting solutions render true color and skin tones on
lm and videoexactly how the eye sees them. And with precise color
temperature matching, OSRAM KREIOS LEDs seamlessly integrate with
existing traditional lighting. The fact that you cant tell them apart is
what sets them apart. For more information on OSRAM KREIOS LED
lighting system solutions, please email entertainment@osram.com
or call 1-888-677-2627.
Girl Trouble
room to work.
We developed various methods
of digitally reformatting the anamorphic footage to fit within the spherical
frame, continues Churchill. For
example, theres a shot thats presented
as letterboxed 2.40:1, and then a characters fist breaks through the maskedoff area into 1.85. We did a lot of nested
zooms or morph zooms, where we digitally zoom into a plate and then transition to a different plate [of the same
action] shot with a longer lens or from
a closer camera position to create an
This was my first

experience doing
nearly everything
with HD dailies, and
I missed the finer
detail you get
with film.
A realistic approach was taken to early scenes staged on an apartment set, but when Pilgrims band
kicks out the jams, a surreal pullback move extends well past the physical confines of the room, which
production designer Marcus Rowland lengthened to comical proportions. We pulled back on the
Technocrane to what seemed like a football fields distance to the band, notes Pope. We pulled out the
ceiling to accommodate the Technocrane, so a CG ceiling was added later. It was a lot of fun.
52
August 2010
impossibly long zoom in. We did this in

a number of the fight sequences to
create anime-style effects. For a lot of
our work, we generated mattes for the
separate elements in case Bill wanted to
grade, for example, just a face within a
composite.
The filmmakers were able to
screen their first days dailies on 35mm,
but then had to transition to HD dailies
for the rest of the shoot. On my next
production, Id like to print more film
dailies, says Pope. This was my first
experience doing nearly everything
with HD dailies, and I missed the finer
detail you get with film.
Pope carried out the final digital
grade at Company 3 in Santa Monica,
working with colorist Stephen
Girl Trouble
The crew illuminates an elaborate exterior shot.
Nakamura. Edgar and I liked what we

saw as we shot, so most of our work in
the DI was about evening things out,
says the cinematographer. We didnt
54
make any radical shifts. Pope advocates

getting images right in-camera as much
as possible. If somethings going to take
an hour to flag off, you may just have to
shoot, but if its going to take two

minutes, do it, he emphasizes. When
a shot escapes your grasp during
production, it passes through a lot of
hands down the chain and becomes the
bible for additional post work. A good
double net is much better than a power
window, if you can do it.
Asked about achieving consistency across Scott Pilgrims variety of
formats, Pope says, About the only
grading challenge was the Phantom
footage, which tends to be a little low in
color out of the camera. Its easily
addressed by pumping in some chroma
during the grade.
After completing their work,
Wright and Pope expressed great satisfaction with the results. Its a rush to
watch it because the action kicks in and
the magical realism never lets up, says
Wright. I see a lot of big-budget films
and occasionally wonder where the
budget went, so my main concern was
putting all our money on the screen. I
different tiers that dont have much real

interaction, but Edgar made sure every
single person in this cast and crew was
included. I love the crew, love the movie,
love the characters and love the actors,
and I think it shows in the final film.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
35mm and High-Definition
Video
Panaflex XL2; Arri 435ES;
Phantom HD; Beaucam
Panavision and Leica lenses
With each succeeding battle, Scott comes closer to winning Ramonas heart.
hope everyone can see how much TLC

went into this movie.
Edgar created this warmth in
and around the set that suffuses the
.LQR)OR
entire movie, observes Pope. It started

with simple things, like coming in and
exercising with the cast every morning.
Some film sets are usually divided into
Kodak Vision2 500T 5219 and

200T 5217
$/D&DUWH

ZZZNLQRIORFRP 1RUWK+ROO\ZRRG:D\%XUEDQN&$86$YRLFH

55
A Magical
Manhattan
Bojan Bazelli, ASC conjures up

dueling wizards in the Big Apple
for The Sorcerers Apprentice.
By David Heuring
|
56
August 2010
he Sorcerers Apprentice is the latest retelling of an ancient

tale in which supernatural powers threaten to overwhelm
the young would-be wizard who summons them.
Perhaps the best-known antecedent is the synonymous
segment of Disneys animated classic Fantasia, in which
Mickey Mouse filled the title role. The new film reimagines
the story as a live-action adventure-comedy set in modern-day
New York, where fresh-faced Dave Stutler ( Jay Baruchel)
finds himself unwittingly cast as the apprentice to sorcerer
Balthazar Blake (Nicolas Cage).
To bring this vision to the screen, director Jon
Turteltaub teamed with Bojan Bazelli, ASC, whose previous
credits include Hairspray (AC Aug. 07), Mr. & Mrs. Smith
Photos by Robert Zuckerman and Abbot Genser. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Disney Enterprises, Inc., and Jerry Bruckheimer, Inc.
(AC July 05) and The Ring (AC Nov.

02). Bazelli was recommended to
Turteltaub by producer Jerry
Bruckheimer, who had recently worked
with the cinematographer on G-Force.
With a story steeped in magic, Sorcerers
Apprentice required Bazelli to focus on
the magical feeling you perceive
subconsciously as an audience, the
cinematographer offers. The goal was
to engage viewers through characters
they can identify with and a story that
sweeps them along. If we fail at that,
nothing else matters.
Along the way, Bazelli adds, the
filmmakers also wanted to create a
version of New York City thats never
been seen before. Perhaps their most
significant decision in this regard was
choosing to shoot most of the picture
with wide-angle lenses, typically a
12mm, 14mm, 16mm, 18mm or 21mm
Cooke S4 prime. That gives the movie
a certain vibe the perspective is more
dynamic, says Bazelli. We wanted to
Opposite: The sorcerer Balthazar Blake (Nicolas Cage) lends his magical touch to one of the
iconic eagles atop Manhattans Chrysler Building actually a stagebound set lined with a
custom TransLite in The Sorcerers Apprentice. This page: Blake generates rings of fire while
training his apprentice, Dave Stutler (Jay Baruchel).
www.theasc.com
August 2010
57
A Magical Manhattan
Right: Stutler
tinkers in Blakes
practice room.
Below and
opposite:
Cinematographer
Bojan Bazelli,
ASCs lighting for
the practice-room
set included an
array of fixtures
mounted to two
concentric circles
of custom-bent
truss centered
around a cluster
of five space
lights.
capture [production designer] Naomi

Shohans sets, the backgrounds and the
city on a grand scale, and if you want to
emphasize the environment and really
situate your actors in it, wide lenses are
the right choice. We shot most of our
close-ups in the 25mm-to-27mm
range, which is fairly unusual, but the
modern rectilinear lenses dont distort
58
August 2010
faces the way older short lenses can. Jon

had never shot a movie in this style, so it
was a new experience for him, but he
really embraced it.
Equally influential on the films
look was Bazellis decision to shoot the
entire picture on a daylight-balanced
stock, Kodak Vision3 250D 5207, and
light it with tungsten sources. He had
been one of the new stocks earliest

testers and had given Kodak feedback
about how it could be fine-tuned, and
Kodak gave the production 250,000' of
the final product before it even hit the
market. I didnt treat it like a daylight
stock in terms of lighting, says Bazelli,
and that approach was only possible
because we knew we would be finishing
with a digital intermediate. In the DI
suite, we could easily time out the
warmth associated with using a daylight
film stock with tungsten lighting, and
that would have been pretty much
impossible in photochemical timing.
I wanted the images in this
movie to travel from the mid-tones to
black in as many tones and shades as
possible, and 5207 allowed me to create
blacks that are deep in a three-dimensional way, he continues. Youre always
looking for natural ways of softening
the image without heavy diffusion, and
because the 85 filter is incorporated into
5207, the image appears to be softer. It
also holds a great deal of detail in the
highlights, which was crucial for maintaining information and variegation in
www.theasc.com
August 2010
59
Lighting photo (opposite) courtesy of Bojan Bazelli. Diagram courtesy of Bazelli and Tony Nakonechnyj.
A Magical Manhattan
our many shots of explosions and fire.
Once fire overexposes, it loses its color,
and thats very difficult to repair or
restore in post.
During prep, Bazelli found inspiration in Orpheus Descending, a book of
color stills taken by Clayton Burkhart
that depict modern New York City, and
Fantasy Art Now, a book of contemporary illustrations. Im a little obsessed
with what these fantasy illustrators do in
their pictures, says Bazelli. Theyre
very filmic. The photographs in
Burkharts book make use of the citys
many lights and colors, and often play
off of reflections and wet streets. The
colors are strong, and the blacks are
really pure. That fit with our desire to set
this story in contemporary times.
Most of Sorcerers Apprentice was
shot on stages in the New York area,
including Steiner Studios. The remainder was filmed on location throughout
the city. More than 1,200 visual-effects
shots round out the magic with flying
balls of plasma, a fire-breathing dragon,
shape-shifting vehicles and many other
illusions.
The filmmakers chose to frame
the story in 2.40:1, which they achieved
by shooting 4-perf Super 35mm. In
New York City, you need [a more vertical frame] to capture the tall buildings,
but because a majority of our film would
be done in interior situations, we
decided on 2.40:1, which gives you a
grander scale, says Bazelli. The filmmakers shot most of the material with
four cameras; Arri CSC provided
Arricam Lites and Studios and Arri
435s, two sets of Cooke S4 primes, and
a complement of Arri Master Primes
for low-light night situations, for which
they were usually kept wide open. As
many as 16 cameras were used on days
when the first and second units both
had extensive scenes to cover.
Shooting on location in New
York posed a number of challenges. The
filmmakers spent 16 nights filming a
climactic battle sequence in lower
Manhattan, where all of their gear had
to be set up at 7 p.m. and torn down
every morning at dawn. Further compli-
Top: The crew

readies a
flashback scene
in the Arcana
Cabana set.
Middle: Cage
demonstrates
an LED system
used to emulate
the light from a
plasma ball.
Bottom: The
finished visual
effect.
60
August 2010
cating matters, the city experienced 43

consecutive nights of rain during the
summertime shoot. The showers
usually lasted no more than an hour,
but it was enough to make the short
nights even shorter, recalls Bazelli.
Nevertheless, the project was finished
on schedule in 96 days.
In the story, a series of evil sorcerers are locked in a Russian-doll-like
series of containers. Each sorcerer must
be unlocked by the right code and
destroyed before the subsequent
sorcerer can emerge. In the final battle,
filmed in Bowling Green Park in lower
Manhattan, the final sorcerer must be
vanquished. The park itself takes the
shape of a circle, symbolizing the circular code that Dave must crack. The
scene was lit with six 120' Condors
surrounding the center of the park.
Each Condor carried two or three
Nine-light Maxi-Brutes. A fire burned
at the middle of the circle that was
enhanced later using CG techniques. I
like Maxi-Brutes because they are
controllable, cheap to rent and powerful, says Bazelli. You can change the
globe or dim them, and with the narrow
globe they throw light over quite a
distance.
In elaborate scenes like this,
where many important visual elements
will be added later, its important to
keep your lighting as simple as possible
so you can get things done, he adds. It
doesnt always work, but it works more
often than not.
The production also spent six
nights filming in Chinatown, where a
dragon springs to life during a parade
and pursues Dave up a fire escape to a
rooftop. Balthazar intercedes, creating a
curtain of confetti to hide his actions.
Five tons of confetti was blown into the
scenes from rooftop Ritter fans. A 50'
Technocrane on the street, a 30'
Technocrane on the roof, and a 17'
Technocrane on the opposing roof
allowed Bazelli to get any angle in a few
minutes. The scene was lit with 300 red
silk Chinese lanterns; Bazelli chose silk
over paper because he thought the glow
was more interesting, and he was
relieved to find that the silk held up well

