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T H E

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Over $6 billion in box ofce shot

on Sony digital gear. Ka-ching!

2008 Sony Electronics Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited.
Features and specications are subject to change without notice. Sony, CineAlta, HDNA, the HDNA logo and SXRD are trademarks of Sony.

When it comes to putting audiences into theater seats, no digital cameras and
recorders come close to Sony CineAlta equipment. When it comes to seeing
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Photo of George Mooradian by Joel Lipton

exclusively for Schneider Optics

Im a big believer in filters. As soon as I discovered Schneiders

DigiCon I knew it was the magic that The Bill Engvall Show
deserved. It allows me to create a much more filmic look. I no longer
have to reign in the highlights. And I can open up the blacks. I can
light bolder 2 to 3 stops now becomes 4 or 5.
Our kitchen has always been a challengetoo flat. Not with the
DigiCon. We have depth and separation.
Thanks to the DigiCon, when we do exteriors the pavement
can be hotter and the foliage plays nicely. We can really get
a sense of location.
My engineer loves what he sees on the monitor. And so does
our colorist. The DigiCon allows us more of a range to play
with and to create a stronger, richer image.
Thanks to Schneiders DigiCon,
I can now create the beautiful
image that The Bill Engvall
Show deserves.

Director of Photography George Mooradian is a

three time Emmy Award nominee for the hit
series According to Jim. Before moving into the
multi-camera world, he was cinematographer on
over a dozen movies. He credits operating for

high-profile cinematographers such as Vittorio

Storaro, ASC (Dick Tracy) as the foundation for
the feature look he brings to his sit-com projects.
Mooradian is now in his third season of The Bill
Engvall Show.
B+W Century Schneider

For George's DigiCon chat visit:

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Phone: 818-766-3715

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It Starts with the Glass tm

The International Journal of Film & Digital Production Techniques

On Our Cover: Mr. Spock (Zachary Quinto) beams onto the USS Enterprise in Star Trek, shot by Dan
Mindel, ASC. (Frame grab courtesy of Paramount Pictures and Industrial Light & Magic.)

Features

28
40
54
64
70

Departments

8
10
14
78
84
92
94
94
96
98
100

A Bold, New Enterprise

Dan Mindel, ASC brings Star Trek up to warp speed

Back to the Future

Shane Hurlbut, ASC creates a dystopian world
for Terminator Salvation

Making History Fun

John Schwartzman, ASC brings icons to antic life in
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

40

Testing Digital Cameras

The ASC and the Producers Guild of America analyze
an array of digital cameras

Assessing Previs
Previsualization is the focus of a joint committee
formed by the ASC, the Art Directors Guild and the
Visual Effects Society

Editors Note
Short Takes: A 65mm Microsoft Installation
Production Slate: Drag Me to Hell

54

Downloading Nancy
Post Focus: Cinematographers, Colorists and the DI

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International Marketplace
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PUBLISHER Martha Winterhalter

EDITORIAL

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1. No matter how inhospitable the location,
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American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 89th year of publication, is published
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Rebirth of an Icon
American Society of Cinematographers

For advance information, register for

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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 - 2008/2009
Daryn Okada
President

Michael Goi
Vice President

Richard Crudo
Vice President

Owen Roizman
Vice President

Victor J. Kemper
Treasurer

Isidore Mankofsky
Secretary

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Daryn Okada
Robert Primes
Owen Roizman
Nancy Schreiber
Dante Spinotti
Kees Van Oostrum

ALTERNATES
Matthew Leonetti
Steven Fierberg
James Chressanthis
Michael D. OShea
Sol Negrin
MUSEUM CURATOR

Steve Gainer
6

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Editors Note
s a longtime fan of the Star Trek franchise, I reacted to
news of the 2009 reboot with cautious optimism. I
spent many happy childhood hours glued to earlySeventies reruns of the original TV series, and Ive also
enjoyed some but not all of the subsequent series
and theatrical features. This time around, I became vaguely
concerned when director J.J. Abrams conceded in interviews that hes always been more of a Star Wars guy.
However, he also noted this preference made him more
willing to take a few bold risks with the familiar mythology.
A visit to the set last year with associate editor and
fellow Trek fiend Jon Witmer indicated Starfleet was in
good hands; an early preview of key sequences further reassured me; and an exhilarating
April screening on the Paramount lot proved that Abrams, cinematographer Dan Mindel,
ASC and the rest of their collaborators had hit the bulls eye with their phasers. In my
humble but studied opinion, this Trek film is the best yet and offers even the uninitiated a
fantastic summer-blockbuster ride.
As I write this column, Witmer is also feeling transported after seeing the
finished picture. His article about the production (A Bold, New Enterprise, page 28), which
offers in-depth analyses from Abrams, Mindel, production designer Scott Chambliss and
visual-effects supervisor/2nd-unit director Roger Guyett, is essential reading for anyone
who craves behind-the-scenes details. Heres hoping the latest iteration of the Trek universe
lives long and prospers.
Sci-fi enthusiasts can also look forward to Terminator Salvation, which teamed
cinematographer Shane Hurlbut, ASC with director McG. While a brief flurry of media
attention was devoted to some of the creative interplay that occurred on-set, Witmers thorough exploration of the project (Back to the Future, page 40) provides a substantial
account of Hurlbuts work and his crucial contributions to the films thrilling images.
John Schwartman, ASC is the new hero of my 3-year-old son, Nicholas, because
he got to man the camera on Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, the sequel
to a movie that has delighted Nicholas more times than I can count. The further adventures
of Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) promise more fun for all ages, and Pat Thomsons piece (Making
History Fun, page 54) explains how Schwartzman achieved the tales whimsical illusions.
This issue also offers several topical articles that address key tools and techniques of the cinematographers trade. Stephanie Argy and Richard Edlund, ASC penned an
overview of the recent Camera-Assessment Series, which examined seven digital cameras
(Testing Digital Cameras, page 64), and also prepared a primer on previsualization
(Assessing Previs, page 70) that focuses on the goals of a joint committee formed by the
ASC, the Art Directors Guild and the Visual Effects Society. Valuable insights can also be
found in a Q&A that Jon Silberg and I conducted with John Bailey, ASC and colorist Stefan
Sonnenfeld about the benefits and perils cinematographers experience in the digital-intermediate suite (Post Focus, page 78). Baileys widely read Filmmakers Forum on this hotbutton topic (AC June 08) caused such a stir that we encouraged him to revisit the subject.

Stephen Pizzello
Executive Editor
8

Photo by Douglas Kirkland.

Short Takes
A 65mm Microsoft Installation at JFK Airport

Visual
installations
serving as ads
for Microsoft
are on display
at John F.
Kennedy
Airport.
Presented
across five
high-definition
plasma screens,
the images
were shot on
65mm by
Christophe
Lanzenberg.

10 June 2009

ravelers hustling through the American Airlines terminal at New Yorks

John F. Kennedy International
Airport are currently getting a break
from the drab interiors typical of such
locations. An unconventional visual
installation shows single motion
images a dog chasing a Frisbee
along the beach, a golfer chipping from
a sand trap across five 40" highdefinition plasma screens. Each image
is a quick narrative playing out in an
attention-grabbing 9.31:1 aspect ratio.
The images were designed as a
visual analog to Microsofts Life Without Borders slogan. Graphic representations of cellphones, computer monitors and home-theater screens help
express the message that magical
moments of everyday life, once
captured, can move easily among platforms that use Microsoft products.
There are eight five-bank
displays in the concourse, and any
passenger arriving or departing on an

American Airlines flight passes by

them. Ad agency Crispin Porter +
Bogusky asked director Rob Feng and
cinematographer Christophe Lanzenberg to create four vignettes, each
with motion that would cross the
frames from right to left, taking into
account the viewers motion through
the viewing area. The stories include
a motorcycle daredevil jumping from
one ramp to another, and a child creating a long soap bubble that bursts as
he reaches the final frame. The basic
idea was that whatever was playing
across the screens should really span
all five, says Feng.
A graduate of the University of
Southern Californias film program,
Feng worked at visual-effects facility
Digital Domain before joining Brand
New School, a directing collective with
offices in New York and Los Angeles.
Lanzenberg, a native of France, moved
to the United States in the mid-1980s
and studied film history and theory in

the graduate program at Columbia

University before transitioning into
cinematography. His credits include
music videos, commercials (NBA:
There Can Be Only One) and features
(Watching the Detectives and Sensation of Sight). He is now working with
Savant Film.
For the Microsoft installation,
Feng and Lanzenberg considered a rig
comprising five HD cameras and also
researched the possibility of shooting
in Imax. But extensive previsualization
and previous experience on a five-HDcamera shoot convinced them that the
most effective approach was to use a
single 65mm camera, an Arri 765,
which would allow them to shoot at
frame rates of up to 75 fps. Scanned at
8K resolution and enlarged 12 percent,
the 65mm frame provided adequate
resolution even after the image was
spread out over the five plasma
screens.
The ability to overcrank was

Frame grabs courtesy of Crispin Porter + Bogusky/Brand New School. Photo by Stephen Sloan.

by David Heuring

Above: A set
comprising a
sand trap and
green allowed
Lanzenberg to
place the lens at
grass level for
some golf action.
Below: The
cinematographer
digs in for
the shot.

12 June 2009

crucial because the agency asked for

images that moved from right to left at
roughly the speed of the concourses
moving sidewalks. That precluded the
horizontal Imax format; Imax cameras
max out at 48 fps. The single-camera
approach also allowed the filmmakers
to make simple adjustments on the
shoot day and in post without the
complications they might have
encountered with a five-camera rig.
Each piece is really a short film that
tells a story in one shot, from one edge
of the frame to the other, says
Lanzenberg. The trick was to anticipate any technical problems before
they happened.
The company that built the
physical display provided the filmmakers with a scale model, but once we
got to the venue, it was a totally different game, recalls Feng. There was
all the ambient lighting, old screens
that were blowing out, and many other
small yet important factors that added

to the challenge.
He spent a good chunk of the
two-month schedule carefully previsualizing every aspect of the project. For
something that looks so simple, there
was a lot of math involved: choosing
the right lenses, the right field of view
and the right distances, says the
director. Clairmont Camera made us a
special ground glass in the very wide
aspect ratio. We used Zeiss/Arriflex
lenses that utilize a 64mm Maxi-PL
mount; we used a 40mm for the motorcycle jump and used the 30mm extensively. The lenses were very sharp but
didnt have the distortion correction
that todays 35mm lenses have. We
chose wide-angle lenses partly to
make the backgrounds more prominent, and we found that the distortion
looked kind of interesting.
Lanzenberg notes that some
challenges were met with very simple
solutions. The boy with the bubble
was photographed with the widest
lens, the 30mm, he recalls. We
chose that focal length to get more
perspective on the forest and to
emphasize the light coming through
the woods in the background; we
would have lost a lot of that on a
longer lens. Once we started shooting,
we realized that in order to appear to
be running in a straight line, the boy
had to run in a half-circle.
In most of the situations,
Lanzenberg chose the best time of day
to shoot and relied on available light.
For the golf shot, a sand trap and
green were built, allowing him to
place the lens at grass level. The day
was cloudy, so the cinematographer
re-created harder sunlight using HMIs,
emphasizing the shadow of the ball
and the subtle movements of the
golfer. To add contrast to the scene
with the soap bubble, he built a wall of
soft light on the camera-right side,
using four 18Ks at a distance through

a 20'x30' frame of diffusion.

Lanzenberg shot the material on
Kodak Vision2 200T 5217, which he
rated at EI 320. Its a softer, gentler
stock, and I knew the image would
retain a filmic quality on the HD monitor in the airport, he says. The
slower lenses and high frame rates
also affected that decision. Also, with
the images being scanned and
displayed on HD monitors, we wanted
to stay true to the film image and avoid
an electronic feel. That seems strange
when were talking about the 65mm
negative, but we were extracting an
incredibly small sliver from the middle
of the frame. I pull-processed the film
by 1 stop to get even tighter grain.
FotoKem in Burbank, Calif.,
processed the footage and scanned it
into the digital domain. In some cases,
the frame was moved up and down
imperceptibly to fine-tune composition. Some sharpening and additional
slow motion were also done during the
digital stages of post.
Lanzenberg and Feng treated
themselves to one printed roll. We
were very curious to see the quality of
the large frame projected, and
FotoKem very nicely printed a roll at
full frame for us, says Lanzenberg. It
was incredible and a real pleasure to
see such beautiful, clean images.
I thought the most interesting
aspect of the project was composing
for the incredibly wide frame, notes
Lanzenberg. Its every cinematographers dream to shoot in CinemaScope,
but 65mm is really incredible. It was
the right choice for this project. The
images are gorgeous.
I

Production Slate
Fateful Encounters

Supernatural Wrath
by Iain Stasukevich
Sam Raimis Drag Me to Hell
begins by presenting its heroine, Christine Brown (Alison Lohman), with a
seemingly simple moral dilemma. An
ambitious loan officer eager for a promotion, Brown needs to prove to her superiors that shes capable of making tough
decisions; in this case, it means denying
an elderly woman (Lorna Raver) an
extension on her delinquent mortgage
payment. Unfortunately, the old woman
vows revenge and places a powerful
curse on Brown, literally transforming
her life into a living hell. Its the classic
tale of a girl in trouble, not a blood-andguts horror movie, says cinematographer Peter Deming, ASC. Id liken it to
14 June 2009

Poltergeist or something by Hitchcock.

The film presents two worlds;
each feels equally real to Brown, but
their differences suggest the possibility
that the demon terrorizing Brown is a
figment of her imagination. For the ordinary world of the bank, Deming used
soft, natural lighting, adding little to no
color. We set up Christines everyday
world in a palette of gray and desaturated colors, notes production designer
Steve Saklad. Initially, our climate had
to be restrained so the camera and lighting could transition us to that other place
when things get amped up.
Deming worked with gaffer
Michael LaViolette to make the most of
practical fixtures. For example, a scene
showing the old womans attack on
Brown in a parking garage was shot in a

real garage, and after running tests with

Kino Flos and HMIs gelled with Plus
Green, Deming and LaViolette decided
to augment the locations existing
mercury-vapor lamps with an additional
half-dozen of the fixtures. When youre
gel-packing a tungsten or HMI source,
youre losing light, and you have to keep
the gels from burning, notes LaViolette.
However, the practicals posed their own
challenges, particularly when it came to
controlling and even effectively mounting them. Also, once the lights were
turned off, it took time for many of them
to come back on.
The filmmakers also wanted to
embrace existing fixtures for the movies
numerous night exteriors. Theres
sodium-vapor light everywhere in Los
Angeles at night, says Deming. We

Drag Me to Hell photos by Melissa Moseley, SMPSP. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Universal Pictures.

An evil hag
unleashes her
fury on bankloan officer
Christine
Brown (Alison
Lohman) in
Drag Me to
Hell, shot by
Peter Deming,
ASC.

Right:
Determined to
show her bosses
she can be
tough, Brown
resists the
pleading of an
elderly woman
(Lorna Raver)
who needs extra
time to pay her
mortgage. We
set up Christines
everyday world
in a palette of
gray and
desaturated
colors, notes
production
designer Steve
Saklad. Below: A
Turkish-style
mansion serves
as the setting for
a sance.
Deming and his
crew bounced
6K and 12K Pars
into thin Mylar to
fill the space
with a
shimmering,
organic light.

16 June 2009

rigged open-faced 1K and 2K sodiumvapor lamps onto streetlights and hid

them as best we could. It was a sourceoriented approach. I didnt want Condors
[creating] fake moonlight. Deming
worked at a T2.8, using Kodak Vision3
500T 5219 for many of these scenes.
Everything was playing so low that the
city backgrounds and light from houses
were visible! recalls LaViolette.
In one key scene, Brown is
having dinner with her boyfriend (Justin
Long) and his parents at their upscale
home and begins to envision horrifying
things, including an eyeball appearing
in the dessert. The setup lent itself to
a classic suspense-horror style, so we
went for lighting that was realistic but
also evocative of films shot onstage,
says Deming. The idea was that we
could plug into a classical Hollywood

style and perhaps even make it blackand-white, and it would still work.
In order to suggest Christine is
going insane, we made that scene very
high-key, with delicate shadow-play
rounding out the room a bit, explains
LaViolette. Chimeras were fitted over 2K
Blondes (for keylight) and 650-watt
Tweenies (backlight), which, along with
a softbox, were rigged to a pipe
suspended over the table. As Brown
descends into her nightmare, the doors
start rattling, cueing the introduction of
fantasy world sources, including Pars
and Fresnels employed in a hard, singlesource fashion. Dutch angles and
frenetic, handheld camerawork also
contribute to the tension of the scene.
As the story progresses, Browns
encounters with the demon become
more frequent, and the demon becomes

increasingly corporeal. Eventually,

Brown finds herself in a waterlogged
grave, attempting to exhume a corpse.
Saklad describes the cemetery set, one
of the few built for the production, as a
horrific steel contraption standing 12'
high and outfitted with an elaborate
plumbing system to re-circulate water
through the grave so Lohman would not
be affected by the mud. Youre already
asking for a suspension of disbelief by
having someone in a hole digging up a
body in the pouring rain, notes Deming.
When shooting something like that,
you should be conscious of the limitations of such a location so you dont give
away the artifice of the set by shooting
it too wide.
In filming the scene, Deming
used 35mm and 27mm prime lenses for
shots close to Lohman and strove to
maintain the feel of source-based lighting. Raimi likes it dark and realistic, but
he doesnt want the viewer to strain to
see whats going on, notes Deming. To
bring out the texture of the rain, he
employed a movable 20K backlight, and
fill was provided by bouncing 1K Mickeys and 2K Mightys off white cards. A
bank of Luminys Lightning Strikes units
was used to punctuate the action.
After Brown learns from a seer
(Dileep Rao) that she can only rid herself
of the curse by transferring it to another
person, she finds herself in a Turkishstyle mansion, where the seer and a
psychic team attempt a sance to effect

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images

Brown attempts
to exhume the
old womans
corpse in a
driving
rainstorm. The
sequence was
filmed on a
cemetery set
with an
elaborate
plumbing
system. When
shooting
something like
that, you should
be conscious of
the limitations
of such a
location so you
dont give away
the artifice of
the set by
shooting it too
wide, advises
Deming (bottom
photo).

the transfer. That sequence has the

films most extreme visuals lighting,
camera and design all went to the same
place, says Saklad. (The set was built
onstage at 20th Century Fox.)
Before Brown can complete the
transfer, the demon appears and foils
her attempt. Prior to this scene, the
demon has appeared only as a shadow
or outline, but for its final appearance,
the filmmakers wanted it to be a kinetic
light that appeared to be everywhere at
once. Deming had his crew bounce 6K
and 12K HMI Pars into thin Mylar to
create a shimmering, organic light that
fills the cavernous room; flags were
used to cut the light and limit clues to its
directionality. Further enhancing the
confusion of the scene is extensive
handheld camerawork, and 1st AC
David Eubank physically shook the
camera in several shots as A-camera
operator Patrick Rousseau followed the
action.
Visual effects that could be
achieved on set with light, shadows and
smoke were done in-camera. In many
cases, these effects were enhanced by
artists working under visual-effects
supervisor Bruce Jones. The goal was
to make it organic, says Deming. Wed
try to start the process on set because
we wanted to give the actors something
physical to use.
Surveying the experience he
has gained since shooting Raimis Evil
Dead II 22 years ago, Deming says his
ideas about cinematography havent
changed that much. Cinematography is
all about storytelling, and when youre
doing a genre film, you have to try to
take it somewhere it hasnt been before.
Its easy to fall back on convention, but
you should try to come up with a way to
redefine the genre.
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Super 35mm
Panaflex Platinum, Gold II
Primo lenses
Kodak Vision3 500T 5219; Vision2
250D 5205, 200T 5217
Digital Intermediate

18 June 2009

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A Dark Romance
by Rachael K. Bosley
A stark, wintry palette sets the
tone for the independent film Downloading Nancy, which follows a desperately
unhappy woman (Maria Bello) who hires
a man she meets on the Internet (Jason
Patric) to kill her, but soon discovers that
he could well be her soul mate. Rounding
out the four-character drama are Nancys
remote husband (Rufus Sewell) and her
therapist (Amy Brenneman).

20 June 2009

The feature-directing debut of

Swedens Johan Renck, Nancy was shot
by cinematographers and frequent
collaborators Rain Li and Christopher
Doyle, HKSC. The pair shared last years
Boston Society of Film Critics cinematography prize for Paranoid Park (AC
April 08), and among their other recent
collaborations are the Polish film
Warsaw Dark, which Doyle directed and
Li shot, and Jim Jarmuschs The Limits
of Control, for which Doyle was the
director of photography and Li was the

second-unit cinematographer. On
Nancy, both of them shouldered a
camera throughout the shoot, which
took place on location in Regina,
Saskatchewan. To get their perspectives
on the project, AC caught up with Doyle
in person on one of his recent visits to
Los Angeles, and with Li via e-mail as
she worked in London and Beijing.
American Cinematographer :
What made Nancy appealing to
you, and why did you think it was a
good project for both of you to do?
Rain Li: I liked the script a lot,
and it struck me as a female film, something that would affect female audiences more than male ones. Cinematography is about building mood and
atmosphere through composition,
camera moves and lighting, and this
story offered a lot of opportunities to do
that. Chris suggested we collaborate on
it because Johan wanted to allow the
actors a lot of physical freedom and
have the camera capture them as organically as possible, and they thought two
cameras would be the best way. Johan
was certainly very brave to let both of us
shoot his first film, and he was also very
encouraging.
Christopher Doyle, HKSC:
Johan and I had worked together on
commercials many times, and we knew

Downloading Nancy photos by Allan Feildel, courtesy of Strand Releasing.

Right: In a
scene from
Downloading
Nancy, a pet
store serves as
the backdrop
for a brief
romantic
interlude
between Nancy
(Maria Bello)
and Louis
(Jason Patric),
whom she has
hired to kill her.
Below: The
camera adopts
a surreptitious
position as
Nancy waits to
meet Louis at
the bus station.