in the wet weather.
In one major night scene at the
Chrysler Building, the structures
famous Art Deco eagles come to life
and take wing. To film the action, the
production built the relevant section of
the building onstage at Steiner Studios,
surrounding the set with a huge
TransLite that was lit from behind with
200 Skypans. (A few dozen LED lights
were sprinkled across the material and
controlled to suggest warning lights

atop various buildings and shimmering
city lights in the deep background.) No
existing TransLite captured the correct
view from the Chrysler Building, so the
production ordered a new 160'x35'
backdrop, and Bazelli enjoyed the
opportunity to participate in its
creation. In January 2009, on a day
immediately following a blizzard, the
production captured a 270-degree view
around the Chrysler Building with a
A Magical Manhattan
On location in Manhattan, 2nd-unit cinematographer Patrick Loungway (top, holding camera) prepares
to shoot part of a visual-effects-heavy scene featuring Blakes shape-shifting automobile.
62
August 2010
digital Hasselblad large-format camera,

with each exposure creating a 60megabyte file. The hi-rez photos were
then stitched together into a panorama,
which Bazelli corrected to match the
look of the movie.
When we used the TransLite,
we put a net in front of it to soften the
view a bit more, he adds. It looked
quite realistic. The crew found the
TransLites proper distance from the set
via a decidedly simple technique.
Bazelli explains, On the Chrysler
Building, I had taken a stick and
marked the apparent size of the Empire
State Building. Onstage, I held up the
stick and asked the grips to move the
TransLite back until the size [of the
Empire State Building] matched.
Interactive lighting was a major
concern throughout the shoot, particularly in scenes requiring visual effects.
Its key to making an effect credible,
observes Bazelli. I like to create as
much of the effect as possible in-camera
and then have the visual-effects team
build on that. This approach came to
the fore in a number of scenes wherein
characters hurl glowing spheres of light
called plasma balls. Bazelli and his chief
lighting technician, Tony Nakonechnyj,
devised a cluster of LED fixtures that
the actors could cradle in their hands.
Rubber bands supported the LEDs and
gave the source a floating appearance.
The light was powered by a battery
pack hidden in the actors costume, and
the source could be remotely switched
on and off and dimmed up and down.
We built them from scratch,
says Nakonechnyj. They were basically
tiny, high-output LEDs mounted on
wafers I think there were 18 LEDs
on each wafer. These circular wafers
were fashioned into a pyramid shape
about the size of a golf ball. In that
configuration, the actors could suspend
them between their palms and spread
their fingers. In another configuration,
they could lay wafers flat in the palms of
their hands, each light illuminating the
opposite hand. And we also had a wafer
sphere on a rod that could be moved
through space to depict a thrown
A Magical Manhattan
plasma ball. Bazelli adds, Almost 90
percent of the effect was captured on
set. At its center, the light is overexposed, so you dont really see [the
wafer].
In one key scene, Balthazar
generates six circles of fire inscribed in
a stone floor and circumscribed by a
larger circle 35' in diameter. Each circle
has its own color of flame, created by
the special-effects department and
captured in-camera. You really needed
to see the whole circle because of the
story point, says Bazelli, so we
decided to use an overhead shot looking straight down. A 50' Technocrane
was required to get the camera, fitted
with a 12mm Cooke S4, high enough
to fit the circle within the 2.40 frame.
The camera was almost touching the
65'-high ceiling.
This scene plays out in the practice room, an underground lair where a
number of other scenes occur, including a romantic interlude in which Dave
impresses his date by creating an
impromptu lighting show that is timed
with the girls favorite song. The light
show, which unfolds as the couple
stands inside a protective metal cage,
includes Tesla coils and strobe lights.
Actual Tesla coils and live bolts of electricity were deemed too dangerous, so
these elements were created later using
CGI. But again, Bazelli sold the illusion with interactive lighting incamera.
The underground lair was a set
with a domed ceiling, and the center
piece of the dome was left out so that
Bazelli could light from above. (A CG
center piece was used in wide shots that
showed the section.) The lighting rig
consisted of two concentric rings of
truss custom-bent to fit the hole. Each
circle could be individually raised or
lowered. In the center was a large,
coop-type fixture comprising five 6K
space lights covered with theatrical
canvas rather than muslin. Theatrical
canvas is much thicker than muslin,
and it gives no shadows, notes Bazelli.
The concentric circles held roughly 120
fixtures, including Source Four Pars
Top: Bazelli
employed 300
Chinese lanterns
to illuminate a
nighttime
sequence filmed
on location in
Chinatown.
Middle: In the
sequence, a
dragon comes to
life amidst a
parade. Bottom:
Blake worries
over a magical
container housing
a series of evil
sorcerers.
64
August 2010
A Magical Manhattan
Above: Bazelli
checks the frame
for a shot in the
subway. Right:
Gaffer Tony
Nakonechnyj
(holding light)
and Bcamera/Steadicam
operator Stephen
Consentino
follow Baruchel
and Teresa Palmer
into the subway.
with scrollers, RGB LED Blazes,

Atomic 3000 strobes and 5K Fresnels.
Bazelli adds that the unusual love
scene was shot with a Zeiss Ultra Prime
8R (T2.8) lens as the camera circled the
couple. With the rectilinear lens, the
angle of view is that of a fisheye lens but
the lines are straight, he notes. The
approach was so unconventional that we
also filmed the scene with a more
normal lens. But the 8R shot is the one
in the movie, and it allows you to see the
full scale of that great set.
Footage captured by aerial cinematographer Hans Bjerno helps place
the magical story in modern-day New
York. Spacecam provided the gyrostabilized helicopter mounts, and Bazelli
notes that the company reconfigured its
system to accept an Arri with a PL
66
August 2010
mount so we could use Master Prime

lenses and get the extra stop. Hans got
amazing, beautiful shots of New York at
night; these were shot on [Kodak
Vision3 500T] 5219 because we needed
the speed.
The productions negative was
processed at Deluxe New York, and the
dailies, timed by Sean Dunckley, were
created nearby at Company 3. Bazelli is
a firm believer in establishing a films
look in the dailies. Sitting with the
dailies timer means getting less sleep
during the shoot, but it takes my
worries away, he says. Every morning
before I went to the set, Id stop by
[Company 3] and sit with Sean for as
long as I could. After a while, the
colorist gets to know you and your style,
and it gets easier. All the editing and all
the test screenings and studio screenings

are based on those dailies, so theres
good reason for you to make them as
tidy as possible. People become used to
that look.
I believe strongly that you
cannot create the look in post, the cinematographer continues. In post, I
finish shaping the sculpture. I do use
those tools extensively to take the look
further, but I like to carve the biggest,
deepest cut in the wood at the moment
of photography.
For the final grade, Company 3
scanned the negative at 4K and did the
rest of the work at 2K. Bazelli calls
Company 3 colorist and ASC associate
member Stefan Sonnenfeld the first
eye on the images as they are coming
together. I have great faith in him, and
he deserves great credit, along with the
other people who do this work for me.
The quality of the shot depends on
them as much as it depends on me and
my crew.
At press time, the team was planning to film out to Kodaks new intermediate stock, Vision3 5254, and then
strike release prints on Kodak Vision
2383. 5254 was designed to work with
the latest film recorders, and its Estarbased, which means that each negative
created can be used to make up to 800
prints, says Bazelli. We plan to make
about seven digital negatives on this
new stock, and because of that, we
expect the prints to look great everywhere, not just at the premiere and in a
few major cities.
TECHNICAL SPECS
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Arricam Lite, Studio; Arri 435
Cooke, Arri and Zeiss lenses
Kodak Vision3 250D 5207,
500T 5219
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David Boyd, ASC

reteams with director
and fellow ASC
member Aaron
Schneider on the
nuanced period piece
Get Low.
By Michael Goldman
|
True
Colors
B
y design, strong connective tissue links Get Lows plot

with the story of how the independent feature got made.
Set in Tennessee in 1934, the tale has a vintage feel that
directly influenced the filmmakers and their methods.
Five-plus years of development went into the character study
of an old, mysterious hermit who decides to reveal a shocking,
long-held secret by inviting everyone in town to his funeral
party which he plans to stage while he is still alive. The
nature of the story, combined with the projects resources and
the aesthetic preferences of director and ASC member Aaron
Schneider and his cinematographer, David Boyd, ASC, took
Get Low down a very traditional production path. Schneider,
who made the transition from shooting to directing with the
Academy Award-winning short film Two Soldiers, also shot
by Boyd (AC Feb. 04), says he is overwhelmingly happy with
the result of his labors: a charmingly quixotic tale built almost
68
August 2010
entirely around Duvalls performance, supported by players of

similar caliber, including Bill Murray, Sissy Spacek and Lucas
Black.
Schneider notes that Get Low represents the pinnacle of
an unusual cinematic relationship, in his words, between two
like-minded cinematographers. He and Boyd met when the
latter began operating for Schneider on the pilot for Murder
One almost 15 years ago. We hit it off from the start, and
within days, we were speaking the same visual language,
Schneider recalls. We made it our mission to do feature-quality work on a television schedule, so when it happened that Get
Low shaped up as a $7.5-million movie with a 24-day shooting schedule [on location in Georgia], David was the first
person I thought of. Our history was invaluable.
By placing his creative bond with Boyd at the films
foundation, Schneider was able to pull off a quick but complex
Unit photography by Sam Emerson. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
Opposite: Felix
(Robert Duvall)
and Mattie (Sissy
Spacek), friends
with a
complicated
history, take a
stroll on Felixs
property. This
page: In a scene
set earlier in the
story, Buddy
(Lucas Black), a
funeral-home
employee, stops
in at Felixs home
to discuss the old
mans unusual
funeral plans.
shoot in Georgia, where the productions locations included a Civil War

battlefield deep in a wooded national
park. That approach led them to undertake some of the most complicated
work of their respective careers, such as
shooting an entire feature entirely on
location, with no sets; burning down a
house at twilight and filming it; and
operating on land that had strict restrictions about its use.
To accomplish these objectives,
the filmmakers eschewed most of the
digital luxuries feature films routinely
incorporate these days, relying instead
on in-camera methods and just six
significant visual-effects shots (created
by Furious FX). Aaron and I really
wanted this to be a classical, traditionally mounted film, as masterful as we
could make it, Boyd explains. But at
the same time, we did not want to call
attention to the photography. We
wanted it to have the shades and tones
of old still photos from that era I
would describe them as dry colors. We
started shooting tests in January 2009 to
figure out how wed achieve that.
Through testing, the filmmakers
determined that they would shoot
anamorphic 2.40:1 using Panavisions
C-Series and E-Series prime lenses,

which Boyd describes as old, beautiful
lenses, not too technologically advanced
by todays standards. These lenses were
the workhorses for the great anamorphic films of the Sixties and Seventies.
My first assistant, Lee The Blaster
Visually, it needed
to be accessible,
but it also needed
to feel mythic, like
a fable.
Blasingame, secured particular serial

numbers of the C and E lenses for us.
Schneider and Boyd also decided
to shoot with two Kodak Vision2
stocks, 500T 5218 and 50D 5205, and
do a degree of bleach-bypass processing
on the negative at Deluxe Laboratories
www.theasc.com
in Hollywood to achieve a weathered,

parched look, says Boyd. He and
Schneider had applied a full bleach
bypass to Two Soldiers, a period piece
also set in the South, but they decided
they wanted Get Lows look to be less
extreme. We dedicated ourselves to the
idea that the color palette in Get Low
would be established mainly by what we
put in front of the camera, and then we
would decide what to do with that color
in the photography, says Schneider.
We talked about keeping primary and
satured colors out of the film, and
[costume designer] Julie Weiss and
[production
designer]
Geoffrey
Kirkland, both world-class artists, made
our jobs so much easier.
The movie has the feel of a folk
tale, so visually, it needed to be accessible, but it also needed to feel mythic, like
a fable, the director continues. We also
wanted to create a kind of veil between
the audience and the period without
being too heavy-handed. In consultation with Beverly Wood, an ASC associate member and Deluxes executive
vice president of technical services, the
filmmakers decided a partial bleach
bypass would do the trick. By depriving
the negative of some of the bleach baths,
August 2010
69
True Colors
we shortened the latitude slightly, dried
out the colors and added a hint of
grain, says Boyd. That gave us the
aged quality we knew the image had to
have without stepping out in front of
the story. Schneider adds, We finished
the picture with a digital intermediate at
EFilm, but we knew electronic control
over saturation couldnt compare to
photochemical desaturation. Bleach
bypass changes the film physically and
randomly; its an analog effect that, at
best, can only be simulated with zeroes
and ones. We worked very closely with
EFilm to use the DI as a means to an
analog end.
The production secured permission to shoot in the Picketts Mill
Battlefield State Park, a location that
included a fully restored Civil War-era
cabin that the filmmakers could transform into Bushs home. The nature of
the cabin, inside and out, and other
scenes in and around the woods, as well
as other interior locations, posed major
lighting challenges for Boyd and his
team, particularly because some scenes
appear to be lit almost entirely by firelight, lamplight and even moonlight. In
fact, one key encounter in the film,
between Bush and onetime girlfriend
Mattie Darrow (Spacek), begins as the
fire dies in Bushs fireplace. The characters come back from a long walk
through the woods, and the fire,
set earlier in the day, is dying only
the embers are glowing, explains
Schneider. Then Felix adds a log, and
the fire starts to come back to life over
30 or 40 seconds. Its romantic and intimate, and it even mirrors [the characters] rekindled relationship. David did a
wonderful job capturing the realistic feel
of that on film; he had to cue the light
levels up consistently over multiple
takes. We rehearsed that scene by the
gas-powered flame bar, and from there,
he built exposure with motion-picture
lights, and it all blended seamlessly.
Felix lights an oil lantern after he
adds a log to the fire, and over the
course of this very important scene, the
firelight grows slowly in intensity and
the lantern light provides a rustic, toppy
Top: Director Aaron

Schneider, ASC frames
up the scene for (from
left) 1st AD Eric
Tignini,
cinematographer
David Boyd, ASC, and
1st AC Lee
Blasingame. Right:
Felix and Buddy visit
one of Felixs old
friends, Rev. Charlie
Jackson (Bill Cobbs).
Below: Schneider and
Boyds reflections are
captured as Boyd films
a scene featuring Bill
Murray, who portrays
funeral-home owner
Frank Quinn.
70
August 2010
ambience, says Boyd. For firelight, we

used two units designed and built by
[gaffer] Brian Gunter, each of which
had four individually dimmable globes.
Their shallow design was perfect for our
very small practical location. Handheld
solids and nets extended the range of
these lights to suit the needs of the
scene. I echoed the lantern light with a
Blonde on a dimmer and flickerbox
bounced up into beadboard overhead. It
took nine or 10 hands on switches and
knobs to make it happen each take, but
it works beautifully for the scene. Bobby
and Sissy could easily feel and respond
to the growing light in their own work.
I mixed colors readily on this
film, continues the cinematographer.
In the tungsten realm, I liked MaxiBrutes with Firestarter globes, 1,200watt narrow globes, to make great
daylight of all kinds. In the HMI world,
I loved 12K and 4K Pars and Joker Pars
for hot, spotty sources. I tended to like
pinny sources for this film more than
softer light for locations, and thats why
I didnt use Fresnels very often. I
preferred hot, open-faced lights for the
feel, and then softer units to file off the
edges a little. This movie required a
beautifully rough, unrefined look.
For certain interiors where
rigging possibilities were limited, Boyd
relied on a lightweight overhead grid
designed and built by key grip Billy
Sherrill. This rig was utilized extensively
in the funeral home owned by Frank
Quinn (Murray), where Bush comes to
arrange his funeral party, and other locations. It was gridwork constructed out
of lightweight 58-inch copper pipe that
could easily support nine to 12 China
balls and could be safely and easily
installed in a ceiling, Boyd explains. It
was designed to install and break down
fast; we usually used it in a 4-by-8-foot
configuration. The China balls were on
dimmers, and we skirted off the source
with black Grid Cloth to control spill.
Billy rigged it to various ceilings, many
times using small pulleys so we could
adjust it quickly.
Several lighting challenges
cropped up in the woods, including a
Above: The
crew prepares
to film one of
Felix and
Matties
encounters in
town. Left:
During a cozy
scene in Felixs
cabin, the pair
becomes
reacquainted.
scene early in the film that shows Bush

wrapped in a blanket and stumbling into
the night, carrying a lantern in the pouring rain. Although the scene looks fairly
straightforward, Schneider calls it the
most challenging photography in the
film. Thats because the team had to
design a way for the lantern to flicker
realistically in a driving rain and also
play off Duvalls face in a way that would
be both photographically pleasing and
naturalistic. Boyd built a rig using an old
oil lantern, and hidden from view was a
small bulb activated by a battery hidden
in Duvalls wardrobe. We wanted to see
the flame in the lantern, which meant
wed have to augment its light from a
logical place, says the cinematographer.
www.theasc.com
We also wanted to shoot in a downpour, which meant a low-voltage DC

globe of some sort. We found what we
needed at an auto-parts store and rigged
it up, hiding a small peanut bulb on the
lantern side that wasnt facing the
camera and making a small battery pack
that Bobby could carry. We localized the
rain towers, and I let the background fall
off so that there would only be the warm
glow around his cabin, motivated by the
lighting inside. Bobby wore the battery
in a small satchel on his shoulder
covered by wardrobe.
However, the flickering lamplight
was one of the few practical effects in
the movie that required digital augmentation. Because of the wind and rain,
August 2010
71
True Colors
Frames from the opening scene show (top to bottom): the controlled-burn plate; the downstairs and
windows tiled in and illumination on the foreground tree comped in; the upstairs raging fire tiled in;
and the final comp. By the time he runs by the camera, the background is 100-percent live action,
notes Schneider.
72
August 2010
there was a lot of movement in the practical flame, but the light and exposure on
Bobbys face were static, says Schneider.
So we asked Furious FX to put a traveling matte on his face, similar to what
cinematographers do [in the DI] when
programming power windows to track
brightness on an actors face. Instead of
programming a constant color correction inside the window, we programmed
changes in exposure that were in sync
with the movement of the flame. That
allowed us to simulate the intensity and
flicker of the candlelight digitally. Our
colorist at EFilm, Natasha Leonnet, put
the finishing touches on the composite,
and it turned out great.
A more outlandish sequence to
film practically and piece together digitally was the burning of an old house, a
scene that opens the film and plays an
important role in the story. The initial
challenge, of course, was finding a real
house the production could burn. The
scene was in danger of getting cut from
the schedule for weeks, but we sent location scouts far and wide looking for a
place that would work, Boyd recalls.
We came across a long-abandoned
house halfway through production; it
was out along a two-lane highway that
we could control at night. We put five or
six cameras out there, including a couple
of Eyemos, and one on a dolly track in
the woods that I operated myself.
Basically, we had one crack at it. We
timed it at magic hour, with a small
amount of skylight left when the house
went up, and it was over in about 30
minutes.
To complete the illusion, the filmmakers had to show a man bursting out
of a second-story window, running
across the roof, leaping to the ground
and running into the woods. That
requirement led the team to film the
burning house in two rapid takes.
Schneider explains, We first had a
controlled burn around the edges of the
windows for when [the stuntman] bursts
out and jumps off the roof. Then, we
quickly reset before the sky went dark
and hid a stuntman in a little heat shelter where he had left off in the previous
take. We set the house fully ablaze, and

when the fire reached the right level, we
cued the stuntman to run across the field
toward and past the camera. The intent
was to blend the first shot of the
controlled burn and stunt with the
second shot of the man running away
from a raging fire to make it look like
one seamless shot. As a visual effect, the
shot was composited by tiling different
portions of the controlled-burn element
with other tiles from the raging-fire
element to create a mosaic of blended
elements. For example, if a chunk of roof
falls off four minutes into the burn, you
can blend that with another piece of
action from the first minute, such as the
moment when a neighboring tree
catches fire, and create your own custom
inferno. Since the shot was locked off, it
was almost like compositing a liveaction shot with itself.
Despite the complexity of these
kinds of sequences, however, the biggest
overall challenge was the climactic
funeral-party sequence, where Bush, at
long last, bares his soul to the world.
There is no final confrontation, no big
action sequence, no device to tie it all
together just a long, impassioned
speech. According to Schneider, Duvall
pulled off his soliloquy on the first take.
But covering the sequence to make it
work correctly in the film required
extensive planning. Because of their
limited time and budget, Schneider,
Boyd and 1st AD Eric Tignini storyboarded the sequence and broke it down
according to the number of extras that
would be required for each shot. The
funeral party was shot over three days,
beginning with wide shots featuring a
large number of extras. Gradually, the
number of extras was whittled down,
and on the third day, the filmmakers
were able to focus on Bushs speech and
tighter coverage.
The filmmakers were not allowed
to bring heavy equipment into the area
where they were shooting because the
location was a Civil War memorial. But
Bush and other characters had to stand
on an elevated platform, so Boyd needed
some way to get proper coverage of the
True Colors
matographer, I always tried to be there

for directors when I knew they needed
convincing, and David was there for me
on this one.
Both Schneider and Boyd take
great pains to credit their cast and crew
for helping to make Get Low a reality. If
they credit themselves with anything,
its with maintaining the authenticity of
the era and the story. Cinematography
has to be authentic, especially on a
period piece, says Boyd. You have to
really control what gets into the frame,
whether those details are large or small,
and we did that ruthlessly. We filmmakers were the ones who saw this story
first, before anyone else, and our mission
from the outset was to tell it correctly.
Im happy we did.
Top left: With Blasingame assisting, Boyd films Rev. Jacksons arrival at Felixs big event.
Top right: A Technocrane comes into play for the funeral party. Above: The filmmakers prepare to
capture another angle of the stage as Quinn welcomes the crowd.
proceedings. He arranged to have a

small Technocrane brought in on a
stake-bed truck that could maneuver
quickly over the dirt roads. During the
day, time was of the essence, and we
were not permitted to use a Chapman
crane because of its weight, he recalls.
We needed a movable and easy-toplace camera, so we rigged the
Technocrane on the back of the stakebed truck.
Later, the filmmakers had to
cover Spacek reacting to the speech, a
critical scene shot on an extremely busy
day. We needed to shoot Sissys performance when the sunlight was over the
trees because of the time of day that the
74
August 2010
reverse angle had been shot previously,

Schneider explains. Sissys big moment
had arrived, and it was already pretty
late in the day. I knew she was about to
give the most emotional performance of
the shoot, and I wanted to make sure
she had the time to do what she wanted
to do. I wanted to shoot with about an
hour to go in the day, but David
resisted. He kept saying, No, lets wait.
By the time we lined three cameras up
on her, the sun was starting to tickle the
treetops. But Sissy nailed it and gave us
a beautiful performance, and, like
Bobby, she did it in one take. The tears
rolling down her face caught the low,
warm light, and it was magic. As a cineAmerican Cinematographer
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Anamorphic 35mm
Panaflex Gold II
Panavision lenses
Kodak Vision2 500T 5218, 50D
5205
Bleach Bypass by Deluxe
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The werewolf Alcide (Joe Manganiello) joins Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin, above right)
and vampire Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer, right) for True Bloods third season, which has
transitioned to an all-data-based online/mastering workflow.
True Blood Workflow Becomes File-Based