Film & Digital:

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Michael Condon, SOC

VP Digital Division

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VP Technical Services

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On location at the
bus station,
Christopher Doyle,
HKSC (right) and
co-cinematographer
Rain Li discuss their
two-camera
strategy as 1st AD
John ORourke
(foreground) and
director Johan
Renck (with script
on his lap) listen.

22 June 2009

a two-camera setup on Nancy would be

the ideal for the actors and for the time
and money we had. I knew Rain was the
ideal person for the other camera. I
know her composition will be extremely
close to what I would have done myself,
but perhaps with something more it
might be 97 percent, or it might be 150
percent. There are no concerns about
someone else trying to prove another
point, and thats extremely reassuring.
She is my greatest collaborator.
Did Johans background as a
musician inform his approach to the
material?
Doyle: I think what makes this
kind of film different from a mainstreamintended film is that you stack up the
ideas or images so they become a single
experience. Most films are sequential;
they go from A to B as opposed to stopping on the way. But the thing is, in life,
you do stop on the way. In music, you
dwell on an idea; you revert back to the
original phrase and see what else it
could have meant. In conversation, you
do that, too. I think filmmakers like
Johan and Jim Jarmusch and Wong
Kar-wai, who come from a musical background, have those facilities with the
rhythm of life, and to give that a visual
form, whether its through color or movement or composition, is extremely
coherent. It gives the audience a
moment to reflect or engage. If you try to

reduce a film to one line, in one way

thats ridiculous, but in another way
perhaps thats really valid. If we can
reduce our image-making to one coherent experience, I think weve made a
good film.
Given that this was Johans
first feature, did he approach it
differently than he did your other
collaborations?
Doyle: He didnt drink! [Laughs.]
No, the great pleasure of working with
Johan is that there is one idea, one
vision, and theres no deviation from
that. Hes also an interesting person to
go on location scouts with because he
wont take more than five minutes in
one spot. You can scout for a whole film
in five hours! Maybe it comes from the
climate all Swedes are in a hurry
because they know winter is coming
soon! Johan is great. Hes one of those
people who would jump with or without
a parachute. This story is bleak, and he
talked about wanting it to look almost
monochromatic.
How did you achieve that?
Li: In coordination with the
costume designer [Denise stholm] and
production designer [Lauri Faggioni], we
decided that pull-processing Fuji 400
Eterna would be the best way to achieve
the muted look Johan wanted and
bridge the feelings between passionate
and mundane, dark and romantic. We

also used a lot of toplight, which Johan

loves. The main location, the house
where Nancy and her husband live, had
a very low ceiling, and because most of
the shots involved two or three parts of
a room in one take, we couldnt hide
lights anywhere except the windows,
and they were too small to light the
scene. The only thing we could do was
add more flat-panel fluorescent lights
which are very common in Regina
to the ceiling. The fixtures are just cheap
fluorescent tubes with a cream-colored
plastic cover that diffuses the light, and
the sources in the house were those
mixed with daylight. Chris and I
discussed whether to swap out the
bulbs for Kino Flo tubes so they wouldnt
look quite as green, but by that time,
wed seen most of the other locations
and knew wed have to deal with those
lights in all of them, and we knew
we wouldnt have time to change
every tube. Therefore, we decided we
wouldnt change any of them; its a big
decision to light an entire film that way!
Pull-processed Fuji 400 does an amazing
job of blending colors in mixed lighting
so no individual color pops out, which is
another reason we chose it for this
movie.
Pull-processing Fuji appears
to be one of your favorite techniques, Chris.
Doyle: It has made the labs in
Thailand very afraid of me they see
me coming and say, Oh, no, hes going
to f**k up the machines again! But you
have to find a lab that believes its reputation depends on films like ours as well
as the James Bond movies. Cinematographers should look for that complicity,
and smaller labs should always be
researched and engaged. [Ed. Note:
Doyle did the final color-timing of Nancy
at FotoKem in Burbank, Calif.]
You do find something that
approximates your own eye, whether its
lighting style, color or film stock. I think
Kodak and Fuji try too hard sometimes. I
dont think this particular medium needs
seven different kinds of Ajax, so to
speak. Most cinematographers are
reasonably focused and organized; they
feel complicity with a certain look, and

Above: In framing
Nancys distant
husband (Rufus
Sewell), we
wanted to feel
almost
extraneous to his
experience,
says Doyle. By
contrast, were
often almost
inside Nancy.
Below: Another
voyeuristic angle
is assumed for
Nancys session
with her
therapist (Amy
Brenneman).

24 June 2009

they return to that. I have an idea about

what will work, but if theres time and
money for testing, I test other things. If
there isnt, you fall back on what youre
used to.
Another thing I did on Nancy that
Ive done on every film Ive shot in the
last five years is light some night exteriors with those lamps that construction
crews use out on the road at night.
Theyre extremely cheap you can buy
one for what it costs to rent an 18K for a
week. Its a small generator that has four

lamps on an arm that can be extended,

and the lights can be separated out or
used together. They appear in shot at
the train depot in Paranoid Park, and in
Nancy, we used them outside the bus
station and for the burial scene. Theyve
become my favorite tools. Sometimes
you have to make sure the ballast is
stable so it wont flicker, and sometimes
it doesnt matter if it flickers.
How did you work out which
of you would shoot what on Nancy?
Li: The goal was to give the
actors freedom to walk from one space
to another without having to worry
about marks or lighting. Once Johan had
worked out the blocking with the actors,
Chris and I were called to the set with
the assistant director [John ORourke] to
watch the scene. Then Chris and I
discussed which angles wed use and
whether to add a few small lights to a
certain part of the room. In some scenes
in Nancys house, Chris would be in the
kitchen, shooting the beginning of the
scene, and I would be in the living room,
waiting to pick up the actors as they
walked from the kitchen to the living
room; that way, the performances could
float uninterrupted. In some cases, we
would focus on shooting different
actors, and wed create a rough path for
each other so we didnt end up in each
others shot when the actors moved.
Many shots have a furtive
quality the camera is peering at
the characters through doorways or
from behind furniture or other
objects. Whats the reason for that?

Doyle: Johan talked a lot about

creating a sense of voyeurism. Were
experiencing something gratuitously
that most of us wouldnt want to go
through or feel the need to engage. We
were trying to imply discretion and yet
intrigue. We chose the location we
chose for Nancys house precisely
because it allowed us to shoot into
certain rooms from a distance and make
use of various framing devices.
Did you know at the outset
that youd be working almost
entirely handheld?
Doyle: Yes. Johan wanted the
camera to float with the characters, I
think to imply a kind of ambivalence
toward them and their understanding.
He actually complained that my handholding was too steady! He kept saying,
Chris, youve got to float more! Ive
spent 10 years perfecting a way in
which you cant even notice the camera
is handheld, so that was kind of a challenge.
The scenes between Nancy
and her therapist appear to be a
departure from that strategy the
shots are quite stable.
Doyle: Yeah, those are
confrontations, whereas everything else
in the film is ambivalent. The camera
floats except when you know shes nuts.
When Nancy and Louis
[Patric] are talking at the Chinese
restaurant, the camera is about eye
level with her, whereas you assume
a slightly higher angle on him. Then,
at one point, when hes in the
middle of a sentence, the camera
drops down to his eye level. Do you
recall why you did that?
Doyle: Rain and I were probably
just trying to keep out of each others
way! Generally, we were trying to get
more objectivity with him and more
subjectivity with her. You do drift in and
try to be consistent, but were not all
Storaro! [Laughs.]
You were contending with a
fairly extreme climate in Saskatchewan. How did that affect your
work?
Doyle: It did dictate certain
aspects of the look. The whole city was

Louis helps Nancy choose a dress for her unusual special occasion.

monochromatic all white! The story

was originally set in another location,
but because its mostly interiors, it was
easy to set somewhere else, in this case
Baltimore. Although tax breaks and soft
money help get a film made, they can be
an iron fist in a velvet glove sometimes,
and I think theyre penny-wise, poundfoolish when they cause a film like
Nancy to be moved into another environment. In general, on a smaller film,
the intent and integrity of a location is
very basic to what we do we
respond to whats there. We riff off the
street noise in Chinatown in New York,
the sound of the waves in Venice Beach
or the austerity of Bruges. And in this
case, the climate had very real limitations; it was -35C [-24F] plus wind
chill, bloody cold, and it took an hour to
change a lens [in order to avoid condensation because of the temperature
shift]. And everyone works at a slower
speed in those temperatures. We were
also contending with Canadian union
laws that dictated a certain amount of
[local crew] participation. When you
have a certain vision, sometimes youre
better off just going in with a really
small crew and doing it.
Do you and Rain currently
have another collaboration in the
works?
Doyle: The extent of the collaboration always depends on the project.
There has been some reticence in the
filmmaking community because Rain
26

is coming onto big projects, which

bring with them all the big prejudices,
at a different level of experience,
and sometimes I have to fight for it.
But everything boils down to word of
mouth, and the only way to have our
collaboration continue to grow is by
actually doing things. The most
gratifying thing is seeing kids reactions
when we do workshops together at
film schools and film festivals, which we
do a lot. They see the two of us arguing
with each other as equals and realize
a young woman is making films of
this quality, and they really respond.
Thats wonderful.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
35mm
Moviecam Compact MK2
Cooke S4 and Angenieux Optimo
(24-290mm) lenses
Fuji Eterna 400 8583
I

Erratum
In last months ASC Awards
photo spread (Cinematographys
Summit), Tracy Fleischmans name
was accidentally omitted from a
caption on page 71. She was the guest
of nominee Kramer Morgenthau, ASC.

A Bold, New

Enterprise

With Star Trek, cinematographer Dan Mindel, ASC and director J.J.
Abrams update Gene Roddenberrys universe for a new generation of fans.
by Jon D. Witmer
Unit photography by Zade Rosenthal, SMPSP
n 1966, when audiences were
introduced to Capt. James T.
Kirk, he was already exploring
strange new worlds, seeking out
new life and new civilizations,
and boldly going (with his equally
enterprising crew) where no one had

I
28 June 2009

gone before. However, Kirks journey

to the bridge of the USS Enterprise
and his first contact with his core
crew is a story that the Star Trek franchises six series and 10 feature films
never told. Director J.J. Abrams has
filled in the gaps with a new Star Trek

feature that reboots the franchise,

and he concedes that finding a look
for the movie, which was shot by
Dan Mindel, ASC, was a challenge.
This isnt a reinvention to a degree
that ignores the history of the franchise, says Abrams. We needed to

Photos courtesy of Paramount Pictures. Frame grabs courtesy of Paramount and ILM.

embrace what had come before, but

the spirit of what Gene Roddenberry
created needed to be treated in a
modern context, with an awareness
of todays audiences.
Mindel, who previously
teamed with Abrams on Mission:
Impossible III (AC May 06), recalls,
J.J. told us early on to use the original TV show as our key reference. He
wanted us to pay attention to that
young, go-get-em, positive attitude. Other Mission: Impossible
collaborators who signed onto Star
Trek included production designer
Scott Chambliss and visual-effects
supervisor/2nd-unit director Roger
Guyett.
Mindel was eager to employ
the anamorphic format for Treks
23rd-century vistas. Im not interested in using Super 35mm, says the
cinematographer. J.J. wanted me to
convince him to shoot anamorphic,
so he and I looked at every test we
could do, and when he saw the
50mm Primo projected, with the
falloff in focus, he was convinced.
Guyett notes that although the
distortion inherent in anamorphic
lenses complicated the visual-effects
work, the result is worth it.
The Trek crews first assignment took them aboard the USS
Kelvin to shoot the opening
sequence, in which the Kelvin is
pitted against the time-traveling
Romulan warlord Nero (Eric Bana)
and his starship, the Narada.
Chambliss says his design for the
Kelvin, which predates the Enterprise
by some 25 years in story time, had
the feeling of combining Flash
Gordon with a Corvette commercial
from 1965, with a cigar lounge
thrown in for the bridge. Because its
the first spaceship were on in the
movie, J.J. and I wanted to do a bit of
a fake-out that would enable us to
make the Enterprise feel really different. The Kelvins interior lighting is
dominated by harsh toplight that
was created with open, undiffused
sources, and Mindel notes that the

Kelvin was where we learned everything we needed to know about

lighting the Enterprise, but we had a
lot more freedom on the Kelvin
because there were places to hide
lights.
The hard-light strategy was
carried into a power plant in Long
Beach, Calif., that served as the
Kelvins lower decks and engineering
section. Chambliss describes the
location as stressed, textural and
oily, which was the feeling we wanted
the Kelvin to have.

Mindel was intrigued by

Abrams desire to shoot Star Trek on
location as much as possible. The
director explains, This movie is a
space adventure and could potentially feel artificial because of that
premise, and I was very nervous
about it not having guts and reality. I
decided it would be critical to shoot
in real, practical locations or build
sets that would, for the most part,
give us the freedom to shoot as if we
were on a real location, perhaps with
some set extensions.

Opposite page:
Spock (Zachary
Quinto, left) and
James T. Kirk
(Chris Pine) face
the first of their
adventures
together in Star
Trek. This page,
top: The
villainous Nero
(Eric Bana) sets
his sights on the
young heroes.
Middle: Neros
ship, the Narada,
squares off
against the USS
Kelvin in the
films opening
sequence.
Below: Some 25
years after the
attack on the
Kelvin, the newly
constructed USS
Enterprise heads
into the final
frontier.

American Cinematographer 29

A Bold, New Enterprise

Top and middle:
Cinematographer
Dan Mindel, ASC
employed a hardlight strategy
inside the Kelvin.
Below: The look
was carried
through scenes
set in the
starships lower
decks, shot on
location in a
power plant in
Long Beach,
Calif.

30 June 2009

The introduction of the adult

James Kirk (Chris Pine) takes place
in an Iowa bar populated by Starfleet
cadets. To create the futuristic watering hole, an array of 23rd-century
adornments was added to the bar at
the American Legion Hollywood
Post 43. We used some Blondes for
toplight and a High End Systems
DL.2 behind the door to project a
moving image and add some life,
says gaffer Chris Prampin. We also
used Element Labs Stealth Displays
and Versa Tubes, which are big,
connectable LED pieces that allow
you to put any color into them or run
an image across them. We built [a rig
with those units] big enough to
encompass an entire wall, and, with
the help of PRG, where we rented
them, we had a full library of images
and colors.
During his momentous night
at the bar, Kirk meets Nyota Uhura
(Zoe Saldana), dukes it out with four
of Starfleets finest, and endures a
blunt scolding by Capt. Christopher
Pike (Bruce Greenwood). Suitably
chastened, Kirk musters the dignity
to enlist in Starfleet and attend the
Academy, where he befriends
Leonard Bones McCoy (Karl
Urban) and sows the seeds of his
rivalry and eventual friendship
with the half human/half Vulcan
Spock (Zachary Quinto).
Later, when Spocks home
planet of Vulcan is threatened, Kirk
and his graduating class receive their
first field assignment, reporting for
duty via shuttlecraft that take off
from a large hangar. For the shuttle
launchings, the filmmakers shot
inside the Marine Corps Air Station
in Tustin, Calif. A mixture of 16'
HMI balloons and stand-mounted
Gaffairs (rented from Skylight
Balloon Lighting) provided ambience inside the 1,000'-long-by-300'wide hangar, while 120' Condors
rigged with Xenons and 18Ks on Arri
MaxMovers swept the floor for
added effect.
Shooting inside the shuttle-

In contrast to the
Kelvins hard
angles,
production
designer Scott
Chambliss
incorporated
smooth curves
into the
Enterprise.
Mindel worked
with Chambliss
to build as much
lighting into the
bridge (far left)
and corridors
(near left) as
possible, and
sections of a
brewery in Van
Nuys, Calif.,
stood in for the
engineering
sections
(below).

craft, Mindel would squeeze in a

Kino Flo or LED panel for fill, and
his crew would often position a
Xenon angled in through the
windows and bounced off a piece of
Rosco Soft Silver on the floor. It was
really hard to get dollies in there, so
we often shot handheld, says
Mindel. That allowed the camera to
be part of whats going on. (On
larger sets, the filmmakers more
often moved the cameras via a
Steadicam or Technocrane.)
Boarding one of the shuttlecraft, Kirk and McCoy depart for the
Enterprise and catch their first
glimpse of the ship in space. There
are certain things you cant let go of if
youre going to do Star Trek, and one
of them is the general look and shape
of the Enterprise, says Abrams. You
want people to glance at it and go,
Yeah, its the Enterprise. And those
who already know it can study it and
realize how different it is.
In updating Starfleets flagship,
Chambliss abandoned the Kelvins
pulp influences in favor of designers
who were interested in futurism and
future technology, such as Eero
Saarinen. I got some line drawings of
the original exterior of the Enterprise,
which was all right angles and flat
discs, and started applying the curvature of Saarinens architecture to the

main structural elements. It was an

elegant approach that allowed the
ship to be itself and get kind of sexy
in the process. To carry that sex
appeal through the starships interior,
Mindel tried to lend the sets the feeling of a brand-new car, when its all
sparkly. I sometimes used Tiffen
Black Pro-Mists to give them a bit
more sparkle, and I was very keen to
have reflections on the set from glass,
shiny objects and surfaces. It just feels
so full of life when you get that.
We made a huge effort to stay
within the confines of the set and
maintain the realism, he continues.
We dont like to fly out walls, and we
built a vast amount of practical light
into the set. In the corridors,
Mindels crew hung 2K Blondes and

750-watt Lekos above holes that the

art department cut into the ceiling.
We also had MoleBeam Projectors
in various parts of the hallway, adds
Prampin. Al DeMayo, our lightingfixtures foreman, made sure what we
wanted was possible.
Much of the lighting built into
the interior was designed to cause
lens flares, which serve as a visual
motif throughout the picture. The
Enterprise has lights set in frame that
basically point down the lens of the
camera in every direction, says
Mindel. Wherever you look, you get
a flare. It goes against everything one
learns as a camera technician, which
is to shield the lens from any extraneous light and stop it from flaring.
Well either get slaughtered by our

American Cinematographer 31

Visual Effects for the 23rd Century

Right: The
Enterprise soars
into battle
against the
Narada.

n ACs October 1967 coverage of

the original Star Trek series, ASC
members Howard A. Anderson,
Linwood G. Dunn and Joseph
Westheimer detailed their Emmywinning special-effects work on the
show, and for the purposes of the
discussion, Westheimer broke this
work into five basic categories. To
lend the new Star Trek feature some
historical perspective, we asked the
films visual-effects supervisor, Roger
Guyett, to use the same parameters
to summarize the work done by
artists at Industrial Light & Magic,
Digital Domain, Svengali Visual
Effects, Lola Visual Effects, Evil Eye
Pictures and Kerner Optical.
Joseph Westheimer, ASC:
First are shots of the USS Enterprise
flying in space or orbiting a planet.
Roger Guyett: Trying to think
of new ways to show off the
Enterprise was a challenge of its own.
The level of complexity ILM artists
are able to create in their digital
surfaces is just phenomenal. We were
able to talk to people who had
worked on the original Star Trek
movies about how they dealt with
surfaces, and we [digitally] created
stuff like interference paint, which
the original effects teams achieved
practically on the Enterprise.
Westheimer: The second type
of effect is materialization of the
people as they are transported to

32 June 2009

the ship from a planet or [vice

versa] . The materialization or
transporter effect is accomplished
by superimposing a glitter over the
form of the people or object being
transported.
Guyett: We wanted to update
the transporter but still make it
familiar. J.J. [Abrams] had a lot of
really good ideas, and the idea you
see in the movie is his; he thought it
should look like light beams traveling in a very dimensional way so you
can understand the space where this
stuff is happening. The effect was
always slightly different depending
on the environment the characters
were in and the lighting conditions,
and it was always difficult to achieve.
I think the transporter was our Battle
of Waterloo it was tougher than
we first thought it would be!
Westheimer: The phaser
effect [has] a variety of settings and
adjustments. Most often used is the
stun effect, which can knock a man
down and render him unconscious.
Full effect, which causes an object to
dematerialize and disappear, is
another.
Guyett: Of course you want to
embrace the old stun vs. kill. But you
can believe our phasers are actually
firing; theyre more high-energy and
gnarly than the original phasers, and
they just feel more dangerous. If you
get hit by one of these things, youre

going to get a horrible wound. It feels

like getting hit by a projectile.
Westheimer: The fourth type
of effect is the television reductions
and superimposures. Aboard the
Enterprise are many view screens,
[and] the most important is the
Bridge Viewing Screen.
Guyett: Its the greatest bridge
window of any battleship, and at the
same time, its got great heads-up
display capability and an advanced
user-interface system, so you can
play back information. We used
greenscreen because a lot of the characters wear blue, but the issue was
that we wanted to reflect the interior
of the ship. We tried using a real
piece of glass so all the reflections
would be true, but building a piece of
glass like that was an absolute nightmare. In the end, we shot plates of
the interior view that we could reflect
back onto the window when we
added it digitally, and we had a CG
mock-up of the interior that would
give us a correct reflection with
correct perspective.
Westheimer: Finally are the
scenes or sequences in which an
optical effect is created literally
from scratch. These effects can be
classified as esoteric adventures .
A recent request, to quote the script,
was for a columnar-like area of
blurry, misty interference of some
sort. It is rather like a gentle whirl-

wind, but one of force rather than

air current. Faint pastel lights and
shades appear and disappear. It
moves from side to side gently and
then disappears. From this
description, our optical company
must create on film the effect that
the writer has conceived.
Guyett: We hit a home run
the first time out with our warp
effect. Russell Earl, my co-supervisor, and I decided we wanted it to
feel like youre traveling faster than
light, but what does that mean? We
had some great artists working on
this show, and the effect came
together very quickly. It has enough
flavor of the old-style warp, but you
get more of a first-person experience its as though youre inside
it.
One thing we did with our
space battles thats slightly different
was a lot of completely virtual pyro.
Traditionally, if you blow something up, you have to shoot an
element, but we wanted a much
more automated process. We studied the way things would explode in
space and invented a whole system
based on that. Theres no oxygen,
for example, so there has to be a
source things burn back to. Theres
also no drag or resistance, so if
something has a velocity, it doesnt
slow down or arc back to the
ground.
We also created some full-on
CG creatures. We had one thats sort
of halfway between a polar bear and
a gorilla we called him the
Polarilla. Neville Page designed
pretty much all of the creatures and
species within the movie. They
probably did less of that on the
original show because it was harder
to do, whereas its relatively straightforward in CG. But having said that,
its still not easy!

peers or be really admired for it!