By Michael Goldman
When the producers of HBOs True Blood told Technicolor

Hollywood they were interested in transitioning to an all-data-based
online/mastering workflow, the Technicolor team suggested that the
hit series could become, in the words of co-producer Bruce Dunn, a
major test case for an all-file-based workflow for an episodic TV
series originating on film. HBO decided to take Technicolor up on the
offer for the current season, the shows third. The challenge, as Technicolor colorist Scott Klein puts it, was how to convert a workflow
and stay creative.
Well into production when they spoke with AC, those
involved say the conversion went off smoothly and has enabled
greater creativity. They suggest that True Bloods overall production
methodology seamlessly weaves a traditional film-acquisition
approach with the latest all-data post techniques. Dunn enthuses
that True Blood can now spread out many fingers from one hand
in the form of easily accessible data once its imagery enters Technicolors SAN, allowing all post units to simultaneously work off the
same core files safely. It gives us incredible flexibility to multitask,
says Dunn. We can do dirt-fixing while were doing assembly, color
correction and visual effects. By going to a tapeless, nonlinear post
workflow, there are huge benefits for picture conforms. Now we can
often make picture changes after we lock the edit.
Using its data-based infrastructure in partnership with its film
76
August 2010
lab, Technicolor handles True Bloods negative processing, dailies,

assembly, color correction, titling, audio mixing, layback and final
mastering. By entering the file-based universe, the team is now able
to have pieces of as many as nine episodes in various stages of
production at Technicolor simultaneously. Currently, only the dailies
process and the delivery of a final master continue to involve tape or
other physical media.
Cinematographers Matthew Jensen, Romeo Tirone and
Steven St. John typically shoot True Blood on Kodak Vision3 250D
5207 and Vision3 500T 5219. (Most of the show is shot in 3-perf
Super 35mm.) The post pipelines engine revs up when the film
comes from stages on the Warner Bros. lot or from locations in
Louisiana; Technicolor develops the film and telecines it on a Spirit 2K
system to HDCam-SR at 4:2:2. Dailies colorist Peter Ritter distributes
two passes of that material: a basic color pass for dailies viewing and
editorial, and a flat pass, which is digitized to Technicolors SAN for
final assembly and final color.
As each episode is cut together, a pull list of shots is created,
and those shots are digitized from the flat pass and assembled by
online editor Ray Miller in an Avid HD Symphony (v. 4.05). From that
point on, everything lives on Technicolors SAN. After an episode is
conformed, colored and approved, an air master is created from
1080p/23.98 fps files and delivered to HBO at 1080i/59.94 on
HDCam-SR tape.
Of course, the transition to the file-based approach did pose
some challenges. For instance, a new approach to dubbing tapes
True Blood photos by John P. Johnson, courtesy of HBO. Technicolor photos by Robert Hoffman, courtesy of Technicolor.
Post Focus
Online editor Ray Miller assembles each episode in an Avid HD Symphony, after which point the
files live on Technicolor Hollywoods SAN.
and DVDs for executives to view had to be

implemented, but Dunn notes that Technicolor resolved the issue of exporting files to
lower-resolution physical media by incorporating the DVC Clipster system into its
pipeline. The production also had to institute new asset-management procedures
and personnel to ensure strict control.
Miller refers to project manager Ashley
Barrett, who heads True Bloods projectmanagement effort, as a data traffic cop
who ensures each version is right before
we start dubs. She makes sure everyone
understands the [file-naming] nomenclature and the protocols for knowing who is
working on what.
On Millers end, the show is assembled entirely in the Avid world, making the
transfer of assets more straightforward.
From the editorial department at the
productions headquarters at The Lot in
Hollywood, we dont have to go through
any translation process, says Miller.
Effects, resizes, time warps, speed
changes they all come across as we see
them in the offline. The actual Avid bin
with the Avid sequence comes over from
editorial, and once we ingest all of that, the
entire show lives on our SAN from that
point forward, which is a huge plus. We
start in Avid, stay in Avid and use the actual
Avid sequence, so all metadata is built in
and no longer has to be translated.
In another change, Klein now uses
Autodesks Lustre 2010, a software-based
color-correction tool, which initially
required the colorist to acclimate to the
real-world difference of a slower-speed

non-hardware system, he says. However,
the learning curve was only temporary, and
Klein insists the new workflow has allowed
him to take full advantage of Lustres
strengths. There are some really great,
easy tools in Lustre for quickly breaking
away sections of the grayscale, isolations,
tracking and shape creation to achieve
great results for the mood of the show, he
says.
Because the shows vampires have
existed for hundreds of years, there are
flashbacks that have extremely customized
looks, Klein continues. Lustre allows me
to highlight the grain for flashbacks and
amplify certain parts of the contrast, or
build the signal in such a way as to show
more grain.
According to Jensen, the new workflow is also benefitting the cinematography
team. In a linear system, you typically deal
with your highlights, mid-tones and shadows and adjust those values to change the
contrast of your image or the saturation
levels, he explains. But in this new
system, within the highlights, for example,
we now have access to the complete gray
scale, meaning we can do much subtler
contrast changes and color combinations.
We have so many effects [about
40-80 shots per episode], and so many of
those shots are delivered long after I am
deep into color correction, Jensen continues. Now, those shots can just be plugged
in, and I dont have to go back to the lab
to work out the color the system
www.theasc.com
77
As part of the
new True Blood
workflow,
colorist Scott
Klein uses
Autodesks
software-based
Lustre 2010 for
color correction.
remembers the color values I set. Thats a

huge advantage.
Klein suggests that there is a farreaching advantage for True Blood in
making the post switch now, at a time
when much of the industry is more directly
focused on switching front ends from film
to digital acquisition. This is the workflow
of the future, he says. As resolution
requirements increase, the way were
making this show will allow us to work on
[episodes] in 2K resolution later on. Well be
ready for it when the call comes.
Although the dailies and delivery
processes still involve tape, Dunn believes
they will see an all-data conversion in the
very near future. I imagine that by next
year, well be fully tapeless, outputting
[dailies] to whatever media is preferred [for
viewing], he says. Id say we are just
months away from saying goodbye to
tape.
Post News
MTI Film Automates Hollywood
Facility with ContentAgent
MTI Film, a provider of high-quality
image-processing tools to the broadcast
and postproduction markets, is expanding
both its business and its physical footprint.
The company recently moved into a new
facility in Hollywood, through which it now
offers television post services.
MTI selected Root6 Technologys
ContentAgent software to streamline the
digital-deliverables workflow at the new
facility. MTI CEO Larry Chernoff enthuses,
ContentAgent not only gives us the work78
August 2010
flow tools, but thanks to its enhanced metadata controls, it allows for an extended level
of automation. ContentAgent incorporates
expansive metadata organizational tools,
enabling metadata to play a key role in
defining and directing workflows. With
budgets constantly shrinking, MTI views
automation as the only way to manage any
volume of file-based deliverables. John
Stevens, CTO of MTI, notes, ContentAgent
gives us all the deliverables within one box
with a fantastic user interface.
Chernoff adds, MTI Film seeks to
become a unique company that embraces all
sides of the postproduction customer spectrum. Through our services facility and
continued research and development for
film restoration and workflows for digital
acquisition, we will be uniquely positioned to
improve industry standards, which we will
share with both our service and technology
customers. We endeavor to partner with
other technology companies like Root6 who
share similar values of cooperation that result
in improving our industry at a time when
change is rampant and postproduction
requires new standards of workflow.
For additional information, visit
www.mtifilm.com and www.root6technol
ogy.com.
Cinesite Expands with Nuke
Visual-effects company Cinesite has
heavily expanded its compositing department by investing in a site license of The
Foundrys Nuke compositing software,
allowing the facility to host a significant
number of additional seats for its visualeffects artists.
The investment is part of an overall

strategy by the company to double in size by
late 2011; the strategy was devised following the commission of such projects as Harry
Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, John
Carter of Mars, The Chronicles of Narnia:
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and Battle:
Los Angeles. As a result of the high
demand for our services, we evaluated the
number of licenses for all the software tools
we use, says Antony Hunt, managing
director of Cinesite. Nuke is a powerful
compositing tool and weve been using it in
our pipeline for over 6 years. By expanding
our seats, were able to work faster and
more efficiently turn around our clients
projects.
Bill Collis, CEO of The Foundry, adds,
Were delighted that Cinesite has invested
in a site license and has chosen Nuke as its
primary compositing tool. The company
works on extremely creative projects and
their talented artists showcase to the fullest
what our tools can do.
www.cinesite.com and www.thefoun
dry.co.uk.
Pro8mm Adds 4:4:4 Workflows
Burbank, Calif.-based Pro8mm has
introduced two popular 4:4:4 workflows,
allowing customers who originate on Super
8mm, 8mm, 16mm or Super 16mm film to
post their projects in 444 RGB 10-bit
uncompressed and 4444 ProRes.
The original film is scanned with
Pro8mms 4K Millennium II scanner and
encoded directly to the facilitys 8TB SAN
system; customers can walk out of a
telecine session with the files in hand and
ready for editing. Pro8mms SAN also
supports the playback of various data file
formats to tape for clients who need to
migrate from file to tape.
Since implementing the SAN system
and file-based workflow, Pro8mm has experienced such an increase in efficiency that
the company has lowered the prices of
certain workflows and eliminated docking
charges. For pricing and additional information, visit www.pro8mm.com.
New StudentFilmmakers.com NYC Studio

Fall Season Hands-On Workshops
1123 Broadway #307, New York, New York, 10010
INTENSIVE FILMMAKING WORKSHOPS
3D Digital Filmmaking Documentary HDSLR Cameras
16mm 35mm HD RED One Filmmaking Film Production
Screenwriting Directing Acting for Film Digital Editing
Music Video Broadcast Journalism Photography
Cinematography Image Control Film Business
Producing Distribution And More
Call for Workshop Instructors

We invite filmmakers, cinematographers, directors,
editors, sound engineers, producers, and screenwriters to submit a syllabus and brief biography for
consideration. Reach us at:
http://www.studentfilmmakers.com/contact.shtml
Never S
Neve
Stop Learning,
Never Stop Networking.
Filmmakers Forum
I
Consider Red Another Paint in Your Palette

By Steven Fierberg, ASC
I recently found myself in a situation that says a lot about

cinematography today. Over the course of a few weeks, I was doing
postproduction on two features at three different facilities, working
with a mix of digital and film technologies. I color-corrected Twelve,
which I captured on the Red One, in Technicolors DI suite in New
York, and then flew to Los Angeles to adjust the answer print at
Technicolor Hollywood; then, while in L.A., I went to EFilm to colorcorrect the digital P3 preview master of Love and Other Drugs,
which I shot on 35mm. It was a blur of color spaces and formats,
and the collective experience taught me a few things about the Red
that could serve as an interesting postscript to Chris Probsts excellent recent article (Working with the Red,
AC Feb. 10). Specifically, I learned some
things that might be helpful to you if youre
shooting with the Red with a goal of cinema
projection.
Twelve was actually my second feature
with the Red. My first, Alex Coxs Repo Chick,
was shot entirely against greenscreen on a
single soundstage, and I was very happy with
how it turned out. I was able to choose our
camera a rare opportunity and I chose
the Red because Id seen tests and knew it
was exceptionally well suited to greenscreen
work. It did not disappoint; I liked the color,
and the fact that the image felt more film-like
than other digital imagery. But I did encounter
some of the issues that Mr. Probst and other
film-trained people have found frustrating. Minor irritants, or
teething problems, included the somewhat nave placement of
buttons that could be too easily pushed by mistake, and a batteryattachment system that frequently failed, causing surprise powerdowns that required a two-minute reboot of the camera. (We ultimately worked around this by using traditional batteries and a
cable.)
A more innate issue, which the Red shares with other full
frame digital cameras, was the surprising lack of depth of field,
which made focus harder than with 35mm. Subjects popped
sharply in and out of focus, with no smooth transition. Because digital sensors have a fixed array of uniform pixels, the circle of confusion jumps from one row of pixels to the next; film, on the other
hand, has randomly placed, variably sized microscopic grains, resulting in a smooth, gradual focus transition. To mitigate the focus difficulty, we increased the light level; if I shot masters at f2.8, I sometimes shot tight close-ups at f4.
We also collaborated with an excellent makeup team to foil

the Reds proclivity to reveal every blemish and flaw on an actress
face, even nascent blackheads lurking just below the skin. Its important to use full base makeup with extremely soft light. In order to
avoid a harsh, crispy look, we bounced off 12'x12' muslins or
projected through Full Grid Cloth. We used only subtle diffusion
filters (18 or Schneider Classic Soft) because the Red image is not
that sharp when enlarged to cinema size. (I test this by looking at
an actor in a cowboy shot or a head-to-toe to see how much of
their eyes I see; all cameras look sharp in a close-up.) The on-set
monitor can be misleading; its only 720p, and although its useful
for previewing contrast (using rec 709) and might keep you from
adding that last, unnecessary fill light, using it to make guesses
about ultimate sharpness and filter strength is treacherous. You
have to see tests at full cinema resolution and
scale and remember how they looked.
I kept my light meter set to 200 ISO. As
the astute AC reader may know, shooting
200 ISO at f4 with bounce light or through
Full Grid takes a lot of light. Because we were
on a stage, this was quite doable with Ninelights or 20Ks, but it would have been harder
to accomplish with smaller lights on location.
The next film I did with the Red would be
a different challenge altogether. I was very
excited to work with Joel Schumacher on the
dark drama Twelve, which follows ultrawealthy youths from Manhattans Upper East
Side who are making that uneasy transition
from high school to college or, for some, to
the cold night streets. Joel had directed many
studio films, but this one was on a tight budget and had to be shot
in 23 days. I knew I could save time by using my beloved Angenieux
Optimos, the 15-40mm, the 28-76mm, and the magnificent 24280mm. For when we really needed the f-stop, we carried a few
Zeiss Superspeeds, which were not only cheap to rent, but also
tested extremely well with the Red. Like most digital cameras, the
Red craves contrast more than absolute resolution (read about
Nyquist sampling if you want to know why), so Superspeeds are, in
some ways, a better match for the camera than Cooke S4s. (This did
not turn out to be true with the Reds new chip, the Mysterium-X,
which I used on the romantic comedy The Oranges. More on that
later.)
On Twelve, as with many projects today, the Red was
presented to me as a fait accompli. Why not? It was advertised as
lightweight, small and sensitive to light, so shooting night exteriors
on Manhattan streets should be easier than with film. Of course, I
knew that with the same lenses and accessories, the Red was no
You have to
see tests at full
cinema resolution
and scale and
remember how
they looked.
80
August 2010
smaller than an Arricam LT, and at ASA

200, with less dynamic range than film, it
was actually far less suited for street filming. But it was too late now!
How did I know the Red was really
only 200 ISO rather than the official 320
ISO? In my careful preproduction testing, I
lit three stand-ins an Asian, an AfricanAmerican and a Caucasian blonde with
direct frontlight at ASA 160 at f2.8. I then
opened up the lens 2 stops, to f1.4, to see
the result at 2 stops overexposed, and then
stopped down to f5.6 to see how they
looked 2 stops down. I wasnt planning to
light everyone to key, and wanted to see
how people would look if they walked into
shadow areas or, say, close to a bright
window. (In my mind, the true ISO of a
camera or film stock is in the middle of the
linear part of the gamma curve.) I then set
the camera and lighting to ASA 200 and
repeated the sequence, and so on up to
ASA 500.
Then I reviewed the results. One
thing to be careful of with the Red is that
most experts, including DITs, only see tests
or dailies projected at HD resolution, and
they make conclusions about the cameras
capabilities based on that limited evidence.
If you are going out to film, it is essential to
do a filmout test or see the tests/dailies in a
tested DI suite, in a DPX file, at 2K resolution or higher. When I viewed my test
footage projected at 1080p HD, the
camera appeared to have excellent speed,
perhaps even exceeding 320 ISO, and if I
were aiming for an HD finish, I could rate it
at that speed. But when I saw the results at
full film resolution, all kinds of noise
showed up in the shadows where there
had previously been detail. At 400 ISO, the
Asian and African-American stand-ins
virtually disappeared when they were 2
stops underexposed. A professional-looking result at 320 ISO would have required
crushing the shadows, thereby adding
contrast. But Twelve wasnt the stark world
of District 9 I wanted our film to have a
smooth, lush look. Thus, I settled on 200 as
the fastest usable speed.
To get a fighting chance for decent
exposure, we took advantage of a feature
that film cameras dont have, opening the
shutter to 270 or even 360 degrees. I had
to carefully evaluate when the motion in
the shot would allow this without blurring

peoples heads into a creepy zombie effect,
but the technique came in handy again
and again. By using the shutter, working
with Superspeeds (and my excellent 1st
AC, Rob Koch), picking locations with
enough available light, and occasionally
ganging up 4x4 Kino Flos, I achieved very
satisfying results in the answer print, check
print, video master and DCP.
On Julian Farinos The Oranges, I
used the Red One with the new
Mysterium-X chip, which lived up to its
name even now, after finishing the film,
I dont know what the chips speed is. I
played it safe by exposing at 320 for day
scenes, 400 for night interiors, and 500 for
night exteriors. Its possible the chip is much
faster than that, but I couldnt be sure, and
I didnt want to come up short six months
down the line when finishing the film.
Why dont I know? Because in the
post workflow recommended by Red, you
color-correct the native Red files using
either Scratch or Red Cine, and after youve
set the look, you convert the file to DPX for
output to an Arrilaser for film printing.
Thus, the entire color space, resolution and
film format are changed after youve timed
it. When correcting my tests in a Red DI
suite, it seemed the camera had enormous
latitude and speed even 2,000 ISO
looked okay but when we looked at a
filmout at 800 ISO, the print was unusable:
no contrast, milky blacks, and so on. This
problem might have been teething
issues in the new DI suite, and it might
not have arisen if we werent making film
prints, but we were, and I couldnt trust
what I was seeing in the digital projection.
I went back to Tim Stipan, my excellent colorist at Technicolor New York, to
use the traditional DI workflow: first
converting the file to DPX and then timing
it, so that the file sent to the Arrilaser was
the same one wed been color correcting.
This is the workflow we used on Twelve,
and there had been no significant difference between the digital file and the
answer print. (Thats a tribute to both the
state of the art and the fine workmanship
at Technicolor.) However, The Oranges was
one of the first projects to shoot with the
Mysterium-X, and the software to convert
the Red file to DPX wasnt even Beta softwww.theasc.com
ware, but Alpha, and it was changing every

week. So I played it safe with the speeds I
chose. However, Im certain the Mysterium-X
is significantly faster and has more latitude
than the old chip. Its greater sharpness
requires less contrast, and this led me to
choose Cooke S4s for The Oranges,
because we wanted a silky and flattering
look.
I wanted a similar look for the
romantic comedy I shot just prior to The
Oranges, Ed Zwicks Love and Other Drugs.
Ed and I chose to shoot on film, and having
just finished the DI, I can say that Kodak
Vision3 200T 5217 put a lot of rich color in
Anne Hathaways skin that I doubt would
be there in a Red file. The Red, especially
with the original chip, tends toward more
contrast and less differentiated skin tones
that look yellower in tungsten light. (I dont
believe an in-camera filter changes this, and
besides, who can afford the stop loss?) Of
course, that can be exactly what you want
for certain films.
Is the Red better than film? Of
course not. Is acrylic better than oil
paint? No, its just different. On a film
project, we typically spend time testing
emulsions, filters, processing, contrast ratios
and so on, so how can we say that a digital
camera looks like film? Which film stock?
With what lenses? For that matter, why try
to make it look like film? If you want the
taste of an apple, dont try to make an
orange taste like one. Just eat the apple.
You may find that the Red image has
a lot of what you like about film, and
maybe something of its own, too. And the
Red Epic may well be a leap forward. If you
choose the Red, I hope its for the same
reason that Hockney and countless other
painters have chosen acrylic or house paint
rather than oil: because it helps you achieve
the look you want for your particular
project. Think of the Red as another
paint in your palette. Just dont pretend
it looks the same as the one next to it.
August 2010
81
New Products & Services

Universal Studios Reopens
New York Street
Universal Studios has opened
four acres of newly rebuilt New York
Street backlot locations. A fixture in
Hollywood for decades, New York
Street (which comprises 13 city blocks
of buildings) has been the setting of
countless commercials, television
shows and feature films, including To
Kill A Mockingbird, The Sting, The
Blues Brothers and Back to the Future.
The shooting location burned in an
accidental fire on June 1, 2008; the
rebuilt site offers a wealth of creative
opportunities for film and television
production and an exciting behindthe-scenes look at Hollywood
moviemaking for Universal Studios
Hollywood theme-park guests.
Immediately following the fire,
Jim Watters, president and general
manager of NBC Universal Operations Group, and Dave Beanes,
senior vice-president of NBC Universal Production Services, began
assembling a creative team to design the new street. Steven Spielberg offered his support, and he contacted production designer Rick
Carter to be a part of the process. Carter collaborated with art director Beala Neel on the initial design concepts and scope of the rebuild,
and Neel headed the team of production designers and graphic
artists, which eventually expanded to a staff of 25.
Based on his own production experience and feedback from
filmmakers, Beanes helped guide the core design team. They decided
to keep the original east-west main street and add new locations,
including a modern New York block with a glass-and-steel look, Paris
Square, London Square and Central Park. The overall design concentrated on detail work that would cater to modern filmmaking needs.
The faade heights have been increased 10' to 25' for an average
height of 40' to 50', providing a realistic urban downtown feel. The
new faades also feature unobstructed interior shooting spaces that
can be built out, allowing productions to shoot interiors without
returning to a soundstage. The width of the main street was
narrowed so the camera could capture both sides of the street in the
same shot, and long vista shots through archways are now possible,
giving added depth to scenes.
For chase sequences, cameras can be positioned on the reinforced faade roofs or mounted on a crane to follow the action. The
fire escapes are practical and built for use with actors and stunt
82
August 2010
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.
people. The new Courthouse Square

has a fire station large enough to
hold a full-sized fire truck, and next
door to the fire station is a modular
gas station that can be dismantled
and stored according to a productions needs. As an added touch of
realism, the manhole covers can emit
special-effects steam, and London
Square has chimneys rigged for
special-effects smoke.
Universal Studios partnered
with the Los Angeles County Fire and
Building & Safety departments to
create new guidelines for fire safety
in the innovative faades, which now
incorporate fully automatic sprinkler
systems, a central fire-alarm system,
built-in fire separation areas and a
separate water supply infrastructure
for the hydrants and sprinkler
systems.
This is a proud day for Universal Studios, enthuses Ron
Meyer, president and COO of Universal Studios. The opening of
New York Street shows the companys commitment to film and
television production in Los Angeles and to supporting filmmakers
worldwide.
For additional information, visit www.filmmakersdestina
tion.com.
EUE/Screen Gems Unveils Atlanta Studio
Complementing its facilities in New York and North Carolina,
EUE/Screen Gems has opened a studio complex with multiple
stages and support services minutes away from the Atlanta, Ga.,
airport.
EUE/Screen Gems is undertaking a $6 million renovation of
the property, located in the former Lakewood Fairgrounds site. The
city of Atlanta agreed to the lease agreement in May, and one of
four stages was already fully functional and in use by June. At press
time, EUE Screen Gems planned to have four other buildings on the
property completely updated by August. The existing buildings offer
four stages ranging from 10,000 square feet to 35,000 square feet,
plus more than 50,000 square feet for lighting and grip, mill shops
and support services.
In addition to updating the existing structures, EUE/Screen
Gems plans to construct a new 37,500-square-foot soundstage to
be ready in March 2011. Current plans for the stage include a
mobile, soundproofed wall that can also