Abrams adds, The flares often
werent made by a light source in the
frame, and to me, that implies theres
something extraordinary happening
just off camera. It makes me feel like
Im not watching the average
moment. And I love the idea of a
motif that is so inherently analog and
imperfect in its unpredictability; it
serves as counterpoint to the sterile,
controlled look that so many visualeffects films seem to have.
If the built-in lighting wasnt
providing the desired flare, the crew
aimed Xenon flashlights at the lenses
as the cameras rolled. Our A- and Bcamera operators, Colin Anderson
and Phil Carr-Forster, would tell us if
we needed to go a little farther in or
out of the frame, or up or down, to
get the ultimate flare, recalls
Prampin. It was funny to watch
Dan and I were running around,
ducking, jumping and hiding behind
things just so we wouldnt be seen by

the cameras. The flashlights were so

bright that there are probably several
instances where Dans actually in the
movie, but you cant really tell!
On the Enterprises ovalshaped bridge, the primary flare
inducers comprised a ring of MR 16s
and MR 11s fitted into the wall; each
was mounted so it could be slightly
panned and tilted for maximum
effect. The bridge had many lighting
opportunities built into it: screens,
buttons, blinking lights and all the
bells and whistles, notes Chambliss.
It feels contemporary and utterly
fleshed out. The consoles manned
by Spock, Hikaru Sulu (John Cho)
and Pavel Chekov (Anton Yelchin)
featured practical fixtures from the
art department and built-in LiteGear
XFlo dimmable fluorescent fixtures,
which were also installed beneath
milk-glass floor panels under the sets
centerpiece, the captains chair. The
XFlos, run off a dimmer-board
system programmed by Joshua

Above: Spock
addresses an
assembly of
cadets at
Starfleet
Academy.
Below:
California State
UniversityNorthridge
stood in for
some of the
Academys
exteriors; visual
effects
transformed the
setting into
23rd-century
San Francisco.

Jon D. Witmer

American Cinematographer 33

A Bold, New Enterprise

Above: Capt.
Robau (Faran
Tahir, center)
faces off against
the Naradas
Romulan crew.
Below left: Nero
ponders his next
move. Below
right: Chambliss
designed the
interior of the
ship as an
assortment of
pieces that could
be rearranged
numerous ways
to suggest the
vessels
immense scale.

34 June 2009

Thatcher, allowed us to put a little

life into [the set], says Prampin. We
could set up a little pulse in them, or
we could make it look like something
was flickering and the power was
going out.
Red-alert situations have been
a Star Trek staple from the very
beginning. To make the most of
those sequences, Mindel had the
electricians fit a red-gelled XFlo
alongside all of the clean tubes built
into the bridge, enabling the
dimmer-board operator to instantaneously establish the red-alert look.
To further punctuate the change in
ships status, we incorporated a lot
of LED technology, such as LiteGear
LiteRibbon RGB strips, which
allowed us to change the color, says
Prampin. The strips were installed as
architectural accents around steps

and other cutaways on the bridge;

when not in red alert, the strips
glowed blue to match Neoflex tubing
running through narrow channels
Chambliss designed into the sets
walls and ceiling. (Neoflex is a flexible, plastic-encased LED strip that
creates a glow similar to a neon
fixture.)
When the Enterprise arrives at
Vulcan, its crew finds the planet
endangered by Neros Narada,
which, Chambliss says, makes the
scale of the Enterprise look rather
insignificant. To economically
suggest the immense scale of the
Naradas interior, Chambliss drew
on his experience working in theater.
I thought we should treat the
soundstage like a theater stage and
create a world where we could mix
and match elements to create differ-

ent and new environments over and

over again. Its not a traditional way
of designing movies, but its a very
traditional way of designing theatrical scenery.
Last year, AC visited the
Paramount soundstage housing the
Naradas interior elements. The
result of Chambliss approach was a
seemingly random arrangement of
almost countless pieces, some on
casters, some incorporating display
interfaces and Romulan insignia,
some hanging from wires run to the
ceiling, and many featuring corrugated black tubing that lent the entire
stage an eerie quality that was
enhanced by Mindels use of smoke
and yellow light. The larger tower
elements could be shot from any
side, notes Chambliss. We could put
them together to make some massive

structure, or we could pull them

apart, flip them sideways and fly them
up in the air. Much to my delight, as
soon as I showed J.J. a model of this
approach, he instantly got it and
started going along for the ride. He
told me it felt like having a stage full
of toys.
Given that the set was going to
change on the fly, we had to be able to
change the lighting on the fly, says
Mindel. We built in the ability to
control our lights from a dimmer
board and rearrange what we were
doing remotely. Accordingly, the
cinematographer employed a
number of moving fixtures
including Vari-Lite VL3500s and Clay
Paky Alpha Spot 1200s above the
set, with Nine-light Maxi-Brutes,
MoleBeam Projectors, 5Ks and 10Ks
cutting additional shafts through the

smoked interior. On the floor, Kino

Flos gelled with Lee 101 Yellow were
placed to light particular set pieces,
and the outer edge of the set was
lined with a painted backdrop that
was alternately frontlit with Far Cycs
or backlit with Sky Pans. It was a
pretty abstract backing, so we tried to
be abstract with our lighting and just
pick spots that worked with the sets
configuration at the time, says
Prampin.
During ACs visit, a phaser
battle was staged inside the Romulan
ship. Between takes, prop master
Russell Bobbitt offered a close look at
Starfleets standard-issue sidearm.
Staying true to the phaser wielded by
the series original cast members, the
updated firearm still boasts both
stun and kill settings; now,
however, the two settings are visually

differentiated with the press of a

thumb switch that physically flips the
barrel 180 degrees. With the guns,
gadgets and all of the control panels,
our intention was always to provide a
literal functionality, says Chambliss,
who praises Bobbitt and set decorator Karen Manthey for their enormous and carefully considered
contributions to that work.
Before traveling back in time
to wreak havoc, the Narada was a
mining vessel, and Nero now uses its
retractable drilling platform as a
devastating weapon. In an attempt to
render the weapon inoperative, Kirk,
Sulu and a red shirt named Olsen
(Greg Ellis) space-dive out of a shuttlecraft and into Vulcans atmosphere, landing on the platform. A
wedge of the platform was
constructed in Dodger Stadiums

Left: Kirk tussles

with Neros crew
on an aerial
drilling platform
while Sulu (John
Cho, left)
struggles with a
parachute
malfunction.
Below left:
Visual-effects
supervisor/2ndunit director
Roger Guyett
(standing at
right) leads the
second unit
through shooting
on the drill
platform. Below
right: The crew
takes aim with
air movers to sell
the impression
that Kirk and
Sulu are
plummeting
toward the
Vulcan surface.

American Cinematographer 35

A Bold, New Enterprise

Right: Spock
addresses the
Vulcan council.
The scene was
filmed in the
SkyRose chapel
in Rose Hills
Memorial Park
in Whittier, Calif.
Below: Mindel
(holding finder)
and director J.J.
Abrams scour
the countryside
in search of
lens flares.

parking lot and backed by greenscreen; the sites elevation allowed

Mindel to shoot into the sky without
fear of glimpsing the Los Angeles
skyline. We learned on Mission:
Impossible that these big greenscreen
sets work better outside, says
Mindel. You get the ambient dust
and wind and sunlight, which really
help sell the gag. Condors also stood
at the ready with Nine-light MaxiBrutes and Dinos for backlight and
100K and 50K SoftSuns for fill.
The approach certainly didnt
make compositing the sequence
easy, says Guyett. With a really
gnarly set, greenscreens get dirty and
become less effective, but I think if
wed done it [onstage], there would
be a greater chance of people looking
at it and saying, I dont really believe
theyre outside. Mindel adds, Part

36 June 2009

of working on this kind of movie is

learning about the [visual-effects]
technology, and Rogers very keen to
teach guys like me. He and I shared
the experience all the way to the digital intermediate, because the biggest
issue is blending everything together
seamlessly [in post].
The filmmakers carried out
the DI at Company 3 with colorist
Stefan Sonnenfeld. Shooting on
film, which is really important to me
and Dan, and then doing the DI with
Stefan allowed us to do a critical and
final pass that was in some cases
about color-correction and in other
cases about being incredibly creative
and giving certain locations an even
bolder look, says Abrams. Mindel
notes, Kodak offered us [Vision3
500T] 5219 because of its greater
latitude, but I found it lacked the

initial contrast that I like; Id much

rather have the contrast on the negative than try to add it afterwards. He
opted instead to shoot two Kodak
Vision2 negatives, 100T 5212 (day
exteriors) and 500T 5218 (interiors).
We shot at T2.823 basically all the
time, and I like to use zooms on set, so
I pushed by half a stop to give us
enough light when we were inside or
shooting at night, adds Mindel.
After the mission is accomplished on the drill platform, Sulu is
jolted off and into freefall. When Kirk
jumps after him, it falls to Chekov,
aboard the Enterprise, to lock onto the
plummeting targets and beam them
back to the transporter room. In the
transporter-room set, we had some
floor and ceiling lighting effects that
remained fairly similar to the look of
the original series, says Mindel.
Prampin adds, We gave the art
department old Fresnel lenses out of
10Ks, and they actually incorporated
those into the set for the characters to
stand on. A mix of 10Ks and Ninelights provided illumination from
below the transporter, and 2K
MoleBeam Projectors were aimed
through holes designed into the ceiling. The transporter remained dark
until the characters stood on it, and
then we would gradually start putting
a little light into it, says Prampin.
Eventually, we would get to an
overexposed state, at which point
the characters would disappear.
(25K SoftSuns and 8K Paparazzis
enhanced the effect.)
When Pike falls into Neros
hands, Spock becomes acting captain
of the Enterprise, and in the interest of
logic and efficiency, he decides to
keep Kirk out of his way by jettisoning him to the ice planet Delta Vega.
The planets exterior was constructed
alongside the drill platform at Dodger
Stadium. We mocked up a proof-ofconcept on the computer and did a
very quick survey of the car park,
says Guyett. We ran a Sunpath on the
two sets, and we were able to present
this concept of shooting the two sets

A Bold, New Enterprise

From left:
Chekov (Anton
Yelchin), Kirk,
Scotty (Simon
Pegg), Bones
(Karl Urban),
Sulu and Uhura
(Zoe Saldana)
boldly go where
no one has
gone before.

side-by-side and demonstrate that it

could actually work. J.J. would do
first unit on one, Id do second unit
on the other, and then wed swap.
Cinematographer
Bruce
McCleery, a longtime collaborator of
Mindels, shot the second-unit material. The filmmakers combined
several techniques to suggest a larger
space than conventional construction could provide in the stadiums
parking lot. We shot plates in
Alaska, and we did a lot of fantastic

38

DigiMatte work to create the ice

environment, recalls Guyett. (Aerial
director of photography David B.
Nowell, ASC shot plates in Alaska
and Utah.) A bluescreen, illuminated
by 18Ks, wrapped around the Delta
Vega exterior, and above the set, key
rigging grip Rick Rader suspended a
large silk from a construction crane
that could be moved depending on
the position of the sun. For additional fill, Mindel used 100K and 50K
SoftSuns.

Seemingly stranded on the ice

planet, Kirk encounters an elderly
Spock (Leonard Nimoy), who has
traveled back in time in pursuit of
Nero. This Spock leads Kirk to a
Starfleet outpost tended by
Montgomery Scott (Simon Pegg).
The outpost set was built in a part of
the Anheuser-Busch brewery in Van
Nuys, Calif. We used Par 64 space
lights to create little pools of light for
people to walk through, but for the
most part, we kept it pretty subdued,
says Prampin. To hide the back wall,
Scott Chambliss put up a bunch of
chain-link fence with some aged plastic on it, and behind that we stuck a
lot of 4-by-4 Kinos, some gelled with
Lee 179 Chrome Orange and some
with Lee 219 Fluorescent Green. We
also used some Kinos in and around
Scottys station, but we mostly keyed
that with Blondes through diffusion,
usually Lee 129 [Heavy Frost].
After the elder Spock shares a

future formula of Scotts with the

young engineer, Scott and Kirk
manage to beam back to the Enterprise
as the ship travels at warp speed;
Scotts calculations, however, land the
pair in the engineering decks. For this
scene, the filmmakers sought a largescale location that would feel clean
and fresh instead of oily and disgusting, says Chambliss. Instantly, we
thought of major food-processing
plants, and our research led us to the
[Anheuser-Busch] plant. Mindel
explains, We shot in a pump house,
which was so noisy that everyone had
to wear ear protection. We also shot in
the fermentation house, which was
refrigerated it was 100F outside,
and we were all inside in protective
clothing! The fermentation tanks gave
us many reflections and great-looking
pings off the stainless steel, but we had
to be very careful about what kind of
lights we used, where we used them
and for how long, because you cant

change the temperature of the ambient air very much before you mess up
all the beer.
We only used fluorescents to
key with, and we were able to light
backgrounds with conventional
lights and turn them off between
takes so they never got too hot, he
continues. We werent allowed to
bring dollies up there, so we shot
with the Steadicam. The filmmakers
also tapped some of the locations
existing mercury-vapor worklights.
We just wrapped them in a little
Rosco Scrim to control their level
and brought in our own lights to
augment that, says Prampin.
With Kirk, Spock, Bones,
Scotty, Uhura, Sulu and Chekov all
finally aboard, the Enterprise boldly
enters dangers maw to conclude its
first adventure. Proud to have
enlisted for another voyage with
Abrams, Mindel reflects, J.J. enjoys
what he does immensely, and he

wants us all to bring our best and

show him something a little different
from whats been seen before. His
mantras are that the work should be
fun, and you should respect the audience. We tried really hard to make
this film worthy of its name.
I

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Panaflex Millennium XL,
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Kodak Vision2 100T 5212,
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39

Back
to the

Future
Shane Hurlbut,
ASC and director
McG envision the
post-Judgment Day
world of
Terminator
Salvation.
by Jon D. Witmer
Unit photography by
Richard Foreman, SMPSP

hane Hurlbut, ASC has seen

the future. As a matter of fact,
he has spent the better part of
the last two years there, in the
grimy, smoldering, post-apocalyptic world of Terminator
Salvation. The year is 2018, and guntoting robots have transformed
human survivors into scavengers.
The world is dominated by a robocentric organization called Skynet,
but the whole scene is actually overseen by a man named McG. For 77
shooting days not to mention
months of prep and post the
future was set up in and around
Albuquerque Studios in New
Mexico, where AC visited last
August.
The production, the fourth
film in the franchise begun in 1984
by director James Camerons The
Terminator, has almost completely
overtaken the studio. Evidence of

40 June 2009

Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Warner Bros.

Opposite page: A
T-700 rolls off the
assembly line in
Terminator
Salvation. This
page, top: John
Connor
(Christian Bale,
left) questions
the allegiance of
Marcus Wright
(Sam
Worthington), a
human/machine
hybrid. Middle:
Director McG
(left) gives
instructions to a
T-600. Bottom:
Shane Hurlbut,
ASC (right) preps
the next setup as
Worthington and
1st AD Bruce
Franklin look on.

the all-out war that serves as the

storys backdrop lines the road from
the airport to the studio; dusty,
burnt-out automobile chassis sit on
the shoulder, and, closer to the studio entrance, a tow truck replete
with built-on weaponry and a cowcatcher stands sentry.
The first three Terminator
films all took place in the present day
and presented Terminator robots
sent back in time in an attempt to
prevent John Connor from becoming the leader of the human resistance, but Salvation is confined to the
future, before anyone traveled back
in time, and before Connor (played
by Christian Bale) earns all of his
stripes. This is post-Judgment Day,
after the bombs have gone off, says
McG. This is the world weve only
had the tiniest sneak peek at in the
other films.
To create the future, the director called on Hurlbut, a collaborator
on We Are Marshall (2006) and
numerous music videos and commercials, and production designer
Martin Laing. Were trying to build
on the language and the rules that
were set forward [by the previous
films] and create a bigger, more

exciting show, says Laing.

American Cinematographer 41

Back to the Future

Connor leads
members of
the resistance
in an assault
against a
Skynet
operations
center.

42 June 2009

Within the overarching timeline of the series, the machines in

this film precede the coming of the
Arnold Schwarzenegger T-800 in
the original film, says McG.
Therefore, Salvations models
required some reverse-engineering
on Laings part. We had to make the
parts bigger and more brutal, says
Laing. The T-700 is 6-foot-9, and
the T-600 is 7-foot-3 and has a rubber mask that doesnt quite fit and is
falling apart. We also wanted to go
with the realities of metal. Theyd be
casting steel, and the reality of steel is
dark, rusty and oily. (Stan Winston
Studio physically realized the
Terminator designs with on-set puppets, costumes and props.)
Martin and I were both totally into this dark, greasy, grimy
world, enthuses Hurlbut, who was
eager to depart from the series established visual language. We didnt
want to go into that same cobaltblue moonlight. We wanted to reinvent the look. Inspired by
Technicolors photochemical OZ
process (created by Bob Olson and
Mike Zacharia), Hurlbut sat down
with colorist Stefan Sonnenfeld at
Company 3 and devised an intense,
digital version of the OZ process,
says the cinematographer. The skies
turn silver-blue, and instead of
brown rods in the desert, there are
silver rods. Everything looks metallic, and what better way to depict a
world of machines?
With the digital post path in
mind, Laing used more saturated
colors in some parts of the set. For
example, he says, we created red
flora thats come up out of the
ground where the radiation level
from the bombs is the highest.
Hurlbut adds, The red tones in this
movie are very saturated and
vibrant, but our post process took
them down to a wonderful bloodcrimson.
On the day AC visits the set,
Hurlbut steps away from a rehearsal
to explain the filmmakers modus

Clockwise from left: Kyle Reese (Anton

Yelchin) confronts Wright; cranes and
wirework enable the crew to shoot a
sequence in which a giant Harvester
Terminator pulls humans out of an old
7-Eleven; the Harvester unleashes
Moto-Terminators to pursue fleeing
humans; Reese and Wright escape in a
modified tow truck.

operandi, but heads back toward his

crew including gaffer Todd
Higgins, key grip David Knudson,
A-camera operator Chris Moseley,
B-camera operator George Billinger
and C-camera operator Gary
Hatfield when McG calls out,
Lets get a lens on this! Before the
cameras start to roll, though,
Hurlbut returns to introduce his
assistant, Po Chan. Once we go into
production, she takes all the lighting
notes on set, including keylight,
backlight and fill exposure, and
camera placement and color temperature. Her notes were absolutely
essential with all of the visual-effects
setups we had. She also manages the
daily schedule, so when you walk
onto the set in the morning, you
know the scene, the stock, the equipment and the personnel because its
all on the list unless I want to
change it on the day. Theres always

that wild card!

McG and I feel the best prep
is the one thats well thought out and
lets us change our plans on any given
day, continues Hurlbut. Weve had
sequences that were supposed to be
one long take, but then I added a few
new cameras to catch explosions,
and the transformation was really
exciting.
As the set braces for the first
take of the day, Chan leads the way
to another stage, which contains the
subterranean outpost Connor and
his colleagues call home. The series
of tunnels and rooms includes the
small room Connor shares with his
wife, Kate (Bryce Dallas Howard).
The tunnels are chockablock with
mementos of the past, including a
basketball hoop and a woodcut portrait of a dog. The resistance isnt
only fighting the Terminators,
theyre also fighting the reality of

American Cinematographer 43

Back to the Future

Connor
interrogates
Wright after
discovering
Skynets
handiwork
beneath Wrights
skin. Hurlbuts
assistant, Po
Chan, drew up
the lighting plots
for the films sets
and locations.

what happens in nature: Moisture

gets in and the paint starts peeling,
says Laing. Theyve run out of
paint. Its the sad world theyre in.
The sad world is also reflected
in the resistances meager air force,
comprising a ragged array of helicopters and airplanes. Its a patch-

work quilt, says Laing. The planes

have been breaking down and
theyve had to steal bits from other
planes, which creates a sad but
almost colorful texture.
In keeping with the freedom
fighters retrofitted aesthetic, the
outpost is illuminated by streetlights

3#!#/../2).4%22/'!4%3-!2#53*5.%
434/04
+%9,4'4+'2%%.
/6%2(%!$,4'4+
&),,4+
7!,,4

and other found sources jerry-built

into the tunnels walls and ceilings.
Victor Zolfo, our set decorator,
found the most amazing practicals,
says Hurlbut. There are fluorescents, warning beacons, and old
cobra-head streetlamps lying
around. In the hallways, I hung little
650-watt FCX bulbs in the ceiling,
and when people walk through
them, they go in and out of hot toplight.
Hurlbut also hung 2', 4' and 8'
batten strips in areas of the outpost
for a soft, controllable source. In an
8-foot strip, there are 25 R30 85watt globes in a line, and I can dim
them up or down depending on
what I want the stop to be.
Throughout the shoot, the cinematographer maintained a stop of
T2, shooting in Super 35mm with
three Kodak stocks: Vision2 50D
5201 (day exteriors) and 200T 5217
(day interiors) and Vision3 500T
5219 (night exteriors and dark interiors). Glenn Brown, my first assistant, is the reason were able to pull

+7)4(#43
+7)4(#43

02!4)#!,4/
4(%7!,,
02!4)#!,4/-!2#53

-!2#53
+7)4(#43

+%9,)'(4
/0%2!4)/.,)'(4
/0%2!4)/.,)'(4

+7)4(#43
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44 June 2009

+7)4(#43

Lighting diagram by Po Chan, courtesy of Shane Hurlbut.