split the space into two smaller stages if
necessary.
Producers, directors and studios
came to us and asked us to go into
Atlanta, says Chris Cooney, chief operating officer and co-owner of EUE/Screen
Gems. We chose this site so that producers and directors can book with us immediately. The need is here, and were here.
Through our properties in New
York City, Wilmington and now Atlanta, we
provide coastal, rural and urban settings to
our clients, as well as size and infrastructure
needed to handle intensive special effects
for film, commercial and gaming, Cooney
continues. This urban location expands
our portfolio in a powerful way. The
company was also drawn to Georgias 30percent tax incentive for qualified production and postproduction expenditures. The
credit is available not only to traditional
motion-picture projects such as features,
series, commercials and music videos, but
also to industries such as game development and animation.
www.euescreengems.com
and
www.screengemsstudios.com.
VES Announces Production
Summit 2010
The Visual Effects Society will hold its
second annual Production Summit for the
greater entertainment industry on Oct. 23
at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Marina del Rey,
Calif. Production Summit 2010: Navigating Tomorrows Business Models will bring
together professionals from all sectors of
the entertainment community for a day of

conversation and collaboration, with a
focus on how to thrive in a rapidly changing
global economic and technological entertainment environment.
Our inaugural summit, held last
October, proved to be an amazing success
by offering a great opportunity to bring
together leading creatives for a wide-ranging discussion covering the gamut from
previs to building worldwide pipelines,
says Eric Roth, executive director of the VES.
Because industry changes come so rapidly
and will likely continue to do so, we decided
that bringing key industry stakeholders
together annually would be beneficial to
everyone.
This years summit will include directors, producers, cinematographers, editors,
technologists and visual-effects artists internationally acknowledged for their innovative thinking and responsibility for moving
the industry into the next decade. Attendees will be encouraged to not only think
outside the box, but also to reinvent the
business models of tomorrow that will
guide the future of the entertainment
industry as its technologies, financial challenges, shrinking schedules, globalization
and proliferating distribution platforms
continue to evolve.
It is of the utmost importance that
we focus the entire industry on our collective future, says VES Board Chair Jeffrey A.
Okun. It is time to work together to ensure
that we, as a community, will be here to
inform, create and operate within this new
future. Now is the time to understand
where it is going, to stop thinking of what
we used to do, and to look forward and

explore how to do it now, well and profitably.
www.visualeffectssociety.com/productionsummit-2010.
Sharp Focus from Redrock Micro
Redrock Micro has introduced the
MicroRemote Focus System, an affordable,
high-performance, wireless/wired focuscontrol system designed for use with any
camera.
Designed for professionals and

amateurs alike, the system includes a wireless/wired controller, a base station/receiver,
motors and a range finder. The controller
features an iPhone/iPod Touch interface for
graphic display of focus information to aid
precise focusing. The system is compatible
with both still photo and cine lenses, and it
Kodak Expands Vision3 Line
Kodak has added two films to its
Vision3 family of motion-picture products:
Vision3 200T 5213/7213, a medium-speed
color-negative camera film, and Vision3
Color Digital Intermediate Film 5254/2254.
5213/7213 features extended latitude, enabling cinematographers
to record more details in highlights,
and delivers finer grain for naturallooking images in the darkest
areas. The emulsion is designed for
shooting in both controlled interiors and challenging high-contrast
exteriors, and is available in all
formats (65mm, 35mm, Super
16mm and Super 8mm).
ASC President Michael Goi,
who had the opportunity to test
5213, notes that the stock is a
significant improvement over the
already excellent Vision2 5217. Reds in skin
tones have a noticeably more natural
balance, and I felt I could almost touch the
high-resolution results in texture. M. David
84
August 2010
can be used with third-party motors or with

Redrock Torque motors. The MicroRemote
also boasts modular functionality, allowing
additional components to extend the
system for multiple motors, multiple
cameras and more.
The handheld controller features
2.4ghz production-quality wireless radio,
with the option for a tethered connection
via an integrated connection port. The
controller also boasts an integrated
rechargeable battery that concurrently
powers an attached iPhone/iPod Touch,
plus a D-tap power connection. The
ergonomic design fits comfortably in the
users hand, and the controller accommodates both left- and right-hand orientations. The system can be used to control
focus, zoom and iris settings, and the
controller also offers users camera
start/stop functionality.
The MicroRemote iPhone/iPod
Touch software, which requires an iPhone
or iPod Touch running OS 3.0 or later, offers
real-time graphic and numeric display of
focus distance and focus scale as well as
real-time display of the MicroTape sonar
range finder distance. The visual display
Mullen, ASC, who also tested the stock,
adds, This new film has an even finer grain
structure with deeper black tones and richer
color saturation, especially in the reds and
flesh tones. The images were slightly sharper
and more consistent in overexposed
areas. The white tones were cleaner after
the film was scanned and converted to digital files. There is also a tighter grain structure
especially when it is used for daylight
exterior scenes.
also shows depth-of-field information

based on the lens and settings, plus an
auto focus setting enabling the MicroTape to directly control focus.
The MicroTape real-time range
finder offers accurate distance-to-subject
display with a 25' range. The metric or
imperial distance scale appears on both
sides of the MicroTape in high-contrast
blue. The MicroTape can be used on its own
or in conjunction with the wireless remote,
and it is configurable for use off-camera.
Supporting both wireless and wired
control of the motors, the MicroRemote
base station enables both automatic and
manual lens calibration and incorporates a
universal power port. Additionally, a wired
finger controller offers precision singlefinger focus adjustment with smooth rotary
operation, and it easily attaches to a handgrip for ENG-style operation.
www.redrockmicro.com.
5254/2254 is designed for use with
contemporary film recorders. The imaging
characteristics of this new intermediate film
enhance the speed and efficiency of DI postproduction while rendering noticeably
sharper images that more faithfully represent the intentions of filmmakers. The film
provides an improved bridge
between Kodak negative films and
Kodak print films.
These new Vision3 films are
the tangible results of our ongoing
commitment to filmmakers, says
Kim Snyder, vice president of the
Eastman Kodak Company and
president of the Entertainment
Imaging Division. They were
designed based on our customers
suggestions and with the goal of
increasing creative freedom and
efficiencies in production and postproduction.
www.kodak.com/go/motion.
New
Tyler Offers MiniGyro
After three years of design, development and testing, Tyler Camera Systems has
unveiled the MiniGyro camera-stabilizing
mount. The handheld MiniGyro supports
and stabilizes cameras weighing up to 30
pounds.
Weighing 21 pounds, the Tyler MiniGyro can be assembled or disassembled in
under a minute. The stabilizer boasts variable-position handles, a quick-release
mounting plate and an adjustable tilt head
for shooting up or down. Additionally, a
uniquely designed progressive shock tube
eliminates vibration while supporting the
MiniGyro and camera.
Designed to work in cramped quarters, the MiniGyro is ideal for shooting in
helicopters, planes, cars, trucks, motorcycles
and boats. A standard 28 to 30 VDC
camera battery powers four brute gyro
wheels and the electronics. The MiniGyro
system fits into one custom 22-pound carrying case measuring 19"x23"x12" with a
total shipping weight of 43 pounds.
www.tylerminigyro.com.
AJA Upgrades Ki Pro Firmware
AJA Video Systems has announced
the availability of version 2.0 firmware for
the Ki Pro portable digital-video recording
device. Ki Pro 2.0 includes RS-422 device
control, support for eight-channel embedded audio and support for gang recording
with multiple Ki Pro units via the Web interface.
The Ki Pro is a portable, rugged,
tapeless video-recording device that records
high-quality Apple ProRes 422 QuickTime
longer:
8,26 m / 22 ft
lighter:
79 kg / 174 lbs
faster:
1,5 m/s / 5 ft/s
camera max.: 13 kg / 30lbs
buy at:
www.technocrane.com
starting from 78.000
Ditto Scanner Evolves

Cintel International has introduced
the Ditto Evolution 2K/4K film scanner and
ImageMill2 image-processing platform.
Building on the successful elements
of the Ditto scanner including excellent
image performance, an easy-to-use interface and the D/SCOP Dust/Scratch Concealment Option the Ditto Evolution offers a
modular and upgradeable solution to film
scanning. The Ditto Evolution provides fast
shuttle capability, a non-pin registration
mode for archive scanning, ImageMill2
processing tools and 3.2D density range.
Ditto Evolution is the first film scanner to be instantly switchable from pin registration to non-pin registration and also the
first film scanner to include film grain
management and image stabilization tools,
says Simon Carter, sales director for Cintel.
It is the ideal film scanner for all applications and stock types, from OCN ingest for
files onto computer-friendly media. Featuring SD/HD-SDI, HDMI and analog inputs,
the Ki Pro enables users to interface with
virtually any type of camera or video source
they may own or rent. Intuitive to operate,
the Ki Pros familiar VTR-like buttons provide
immediate controls for basic operation, and
from a distance, users can control the Ki Pro
with a laptop or iPhone Web browser via
86
August 2010
digital intermediates to dense print for

restoration projects. Simon Clark, Cintels
business development manager, adds,
Ditto Evolution offers solutions to all filmscanning needs. It can evolve from a simpleto-use calibrated pin-registration scanner for
digital-intermediate use with superb image
quality to a multi-format, non-pin-registration machine for shrunken and damaged
film incorporating a full set of image-restoration tools.
The ImageMill2 image-processing
platform adds network capabilities and data
file management to the existing ImageMill
feature set. Carter notes, ImageMill2 will
address the industrys need for a fast yet

simple-to-use noise and grain management
tool for both data-centric digital-intermediate applications and restoration projects
within one product. With speeds in excess of
25 fps for 2K and HD files, the performance
of ImageMill2 is unequalled. We are
currently processing 4K files at 10 fps and
can also deal with SD files at twice real time.
With ImageMill2 you can truly eliminate the
wait.
www.cintel.co.uk.
Ethernet or wireless connection. Additionally, AJA has collaborated with Avid to

ensure that, via Avid Media Access (AMA)
plug-in architecture, the Ki Pros ProRes
QuickTime files are directly compatible with
Avid Media Composer and Symphony
systems, allowing users to view, edit and
play back the files with access to all clip
metadata.
Since Ki Pro delivers pristine 10-bit
4:2:2 image quality, many of our customers
have been turning to it as a practical, cost
effective alternative to a VTR on set, in the
studio and in mobile production environments, says Nick Rashby, president of AJA
Video Systems. Now with RS-422 device
control, Ki Pro can interface to even more
devices and workflows via industry standard
machine control protocols.