87/2+,)'(43

Top: Connor
transmits radio
messages with
the hope of
finding other
human
survivors.
Middle: Connor
and his wife,
Kate (Bryce
Dallas Howard),
share a quiet
moment in the
resistances
subterranean
outpost. Bottom:
Hurlbut checks
the light in the
outposts
corridors.

at a T2 the whole time. He is amazing.

Hurlbut wanted to minimize
grain throughout the picture.
Other films that deal with postapocalyptic settings add grain, but I
thought we should reinvent the
genre with a unique look without
adding grain, he says. I also shot
the whole movie on a 144-degree
shutter to sharpen the effects and
make the image snap. The action,
the sparks and the fire are just a little
crisper.
Leaving the relative safety of
the resistance behind, Chan heads
toward another stage, this one housing the underbelly of Skynets operations; a splinter unit is picking up
some additional footage. Opening
the stage door sends a shaft of daylight cutting through the interior
haze, and when the door closes
again, moments pass before any
detail can be discerned. When the
eyes adjust, the sight is shocking:
Human refugees dressed in the tattered remnants of clothes huddle in
a cramped, overcrowded cage, the
victims of Skynets efforts to harvest
human hair and skin in an attempt
to create a Terminator visually indistinguishable from humans. (The
smoke that plays inside this set
marks a motif running throughout
the film, even in exteriors, suggesting a world still smoldering from

Judgment Day.)
American Cinematographer 45

Back to the Future

Above: Skynet
uses flying
Transporters to
ferry humans
for a harvesting
program. We
built our
[Transporter]
set around
cattle cars,
says production
designer Martin
Laing. Humans
are now being
moved like
cattle, just
brutally pushed
from A to B.
Below left:
Reese is
caught in a
Transporter.
Below right:
The machines
unload their
human cargo in
a large
processing
facility.

46 June 2009

In an early scene in the film,

Connor leads a group of fighters
into the missile silo that houses this
cage. A ground-level assault wipes
out most of the silos power except
for a few warning strobes and spinning red beacons. Otherwise, the
interior was lit with Surefire flashlights mounted to guns, says
Hurlbut. To better illuminate his
surroundings, Connor ignites a
magnesium flare. Hurlbut recalls, I
told Christian, This is very dangerous, but its going to be the coolest
shot youve ever seen the result
will be total darkness, and when you
strike the flare, youre going to
become as bright as a nuclear
bomb!
The surface attack leading to
the discovery of the underground
cages was filmed as a day exterior in
the New Mexico desert, where the

production had to contend with

high winds. Before tackling
Salvation, Hurlbut shot Swing Vote
(2008) in the state, and on that feature, he took a cue from his nightexterior setups to help him through
the windy days. For night ambience, Ill bounce 12-light Maxis into
a flyswatter, a 45-foot Pettibone telescopic-boom forklift with a big
bounce mounted on it. For days, we
started mounting bounces on
Pettibones, and we could drive them
anywhere, with no lines and no bull
pricks in the ground. We got the
ones with the turning front rack so
we could aim the bounce exactly
where we wanted it.
For night-exterior setups, he
added 120' Condors fitted with 24light Dinos for backlight. My backlight is probably 1 stops down, and
my fill is about 3 down its in

the toe, he says. I have a home out

in the Santa Rosa Valley, and I can
really study the moonlight and how
it backlights or sidelights trees. I
think nights look utterly realistic
when you underexpose.
Hurlbut incorporated such
underexposure for an exterior location involving a Napalm run
Connor makes from a helicopter. He
explains, We built a pond just down
from the studio that was 80-feet
wide by 200-feet long, and we put
approximately 60 cement trees
alongside that we could light on fire
for the Napalm strike. After the
strike, Connors chopper crashes
into the pond, which is infested with
Hydrobots. Laing notes, The
Hydrobot is the first Terminator we
see in the water, so we took the
movement of an eel but worked
with the reality of pistons and pro-

Back to the Future

Right: Hurlbut
incorporated
smoke, sparks
and fire effects
inside the
Terminator
factory, which
was constructed
in a New
Mexico power
plant. Below left:
The crew
prepares to
shoot stagebound footage to
match an
exterior Napalm
strike. Below
right: Gelled Par
cans are aimed
into mirrors to
make a grounded
Pave Hawk
helicopter
appear to fly
over a series of
explosions.

48 June 2009

pellers to actually make it go

through the water. We tried to make
it as real as possible. Helping sell the
realism, Hurlbut adds, Charlie
Gibson, the visual-effects supervisor, knocked it out of the park with
every rendered frame. The teams he
assembled were at the top of the
game. (Those teams included
Industrial Light & Magic, Asylum,
Pixel Liberation Front, Rising Sun
Pictures and Kerner Optical.)
Patrick Loungway, our second-unit cinematographer, devised
a shot where a guy falls out of the
helicopter and into that pond with a
Hydrobot attacking his face, says
Hurlbut. Patrick put a 5K on a
Condor with a ceiling fan spinning
in front and a piece of foamcore as

the helicopters shadow. For the

setup, the camera was in the water
looking up as Connors co-pilot
breaks the surface; underwater
director of photography Peter
Zuccarini helped realize the shot.
In our last three weeks, weve had
first and second unit, both with
splinter units, to get all the shots,
says Hurlbut.
Converting [cameras] in a
multi-camera shoot is where you
lose all your time on films, so I make
sure everything is built and ready to
go, the cinematographer continues.
The crash cams are ready, the
Steadicam is ready, and Ive got two
cameras in handheld mode and two
cameras in studio mode. We rarely
use more than two or three cameras

at a time, but when we want to go to

the crane, its ready.
We went with a full Primo
lens package, he continues. Theyre
nice, sharp lenses with incredible
contrast; I thought this film was the
perfect application for them. Aside
from NDs, he avoided filtration, and
he notes that he and McG would
generally establish the scenes with a
wide lens and then cover the action
on long lenses. Most of the time,
21mm was as wide as we went. McG
loves close-ups around the actors
face, so wed start on a 21mm and
then go to a 150mm.
In contrast to the moonlight
ambience near the pond, the night
breaks open with artificial glare
around Skynet, where flying
machines called Transporters ferry
humans for the machines harvesting program. When resistance
member Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin)
is captured and taken to Skynet,
Connor and Marcus Wright (Sam
Worthington) set off to rescue him.
I lit Skynet with a blue-green tone
that was the evil color and
used warmer tones for the resistance, says Hurlbut. To maintain
that look where the Transporters
land and unload their cargo, the cinematographer worked with David
Pringle of Luminys Systems to
acquire 600 metal-halide sports fixtures, which Pringle modified with
housings that made them more

  
 
 

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Back to the Future

Top: The sterile
laboratory
where Skynet
conducts its
human
experiments
stands in sharp
contrast to the
rest of the postapocalyptic
world. Middle:
McG shows his
solidarity with
the human
resistance.
Below: Connor
leads Reese
and Star
(Jadagrace) out
of the lab.

efficient, says Hurlbut. He put

reflectors in them and moved the
ballast, so we have an incredibly
bright source that weighs very little.
We put six Pettibones outside of Skynet, and [key rigging grip]
Kent Baker mounted 60 of these
lights on each one, he continues.
Scott Graves, the rigging gaffer, and
Kent Baker can turn any vision into
a reality.
The cyan motif continues in
the so-called Terminator factory,
where machines manufacture T-700
endoskeletons. Chan leads the way
into another darkened stage, where a
small part of this factory awaits

50 June 2009

some insert shots. Most of the action,

however, was filmed on location
inside a local power plant. To establish
the reality of machines making
machines, we went to a Swedish company called ABB, who sent us 16 of
their robots along with one of their
technicians, says Laing. We added
the torsos of our Terminators into the
set and then brought in these robots,
which were programmed to do a ballet around them. It was absolutely
lovely.
Despite the mechanized
majesty, Hurlbut was concerned the
location might look too small
onscreen. The factory was rather
small, and McG wanted to make it feel
like it went on to infinity, he says. So
we added smoke and brought in the
language of Skynet with metal-halide
sports fixtures on one end, backlighting the smoke and silhouetting the
robots, which made them look menacing. It was very dark in there, but
there were sparks and fire creating
ambient light. There were guys welding right next to the frame, and Mike
Meinardus, the special-effects coordinator, and his key set foreman Chris
Brenczewski had propane poppers
theres a flame under a little tube, and
when you hit a button, a solenoid
valve opens a 5-gallon propane tank,
shooting the propane through the
flame and creating a 15-foot fireball.
Being able to light practically with all
of these different sources has been an
amazing gift from the special-effects
department they made this look
possible.
Fire also pocks the post-nuclear
landscape, and Hurlbut regularly
employed flame effects on night exteriors to boost contrast. In a fullmoonlight environment, everythings
kind of gray, he notes. When we
injected the fire element, it really
brought everything out and gave it
dimension. To supplement real
flames on location, the electricians
clustered Fay lights, pointing in all
directions, on a Western dolly. We
put a Magic Gadget flicker generator

Back to the Future

Wright
struggles to
face his inner
demons.

in there and dialed it to achieve our

highs and lows, says Hurlbut. The
movable rig was gelled with double
Full and Half CTO. We had to really boost the fire effect because of our
DI plan, he notes. With the gel
canopy completely covering the
lights, the rig was totally waterproof. We had six of those rigs and
moved them wherever we needed
fire.
The same gel combination
was used in a different rig to make it

appear as though a Pave Hawk helicopter is flying over Skynet as explosions erupt beneath the aircraft. To
sell the effect while the aircraft sat on
the stage floor, Hurlbut had the floor
covered with mirrors and set a line
of rocknroll truss fitted with gelled
Par cans above the helicopter, on
either side. With the overhead fixtures bouncing into the mirrors, the
fire source appeared to be below
the helicopter; to add a sense of
movement, a chase sequence was

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52

run from a dimmer board while lamp

operators physically panned metalhalide sports fixtures. It was like a
poor-mans process, says Hurlbut.
There were nine guys panning lights
and our dimmer-board operator,
Bryan Booth, doing his dance, and it
all looked so real.
Skynets headquarters are in
San Francisco, where a mad scientist
named Serena (Helena Bonham
Carter) sits behind the curtain of
Skynets machinations in an utterly
sterile environment that contrasts
poignantly with the rest of the world.
Shes the evil witch who has created
her own little world, says Laing. But
underneath, everythings very dark
and dingy.
The sterility is most notable in
Serenas tower, where she squares off
against Wright. Hurlbut explains, I
lit the set from overhead and overexposed it to make it hyper-white. That
was the one day I shot at a T4,

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because McG wanted more depth in

there. HPL space lights, which incorporate halogen Pars, provided the
base exposure in the set. The wide
shots played nicely with the top
source, but for close-ups, we brought
in a little fill for their eyes, says
Hurlbut.
When the Salvation crew
returns from lunch, they prepare to
shoot in another section of Skynet,
the lab where experiments involving
human skin and hair are conducted.
The lab reflects the clinical atmosphere of Serenas tower but has a
morgue-like quality thanks to the
human cadavers lying on surgical
tables. In the scene at hand, Connor,
Reese and a girl named Star
(Jadagrace) try to make their way out
of the facility, and when Terminators
take up the chase, things start to
explode.
Practical lights adorn much of
the set, with an overhead grid of near-

ly 100 space lights providing overall

ambience. To facilitate CG extensions in post, a bluescreen lines the
outer edge of the set; it is lit by Kino
Flo Image 80s along the top and
bottom, all fitted with Super Blue
tubes. Thats mainly what I use for
stage applications, and when we do
bluescreen work outside, I use
18Ks, says Hurlbut. The cinematographer goes on to explain his
preference for bluescreen over
greenscreen: If you have blue contamination on a face, you can desaturate it to make it look like skylight.
But what can you do with green
contamination?
Despite the extensive visualeffects work, effects were achieved
practically and in-camera as often as
possible. I wanted all the explosions, all the velocity, to be a tactile
experience, says McG. When people see CG elements, they sort of
detach from the movie, and this

story is a cautionary tale. We live in a

science-fiction world, and if we
dont watch out, this could happen.
With that ominous prediction hanging in the air, McG surveys the set
and turns once more to face the
future. Make it hot! he shouts.
Lets go!
I

TECHNICAL SPECS
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Super 35mm
Panaflex Millennium XL,
Platinum;
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53

Making History

Fun

John Schwartzman,
ASC captures a
cavalcade of famous
figures in the
madcap comedy
Night at the
Museum: Battle of
the Smithsonian.
by Patricia Thomson
Unit photography by
Doane Gregory

54 June 2009

heros welcome greeted Night

at the Museum: Battle of the
Smithsonian when the production arrived at the titular
museum in Washington, D.C.,
last May. It was like being an
American soldier in 1945 driving
through Sicily, where everyones
throwing prosciutto and bottles of
wine, recalls John Schwartzman,
ASC, who joined director Shawn
Levy to film the sequel. Smithsonian
staffers were well aware that the original Night at the Museum (2006) had
boosted attendance at New Yorks
American Museum of Natural
History by 20 percent, so they welcomed the sequel with open arms.
The filmmakers even received per-

mission to shoot inside the National

Air and Space Museum, a first for a
Hollywood production.
Battle of the Smithsonian
picks up with Larry Daley (Ben
Stiller), now a successful businessman, as he visits his old friends at
the museum and discovers that
interactive displays are replacing the
old-fashioned dioramas, which are
being shipped to the Smithsonian
for storage. When he realizes the
materials include the Egyptian
tablet that gives life to the museums
inanimate inhabitants, Daley dashes
to Washington to try to retrieve the
tablet before dark, but doesnt arrive
in time. Among the newly awakened
is the evil Egyptian king Kah Mun

Photos courtesy of 20th Century Fox.

Rah (Hank Azaria), who intends to

use the tablet to open the doors to
the underworld. He recruits other
bad guys, including Ivan the Terrible
(Christopher Guest) and Napoleon
(Alain Chabat). Meanwhile, Daley
gathers a team that includes Gen.
George Custer (Bill Hader) and
Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams). The
action peaks when Daley and
Earhart steal her aircraft and the
Wright brothers plane from the Air
and Space Museum and escape to
New York with their precious cargo.
Like its predecessor, which
was directed by Levy and shot by
Guillermo Navarro, ASC, Battle of
the Smithsonian features few scenes
without visual effects; even a simple
two-shot often has animated elements, such as a dancing Degas ballerina, in the background.
Nevertheless, says Levy, he retained
the philosophy of the first film:
This was a comedy first and an
effects extravaganza second.
Comedy was one reason Levy
decided to shoot widescreen. He
had never done so, but
Schwartzman convinced him it
would allow the comedy to play
better. The wider frame allows you
to unify multiple stars, which is a
treat for audiences, says Levy. To
see Ben Stiller improvising in the
same frame as Hank Azaria or
Christopher Guest just maximizes
the comedy trip. Of the decision
to use Super 35mm instead
of anamorphic, Schwartzman
explains, I would have preferred
anamorphic, but we were going to
have many units going, and we had
to be sure wed have enough equipment for everybody. And nowadays,
with digital intermediates, Super 35
isnt a bad way to go.
For Schwartzman, one of the
challenges of the production was
balancing the storys nighttime setting with the mandate that comedy
shouldnt be too dark. The studio
[20th Century Fox] wanted Night at
the Museum to look more like Day

Opposite page:
Smithsonian
Museum
security guard
Larry Daley
(Ben Stiller)
and aviatrix
Amelia Earhart
(Amy Adams)
check out a
female statues
reaction as
Rodins Thinker
flexes his
guns to
impress her.
This page, top:
Larry and his
new friend try
to contain the
mayhem
unleashed by a
magical
Egyptian tablet.
Middle: Evil
pharaoh Kah
Mun Rah (Hank
Azaria) uses an
hourglass to
torment
miniature
cowpoke
Jedediah
(Owen Wilson).
Bottom: Honest
Abe Lincoln
springs to life
in his memorial
chair.

American Cinematographer 55

Making History Fun

Top left: Armed

with his trusty
flashlight, Larry
shows off the
form that got
him promoted to
the big leagues
of museum
security. Top
right: Larry
attempts to
reason with
Napoleon (Alain
Chabat). Below:
Napoleon and
Ivan the Terrible
(Christopher
Guest) suffer a
temporary
setback in their
quest for world
domination.

56 June 2009

at the Museum, he notes wryly.

That was a battle Guillermo
[Navarro] had to fight pretty much
all the way through, and I have to
give him credit for fighting the hard
fight. On this film, the studio knew
it had a successful franchise, so I
didnt have to fight as much.
Indeed, Schwartzman had
access to plenty of gear during the
72-day shoot. Two Technocranes
(30' and 50') with stabilized Scorpio
remote heads were constantly
onstage in Vancouver, where most
of the movie was shot, and
Schwartzman says they were valuable for enhancing the comedy. If

an actor suddenly stops 4 inches to

the left of where he should be and
you dont have any more track,
youre stuck, he notes. You dont
want to call Cut if the actors are
riffing, so we used the Technocrane
like a dolly and kept shooting. [Acamera operator] Ian Fox could tell
[Technocrane technician] Ryan
Monroe, Camera left, 6 more inches, and we could literally do five
minutes of a scene in one shot.
Shawn became very enamored of
long, moving masters. Wed still go
back and shoot coverage, but it was
almost like shooting rehearsals
you never knew when you were

going to get something magical.

Panavision headquarters in
Woodland Hills, Calif., supplied the
camera package, which included
two Panaflex Platinums, a
Millennium XL, Arri 435s, and
Primo prime and zoom lenses. The
second unit, which worked for half
of the shoot and operated like an
action unit, mainly used the Arris.
Second unit was actually shot by
Ian, our A-camera operator, says
Schwarztman, who also used Fox
this way on National Treasure.
When we started that work, I
moved [B-camera operator] David
Crone to the A cam, and Ian became
the 2nd-unit director of photography. By then, wed shot enough of
the movie that Ian knew exactly
what to do. I didnt have to explain
how I lit the stacks underneath the
Smithsonian, for instance. It worked
out very well.
Much of the picture was shot
on Kodak Vision2 Expression 500T
5229, which Schwartzman rated
normally. (Vision2 200T 5217 was
used for day exteriors and greenscreen work.) Half of this movie is
Ben in his dark blue uniform, and
he looked best on 5229, notes the
cinematographer, who also tested
the costume with Vision2 500T
5218 and Vision3 500T 5219. 5229

was a little softer in the shadows, so

we could see more detail in his jacket. If he was standing there talking, it
would have been very easy to bring
the level of brightness of his jacket
up without affecting everything else,
but this is essentially a chase movie,
so it would have been very difficult
to constantly light his jacket independently of his face. 5229 made
that problem go away.
Production began with four
days of exteriors on the Washington
Mall, and Schwartzman was surprised by the locations limited lighting. At night, its pitch black, which
is really tragic. The buildings are
barely lit, and the trees arent lit at all.
We ordered something like 11 miles
of cable, and it had to come from
Los Angeles because there wasnt
enough on the East Coast! Gaffer
Jay Kemp and his crew spent a week
placing 300 Blondes and Redheads
under all the trees. To create moonlight both in Washington and on a
nine-block stretch outside the
American Museum of Natural
History, which appears at the beginning and end of the film,
Schwartzman turned to LRX lights.
Id never used them before, and
they were quite good for this kind of
thing, he observes. In D.C., we
used two LRX Piranhas with 12K
HMIs, and in New York, we put
three LRX Singles each on two 120foot Condors. You can pan, tilt and
spot them remotely, and they move
very quickly.
For night scenes in which the
Air and Space Museum is seen in the
background, Schwartzman wanted
the museums famous displays to be
visible through the buildings glass
faade. The windows have a neutral
density that cuts out four stops of
light because they dont want sunlight to damage the aircraft, he
notes. To make the exhibits glow,
we had to bring in a lot of 6K HMI
Pars and bounce them around to
build up the ambience. The lights
were gelled to match the existing

A Technocrane
hovers over
crewmembers as
they set up a
scene. You dont
want to call Cut
if the actors are
riffing, so we
used the
Technocrane like
a dolly and kept
shooting, says
cinematographer
John
Schwartzman,
ASC (below).

American Cinematographer 57

Making History Fun

Right: Jedediah
(Owen Wilson)
and the equally
diminutive
Roman general
Octavius (Steve
Coogan)
emerge from a
packing crate.
Below: An
oversized set
ringed with
greenscreen
sells the
illusion.

interior color temperature, which

was around 4500K and slightly
green.
Night scenes set in the Air
and Space Museum were shot on a
massive set built at Vancouvers
Washington Studios, a former shipyard. The 57,000-square-foot space
facilitated a full-scale reconstruction

58 June 2009

of the museums two-story lobby,

including a mezzanine sturdy
enough to hold a Technocrane.
There were probably 60 display
cases that had everything from flight
suits to an Apollo lunar lander on a
moonscape, Schwartzman marvels.
You could go into the gift shop and
eat Space Food ice cream. It really

looked like youd turned the corner

at the Air and Space Museum and
walked into a new wing.
Even with 10 weeks of prep,
Schwartzman had his hands full.
That facility was a great place to
build a ship but a terrible place to
make a movie, because there was literally no infrastructure, he says. It
was the biggest, most complicated
set Ive ever lit. We had to ask BC
Hydro, the hydroelectric power
company, to run 16,000 amps of
power to our stage. It took eight
weeks just to get the cabling and
dimmers in, and that was with 40
people working 12 hours a day. He
notes that Vancouver-based gaffer
Drew Davidson and key grip Mike
Kirilenko were two of the best and
brightest people Ive ever had the
pleasure of working with.
We used around 120 space
lights, in addition to all the practicals, to light the set, continues the
cinematographer. Ninety percent of
the lighting is visible in shot. There
were 300 Image 80s underneath the
mezzanine as ambient light. The display cases required days to wire. It

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Making History Fun

A Prasad threeaxis Mega

Mount remote
head attached
to a 50'
Technocrane
helped the
filmmakers
stage a dogfight
in the Air and
Space Museum,
a massive set
constructed at
Vancouvers
Washington
Studios. We
literally flew
the camera
through the
whole place,
doing really
wild angles and
steep, sharp
turns, says
Schwartzman.

60 June 2009

was as though we were setting up

our own museum. Almost everything in there had to be photographable, and there was very little room
to hide movie lights. We built scaffolding and a grid overhead, but
those were used just for big, broad
washes of light. Everything else was
done with very small units on the
ground. We could flip a switch and
have the thing pretty much lit up,
then focus on cleaning up faces for
the close-ups.
In the films most complicated
set piece, the entire Air and Space
Museum springs to life. That was
kid-in-a-candy-store time, recalls
Levy. We had live-action rockets
and jet fighters in addition to CG
aircraft and spacecraft. We had both
Technocranes working, live pyro and
dry ice. It was an embarrassment of
riches. After shooting the requisite
scenes with the actors, Levy decided
to spend one day filming without
the cast. We decided to film any
cool shot that John, [visual-effects
supervisor] Dan DeLeeuw and I
could imagine, says the director. It
was an amazing luxury.
One of Schwartzmans ideas
was to engage the model airplanes in
a dogfight. To capture the planes
points of view, a 50' Technocrane
was positioned on the second floor
and mounted with a Prasad threeaxis Mega Mount remote head that
could swivel 360 degrees. We literally flew the camera through the
whole place, doing really wild angles
and steep, sharp turns, says
Schwartzman. We explored everything. I put the camera into a reveal
craning down through Jupiter,
beginning with the camera 80 feet in
the air, as an opening shot we could
use somewhere else. That day was
like sending your second unit out to
get great shots of New York, but in
this case, it was our set.
Some sequences the filmmakers expected to shoot against greenscreen were filmed on this set
instead. When Daley and Earhart

steal the Wright brothers Flyer, they

climb aboard its wing as the aircraft
is suspended 40' above ground. We
actually did that live, which enabled
us to cut a giant sequence out of our
previz and also made it better,
says Schwartzman.
But greenscreen was absolutely necessary for other sequences,
including scenes inside the Lincoln
Memorial, when the statue of
Lincoln comes to life; scenes with
the 2"-tall characters Jedediah
(Owen Wilson) and Octavius (Steve
Coogan); and scenes showing the
Wright Flyer exiting the museum
and flying over the Washington
Mall. (That escape also involved the
films only model work, shot with a
motion-control camera on an 80'
model by cameraman Tim Angulo.)
In all, the production shot 14 weeks
of greenscreen work on one of
the four stages it occupied at
Vancouvers Mammoth Studios, and
Schwartzman wanted a lighting rig
that would be workable in every situation. Since we were going to use
the greenscreen set for a variety of
scenarios throughout the shoot, it
made sense to spend the time and
the money up front to rig it properly, he says.
We needed a certain intensity because we planned to do a
sequence that was an homage to 300
it was to be shot at a fairly deep
stop, T5.6, at 150 fps on 200-ASA
film, continues Schwartzman. We
built some 20-by-20-foot softboxes
that each held 96 1K globes, but they
werent bright enough, so we added
2K Nooks to get the output we
needed. We built the boxes big so the
scale of the light source would be
correct for a 2-inch-tall character.
With the large sources, the light
wrapped and reflected in a more
realistic way.
The softboxes were suspended
from chain motors, allowing them
to hang horizontally or vertically or
at an angle somewhere in between.
We hung six of them in two rows of
61

Making History Fun

The Capitol
Dome serves
as a scenic
nighttime
backdrop.

62

three and just articulated them

however we needed to, says
Schwartzman. If I wanted a backlight that was soft and low, we could
just lower the thing out of frame. It
was all done by the push of a button. The rig enabled the filmmakers

to work quickly. We never worked

longer than a 10-hour day, notes
Schwartzman. That kept everybody
fresh.
Thanks to the size of the
greenscreen stage, Schwartzman
could scale the films 2" characters

down the correct way, by moving the

camera back. At times, the camera
was 200 feet away from the actor! he
says. Guillermo really helped me by
figuring out all the math on the first
film. We kept notes, and we had
high-end matte software on the set,
so we could literally look at composites as we lined up the shot.
In many respects, says
Schwartzman, his job was made easy
by splendid sets, locations and costumes. Theres just so much to look
at in every shot, he says. The
Smithsonians Castle Commons, for
instance, contains stained-glass
windows and chandeliers, and you
really couldnt make a bad angle in
there. There are so many hanging
fixtures that I think theres something sparkling in the background in
every shot. Making the most of the
natural light at hand, he added some
20Ks and Chimeras to provide soft
fill.

For Schwartzman, the only

downside of the production was the
scarcity of film dailies. Theres been
such a push to get the film to the editors as quickly as possible that thats
taken precedence over everything
else, he observes. Theres no way a
colorist doing a high-def transfer on
a Spirit can tell you whether your
density is exactly the way it was the
day before, or that you need another
half-stop of exposure. Those were
the types of conversations I had with
[timers] John Bickford and Mike
Zacharia every day when I was filming The Rock [AC June 96],
Armageddon [AC July 98], Pearl
Harbor [AC May 01], Seabiscuit [AC
Aug. 03] and The Rookie. Today, if
you want to print dailies, it stops the
machine. On Battle of the
Smithsonian, he viewed film dailies
twice a week for the first few weeks
of the shoot; after that, HD dailies
were screened on a plasma TV.

Some filmmakers feel they

can correct any inconsistencies in
post, so they dont want to worry
about it on the front end, says
Schwartzman. Im prepping Green
Hornet with Michel Gondry, and I
know Michel is going to have to fight
a million battles, and [film dailies]
wont be one hell want to fight. I
cant blame him, but it stings to have
part of the craft you love taken away
from you.
All told, however, Schwartzman considers Battle of the
Smithsonian a great experience. I
enjoyed every moment of making
this movie, and Im really proud of
it. Having shot a previous picture
starring Ben Stiller [Meet the
Fockers], I knew that speed would be
a really good thing to have in our
back pocket, and all the rigging we
did in prep was really important for
that. A day of shooting on a movie
like this is about $300,000, and if you

can save one day by spending

$20,000 more to rig a set properly,
its the best $20,000 youve ever
spent. We were very clever in how
we rigged and shot this movie, and
thats why we finished three days
ahead of schedule.
I

TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Super 35mm
Panaflex Platinum,
Millennium XL;
Arri 435
Primo lenses
Kodak Vision2 Expression
500T 5229; Vision2 200T 5217
Digital Intermediate
Printed on
Kodak Vision Premier 2393

63

Testing
Digital Cameras
The ASC and the Producers Guild of America put 7 digital cameras
through their paces with the Camera-Assessment Series.
by Stephanie Argy and Richard Edlund, ASC

he Producers Guild of America

and the American Society of
Cinematographers
recently
joined forces to conduct landmark tests of seven digital cameras: Arris D-21, Panasonics AJHPX3700, Panavisions Genesis,
Reds One, Sonys F23 and F35, and
Thomsons Grass Valley Viper.
Shooting the same tests at the same
time was an Arri 435, which used
four Kodak stocks, two tungsten
(Vision2 250T 5217 and Vision3
500T 5219) and two daylight
(Vision2 250D 5205 and Vision3
250D 5207). It was a snapshot in

T
64 June 2009

time because the technology of digital cameras is by no means static,

says Curtis Clark, ASC, chair of the
Societys Technology Committee.
The tests will be presented for
the first time this month, during the
PGAs Produced By Conference
(www.producedbyconference.com).
The event will give viewers a chance
to see the footage and draw their
own conclusions about the cameras
performances, but the idea is not to
crown a winner. Our only agenda
was to supply the community with
an educational resource, says David
Stump, ASC, chair of the Technology

Committees Camera Subcommittee. Its not a competitive test; its not

a shootout.
The idea of the project, which
was funded by Revelations
Entertainment, was to create a definitive overview of the current state of
digital cameras, a collection of
footage that could serve as a reference for the industry at large. Its
really hard to find a set of unbiased
test materials made under controlled
circumstances, says Stump. When a
test of any camera is done, the test
usually ends up being owned by a
motion-picture studio, so the next

Photos by Yousef Linjawi and Simon Wakelin, courtesy of the Producers Guild of America.

person who wants to use that camera

has to start all over again and do his
own tests.
It was critical that the tests be
done in a way that embodied the
integrity and authority of the ASC. In
2003-2004, the Society collaborated
with Digital Cinema Initiatives to
create Standardized Evaluation
Material, or Stem, a mini-movie that
provided a robust test of image quality for technologies used in digitalcinema distribution. To this day,
Stem and what we did with DCI
remains the benchmark, says Clark.
The Camera-Assessment Series had
to live up to that high standard.
The process began with long
discussions in the Technology
Committees camera and workflow
subcommittees about the challenges
that were likely to arise. We tried to
lay down a set of ground rules that
would fit every camera into both a
film-out and digital-out motion-picture production pipeline, says
Stump. That pipeline could be
unique, but it had to share the criteria that are the baselines for all
motion-picture production: 10-bit
log for filmout, doing a DI and doing
a P3 output for digital cinema.

Other standards were set for the

cameras as well. Because cinematographers base business is feature films, we drew the line in the
sand at the point we felt was sufficient for big-screen work, says
Stump. At minimum, he explains,
the cameras had to be capable of an
image with resolution of 1080p and
a color depth of 4:4:4. That weeded
out a lot of cameras, he notes.
In recent years, the ASC has
pursued collaborations with various
organizations in the industry, and
for the Camera-Assessment Series,
the PGA and producer Lori
McCreary were indispensable in
pulling everything together. At
Clarks invitation, McCreary had
been attending meetings of the ASC
Technology Committee, where she
was struck by cinematographers
perspective on new technologies.
Because they constantly have to
think about where things are headed, cinematographers can better,
more accurately predict the future
than filmmakers in other fields, she
observes. The PGA hopes the test
results will enable producers to better understand the budgetary and
workflow ramifications caused by

the choice of a camera. Workflow

directly affects the producers job on
a daily basis, and were not as
informed as we could be, says
McCreary.
The ASC and the PGA
brought their own concerns and
interests to the tests; these included
image quality, color space, contrast,
dynamic range, ease of use,
ergonomics, how well the cameras
fit into a typical production workflow, and how much extra time, if
any, they required on set. All of these
were factored into the design of the
tests, situations Stump describes as
commonplace but difficult. We
wanted to show how all of these
cameras deal with the normal issues
of everyday cinematography: windows that look out onto exteriors,
daylit exteriors, daylit interiors. How
does it look under night tungsten
light? How does it look under a
laundry list of typical scenarios?
During the tests, each camera
had its own cinematographer: Bill
Bennett, ASC was on the Arri D-21;
Mark Doering-Powell was on the
Panasonic AJ-HPX3700; Shelly
Johnson, ASC was on the Panavision
Genesis; Nancy Schreiber, ASC was

Top digital
cameras were
tested under a
variety of
conditions by a
group of
distinguished
cinematographers
during the recent
CameraAssessment
Series organized
by the ASC and
PGA. In the photo
on this page,
visible from left to
right in the front
row are ASC
members Shelly
Johnson, Nancy
Schreiber, Peter
Anderson and
Kramer
Morgenthau
(standing).
Standing behind a
camera in the
second row at far
right is Karl
Walter
Lindenlaub, ASC,
BVK; visible
behind Schreiber
is Bill Bennett,
ASC (wearing
light-blue cap).

American Cinematographer 65

Testing Digital Cameras

The setup
supervised by
Lindenlaub
included an
explosion
involving
Bruce, the
mechanical
shark made
famous in Jaws.
The shadow
was 2 stops
under in the
dark part of
waves, while
part of the flame
was 6-7 stops
over, he noted.
It will be
interesting to
see which
cameras hold
that detail.

66 June 2009

on the Red One; Peter Anderson,

ASC was on the Sony F23; Kramer
Morgenthau, ASC was on the Sony
F35; Marty Ollstein was on the
Thomson Grass Valley Viper; and
Karl Walter Lindenlaub, ASC, BVK
manned the Arri 435. We tried to
employ a cinematographer for each
camera who gave the manufacturer a
sense of comfort and gave each camera its greatest opportunity to shine,
says Stump. Those were both
important things. These are
mechanical devices, but all this
machinery doesnt exist in a vacuum;
everyone has something at stake.
Everyone trying to sell or rent a digital camera has a lot of time and
money invested in that device. It was
very important to take that into consideration when casting for the right
cinematographer to accompany each
camera on set.
The tests were shot at
Universal Studios on sets used for
Desperate Housewives and at the lake
where Bruce, the shark from Jaws,
resides. It was a gigantic effort that
required the cooperation and assistance of several hundred people,
notes Stump. Without the PGAs
help, we could never have pulled it
off. Stump supervised the testing,
collaborating with other ASC cinematographers who were also working in a supervisory capacity: Clark,
Rodney Charters, Kees Van Oostrum
and Richard Crudo. The cameras

passed through six different test scenarios, each of which had its own
cinematographer (or, in a couple of
instances, two cinematographers);
those cinematographers were ASC
members Charters, Richard Edlund,
Steven Fierberg, Michael Goi, Jacek
Laskus, Matthew Leonetti, Stephen
Lighthill, Lindenlaub, Robert Primes
and John Toll. Lighting was
absolutely left to the cinematographers discretion, notes Stump. The
following is an overview of the six
scenarios:
Day-Exterior Lock-Off:
Charters and Edlund
Our test was very simple,
says Edlund, the vice chairman of
the Camera Subcommittee. He notes
that a moving camera loses some
resolution because the shutter is
open while the camera is in motion,
but when the camera stops panning,
its possible to see the pattern of the
pixels, which he calls bathroom
tile. The shot had a complex subject
a house with bricks and shingles
and other tiny details and Edlund
thought it would be interesting to see
how the cameras dealt with that.
Day-Exterior Tracking Shot
of a Moving Bicycle:
Fierberg and Laskus
This scenario was meant to
reveal any strobing and movement
issues with the various cameras, but

it also became a contrast test. The

shot tracks alongside a bicyclist riding
from camera left toward camera right
in front of a white picket fence. The
picket fence is a repeating pattern, and
so is the spinning bicycle wheel, says
Fierberg. In the past, some cameras
had trouble showing those without
annoying strobing. During the shot,
Fierberg pushed in closer toward the
picket fence to change the frequency
of the boards appearance onscreen.
As a further motion test, he
also added a person walking in the
opposite direction from the cameras
movement. In some cameras, you
could open the shutter to get less
strobing and more blur, explains
Fierberg. That works fine until you
encounter the person walking the
other way; then, the persons head
becomes a disturbing blur. He notes
that because the camera is moving at
one speed and the person is walking a
certain speed in the opposite direction, the blur is much more pronounced. The bicyclist isnt very
blurred because the speed difference
between him and the camera is very
minor.
The scene was shot in frontlight sunlight but because the
camera passes in front of dark shrubbery, the test showed the contrast
capabilities of the cameras, too.
Night Interior:
Goi
The only parameters for this
setup were that it was a night interior
that had performers of varying skin
color in it, says Goi. They left it to
me to figure out what else I wanted to
work into the scenario. The scene is a
living room at night, and Goi came
up with the idea of having three characters an African-American male,
a Caucasian female and a Caucasian
male surrounded by boxes, as
though they have just moved in. They
toast each other with wine. I specifically chose red wine because its particularly difficult to make it look like
red wine onscreen, notes Goi. Often,

it looks like black oil.

Because the characters have
just moved in, Goi included a bare
lightbulb in the scene, which gave
me the opportunity to see if there
was any streaking. To look at values
in the highlights, he began the scene
with the couch covered with an offwhite sheet that was slightly overexposed by the bare bulb. When the
sheet is removed, the couch is of a
very different density, he says.
Goi opens his shot with
the African-American and the
Caucasian woman side by side, with
the same amount of light on their
faces. They then cross to the couch,
where Goi gives the AfricanAmerican actor about another third
of a stop to see what the difference
would be. To also test the cameras
abilities to separate dark values, Goi
positioned the African-American on
the couch so that his head would be
in front of a black marble fireplace.
The Caucasian man is wearing a red T-shirt, the tone of which is
very close to the color of the uncovered couch, so the test reveals how
the cameras separate those close
tonalities.
Theres a lot of stuff in this
test thats very close to the edge in
terms of how Id shoot it on film,
notes Goi. If one camera or another
is more crushy, youll see those differences clearly.
Inside Light, Outside Light:
Leonetti
Leonetti says his scenario
offers one of the most challenging
assignments for a cinematographer:
balancing interior and exterior lighting. Every time I show up for a
setup like that, I have to put my
thinking cap on, he remarks. The
main question was whether to shoot
with blue or incandescent light. Blue
was chosen. Given that information, I dreamed the shot up, says
Leonetti. I was trying to create some
contrast, some very highly illuminated, reflective pieces in the shot. In

addition, the idea was to see how

each camera would balance the
inside and the outside, which is seen
through a bay window.
The shot begins on a hot tray
of glasses in the foreground. I put a
light on the balcony and made it
pretty bright so I could see how each
camera would take the highlights
and if it could hold the highlights,
says Leonetti. The camera then pans
left, past two ungelled windows that
are 4-5 stops over the f-stop for the
rest of the shot. The camera continues panning until it settles on two
people, an African-American man
and a Caucasian woman, standing in
front of the bay window. I tried to
do the balance so it wouldnt blow
out, says Leonetti. To do that, he
explains, you must either build up
the inside lighting or use ND gel on
the windows to darken the outside.
I chose to do a little of both. I put
the camera in a place where I could
hide HMIs outside, so each of those
windows had a light coming
through. I had two 0.3 neutral-density gels on the outside window. For
each camera, he then made a second
pass, taking off one of the 0.3 gels.
Leonetti chose the exposure
for the film camera, but he had
the cinematographers for each digital camera set their own f-stops. I
didnt touch the lighting. We tried to
make it look as consistent as possible. I kept reading the light to make
sure the light didnt change. That
was important.

To maintain that consistency,

this test was spread over two days so
that all shooting was done between
10:15 a.m. and 2 p.m.
Day Exterior:
Lighthill and Toll
Although the cameras spent
most of their day rotating from set to
set, there were two scenarios that all
cameras shot at once. This was one
of them. The scene takes place in a
park playground, where a number of
people of varying races are throwing
balls, spinning Hula-Hoops and so
forth. A pale woman pushes a baby
carriage through the foreground.
Im really happy I got to do that
one, because the most common
thing all cinematographers have to
do is take the dynamic range of a day
exterior, midday or late day, and
make it work, says Lighthill. There
are different skin tones and lots of
different values, so I think it will test
all the media.
The scene was shot twice,
once at dusk (overseen by Toll) and
the next day at midday (overseen by
Lighthill). Johns situation was quite
different from mine, of course,
notes Lighthill. He had more light
coming in and long shadows. But
the midday setup has almost all the
challenges cinematographers typically face that are so hard to wrangle.
Theres a great dynamic range
between the brightest and the darkest elements in the shot.

Morgenthau
(sitting at far
right) surveys a
setup along with
Johnson and
Schreiber (at
left) and
Lindenlaub and
Lindenlaubs 1st
AC, Tommy
Klines (standing
behind
Morgenthau).

American Cinematographer 67

Testing Digital Cameras

The
cinematographers
pose for a group
photo to
commemmorate
their participation
in the study.

68

The Lake:
Lindenlaub
The scene at the lake was also
shot by all the cameras at once at
sunrise. Its a wide shot of the lake
with the mechanical shark and a big
flame explosion, says Lindenlaub.
The information in the setup is
actually quite interesting. Behind

the lake is a big hill with a lot of dark

foliage, and the water and flame offer
an extreme contrast range. The
shadow was under 2 stops in the
dark part of waves, while part of the
flame was 6-7 stops over. It will be
interesting to see which cameras
hold that detail.