Ki Pro version 2.0 firmware is available as a free software download to all Ki
Pro customers. For more information, visit
www.aja.com.
Lightcraft, Mo-Sys Forge
Agreement
Lightcraft Technology and Mo-Sys,
who have independently developed affordable solutions to simplify the tracking and
visualization of complex visual-effects shots,
have announced they will combine their
product offerings in order to provide a full
range of virtual-production tools for the
entertainment industry. The companies
have entered into a joint distribution agreement to sell each others products as well as
their own in their respective regions,
thereby supplying their customers with a
single source for complete optical and
encoded tracking and on-set visualization
systems.
Lightcraft Technology builds the
Previzion virtual studio system, which
combines real-time photorealistic 3-D
rendering, keying, lens tracking, compositing, metadata recording and camera tracking; the camera tracking works with either
the inertial/optical combination of Lightcrafts Airtrack precision gyro and Intersenses IS1200, or with Mo-Sys encoded
camera supports. Among Mo-Sys offerings
is the 3D Inserter, offering fast and flexible
live previsualization and data logging of
camera moves on a virtual set. In addition
to its own products, Mo-Sys will now
distribute Lightcrafts Previzion system in
Europe, while Lightcraft will distribute MoSys 3D Inserter, Motion Logger and full
range of encoded camera heads and cranes
in the Americas.
Eliot Mack, CEO of Lightcraft Technology, notes, It is rare to find a company
to work with that has Mo-Sys combination
of technical expertise, vision and innovation. We are excited about the potential
that this relationship will provide us and our
customers as we expand the use of virtual
production tools worldwide. Michael
Geissler, CEO of Mo-Sys, adds, We are
impressed with the competence and innovative spirit at Lightcraft. The collaboration
brings together a unique and powerful
complimentary chain of tools for next-
generation filmmaking and ensures both stay

at the forefront of developments to come.
www.lightcrafttech.com and www.mosys.com.
3cP Guides Images on Set, in Post
Gamma & Density has announced
that its 3cP on-set color-correction system for
cinematographers has been extended for use
during the pre-post and post phases of a
production. The enhanced 3cP Set + Post
system allows for even more creative freedom
for contemporary image makers while maintaining the predictable, consistent results 3cP
has become known for.
3cP Set + Post includes a variety of
new and improved tools for data management, color correction and previsualization.
When used in conjunction with Blackmagic
Designs HDLinkPro, the software-based
system allows cinematographers and digitalimaging technicians to color-correct a live HDSDI stream in real time. Furthermore, colorcorrected dailies created by 3cP Set + Post can
be targeted for viewing on such devices as
iPads and iPhones and can be produced in
Apple ProRes and Avid formats.
3cP Set + Post also adds the ability to
work with Reds Mysterium-X sensor, accessing and decoding the data directly from its
raw format to ensure the highest quality
imagery. To further aid this task, Gamma &
Density has added Red Mysterium-X tungsten and daylight color charts to its chart
family, which already included Rec 709 and
film charts.
Additional features of 3cP Set + Post
include expanded support for the
DaVinci/Blackmagic Design Resolve color
corrector, an ability to previsualize lighting,
support for generating Nucoda-style 3-D
LUTs, enhanced P2 file handling, support for
anamorphic and 3-D imagery, and more.
www.gammadensity.com.
Calibrated Software Decodes
AVC-Intra
Calibrated Software has expanded its
Calibrated{Q} family of QuickTime components with the introduction of Calibrated{Q}
AVC-Intra Decode, a QuickTime decode
codec that expands AVC-Intra-based postproduction by providing an easy and high-
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setup, regardless of platform and without
having an editing application installed.
AVC-Intra is an advanced 10-bit
video compression technology developed
by Panasonic for cameras in the companys
professional P2 product line. Calibrated{Q}
AVC-Intra Decode streamlines the use of
AVC-Intra material by letting users share,
view and work with AVC-Intra MOV files in
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that support QuickTime directly on their
Mac or PC systems with up to full 10-bit
color depth and without requiring additional software, such as Final Cut Pro. AVCIntra Decode also enables cross-platform,
standalone playback and use of P2 AVCIntra MXF files in QuickTime Player or
Square Box Systems CatDV asset-management software when used in tandem with
Calibrated{Q} MXF Import.
We are excited by the development
of products like Calibrated{Q} AVC-Intra
Decode that extend the quality, flexibility
and efficiency of AVC-Intra media into the
postproduction process and provide
customers with a comprehensive range of
options for working with AVC-Intra files,
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Greg Booth, president of Calibrated
Software, adds, As advancements in
image formats continue to evolve, Calibrated Software is committed to delivering
accessible tools that map todays changing
workflows and can be easily installed onto a
users Mac or PC to help them see and work
with their material as directly and immediately as possible. Many broadcasters and
postproduction facilities are adopting a
Panasonic AVC-Intra workflow, and Calibrated{Q} AVC-Intra Decode was created to
facilitate rapid viewing and review of AVCIntra material at up to full 10-bit quality and
according to the end users specific platforms and needs.
Version 1.0 of Calibrated{Q} AVCIntra Decode for Macintosh OS X 10.5/10.6
(Intel only) and Windows 7/Vista/XP is now
available. For more information, visit
www.calibratedsoftware.com.
Magic Bullet Grinds DSLR Video
Red Giant Software has introduced
Magic Bullet Grinder for converting DSLR
video to edit-friendly formats, enabling
smooth playback and faster rendering.
With Magic Bullet Grinder, Final Cut
Pro users now have a fast way to get DSLR
footage from video-capable Canon DSLR
cameras into their timeline for editing, add
time code and generate proxies all in a
single time-saving pass. Batch processing
and multi-threading make for fast and painless conversion, allowing editing to begin
even on location.
Magic Bullet Grinder supports all
88
August 2010
video-capable Canon DSLRs, with additional

format support coming soon. The software
tool converts to ProRes, Standard, ProRes
Proxy and PhotoJPEG formats, complete
with a time-code track. The batch-processing feature supports multi-threaded systems
to ensure fast, glitch-free operation; users
working with eight cores can convert eight
files at once. Magic Bullet Grinder also adds
file-name and time-code information
directly to proxies and converts 30p and
60p media for quick 24p slow-motion
effects.
Magic Bullet Grinder is available for
$49. For additional information, visit
www.redgiantsoftware.com.
LightSpace Manages Color
Light Illusion has released LightSpace
CMS, a fully featured color-management
system. The system is a continued development of Light Illusions widely adopted LUT
Manager display and calibration software.
LightSpace CMS brings major calibration
enhancements to users, with full display
and film-profiling capabilities, as well as the
automatic generation of calibration LUTs
from the various profiles generated.
Improving on Light Illusions 3D LUT
Manager, LightSpace CMS makes it much
easier to implement total color management facility wide for DI, visual effects, grading, animation, games or exhibition using
any direct display or projection-monitoring
system. LightSpace CMS is not only suitable
for visualizing film images on digital
displays, but also for directly matching
different displays, allowing operators,
colorists, supervisors, cinematographers and
directors to see a matched final look at
every point in the digital post chain.
LightSpace CMS makes accurate
color management available to all industry
operations, and its new tools and capabilities really help to enhance facilities calibration capabilities and accuracy, says Steve
Shaw, CEO of Light Illusion. While LightSpace CMS will be welcome in all facilities
looking for high quality color management,
its affordable price makes it easy for studios,
post and broadcast facilities to establish
company-wide color calibration, regardless
of the specific display or creative hardware
being used.
LightSpace CMS brings together a
range of tools and capabilities that go far

further than simple LUT building, with
options that provide for full underlying color
management, display profiling, profile
matching (auto-LUT generation), direct
profile and LUT transformation, calibration
visualization and display comparison, colorspace conversion, and even batch image
processing with multiple image parameter
controls. LightSpace CMS enables customers
to accurately measure all displays to fully
manage the color pipeline, regardless of the
technology being used. A wide and growing
range of measuring probes can be used,
including X-Rite Hubble, Klein K-10, i1 Pro,
i1 Display 2, i1 Display 1, i1 Display LT and
ColorMunki.
LightSpace CMS can be purchased as
a fully configured package, or via option
components allowing customers to build
their color-management tools as their
requirements grow. For more information,
visit www.lightillusion.com.
Avid Takes Editing Line to
Next Level
Raising the bar on format flexibility,
openness and speed, Avid has introduced
the Media Composer v5, NewsCutter v9 and
Symphony v5 editing systems. New features
include native support for popular formats
such as Red, QuickTime and Canon XF;
support for Matrox MX02 Mini monitoring
hardware, a low-cost external monitoring
solution enabling field editing and simplified
client screening sessions; HD-RGB finishing
capabilities, allowing customers to keep
high-end finishing in-house; multi-channel
audio support; and an array of interface
enhancements.
Avid Media Access enhances productivity by supporting the most popular filebased formats and eliminating the need for
customers to transcode, re-wrap, log and

transfer media. In addition to supporting
Red .R3D, QuickTime and Canon XF files,
the updated editing systems also support
the AVCHD format as well as XDCam proxies, the latter offering access to proxy video
and high-quality audio files, enabling
customers to make more informed creative
decisions in the offline edit and easily link
back to full-resolution XDCam clips to
complete projects.
The enhanced user interface in
Media Composer, NewsCutter and
Symphony offers a new timeline Smart Tool,
featuring drag-and-drop audio and video
elements as well as editing and trimming
features for direct manipulation of clips in
the timeline, providing customers with more
choices in the way they work.
www.avid.com.
Media 100 Upgrades Suite
Media 100, a provider of advanced
editing systems for the corporate, broadcast, postproduction and new-media industries, has announced the availability of
Media 100 Suite Version 1.6. Version 1.6
supports Calibrated Softwares Calibrated{Q} MXF Import, AVC-Intra Decode
and DVCProHD Decode products, allowing
Media 100 Suite editors to directly open
MXF files, import and play back AVC-Intra
media, and play back media created in the
DVCProHD codec. Version 1.6 also includes
Boris XML Transfer Version 2 for Media 100
Suite, giving users the ability to export
Media 100 Suite timelines to Adobe After
Effects CS5.
Additional features of Version 1.6
include a new intelligent folder import
option, which recognizes certain file and
folder patterns (such as the Panasonic P2
folder pattern that commonly holds AVCIntra media) and selectively imports files
from those folders, and faster rendering of
multi-layer Boris Red filters.
Media 100 Suite Version 1.6 is available through the Media 100 worldwide
reseller channel and direct from the Media
100 website for a recommended price of
$1,295. For more information, including
how to upgrade from a previous version of
Media 100 Suite, visit www.media100.com.
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91
Advertisers Index
16x9, Inc. 90
Abel Cine Tech 15
AC 1, 4, 93
Aja Video Systems, Inc. 11
Alan Gordon Enterprises 90
Arri 35
ASC 89
AZGrip 90
Backstage Equipment, Inc.
73
Band Pro Film & Digital 91
Burrell Enterprises 90
Camera Essentials 91
Canon USA 5
Cavision Enterprises 25
Chapman/Leonard Studio
Equipment Inc. 23
Cinematography
Electronics 85
Cinekinetic 90
Cinematographer Style 54
Cinerover 90
Cinevate 21
Convergent Design 40
Cooke Optics 6
Creativesphere 75
Dell 9
Deluxe 37
Denecke 91
Duclos Lenses 87
DV Expo 95
Eastman Kodak 13, C4
EFD USA, Inc. 53
Film Gear 6
Filmlight 65
Filmtools 6
Fujji Motion Picture
16a-d, 47
Glidecam Industries C3
Schneider Optics 2
Shelton Communications 91
Soundscapers 90
Stanton Video Services 85
Super16 Inc. 90
Sylvania 49, 51
International Supplies 83
Technocrane 85
JMR Electronics, Inc. 19
VF Gadgets, Inc. 90
Visual Products 39
K5600 7
Kino Flo 55
Laffoux Solutions, Inc. 90
Lensrentals.com 83
Lite Panels C2
Maine Media Workshops 73
Movcam Tech. Co., Ltd. 63
Movie Tech AG 91
MP&E Mayo Productions 91
Nalpak Inc. 91
Nevada Film Office 61
New York Film Academy 27
Oasis Imagery 77
Oppenheimer Camera Prod.
90
92
Panther Gmbh 41
PED Denz 39, 91
Photon Beard 90
Pille Film Gmbh 91
Postworks 73
Pro8mm 90
Production Resource Group
67
Welch Integrated 79
Willys Widgets 90
www.theasc.com 54, 87, 92
Zacuto Films 91
Clubhouse News
5 ASC Members Invited to
Join Academy
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences recently invited 135 members
of the film industry to join its ranks, including ASC members Shane Hurlbut, Tom
Hurwitz, Dan Mindel, Tobias Schliessler
and Robert Yeoman. Those who accept
the invitation will be the only additions to
the Academys roster of voting members
this year.
Top: Phedon Papamichael, ASC.