Lightbulb:
Primes
The main purpose of this scenario was to see latitude in a very
challenging situation. These days, if
you cant shoot under low-light conditions, youre at a competitive disadvantage, notes Primes. He decided to
start with a large close-up of a bare
lightbulb. Then, a mans face comes in
and the camera dollies back, revealing
a dark garage with lots of objects and
detail in the background shadows. As
the frame widens, the man walks over
to stand behind a workbench. We
made a mark for the actor that was
about 1 foot away from the bulb
he was 4 stops over incident light,
says Primes. At the bench, he was 1
stop underexposed. Meanwhile, the
background was about 4 stops under.
Although Primes considered
blacking out a window in the background, he decided instead to tent it
and put a light with a blue filter there

so that it would be a nice compositional element with the same tonality on every take. He also took care to
ensure that the lightbulb and voltage
would be the same from take to take,
and the face at the same distance.
The set never changed, the voltage
was brought up to a very tight tolerance, and the actor was very wellrehearsed, he says.
I think all the tests are going
to be valuable, but mine was kind of
brutal, and Im happy about that,
he adds.
Postproduction
Although every test was
designed to challenge the cameras in
various ways, the object was not to
break them. Clark notes that during post at LaserPacific, where color
correction was done on an Autodesk
Lustre by Mike Sowa, every effort
was made to give the cameras the
chance to look their best. If we have

to give a camera more time in post,

well do that, but all of that work will
be documented, says Clark.
Stump says close attention
will be paid to what it takes for the
material to fit well into the standardized workflow established for the
tests. Thats a really effective learning scenario: how do we fit this
square peg into the labs round hole?
Im trying to listen through the wall
into the projection booth and into
the machine room and throughout
the halls of LaserPacific as they chase
what kind of signal weve brought
them from any particular camera!
He adds that it isnt only the
potential users of these cameras who
are learning from the tests. The
manufacturers who participated are
learning as much about the workflows as we are, he says. Few of
them have had the opportunity to
chase one of their shoots all the way
through to a finished piece of film. I

think were going to see a lot of

modifications and upgrades come
from this testing.
Clark says he hopes the tests
will make filmmakers more aware of
how critical the overall workflow is.
Making a film isnt just about picking a camera and shooting, he says.
How are you going to finish it? Is it
going to end up as a compromise
that you didnt anticipate but have to
live with? The important thing is to
make an informed choice when you
pick your camera. Then, you can
apply your aesthetic.
Given that digital technologies are constantly evolving,
McCreary says she hopes the
Camera-Assessment Series will be
an ongoing process rather than a
one-off event. You eat an elephant
one bite at a time, she says.
A report about the CAS test
results will be published in our
September issue.
I

69

Assessing

Previs

The ASC, the Art Directors Guild and the Visual Effects Society join
forces to explore the existing and potential uses of previsualization.
by Stephanie Argy and Richard Edlund, ASC
revisualization is the process
of using computer-generated
animation to explore scenes
and sequences before they are
shot, and it can significantly
impact the cinematographers job. It
can enable the director of photography to become even more involved
in shaping a movies narrative; conversely, there is a danger he or she
will end up merely executing shots
that were conceived and detailed by
someone else long before the cinematographer joined the production.
I can understand why cinematographers have been reluctant to
embrace previs: theyre often
excluded from the process, says
Chris Edwards of The Third Floor, a
company specializing in previsualization. But we have found their
involvement is really key.
To address some issues related
to previsualization, including how
best to integrate it into production,
the ASC Technology Committee
recently joined with the Art
Directors Guild and the Visual
Effects Society to form the
Previsualization Committee, the
first joint committee formed by the
three organizations. Co-chaired by
Ron Frankel, the owner of previs
company Proof, and David Morin, a

70 June 2009

consultant with Autodesk, the group

began meeting in April 2008. Over
the course of 12 meetings, it has
brought together some of the leading previs practitioners in the industry, cinematographers, production
designers, visual-effects supervisors
and other filmmakers to explore
previs and the role it should play in
the future. Learning how other
people see this process has been very
insightful, says Frankel. Previs is
coming into its own in a very interesting way.
Previsualization has been
around in various forms for
decades. Before shooting the original Star Wars, George Lucas worked
out the timing for space battles by
cutting together footage of World
War II fighter-plane dogfights. On
the third Star Wars film, Return of
the Jedi, the speeder-bike sequence
in the forest was tested out using
action figures that were shot with
lipstick cameras. We could figure
out movements and work out a little, dynamic piece of action, then
cut it together and see if the shots
wed planned were going to work
well, says Neil Krepela, ASC, a cinematographer and visual-effects
supervisor who worked on Jedi.
In the definition crafted by the

Previsualization Committee, previs

generally comprises computer-generated imagery created in a 3-D
modeling-and-animation application and then edited together to
demonstrate the potential execution
of a scene or sequence. According to
the committees research, the earliest
example of CG previs appears to be
The Boy Who Could Fly (1985).
During a sequence in that movie,
two children fly over a school fair
filled with amusement-park rides;
the child performers were held aloft
on wires suspended from a large
crane, and the sequence was covered
with a Skycam supported by pylons.
James Bissell, the projects production designer and second-unit director, asked Canadian computergraphics company Omnibus to help
him create a digital version of the
sequence so he could experiment.
The resultant previs enabled him to
see where the shadows would be at
different times of day so he could
position the camera and crane as
efficiently as possible. They said,
What a great use for the technology
we never thought of that, recalls
Bissell. It allowed us to shoot a pretty elaborate sequence in about three
days.
Previs is not visual effects,

Images courtesy of The Third Floor and Pixel Liberation Front.

although the two disciplines are

often lumped together, perhaps
because previs is commonly used
on pictures that involve complex
visual-effects sequences. Also, many
of the tools and applications used in
previs, such as Maya, are also used
for visual-effects work. But previs is
as different from visual effects as a
sketch is from a painting; its about
quickly trying out possible shots and
sequences in real time and making
changes on the fly, rather than making polished shots that are textured
and properly lit. Previs is used to
tell the story in the rawest possible
form, says Laurent Lavigne, whose
previs work includes the films
Transformers, Jumper and The Last
Samurai.
Contrary to popular belief,
previs is not an entry-level visualeffects job. I believe its a specialized
field that requires classically trained
artists, says Steven Yamamoto,
whose previs credits include Public
Enemies, Hancock and The Sorcerers
Apprentice. You need a high level of
knowledge of not only CG work,
but also creative storytelling.
Combining those skills is asking a
lot of one person.
The previsualization process
begins with the creation of digital
assets: sets, characters, vehicles and
anything else that needs to be modeled in CG. These elements are then
animated, and actions and positions
are set, just as a director would block
a live-action scene with real actors.
Next, virtual cameras are placed into
the scene. Angles, lenses and moves
are chosen, and shots that cover the
action are rendered out. These shots
can then be assembled into a
sequence or handed to the projects
picture editor, who adds them to the
cut as though they are real coverage.
Previs can be continued on set, to
solve problems and validate whats
been shot, and in post, where previs
elements can be retimed and adjusted to fit with the real footage as it

becomes available.

The Third Floor

created this
previsualization
progression for a
battle sequence
in the World
War II action
drama Valkyrie.
From top to
bottom:
characters and
ground plane;
characters,
vehicles and
terrain;
characters,
vehicles and
terrain with
textures;
textured
characters,
vehicles and
terrain with
lighting and
shadow cards;
added mountain
geometry,
background,
cyclorama, dust
cards and
atmosphere
cards; added
explosion cards.

American Cinematographer 71

Assessing Previs
Two of the
previs
schematics
prepared by
Pixel
Liberation Front
for The Matrix
Reloaded
detail key
moments from
the films
ambitious
freeway chase.

Companies considering the

use of previsualization should know
up front what they need and want
from the process. It involves a variety
of logistical questions, some of

72 June 2009

which can only be answered on a

project-by-project basis: How
should the previs crew be structured? Is it best to have a team of
artists from one company, or should

the team comprise several artists

who are independent of one another? Once a team is in place, to whom
should they report? Which departments should be involved in the pre-

vis process? Should the team work

in its own office or on-site with the
projects crew or production staff?
The biggest previs question
might be: Who is it for, and what is
its purpose? Some people see the
process as a way to work through
logistically difficult sequences,
determine what will be necessary to
shoot them, and then provide the
relevant departments with very precise data. Roberto Schaefer, ASC says
that on Quantum of Solace, previs
was used for very technical reasons:
We did a lot of previs for set construction; they built CG sets to make
sure we could get the angles we
needed. The scaffold-and-rope fight
scene was a complicated jigsaw
puzzle because the set didnt fit into
the stage it hit the rafters and was
supposed to be 20 feet taller than
it was. We wanted to do a previs to
make sure we were on the same page
for camera angles, movements and
so on. Others might see previs as a
tool for exploring the narrative.
The animation pipeline has a story
department, but live action doesnt,
and previs becomes the ersatz story
department, observes David
Dozoretz of Persistence of Vision.
Working with a small number of digital artists sometimes
just one gives a director a relatively inexpensive, low-pressure way
to explore ideas, and its easy to discard any that dont work. Previs is
the directors undo button, says
Edwards. In film school, I learned
that every moment I waste is a
moment Im sucking out of my
movie. If youre going to make mistakes and you will its better to
do it with a smaller team, and youll
probably make fewer mistakes.
Colin Green of The Pixel Liberation
Front adds, If filmmaking is about
real heat-of-battle decision-making,
previs allows for decisions to be
made with more deliberation. We
force answers to creative questions
and make contributions to the creative vision. The formalism of the
73

Assessing Previs
Previs Glossary
A joint subcommittee comprising members of the American Society
of Cinematographers, the Art Directors
Guild and the Visual Effects Society has
agreed upon the following definitions:
Previsualization, or previs, is a
collaborative process that generates preliminary versions of shots or sequences
predominantly using 3D animation
tools and a virtual environment. It
enables filmmakers to visually explore
creative ideas, plan technical solutions,
and communicate a shared vision for
efficient production.
There are a number of types of
previs in current practice, including:
Pitchvis illustrates the potential
of a project before it has been fully
funded or greenlit. As part of development, these sequences are conceptual,
to be refined or replaced during preproduction.
Technical Previs incorporates
and generates accurate camera, lighting,
design and scene-layout information to
help define production requirements.
This often takes the form of dimensional diagrams that illustrate how particular shots can be accomplished using
real-world terms and measurements.
On-Set Previs creates real-time
(or near-real-time) visualizations on
location to help the director, cinematographer, visual-effects supervisor
and crew quickly evaluate captured
imagery. This includes the use of techniques that can synchronize and composite live photography with 2D or 3D
virtual elements for immediate visual
feedback.
Postvis combines digital elements and production photography to
validate footage selection, provide
placeholder shots for editorial, and
refine effects design. Edits incorporating postvis sequences are often shown
to test audiences for feedback, and to
producers and visual-effects vendors for
planning and budgeting.

74 June 2009

medium forces you to figure things

out in a way that storyboards and
finger gestures never will.
The perception of previsualization as a time to experiment raises still more questions, including
how finished previs materials should
be. One topic of discussion in the
Previsualization Committee has
been whether the CG models made
in previs can or should be constructed in such a way that they can later
be handed off to a visual-effects
facility and used as the basis for the
final effects. Theres always someone who believes he can set up this
amazing pipeline and integrate previs and effects, but right now, you
cant do that, notes Nic Hatch,
owner of London previs facility
Nvisage.
According to Hatch, the different goals and needs of the two
departments make it difficult to
combine them. Previs is concerned
with timing and framing, and the
models and character rigs are very
simple; they have a limited number
of controls so they can be easily
manipulated in real time, with no
rendering. By contrast, artists making visual-effects shots that will
appear in the movie have to create
photorealistic images, so their models and characters need to be complex, fully textured and rendered
out, making them very difficult to
work with in real time. I like to
think of previs companies as speedboats: Were very fast and can
change direction easily, says Hatch.
A post house is like an oil tanker: It
can carry a lot, but when it switches
its engine off, itll cruise for two
miles before it can stop.
Production designer Alex
McDowell has used previs for both
live-action and animation projects.
He is currently working at
Dreamworks Animation, where he
has participated in numerous discussions about assetizing vs. disposability. Assetizing means creating
assets (such as CG models and

camera moves) during previs that

can be used by other artists as the
basis for visual-effects shots (or
other aspects of post), so they dont
have to start from scratch when
they do their work. At the moment,
the consensus is that trying to preserve assets too soon can undermine a critical aspect of previs:
the ability to try things out and discard attempts that dont work.
Disposability is super-useful, says
McDowell. If you try to assetize,
you lock yourself in.
How detailed should previsualization be? In the beginning,
[the mandate] was, Keep it rough
and dont texture, says Dozoretz,
who became one of the industrys
first previs artists when he joined
Lucasfilm in 1992. However, when
his team began to work on the podrace sequence in the fourth Star
Wars film, The Phantom Menace,
they needed to show the speed of
the racers rushing by, which
required them to create texture.
Today, previs artists and
facilities offer a range of polish in
their animations. Yamamoto says
each movies narrative dictates the
level of detail and how and where
its used: If we have a 30-foot robot
running through a city street, its
part of how we tell the story that
the robot is this large, has this much
mass and runs this fast. It might not
be that important for me to put
textures on the sky, but it would be
important that the robot is not
floating on the ground and can
actually take solid steps. We might
also add the details of his feet sinking into the ground, because those
details tell the story of a 30-foot
robot running down the street.
All previs practitioners advocate making a scenes dimensions
and scale as real-world as possible.
At the moment, though, there is no
standardized way to match the virtual cameras in previs to real ones.
(One workgroup within the
Previsualization Committee has

been exploring the best ways to

achieve that goal.)
An even more pressing need is
to increase the role the cinematographer plays in the previs process.
The main problem Ive encountered has been getting some of the
cinematographers time, says
Yamamoto. The first chance I get, I
want to ask him what aspect ratio he
wants to use, what lenses he likes,
and what kind of equipment he
plans to use if hes going to have
a 20-foot crane, I dont want to put
in a 30-foot-crane move. I also try to
research the cinematographers
style, not just the directors, to try
and get a handle on how he frames
things.
Until now, many cinematographers have had little occasion to
interact with previs artists. Schaefer,
who has used previs on several pictures in addition to Quantum of
Solace, including Finding Neverland
and Stranger Than Fiction, says he
has never been asked about the
process by another cinematographer. Some cinematographers might
fear previs will lock the production
into a narrow vision (i.e., shoot the
storyboards), and Schaefer believes
that concern is valid: The bad side
of previs is that people tend to see it
as the written word, the Bible. Its
important to treat it as a basic guide.
If your approach abides by the previs too strictly, it can limit your
thinking.
Previs practitioners are acutely aware of those dangers, but they
contend that the process should
never lock anyone into doing what
was planned if a better idea emerges
on set. Dont be afraid of it, and
dont feel youre being boxed in,
advises Edwards. Previs doesnt
prohibit you from responding to
happy accidents. Actually, it frees
you up to respond to whats going
on.
One danger some have
encountered is that a producer or
studio will have its own agenda for

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75

Assessing Previs
previsualization work. What drives
me crazy is when the director does
previs and the studio says, Thats it,
thats what you have to do, or, worse,
the studio tries to take it over, says
Dozoretz. Its a bastardization of
the process when the director is not
allowed to think on his feet, or when
previs is used against him.
One of the most controversial aspects of the previsualization
process has been its use very early in
prep, in some cases to convince studios or investors to greenlight a
project. This work is sometimes
done even before a director is
attached, which raises thorny ethical issues for previs artists who see
themselves as part of the directors
team. In other cases, a director
might commission a previs to
demonstrate his vision for a project.
In one instance, this ploy failed to
get the director hired, but the previs
house that did the spec work was

76

hired to work on the film with a different director.

The less-than-intuitive nature of previsualization can frustrate filmmakers as they interact
with it. Schaefer says he hasnt
leaned on previs as a tool for creative exploration partly because he
finds the process a bit clumsy.
Maybe its the interface Im a
Mac person, and previs is very
Windows-based, he muses. It
could be a lot more useful if I felt
more comfortable with the interactive manipulations. If they could
give it to me on a computer and I
could do it on my own time, it
would be a more creative process
for me.
One relatively new option
that could facilitate the process is the
growing use of handheld interfaces
that mimic a camera; these tools
make it possible to physically move
around in CG space. Basically, after

a CG environment is built, it can be

displayed on a portable screen that
behaves like a handheld camera
within the scene. A director, cinematographer or production designer can then carry the screen around,
exploring the space and setting up
shots. You build an environment,
and then the director and cinematographer can have a meeting in
that environment, says Edwards.
McDowell says this capability
represents an enormous change for
production designers. Most of my
peers had to learn to translate
abstract thoughts into blueprints, a
completely inappropriate medium,
he notes. Now, were able to carve
space. I can build a [virtual] set and
ask the cinematographer to look at
it. Everything can happen almost
instantly. He adds that the latest
generation of interactive devices is
no longer so driven by the technologists, whose influence was greater in

the recent past. Im finding that you

dont need to know anything about
the tools, except that theyre there
for you in some form or another.
You dont need to be technical in any
way [in order to use them].
Bissell, however, says he
doesnt need a virtual camera. I
dont design that way, he says. He
does his own previs work by using
Google SketchUp and then exporting that work to Maya. When I
break down a scene, there are certain
images each scene is going to have. I
dont approach cinematic design as
if its architecture; I design the angles
and then build the space. Im not
really interested in walk-throughs
unless thats part of a scenes dynamics. If it is, Ill do it in Maya.
Nevertheless, a handheld
interface does give filmmakers the
means to express their own creative
personalities. Visual-effects supervisor John Scheele recalls visiting the

set of a James Cameron project with

Oliver Stone, who was allowed to
experiment with the virtual camera.
Oliver grabbed the camera and
started pushing in, like something
from Natural Born Killers, Scheele
recalls. Directors and cinematographers immediately come at it with a
style all their own. He adds that he
looks forward to the next step, when
filmmakers will not only emulate
their signature moves, but also use
the technology with more depth.
How can these tools get into the
hands of the people who should be
using them? he muses.
Answering those questions,
and many others, is the purpose of
Previs 2020, a Previsualization
Committee workgroup that is trying
to envision what the process can
become. Thinking forward is completely liberating, says McDowell, a
Previs 2020 member. Where could
[the technology] go? If it can do this,

why cant it do that?

What role will previsualization play in the digital-filmmaking
pipeline? Can it become a focal
point for digital technology, the
backbone of an overarching structure that erases the lines between
prep, production and post? Can it
be used to set up an immersive,
non-linear production space? The
Previsualization Committee has
begun asking the questions, and the
answers will ultimately come from
the filmmaking community as a
whole, from those using the technology on projects that have yet to
be envisioned.
I

77

Post Focus
Cinematographers, Colorists
and the DI
by Jon Silberg and
Stephen Pizzello
Early in 2008, National Public
Radios Morning Edition ran a
segment in which colorist and
Company 3 founder Stefan Sonnenfeld,
an associate member of the ASC, spoke
about the tools and skills colorists can
bring to feature films via the digitalintermediate process. One listener was
John Bailey, ASC, who believed that
the reporter, Susan Stamberg, and
Sonnenfeld were touting colorists as a
replacement for the director of photography. Shortly thereafter, Bailey
addressed this and other concerns
related to digital post and digital
capture in a Filmmakers Forum (AC
June 08), a piece that prompted much
discussion, including a Filmmakers
Forum by Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC (AC
Oct. 08) and a number of letters to the
editor.
After Baileys piece was
published, he and Sonnenfeld collaborated on a DI for the feature Hes Just
Not That Into You (AC Feb. 09). In the
process, each developed a better
understanding of the others perspective on a number of complex issues
related to digital post. AC recently sat
down with them to get some of the
details.
American Cinematographer :
John, what was your initial reaction to the NPR story?
John Bailey, ASC: It brought
into focus something Ive been thinking
about for some time: how has the role
of the cinematographer changed in the
world of digital finishing as opposed to
the world of photochemical finishing? It
hasnt been an evolution, its been a
qualitative change, and cinematographers are experiencing it all the time.
78 June 2009

Since I wrote the Filmmakers Forum,

many young cinematographers have
come to me and said, Yes, this is
happening there are more difficulties in the DI suite in terms of collaboration and having control over the final
look of the film.
I should mention that Ive had a
number of wonderful experiences with
[colorist] John Dunn at Ascent Media,
including the timing of a new master of
Silverado [AC July 85]. John is very
respectful of the original work and does
not try to reconceive it; on each project,
he is very low-key and artful.
Stefan, do you believe cinematographers are losing control
over the look of their films in the DI
suite?
Stefan Sonnenfeld: Ive had
the pleasure of collaborating with many
cinematographers on DIs, and I have no
intention of taking over their creative
process. Its extremely important to stay
true to what the cinematographers are
doing because our work complements
theirs.
Bailey: Inherently, the parameters you work within to finish a film
photochemically are much narrower. In
terms of poetry, its like writing a sonnet
rather than free verse. Photochemical
printing requires more discipline and
control. In the DI suite, the options you
have to go in and play later are numerous, almost limitless; you can do
primary and secondary color changes,
you can isolate parts of the frame with
power windows and tweak them, and
you can recompose shots something
thats done all the time. The fact that
the tools exist suggests they could be
misused, even if that isnt always the
case.
What are some of the things
youre hearing from young cinematographers?
Bailey: For one thing, many of

them havent done much work in the

photochemical realm and are less
aware of the greater dynamic range
and transparency of pure photochemical shooting and finishing. I came
through a tradition where we essentially just had one-light dailies, and
when they came back, everyone could
see how consistent your work was. I
think young cinematographers who
have worked only with video dailies
and then finished their films in the DI
suite have unconsciously started to
rely more and more on post tools to
make things right. Im hearing at labs
that many timers are concerned about
how uneven some work looks now. I
know of a couple of projects on which
the answer-print timers have essentially said, We cant make it even
enough. Theres so much variance in
the negative density that the simple
three-color controls and light/dark
parameters arent enough. They have
to strike a DI in order to make a decent
answer print. Thats unfortunate,
because if you ever want to strike an IP
off that negative for archival purposes,
its going to be very erratic.
Sonnenfeld: Its true that the
newer filmmakers are used to going
into a telecine suite and dont have the
experience Johns talking about. I can
think of a perfect analogy: My brother
is a musician, and he recently talked
me into getting some Roland drums
and keyboards, which are extremely
complicated and can sample anything
in the world. One of the Roland guys
told me, Youre not great, but I can tell
that you at least know how to play the
piano. There are a lot of prominent socalled musicians who cant play a song
or read music. They might come up
with a successful sound, but they cant
go back to the basics. People who
dont understand the basics of the
photochemical process come into the

Stephen Lighthill, ASC

n my last year of
graduate school at
Boston University,
where I was studying print
journalism, I took a
filmmaking course that
required us to produce a short
film. Shooting that film was
my most rewarding experience
in graduate school.
My first legitimate
cinematography work was for
CBS News, where I shot news
with an Auricon conversion, a
large, 16mm single-system
sound camera. American
Cinematographer was the
only reliable source of
information for finding
batteries, inverters, lenses,
lights, shoulder braces and
related equipment for
cinematographers.
AC has been my
bible ever since. Most
importantly, the magazine was
my graduate school for
cinematography, and it helped
me understand Im part of a
community of visual artists.

photo by Owen Roizman, ASC

Stephen Lighthill, ASC

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DI suite and say, Tweak the shit out of

this, and thats when I realize how
important it is to work with people
who understand the basics. If they
dont, the result can be a horrible-looking picture that gives the whole
process a bad name.
Some
cinematographers
would love to have one-lights, but
others are working with producers
or directors who might not understand what theyre looking at, and
for them, the important thing is to
get everyone excited about the
look of the dailies. Whats your
take, John?
Bailey: Its all about ensuring
that the cinematographer has an accurate understanding of what resides in
the negative. When the colorist is
changing gamma and primary and
secondary colors on a day-to-day
basis, the result can look like an
answer print or at least somebodys
version of an answer print but you
really have no idea what the negative
looks like.
Sonnenfeld: Thats where I like
to feel a little snobby, if you will,
because I talk to cinematographers
every day, or at least every week,
about their negatives. Im not just
sitting there pushing buttons.
One issue that comes up all
the time is the cinematographers
participation, or lack thereof, in
the DI process. Some are paid for
post work, but many arent, and in
many cases, if another job comes
along, they wont turn it down in
order to supervise the DI.
Sonnenfeld: Ive seen cinematographers get paid for post work,
but only on very large projects obviously, money is the issue. Most cinematographers come in on their own
time, and thats tough, especially when
the DI is dragged out for two or three
months or more. How can you expect
the cinematographer to be available at
random times and turn down other
jobs in order to be there?
Bailey: Take The Curious Case
of Benjamin Button, a film that would
have been inconceivable five years
80 June 2009

ago. It has a strongly controlled

DI look, which is the aesthetic [director] David Fincher wanted, and the
post process was so long and complicated that [cinematographer] Claudio
Miranda was unable to be there all the
time. Films like that, whose whole
conception and execution is dependent upon digital finishing, introduce
another whole set of characteristics
and variables, and the more prevalent
they become, the more the question of
the cinematographers involvement
will come up. Most of us cant dedicate months of our lives to the DI
suite.
When the time came to do a DI
on Hes Just Not That Into You, I was
shooting When in Rome in New York,
and I was only able to come to Los
Angeles on two weekends and give
very minimal input, while [director]
Ken Kwapis and Stefan took care of
the rest. I think the result is very, very
good, but Ill never know what it would
have looked like if Id been able to be
more involved. Nor do I know what it
would have looked like if Id been able
to finish it photochemically, which is
what we wanted to do. This gets to
the crux of the issue for me: We didnt
want the DI process, the studio
promised us we could finish photochemically, and then, when we were
getting ready to cut the negative, they
changed their minds. We were
stunned. Our fallback position was to
ask for a 4K DI, but the studio said they
didnt want to establish that precedent. When that decision became nonnegotiable, I decided Id like to do a
film with Stefan he contacted me
after reading my article in AC. I told
Ken I knew Stefan would be a custodian of the vision we had of the
picture, and he was. It was a great
experience.
Sonnenfeld: Im known for
making the DI a collaborative process.
Im an associate member of the ASC,
and I feel I represent the Societys
standards. I shot film for years as a
cinematographer on music videos and
commercials, and Im in tune with
what cinematographers are trying to

do and trying not to do. Working with

John was fantastic. I always learn
from people like him when we work
together on DIs; every time I get in that
room with someone who is sophisticated in his knowledge of film, it helps
me.
Bailey: Since youre an advocate for the DI process, Stefan, Id like
to ask you what you think you were
able to do on Hes Just Not That Into
You that could not have been achieved
photochemically.
Sonnenfeld: Ill be the first to
say that the film would have looked
beautiful with a photochemical finish.
But even if Im working on a film that
was shot beautifully, I still like the
creativity of the DI process; you can do
a scene warmer, cooler, brighter or
darker and play around with smaller
adjustments and see them in real time.
I like that flexibility, and I think its very
helpful.
Bailey: With all due respect, I
still feel there was no reason to do a
DI. Everything we wanted was there in
the negative. A few years ago, I shot
a feature in 3-perf Super 35mm only
because the actors contract mandated
a DI with approval for cosmetic corrections. That requirement dictated the
format we chose. I never would have
made that choice creatively. More
recently, I did another film that
featured a number of very beautiful
actresses. For reasons unfathomable
to me, one of them decided she
wanted several dozen cosmetic fixes
in the DI. It made me start to question
the potential implications for the
future. What if an actor or a producer
who has contractual power to do so
decides to digitally change the nature
of the cinematographers lighting
more or less fill, or a softer or harder
keylight? What if they decide to
change the image size or reposition a
close-up? You might say, Impossible.
The director wouldnt allow it. But
how many auteur directors with full
creative control do you know today?
For some years now, the studios have
required us all to accept a provision in
our contract that says, Geneva artists

rights notwithstanding, you agree that

you are engaged as Work for Hire. In
fact, that means you have no creative
control over your work.
Stefan, what about Johns
assertion that an anamorphic film
thats finished photochemically,
print-to-print, offers much better
image quality than a 2K or even 4K
digital finish? Is it accurate?
Sonnenfeld: The short answer
is yes, but the long answer is that
there are too many ancillary deliverables these days that require digital
manipulation to make a strictly photochemical finish practical. You cant just
do an IP and assume everything downstream is going to look fine. The good
thing about the DI is that you control
the look of all deliverables from end to
end; you put all your time and energy
into the digital master, and we can
ensure the quality of the image
through all of the deliverables with
minimal effort. I think thats enough of
a reason to do a DI. If I were making a
film that would only be seen theatrically once, it would be a different
story. These days, your master lives on
a Blu-ray DVD for the rest of your life.
And even if you do a photochemical
finish, you have to go through the DI
process to create the file thats used
for digital distribution at thousands of
theaters around the world. Almost
every project has to do that, especially
the big titles, and thats why so many
studios are mandating DIs.
Bailey: But I would argue that
if you dont have to do a DI for creative
reasons, you should cut negative
so you have an established cut negative thats not buried within 500 rolls
of film and make an IP from that,
then use the IP as a source for a highquality video master. I did that yesterday on one of my recent films, and the
2K video master I did will essentially
become the digital master. Both of the
films I had in competition at Sundance
this year [Brief Interviews with
Hideous Men and The Greatest] had
cut negative and were finished photochemically.
Sonnenfeld: But there are









 






  






 
 


  




 







 

  
 

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81

some filmmakers Tony Scott is an

example who want the flexibility to
rework the look of movies they shot 10
or 15 years ago because their sensibilities have changed. For Tony, we
remastered The Hunger and Top Gun,
and he changed a lot of stuff. We took
the IP and scanned the untimed negative and made comparisons, and we
found it was easier to work off an
untimed negative than the timed IP
when Tony wanted to take the look in
different directions. A timed IP is limiting to some degree.
If Scott hadnt wanted to
change the look, would the IP
have been sufficient?
Sonnenfeld: Its easier for the
colorist to work from because the color
decisions are incorporated into it, and
yes, there is consistency, but in the
digital process, you have to hit every
scene. Just because its consistent and
its an IP, that doesnt mean the same
10 scenes will always look the same
with one correction.
What about the argument
that cutting neg is limiting in terms
of future deliverables?
Bailey: I feel that a movie, like
a novel, is an artifact; its not 500,000
feet of raw data to be repurposed at
will. On any production, the director
makes certain decisions about a
performance, the actors make certain
choices, and the cinematographer
makes certain choices, and that
becomes what the film is. Those are
the decisions I made, and its the statement I wanted to make.
Sonnenfeld: But as you know,
John, there are cinematographers who
want to come in here and put 15 power
windows on everything.
Bailey: And that has been
detrimental to the look of a lot of
movies! I think that not cutting neg is a
double-edged sword. You dont lose
the frames, but youve essentially
imprisoned the original film what
was theatrically released in 1,000foot rolls of film, and if you shot
500,000 feet of original camera negative, all of that has to be stored. That
mandates a huge physical archive. And
82 June 2009

all these digital masters were talking

about 4K, 2K, 1K comprise a
huge amount of information that has
to not only be stored properly but also
migrated to new formats as they
evolve. And when things are stored on
tape, or on hard drives, which are a
bigger problem, they have a tendency
to sort of corrupt and disappear. One of
the first long-form things I did on video
was The Anniversary Party [AC July
01], which I shot in the PAL format. For
a long time, [co-directors] Alan
Cumming and Jennifer Jason-Leigh
considered shooting Super 16mm
instead of video, and today, even
though Im pleased with the movie, I
regret that we didnt shoot film,
because if we had, wed have an
archival original camera negative.
What will happen to our original PAL
tapes, I dont know.
Sonnenfeld: I recently remastered a big movie thats about six years
old, and two of the reels couldnt be
recovered from the DTF [tapes]
because the tape just wouldnt play.
We had to re-create the roll by scanning the negative and conforming [it].
Bailey: And if the film hadnt
earned $100 million at the box office,
would there even be all that negative?
What happens if the negative wasnt
cut, and you have to dig through
400,000 or 500,000 feet of film stored
in 1,000-foot rolls? Whos going to pay
for that?
Ansel Adams burned most
of his negatives because he felt
his creative intent was in the
print, not the negative. Do you see
a kind of corollary in the film
world?
Bailey: I saw a wonderful
show at the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art that had some of Ansel
Adams key images from Yosemite;
they showed the evolution of his prints
from the so-called vintage print done
at the time to the print he made right
before he died. There were maybe five
or six versions of the same image, and
its amazing how different they were. I
understand that kind of evolution.
Every artist has a right to do that, but

Adams was an artist who created an

image and had control over what he
wanted to do every step of the way. I
dont think very many filmmakers have
that kind of control. Certainly, cinematographers dont. Its only recently
that studios, in their enlightened selfinterest, have understood the importance of calling the cinematographer
in to supervise some of these new iterations of their work.
I know Im on the losing side of
this. I just hope I can finish my career
in the photochemical realm as much
as possible, because I know whats
coming, and aesthetics and quality are
not driving those decisions its
monetary. Studios want nothing more
than to eliminate these bulky, old film
prints that need to be transported, and
the faster digital cinema comes in, the
cheaper it will be to deliver the product.
Sonnenfeld: Thats why its so
important to work with the right
people. Every DI is different; this isnt
a business where generic work will
do.
You have to really understand
what the hell is going on. A lot of film
schools dont teach enough about the
things were discussing. Filmmaking is
like any other craft: if you want to
learn it, youd better be prepared to
learn everything about it. If you want
to be a great filmmaker, you have to
understand postproduction. Youre
going to get torched if you dont.
I

New Products & Services

to reach into the highlights, says Fred
Murphy, ASC. It has warmer, richer,
better skin tones than its predecessors.
It is also good to have a relatively fast
stock that gives you strong images in
falling light.
For more information, visit
www.kodak.com/go/motion.

Kodak Introduces
Vision3 250D
Eastman Kodak Co. has unveiled
Vision3 250D 5207/7207 color-negative
film, the second emulsion in the Vision3
line. We introduced Vision3 technology
in response to our customers requests
for an expanded range of capabilities
from capture all the way through postproduction and distribution, says Ingrid
Goodyear, general manager of Worldwide Image Capture Products for
Kodaks Entertainment Imaging Division.
By extending the Vision3 portfolio, we
continue to give our customers more
workflow efficiencies combined with all
the existing advantages of film: image
quality, resolution, unrivaled dynamic
range, flexibility and archivability.
5207/7207 is designed to retain
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are characteristic of Vision3 technology,
with more details in the extreme highlight areas. Like Vision3 500T
5219/7219, the new stock incorporates
proprietary Advanced Dye-Layering
Technology, which renders finer-grain
images in underexposed areas and
produces cleaner film-to-digital transfers for post. 5207/7207 also offers
exceptional imaging in natural daylight,
artificial daylight and a variety of mixedlighting situations while maintaining
pleasing flesh tones and color reproduction.
What I like about the 5207 is its
intense rendering of color, its strength
when it is underexposed, and its ability
84 June 2009

Helical Antennas
Go 12 Rounds
Although they have been on the
market for a number of years, Professional Wireless Systems proprietary
Helical antennas only recently made
the transition into feature-film production with 12 Rounds, directed by Renny
Harlin and shot by David Boyd, ASC.
Production mixer Paul Ledford
employed the Helical antennas to
capture dialogue in the midst of a highspeed chase.
Inspired by the use of Helical
antennas for Super Bowl broadcasts,
Ledford spoke with Carl Cordes, PWSs
general manager, who indicated that
Helicals would be equally effective on
car-chase and foot-chase sequences for
movies, says Ledford. Prior to buying
the antennas, Ledford experimented
with a rental kit. He notes, Our test van
consistently monitored transmissions
from a car moving in the same traffic
direction a couple of blocks away.
The advantages of the Helical
system were especially appreciated by
12 Rounds stunt drivers, who could put
more distance between themselves and
the audio van. We were able to maintain continuous contact with the talent
while keeping well away from the
driving action, says Ledford. Everyone
could see and hear everything. The
units functioned flawlessly throughout
our 52-day location shoot, even when
we were driving across bridges. They
were particularly helpful during a
streetcar sequence shot on Canal
Street. They picked up transmissions

from distances of almost six blocks

away.
We shared our chase van with
our video-assist operator, Chris
Murphy, Ledford continues. During
production, we tested the PWS Helical
on our IFB transmissions and videoassist receivers and found them to be a
great improvement. He worked with a
Six Pack kit of 100mw and 250mw
Lectrosonics units; some transmitters
were outfitted with pack antennas, and
others used small mag mounts on car
exteriors. These were quite acceptable
visually and proved functional at virtually any angle, he enthuses. I think
this technology has a real future in location-based feature-film production.
According to Cordes, PWS Helical antennas deliver 14 dB of forward
gain and cover a bandwidth from 450
MHz to over 800 MHz, with an overall
beam width of 57 degrees. Theyve
performed flawlessly at Super Bowl
broadcasts for the past five years and

have also been used on a number of

reality-TV productions, says Cordes.
Its a logical and effective solution for
maintaining dependable audio and
video feeds during high-action productions.
For more information, visit
www.professionalwireless.com.
Mytherapy Opens D-Cinelab
Specializing in raw-camera post,
2K and 4K DI processes, and digitalcinema mastering, Mytherapy DCinelab has opened a new facility in
Londons West End. The facility takes
raw-camera processing beyond simple
conversion and into the realm of
advanced post, offering such services
as noise removal, grain and film-stock
match, and color-artifact removal. The
facility also offers real-time transfer of
raw camera data in 4:4:4 10-bit log and
image sequence.
Mytherapy D-Cinelab can handle
the entire high-end digital post on a
project or complement other facilities by
assisting in the creation of a workflow
from acquisition through to deliverables. Mytherapy supports such camera
systems as Red One, Silicon Imaging
2K, Phantom HD and Arri D-21.
For more information, visit
www.mytherapy.tv.

16x9 Super Fisheye,

Wide Attachments
16x9 Inc. has unveiled the EXII
0.6X Wide Attachment and the EXII
0.45X Super Fisheye Lens Attachment.
The EXII 0.6X, the companys first
HD-quality wide attachment designed
as a single-lens element, measures 0.9"
long with a front diameter of 98mm, and
it weighs 6.6 ounces. Increasing wideangle coverage by 40 percent, the EXII
0.6X minimizes barrel distortion and
enables partial zooming with cameras
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that have auto-focus capability. The

Wide Attachment is compatible with a
number of cameras from Canon, Panasonic and Sony, and is available in
62mm, 72mm, 77mm and 82mm thread
mounts ($345), as well as a bayonet
mount ($395).
The single-element, HD-quality
EXII 0.45X Super Fisheye boasts a small,
lightweight design measuring 0.9"
long with a front diameter of 115mm
and weighing 14.4 ounces with more
mounting options to fit popular cameras
from Panasonic and Sony; mounting
options include bayonet ($595) and
62mm, 72mm, 77mm and 82mm
threaded ($545).
For more information, visit
www.16x9inc.com.
OConnor Updates Classic
OConnor, a Vitec Group brand,
has upgraded its workhorse Ultimate
2575 Fluid Head. The new D model
boasts ergonomic changes to controls
and more pan-bar mounting points
while retaining the counterbalance
specifications and other characteristics
that contributed to the popularity of its
predecessor, the 2575C.
The 2575D enables easier
adjustments by relocating all controls on
the platform to the operators side
the left. The one-touch platform-release
lever allows for one action to undo the
safety catch and open the lever, speeding deployment and location changes in
the field.
The upgraded fluid heads platform now features dual platform scales

one on each side and four handle

rosettes to allow operation from either
side of the head, as well as front or back
handle-mounting. The 2575D weighs
the same as its predecessor (22.9
pounds), carries the same payload (0-87
pounds), and is compatible with the
same accessories. It also features
OConnors smooth pan-and-tilt fluid
drag, specifically designed to deliver the
control and stability necessary for filmstyle shooting. OConnors patented sinusoidal counterbalance system provides
accurate balance at any point in the tilt
range.
For more information, visit
www.ocon.com.

Vinten Supports
Videographers
Vinten has responded to
demands from DV-camera users by
introducing an addition to its Protouch
lightweight camera-support range. The
new Pro-5Plus pan-and-tilt head boasts
a switchable counterbalance spring for
smoother, controllable tilt movements,
separate pan-and-tilt locks, continuously variable pan-and-tilt drag for
smoother panning, a 75mm spherical
base, a leveling bubble, a quick-release
side-load camera attachment system for
convenient attachment and release
from the head, and a fixed-length pan
bar that can be positioned to suit any
preference.
Despite its lightweight construction, no compromises have been made
regarding camera stability. With a
solidly engineered single-stage Pozi-Loc
aluminum tripod and lightweight floor
spreader, the Pro-5Plus offers class-

leading rigidity with maximum control.

The grab-and-go Pro-5Plus system also
offers two levels of counterbalance:
position 1 for the smallest of
camcorders requiring no counterbalance, and position 2 for camcorders of
up to 9.9 pounds.
The Pro-5Plus pan-and-tilt head
comes with its own Petrol transport
case. For more information, visit
www.vinten.com.
EZ Jib Adds Extension
EZ FX, Inc. has introduced an
extension kit for its EZ Jib camera
crane. Replacing the 6' and
4' extensions, the new kit
can be used at either
3.5' or 7', effectively
offering two extensions in one kit.
Further, the kit is
more compact
than the 6' extension, providing
easier storage
and transport.
Supporting cameras weighing
up to 25 pounds, the new extension kit
includes an extension for the camera
end of the jib and a suspension cable for
stabilization and strength. The kit
adapts to all EZ Jibs sold in the past,
and the jib system can also be outfitted
with remote control pan/tilt heads.
For more information, call (800)
541-5706 or visit www.ezfx.com.
Petrol Rolls Out C-Stand Bag
Petrol, a Vitec Group brand, has
unveiled the C-Stand Rolling Bag, a
padded, semi-hard carrier designed to
hold up to four C-stands comfortably
and securely.
Dual-directional upside-down
zippers extend the length of the lid and
open quickly to fully expose the bags
interior. Inside, the contents are
surrounded on all sides by cushioning,
and sturdy nylon binding straps hold the
C-stands in position. A drawing on the
bottom of the carrier illustrates how the
stands should be placed.
The cases exterior boasts front
and rear handgrips, enabling easy lifting

How will you create,

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87

of the bag
from a shelf or
back compartment of
a car. Other features
include Petrols U-Grip
ergonomic interlocking carrying handle
and a smooth-gliding inline skate-wheel
assembly for convenient rollaway
toting. The bag is constructed of
durable, water-resistant, black ballistic
nylon.
The C-Stand Rolling Bag has a
recommended price of $175. For more
information, visit www.petrolbags.com.