Bottom: Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC.
2010-2011 Board, Officers

Elected
Michael Goi, ASC has been elected
to a second term as president of the Society.
His fellow officers for 2010-11 are Vice Presidents Richard Crudo, Owen Roizman
and John C. Flinn III; Treasurer Matthew
Leonetti; Secretary Rodney Taylor; and
Sergeant-at-Arms Ron Garcia. Other
members elected to the Board of Governors
are John Bailey, Stephen Burum, Curtis
Clark, George Spiro Dibie, Richard
Edlund, Stephen Lighthill, Isidore
Mankofsky, Daryn Okada, Robert
Primes, Nancy Schreiber, Kees Van Oostrum, Haskell Wexler and Vilmos Zsigmond. Alternates are Fred Elmes, Rodney
Taylor, Michael D. OShea, Sol Negrin
and Michael B. Negrin.
94
August 2010
Papamichael Honored for

Career Achievement
Phedon Papamichael, ASC was
honored with the Orpheus Award for
Career Achievement at this years Los Angeles Greek Film Festival. The award recognizes Papamichaels professional achievements in cinematography and directing, as
well as his continued support of the arts.
Director Alexander Payne, who collaborated with Papamichael on Sideways,
presented the cinematographer with the
award. In a separate event, Arcadia Lost, a
new feature that Papamichael directed and
shot, was screened, and he participated in a
Q&A.
McAlpine Journeys to India
Don McAlpine, ASC, ACS
presented three sessions during the recent
Cinema India Expo in Mumbai, India: a
Kodak-sponsored master class, and two
conversation sessions arranged by Createasphere, Cinema Indias international sales
and programming partner. The workshops
in Mumbai were truly rewarding for all of
us, notes McAlpine. The local film people
seemed to be very interested in what I had
to say, and attendance grew during each
workshop. The questions were searching,

and each session ran overtime. It was time
well spent.
Prieto Speaks at LAFF
Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC recently
participated in a Kodak Focus seminar
during the 16th annual Los Angeles Film
Festival. He showed clips from his work and
discussed his collaborations with an array of
directors.
ASC Participates in
Cine Gear Expo
Cine Gear Expo, an annual showcase of cutting-edge motion-picture technology, unfolded over four days in June at
Paramount Studios in Hollywood, and ASC
members were involved in a number of
events. Peter Anderson, ASC delivered
the keynote to kick off a daylong 3-D
symposium, after which began a series of
Premiere Seminars. Seminar participants
included ASC members John Leonetti
(discussing Piranha 3-D); Wally Pfister
(discussing Inception); Richard Edlund
(moderating a panel for the Visual Effects
Society); and John Bailey, Daniel Pearl,
James Chressanthis and Rodney Taylor
(panelists for the Kodak-sponsored Truth
About Film and Digital Production).
George Spiro Dibie, ASC moderated an
ASC panel comprising Society members
Russ Alsobrook, Stephen H. Burum,
James L. Carter, Allen Daviau, Michael
Goi, Johnny E. Jensen, M. David
Mullen, Sol Negrin, Nancy Schreiber
and Christian Sebaldt; Joe Dunton, BSC
also joined the panelists, and Donald M.
Morgan, ASC participated from the audience.
Rounding out the weekend, Society
members Amy Vincent, Bill Bennett,
Gabriel Beristain, Ron Dexter and
Stephen Lighthill participated in master
classes at Mole Richardson, and associate
member Volker Bahnemann received the
Cine Gear Expo Lifetime Achievement
Award.
Papamichael photo courtesy of Los Angeles Greek Film Festival. Prieto photo by Alexandra Wyman/WireImage, courtesy of Film Independent.
Being elected to serve a second

term as ASC president is a great honor and
a privilege, says Goi. At a time when so
much is going on in the industry, this is a
tremendous vote of confidence that this
body of incredible artists believes in my
vision of where the ASC is going in the
future.
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Close-up
Charles Minsky, ASC
When you were a child, what film made the strongest impression on you?
Lawrence of Arabia (1962). At 16, I worked as an usher at the Beverly
Hills theater where it played in 70mm for nine months, and I was
reminded every day of the power and scope of movies. I knew every
image and all the music cues, and I could recite every line. More importantly, it changed the way I regarded film, because I never tired of
watching it. That had never happened before.
Which cinematographers, past or present,
do you most admire, and why?
Freddie Young, ASC, BSC, who turned me
around and made me see how images could
transport you to a completely different world.
John Alonzo, ASC, for his work on Chinatown
his handheld work and the polished gloss of
L.A. Conrad Hall, ASC, for his brilliant and innovative vision on Searching for Bobby Fischer; his
use of light, long lenses and color made the
world of chess appear utterly magical.
Where did you train and/or study?

All of my film education was on the job. I graduated from the University of California-Los Angeles with a degree in political science but didnt
pay attention to film until that first job, three years after I graduated. I
took two film classes, but they werent very interesting.
Who were your early teachers or mentors?
As a camera assistant, I worked steadily for five years with a commercial
director/cameraman named Melvin Sokolsky. I watched him and
learned how to conceptualize a project. I also watched and learned
about lighting. I also worked for years as an assistant in the camera
departments at Universal and Warner Bros. I worked with [ASC
members] Matt Leonetti, Joe Biroc and John Alonzo, and with Ray
Villalobos.
What are some of your key artistic influences?
I love photojournalism, especially Robert Capa, Sebastiao Salgado, and
Tyler Hicks of the New York Times. I also love paintings and prints by
Charles Sheeler, Ralston Crawford, Georgia OKeeffe and Paul Strand.
How did you get your first break in the business?
After working as a social worker and a waiter, I went back to school to
August 2010
What has been your most satisfying moment on a project?

Finding the center of the scene I am shooting and making sense of it.
Cinematographers are storytellers, and we are always searching to
make an idea into an image.
Have you made any memorable blunders?
On the first job I got as a union assistant, I
white-lighted 1000' of film on the first day of
prep. I thought it was the end of the world.
What sparked your interest in photography?

Blind luck. On my first job in the business, I was told to carry camera
cases and help the camera assistant. I spent three months doing everything that was asked of me, and before I finished, I fell in love with the
camera. I hadnt taken so much as a Polaroid before, but suddenly I was
fascinated by cinematography. My life changed in a matter of months.
I got a Nikon F2 and took as many pictures as I could afford.
96
study psychology. Out of boredom, I got a job on a low-budget project

in San Diego my father knew someone who knew someone who
wanted to make a movie. I was hired as a gofer. I never looked back.
What is the best professional advice

youve ever received?
Im not sure its the best advice, but when I first
began working as a camera assistant, Joe
Ruttenberg, ASC lived next door. He took me
into his house one day and showed me his two Academy Awards and
told me to become an editor, because they had more control of his art
than he did. It didnt deter me, but it made me aware that I wasnt in
complete control of the finished product. Its a lesson Im still learning.
What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you?
I read a lot of mysteries and enjoy Ken Bruen, Robert Crais, Michael
Connelly, Robert Parker and Richard Russo. I just finished reading all of
Ken Harufs books, including Plainsong. Movies: I just watched The
Lookout and (500) Days of Summer.
Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like to
try?
I love all kinds of detective stories and would love to shoot more of
them. Im also a huge fan of childrens stories.
If you werent a cinematographer, what might you be doing
instead?
Teaching. I love working with students and sharing some of the knowledge Ive retained over the years.
Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for membership?
John Toll, Robert Primes and Bing Sokolsky.
How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?
I consider myself lucky to be in the ASC. Its a very inclusive group of
professionals. Its a safe place to exchange ideas and thoughts, and we
share problems and solutions. People want to be members, and, once
admitted, we are open and trusting of each other. It makes me proud
to be in the ASC.
ONFILM
CHRIS MENGES, ASC, BSC
I dont know a cinematographer certainly not

myself who has contributed to a meaningful
movie who wasnt collaborating with a highly
visual director. Part of it is luck, getting to work
with the right director, actors and script, and
then it takes an incredible amount of hard
work. The inspiration comes from the words
and inside the characters. All you have to do
is bring your soul and great energy. But it goes
beyond collaborating with directors. You are
also working with the production and costume
designers, makeup artists, gaffers and everyone
on your crew to get the right composition,
camera movement and focus to capture
magic moments on lm. Film is collaboration;
you cannot dream on your own, but more
importantly you have to trust your instincts.
Chris Menges, ASC, BSC won Academy Awards
for The Killing Fields and The Mission, and
earned additional nominations for Michael
Collins and The Reader. He is the 2010 recipient
of the American Society of Cinematographers
International Award. His body of work includes
Kes, Angel, Local Hero, The Boxer, A World
Apart, The Pledge, The Good Thief, Dirty
Pretty Things, The Three Burials of Melquiades
Estrada, Notes on a Scandal, and other
memorable documentary and narrative lms.
For an extended interview with Chris Menges,
visit www.kodak.com/go/onlm
To order Kodak motion picture lm,
call (800) 621-lm.
Eastman Kodak Company, 2010.
Photography: 2010 Douglas Kirkland

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AUGUST 2010

THE LIGHTING REVOLUTION:

Discover the award-winning

Litepanels Sola LED Fresnel Series

Litepanels 1x1 Series

Litepanels revolutionary Sola Series offers a whole new world of

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Sola features touch screen

Litepanels Sola Fresnels & 1x1s both feature:

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Litepanels 1x1 Low-Profile

Affonso Beato, ASC, ABC

photo by Owen Roizman, ASC

Affonso Beato, ASC, ABC

Call (800) 448-0145 (U.S. only)

Despite improved filtration

What the Classic Black

When shooting a multi-camera

Im a long-time fan of the

The Century Low Angle Prism

The International Journal of Motion Imaging

Cat and Mouse

VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM TO ENJOY THESE WEB EXCLUSIVES

The International Journal of Motion Imaging

PUBLISHER Martha Winterhalter

CIRCULATION, BOOKS & PRODUCTS

ASC GENERAL MANAGER Brett Grauman

50Mbps MPEG-2 4:2:2

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American Society of Cinematographers

John C. Flinn III

Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.

Windows. Life without Walls. Dell recommends Windows 7.

If you can imagine it,

Call 1-800-873-1290 or visit www.dell.com/smb/imagine

Top photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.

Michael Goi, ASC

Record natively to Apples ProRes 422 codec

Brain Farm Makes Waves with Quiksilver Campaign

Wyoming production house Brain Farm, which specializes in

Photos and frame grab courtesy of Brain Farm.

Kodak, 2010. Kodak and Vision are trademarks.

full sunlight, he explains. That means you

CineMags RAW files takes a while, and we

When production in Mexico

The Next Generation of High-Speed Imaging

Full Phantom lineup - v210,

New solutions for 2/3 B4,

Including the new Phantom

Faster data workflow,

Full accessory line for remote control,

Available at major rental houses and

Abel trained Phantom Techs are working in

Hundreds of features, TV, commercials,

AC Poll Names 10 Best-Shot Films of 1998-2008

Bucking the conventional wisdom that says comedies do not

explained, I thought that maybe this [post] process wouldnt really

Amlie photo 2001 Miramax Films.