CineBags Redesigns
Laptop Bag
CineBags has redesigned its CB17 Laptop Bag. Designed to hold laptops
of up to 17", the CB-17 includes a
removable laptop sleeve, a shoulder
strap and CineBags Remove Before
Filming key chain. The bag can also
expand to accommodate large production binders.
The CB-17 is available in gray
and orange or a limited-edition digital
camo version. For more information,
visit www.cinebags.com.
Editing Magic with
Magix Software
Magix has introduced two videoediting software packages, Video Pro X
and Movie Edit Pro 15.
Features of Video Pro X, the
companys professional video-editing
solution, include Source and Program
Monitor, allowing for direct comparison
88

between original and edited video clips,

and Multi-Camera Editing, with support
for up to four cameras and full audiosource synchronization between multiple tracks or inputs. Video Pro X also
boast an improved user interface,
wherein all shortcuts are freely definable, the timeline can be adjusted based
on the users preferences, and all interface components can be made bigger or
smaller, moved or even hidden. The software package supports full 1080p HD
video content for uploading, editing and
burning to Blu-ray discs.
Movie Edit Pro 15 fuses sophisticated video-editing tools with advanced
surround dubbing and individually
adjustable special effects, all packaged
in a simple user interface. Like Video Pro
X, it offers full 1080p HD support. Other
features include full YouTube support to
help users publish their videos directly
to the Web site, and Multi-Camera Editing for two cameras.
For more information, visit
www.magix.com.
VDS Keeps Quantel
Plugged In
Video Design Software has
released six new Synapse-Neuron
bundles for Quantel, allowing the Quantel Q-range operator direct, interactive
use of hundreds of professional-grade
After Effects plug-ins from within the
Pablo, iQ, gQ, eQ, QPaintbox and
QEffects environments.
The neurons include Red Giant
Psunami, a photorealistic water-simulation plug-in; Red Giant Radium Glow,
featuring filters for creating glimmering
points and precise outlines; Red Giant
Warp, offering control over shadows,
reflections and corner-point warps; DigiEffects Simulate: Camera, which mimics

camera and projection artifacts;

DigiEffects Simulate: Illuma,
featuring practical lighting
effects; and DigiEffects Damage,
which simulates analog and digital errors and defects.
We are very pleased to be
able to offer Quantel users these
exciting, new plug-ins, says
Larry Mincer, president of VDS.
Our Synapse platform will continue to
provide great new visual effects on
Quantel as they become available. It
offers Quantel operators over 900 plugins, ranging from the latest eye-catching
visual effects to advanced imageprocessing algorithms to solve difficult
compositing problems.
For more information, visit
www.videodesignsoftware.com.
Escape Offers Online CameraTracking Course
Escape Studios is offering the
online course Camera Tracking for
VFX, which delves into the professional
camera-tracking skills required by aspiring 3-D artists. Taught by Escape Studios
staff, the course covers background,
workflows and best practices in a flexible format that includes more than 12
hours of video content.
Camera tracking, also called
match moving, is one of the most important and fundamental techniques for 3-D
artists to master, says Dominic Davenport, CEO and founder of Escape
Studios. This course has been meticulously planned to provide students with
a thorough professional grounding in the
theory and techniques required for
seamless camera moves.
The course covers software
applications PFTrack 5 and Maya Live,
showing techniques that are applicable
to all software packages. A basic understanding of Maya is required, but the
course assumes no prior knowledge of
camera tracking.
After completing the course,
students will be well versed in tracking,
solving and adjusting shots, as well as
techniques for manipulating footage. A
series of online videos is provided to
clarify key points, and students can

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The fee for the course is $299.
For more information or to register, visit
www.escapestudios.com.
Tiffen, Lowel Team Up
The Tiffen Co. has agreed to
handle the manufacturing, worldwide
distribution and marketing of all LowelLight Manufacturing, Inc., products.
This agreement between our companies is a perfect fit, says Steven Tiffen,
president and CEO of The Tiffen Co. The
broad range of lighting products Lowel
offers complements our name-brand
photographic-accessory lines, and our
distribution channels reach the same
markets. We are both very excited about
this expansion and the opportunities it
presents.
Marvin Seligman, president of
Lowel-Light, adds, As we enter our
50th year, this partnership brings us
closer together with Tiffen and its other
premier brands, such as Steadicam. It
allows us to concentrate on what we do
best: create innovative, functional and
elegant lighting tools for todays imaging
world.
For more information, visit
www.tiffen.com or www.lowel.com.
Thomson Post Becomes
Digital Film Technology
Parter Capital Group has
completed its acquisition of the Thomson Post Production Business Unit,
which has been rebranded Digital Film
Technology. The transition for DFT
customers is seamless because DFT
is selling and supporting Thomsons
full post-product line, including the
Spirit and Shadow family of scanners/
telecines/datacines, the Bones family of
dailies and post workflow-management
tools, the Scream grain reducer, and the
Luther color-calibration system.
In addition to our seasoned
management team, we have an
extremely talented and motivated group
90 June 2009

of people that are committed to delivering superior sales and support services
and innovative technology and products, says Stefan Kramper, managing
director of DFT. By building on our
history and leadership in the post industry and opening our internal and external
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Epson Unveils Home
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Epson has added the PowerLite
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The Home Cinema 6500 UB has
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I

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Please e-mail New Products/Services
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include full contact information and product
images. Photos must be TIFF or JPEG files of at
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Join some of the worlds nest players at SIGGRAPH 2009 in New Orleans.
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American Cinematographer 93

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Hollywood Rentals 59
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Chimera 27
Cine Gear Expo 99
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American Society of Cinematographers Roster

OFFICERS 2008-09
Daryn Okada,
President
Michael Goi,
Vice President
Richard Crudo,
Vice President
Owen Roizman,
Vice President
Victor J. Kemper,
Treasurer
Isidore Mankofsky,
Secretary
John Hora,
Sergeant-at-Arms
MEMBERS
OF THE BOARD
Curtis Clark
Richard Crudo
Caleb Deschanel
John C. Flinn III
William A. Fraker
Michael Goi
John Hora
Victor J. Kemper
Matthew Leonetti
Stephen Lighthill
Daryn Okada
Robert Primes
Owen Roizman
Nancy Schreiber
Kees Van Oostrum
ALTERNATES
Steven Fierberg
Michael D. OShea
Sol Negrin
Michael Negrin

96 June 2009

ACTIVE MEMBERS
Thomas Ackerman
Lance Acord
Lloyd Ahern II
Herbert Alpert
Russ Alsobrook
Howard A. Anderson III
Howard A. Anderson Jr.
James Anderson
Peter Anderson
Tony Askins
Charles Austin
Christopher Baffa
James Bagdonas
King Baggot
John Bailey
Michael Ballhaus
Andrzej Bartkowiak
John Bartley
Bojan Bazelli
Frank Beascoechea
Affonso Beato
Mat Beck
Dion Beebe
Bill Bennett
Andres Berenguer
Carl Berger
Gabriel Beristain
Steven Bernstein
Ross Berryman
Michael Bonvillain
Richard Bowen
David Boyd
Russell Boyd
Jonathan Brown
Don Burgess
Stephen H. Burum
Bill Butler
Frank B. Byers
Bobby Byrne
Antonio Calvache
Paul Cameron
Russell P. Carpenter
James L. Carter
Alan Caso
Michael Chapman
Rodney Charters
James A. Chressanthis
Joan Churchill
Curtis Clark
Peter L. Collister
Jack Cooperman
Jack Couffer
Vincent G. Cox
Jeff Cronenweth
Richard Crudo
Dean R. Cundey
Stefan Czapsky
David Darby
Allen Daviau
Roger Deakins
Jan DeBont
Thomas Del Ruth
Peter Deming
Caleb Deschanel
Ron Dexter
George Spiro Dibie
Craig Di Bona

Ernest Dickerson
Billy Dickson
Bill Dill
Bert Dunk
John Dykstra
Richard Edlund
Frederick Elmes
Robert Elswit
Geoffrey Erb
Scott Farrar
Jon Fauer
Don E. FauntLeRoy
Gerald Feil
Steven Fierberg
Gerald Perry Finnerman
Mauro Fiore
John C. Flinn III
Ron Fortunato
William A. Fraker
Tak Fujimoto
Alex Funke
Steve Gainer
Ron Garcia
Dejan Georgevich
Michael Goi
Stephen Goldblatt
Paul Goldsmith
Frederic Goodich
Victor Goss
Jack Green
Adam Greenberg
Robbie Greenberg
Alexander Gruszynski
Changwei Gu
Rick Gunter
Rob Hahn
Gerald Hirschfeld
Henner Hofmann
Adam Holender
Ernie Holzman
John C. Hora
Gil Hubbs
Michel Hugo
Shane Hurlbut
Judy Irola
Mark Irwin
Levie Isaacks
Andrew Jackson
Peter James
Johnny E. Jensen
Torben Johnke
Frank Johnson
Shelly Johnson
Jeffrey Jur
William K. Jurgensen
Adam Kane
Stephen M. Katz
Ken Kelsch
Victor J. Kemper
Wayne Kennan
Francis Kenny
Glenn Kershaw
Darius Khondji
Gary Kibbe
Jan Kiesser
Jeffrey L. Kimball
Alar Kivilo
Richard Kline

George Koblasa
Fred J. Koenekamp
Lajos Koltai
Pete Kozachik
Neil Krepela
Willy Kurant
Ellen M. Kuras
George La Fountaine
Edward Lachman
Ken Lamkin
Jacek Laskus
Andrew Laszlo
Denis Lenoir
John R. Leonetti
Matthew Leonetti
Andrew Lesnie
Peter Levy
Matthew Libatique
Stephen Lighthill
Karl Walter Lindenlaub
John Lindley
Robert F. Liu
Walt Lloyd
Bruce Logan
Gordon Lonsdale
Emmanuel Lubezki
Julio G. Macat
Glen MacPherson
Constantine Makris
Karl Malkames
Denis Maloney
Isidore Mankofsky
Christopher Manley
Michael D. Margulies
Barry Markowitz
Vincent Martinelli
Steve Mason
Clark Mathis
Don McAlpine
Don McCuaig
Seamus McGarvey
Robert McLachlan
Greg McMurry
Steve McNutt
Terry K. Meade
Chris Menges
Rexford Metz
Anastas Michos
Douglas Milsome
Dan Mindel
Charles Minsky
Richard Moore
Donald A. Morgan
Donald M. Morgan
Kramer Morgenthau
M. David Mullen
Dennis Muren
Fred Murphy
Hiro Narita
Guillermo Navarro
Michael B. Negrin
Sol Negrin
Bill Neil
Alex Nepomniaschy
Yuri Neyman
John Newby
Sam Nicholson
David B. Nowell

Rene Ohashi
Daryn Okada
Thomas Olgeirsson
Woody Omens
Miroslav Ondricek
Michael D. OShea
Anthony Palmieri
Phedon Papamichael
Daniel Pearl
Edward J. Pei
James Pergola
Don Peterman
Lowell Peterson
Wally Pfister
Gene Polito
Bill Pope
Steven Poster
Tom Priestley Jr.
Rodrigo Prieto
Robert Primes
Frank Prinzi
Richard Quinlan
Declan Quinn
Earl Rath
Richard Rawlings Jr.
Frank Raymond
Tami Reiker
Marc Reshovsky
Robert Richardson
Anthony B. Richmond
Bill Roe
Owen Roizman
Pete Romano
Charles Rosher Jr.
Giuseppe Rotunno
Philippe Rousselot
Juan Ruiz-Anchia
Marvin Rush
Paul Ryan
Eric Saarinen
Alik Sakharov
Mikael Salomon
Harris Savides
Roberto Schaefer
Aaron Schneider
Nancy Schreiber
Fred Schuler
John Schwartzman
John Seale
Christian Sebaldt
Dean Semler
Eduardo Serra
Steven Shaw
Richard Shore
Newton Thomas Sigel
John Simmons
Sandi Sissel
Bradley B. Six
Dennis L. Smith
Roland Ozzie Smith
Reed Smoot
Bing Sokolsky
Peter Sova
Dante Spinotti
Robert Steadman
Ueli Steiger
Peter Stein
Robert M. Stevens

J U N E

Come visit
us at

2 0 0 9

Tom Stern
Vittorio Storaro
Harry Stradling Jr.
David Stump
Tim Suhrstedt
Peter Suschitzky
Alfred Taylor
Jonathan Taylor
Rodney Taylor
William Taylor
Don Thorin
John Toll
Mario Tosi
Salvatore Totino
Luciano Tovoli
Jost Vacano
Theo Van de Sande
Eric Van Haren Noman
Kees Van Oostrum
Ron Vargas
Mark Vargo
Amelia Vincent
William Wages
Roy H. Wagner
Ric Waite
Michael Watkins
Jonathan West
Haskell Wexler
Jack Whitman
Gordon Willis
Dariusz Wolski
Ralph Woolsey
Peter Wunstorf
Robert Yeoman
Richard Yuricich
Jerzy Zielinski
Vilmos Zsigmond
Kenneth Zunder
ASSOCIATE MEMBERS
Alan Albert
Richard Aschman
Volker Bahnemann
Joseph J. Ball
Carly M. Barber
Craig Barron
Thomas M. Barron
Larry Barton
Bob Beitcher
Mark Bender
Bruce Berke
John Bickford
Steven A. Blakely
Mitchell Bogdanowicz
Jack Bonura
Michael Bravin
William Brodersen
Garrett Brown
Ronald D. Burdett
Reid Burns
Vincent Carabello
Jim Carter
Leonard Chapman
Denny Clairmont
Cary Clayton
Emory M. Cohen
Sean Coughlin
Robert B. Creamer
Grover Crisp
Daniel Curry

Ross Danielson
Carlos D. DeMattos
Gary Demos
Richard Di Bona
Kevin Dillon
David Dodson
Judith Doherty
Don Donigi
Cyril Drabinsky
Jesse Dylan
Jonathan Erland
John Farrand
Ray Feeney
William Feightner
Phil Feiner
Jimmy Fisher
Scott Fleischer
Thomas Fletcher
Steve Garfinkel
Salvatore Giarratano
Richard B. Glickman
John A. Gresch
Jim Hannafin
William Hansard
Bill Hansard, Jr.
Richard Hart
Roman I. Harte
Robert Harvey
Don Henderson
Charles Herzfeld
Larry Hezzelwood
Frieder Hochheim
Bob Hoffman
Vinny Hogan
Robert C. Hummel
Roy Isaia
George Joblove
Joel Johnson
John Johnston
Curtis Jones
Frank Kay
Debbie Kennard
Milton Keslow
Robert Keslow
Larry Kingen
Douglas Kirkland
Timothy J. Knapp
Ron Koch
Karl Kresser
Lou Levinson
Suzanne Lezotte
Grant Loucks
Andy Maltz
Steven E. Manios
Robert Mastronardi
Joe Matza
Albert L. Mayer, Sr.
Albert Mayer, Jr.
Andy McIntyre
Stan Miller
Walter H. Mills
George Milton
Mike Mimaki
Rami Mina
Tak Miyagishima
Michael Morelli
Dash Morrison
Nolan Murdock
Mark W. Murphy
Dan Muscarella

F. Jack Napor
Iain A. Neil
Otto Nemenz
Ernst Nettmann
Tony Ngai
Mickel Niehenke
Marty Oppenheimer
Walt Ordway
Larry Parker
Michael Parker
Warren Parker
Doug Pentek
Ed Phillips
Nick Phillips
Joshua Pines
Carl Porcello
Howard Preston
David Pringle
Phil Radin
Christopher Reyna
Colin Ritchie
Eric G. Rodli
Andy Romanoff
Daniel Rosen
Dana Ross
Bill Russell
Kish Sadhvani
David Samuelson
Peter K. Schnitzler
Walter Schonfeld
Juergen Schwinzer
Ronald Scott
Steven Scott
Don Shapiro
Milton R. Shefter
Leon Silverman
Garrett Smith
Stefan Sonnenfeld
Jurgen Sporn
John L. Sprung
Joseph N. Tawil
Ira Tiffen
Arthur Tostado
Ann Turner
Bill Turner
Stephan Ukas-Bradley
Mark Van Horne
Richard Vetter
Joe Violante
Dedo Weigert
Franz Weiser
Evans Wetmore
Beverly Wood
Jan Yarbrough
Hoyt Yeatman
Irwin M. Young
Michael Zacharia
Bob Zahn
Nazir Zaidi
Michael Zakula
Les Zellan
HONORARY MEMBERS
Col. Edwin E. Aldrin Jr.
Neil A. Armstrong
Col. Michael Collins
Bob Fisher
Cpt. Bruce McCandless II
David MacDonald
D. Brian Spruill

Cine Gear
June 5th- 6th

THE ART OF LIGHT

Color Correction
Diffusion
Color Effect
Tel: 818-238-1220
www.leefilters.com

97

Clubhouse News

Society Welcomes Farrar

California native Scott Farrar,
ASC started making films in high school.
He continued his education at the
University of California-Los Angeles,
where he earned a Bachelor of Arts
degree and a Master of Fine Arts in
theater design with an emphasis in film.
Farrar began working as a freelance director of photography and editor,
but after a visit to Industrial Light &
Magic during the production of Star
Wars (1977), he decided to focus on
photographic effects. Following a stint
with Robert Abel and Associates, Farrar
joined Douglas Trumbull to work on Star
Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), and in
1981, he joined ILM as an effects cinematographer/camera operator on Star
Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982). In
1985, Farrar won an Academy Award for
his contribution to Cocoons visual
effects, and he was subsequently
promoted to visual-effects supervisor for
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988).
Farrar earned Oscar nominations
for Backdraft (1991), Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001), The Chronicles of
Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe (2005) and Transformers
(2007). He recently completed work on
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
(2009). Drawing on his background as a
camera operator and cinematographer,
98 June 2009

Lake Arrowhead Fest Fetes

ASC Members
At the 10th annual Lake Arrowhead Film Festival in April, Vilmos
Zsigmond, ASC and the late Laszlo
Kovacs, ASC were honored with
Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography Awards. Fellow Society
member Ron Dexter presented the
award to Zsigmond during the festivals
Gala Awards Ceremony, and the LAFF
Vice-President of the Board of Directors,
Jack Cooperman, ASC, presented a
Special Recognition Award to James
Chressanthis, ASC for his documentary No Subtitles Necessary.
Awards were also presented in
the categories Documentary Feature,
Feature Film, Ensemble Cast, Special
Achievement in Film, Best of the Festival, Short Documentary, Short Film,
Animated Film and Student Film; director Joe Dante took home the award for
Special Achievement in the Art of Independent Filmmaking.
This is a very filmmakeroriented festival, says Cooperman.
We never show more than two screens
at any one time, and because its all in
one facility, theres a tremendous

amount of communication between the

audience and the filmmakers.
Cinematographers who have
been honored by the festival in the past
include ASC members William A.
Fraker and Donald M. Morgan. Cooperman adds, My whole function [during
the festival] is to make the general public
aware of the role of the cinematographer.
Beverly Hills Fest
Honors Wexler
Haskell Wexler, ASC was
presented with the Legend Award during
the ninth annual International Beverly
Hills Film Festival. The award was
presented on April 5 at the Beverly Hills
Hotel.
Hummel Presents Big Picture
On May 7, in conjunction with an
exhibition celebrating the 75th anniversary of the National Archives, ASC associate member Rob Hummel presented
The Big Picture: The Evolution of the
Wide-Screen Film. Organized in partnership with the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences, The Charles
Guggenheim Center for the Documentary
Film and the Foundation for the National
Archives, the illustrated lecture traced
the history of motion-picture formats
from the silent era to the present day.
Cinematheque Hosts Roizman
Owen Roizman, ASC recently
visited the American Cinematheques
Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, Calif., to
discuss his Oscar-nominated work on
William Friedkins The French Connection
(1971). Former Los Angeles Times writer
Kevin Thomas led the discussion following a screening of the film.
I

Photo of Vilmos Zsigmond and Jack Cooperman by Linda Silverstein, courtesy of the Lake Arrowhead Film Festival.

he has pushed to develop CG tools similar to the flags, nets, shiny boards and
barn doors found on live-action sets.

JOIN HOLLYWOODS PROFESSIONALS IN 2009

For the Pre-Production Production Post Production Community

Paramount Pictures Studio Lot, Hollywood, CA

Exhibition & Premiere Seminars: June 5 - 6, 2009
The Film Series at Cine Gear Expo: June 4 - 6, 2009
Master Class Seminars: June 7, 2009
CALL FOR ENTRIES!
THE FILM SERIES AT CINE GEAR EXPO 2009
Independent, Student Short Film & Feature Film Competition

ANNOUNCING NEW!

Contact us @
310/472-0809 info@cinegearexpo.com
For more information and updates, visit us at:

The Expansion Into Documentary Film Competition

Deadlines For Submissions Are:

Early 3.15.09 Regular 4.08.09 Late 5.01.09

W W W. C I N E G E A R E X P O. C O M

ASC CLOSE-UP
Alan Caso, ASC

Which cinematographers, past or present,

do you most admire?
Gregg Toland, ASC; Sol Polito, ASC; Robert Surtees, ASC; Freddie
Young, ASC, BSC; Carlo Di Palma; Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC; Vilmos
Zsigmond, ASC; Geoffrey Unsworth, BSC; Gordon Willis, ASC; Robert
Richardson, ASC; Darius Khondji, ASC, AFC; John Alcott, BSC; and
Janusz Kaminski.
What sparked your interest in photography?
An involvement in drawing and painting since I was a child. Also, my
dad was a photographer in the Air Force.
Where did you train and/or study?
Massachusetts College of Art and the University of Massachusetts.
Who were your early teachers or mentors?
Im not sure if mentors is the word, but those with whom Ive worked
for varying amounts of time and from whom I learned the most were
Jan DeBont, ASC; Ernest Day, BSC; Winton Hoch, ASC; Orson Welles;
and Bruce Surtees.
What are some of your key artistic influences?
Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Degas and Renoir; Sergei
Eisenstein, Buster Keaton, Orson Welles, David Lean, Sam Peckinpah
and Francis Ford Coppola; Truffaut and Godard; Antonioni, De Sica,
Leone and Bertolucci; Alfred Eisenstaedt, Alfred Stieglitz, Ansel Adams,
Richard Avedon, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Edward Weston and Robert
Frank.
How did you get your first break in the business?
I got a job as an assistant on a film called Roar (1981) that Jan DeBont
came over from Holland to film. He moved me up to operator very early
in the production. As the movie rolled on for over three years, it gave me
a great daily training ground to learn the complicated skills of operating,
and cinematography in general. It also provided a chance for me to train
with a Steadicam; this allowed me the opportunity to begin a parallel
career as an A-camera and Steadicam operator.

100 June 2009

What has been your most satisfying

moment on a project?
Its hard to put a superlative on the
moment. I would say these are some: as
complete works, the period pieces
Frankenstein (for Hallmark) and Into the
West (for DreamWorks/TNT); actually
surviving the feature Reindeer Games
and miniseries George Wallace with
John Frankenheimer and with fond memories; the sheer glee of
doing Muppet movies; and the complete freedom to create the look of
Six Feet Under.
Have you made any memorable blunders?
Falling asleep while operating a close-up on Bette Davis.
What is the best professional advice youve ever received?
From John Frankenheimer: Alan, whatever you do in this business,
dont ever let them push you into shooting something you know is just
bad, something youll end up regretting or hating. Simple rule of thumb:
dont shoot s**t!
What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you?
I read such a wide variety of fiction and enjoy art in such an eclectic
way that it is very hard to cite any one thing. I would rather say that the
collective experience of appreciating and living in todays complex environment speaks volumes.
Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like to
try?
My favorite genres are action, period pieces and Westerns. I would
love to try a musical.
If you werent a cinematographer, what might you be doing
instead?
Building furniture and growing a big vegetable garden.
Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for membership?
Charlie Correll, Gil Hubbs and Kees Van Oostrum.
How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?
It has brought me closer to my peers and made available the tremendous resources offered by the Society. Membership has also allowed
me the opportunity to give back to the community through the Societys
involvement with educational, awards and technical-advancement
programs.
I

Photo by Kodak.

When you were a child, what film made the

strongest impression on you?
There really wasnt one, but a combination of
several, including Lawrence of Arabia (1962),
West Side Story (1961), Blow-Up (1966), The
Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Psycho (1960),
Major Dundee (1965) and Ben-Hur (1959).

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