2014 02

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the new
/T2.2
The International Journal of Motion Imaging
On Our Cover: Frank Stokes (George Clooney) leads a team of architects, art
historians and museum curators behind enemy lines in The Monuments Men, shot
by Phedon Papamichael, ASC. (Photo by Claudette Barius, SMPSP, courtesy of
Sony Pictures Entertainment.)
FEATURES
34
44
54
64
74
Allies of Art
Phedon Papamichael, ASC dramatizes a unique mission in
the World War II adventure The Monuments Men
Calm, Cool, Creative

Dean Cundey, ASC reflects on his career upon receiving the
Societys Lifetime Achievement Award
Serving the Story, with Style

Eduardo Serra, ASC, AFC is honored with the
International Award
54
Distinguished Service
Richard Rawlings Jr., ASC earns the Career Achievement in
Television Award
Learning from the Masters

The Society hosts its inaugural ASC Master Class
64
DEPARTMENTS
10
12
16
24
80
83
86
87
88
90
92
44
Editors Note
Presidents Desk
Short Takes: The Body
Production Slate: Tims Vermeer Visitors
Filmmakers Forum: Nic Sadler
New Products & Services
International Marketplace
Classified Ads
Ad Index
Clubhouse News
ASC Close-Up: Javier Aguirresarobe
VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM
SEE AND HEAR MORE CINEMATOGRAPHY COVERAGE AT WWW.THEASC.COM

Left: Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) implores
P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson) to trust
him. Right: John Schwartzman, ASC
(pointing) on set with (from left) director
John Lee Hancock, dolly grip Moose
Schultz and A-camera operator Ian Fox.
In an exclusive podcast, cinematographer John Schwartzman, ASC will discuss his work on Saving Mr. Banks, in which
Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers locks horns with Walt Disney over his plans for a movie adaptation of her work.
THIS MONTHS ONLINE QUESTION: Which painters or artists have influenced your approach to cinematography?
Mark Mercuri: Frank Lloyd Wright, for scale,

sight lines and angles.
Beth Gosnell: Frida Kahlo.
Joe Barzz: Rembrandt and van Dyck, for their
use of light and shadow. But in some assignments I follow [cinematographer] Gabriel
Figueroa; he based his works in the style of the
Mexican painters the forced perspective of
Siqueiros, the low angles of Rivera. In a documentary, I tried to mimic the colors of Tamayos
paintings using Kodak reversal film.
Brian D. Hallett: Vermeer and Edward Hopper.
Evan Spielman: Basquiat.
Oliver Ryan: Frank Frazetta and Edvard
Munch.
Eric Abramson: Vermeer and the rest of the
Dutch masters rock natural light. I am also influenced by many photojournalists, especially from
the 1970s and 80s.
Jolon Dante: Obviously lighting, but also the
feel of movement, would be key elements for
me in making this choice: Peder Severin Kryer
and Edgar Degas.
Leandro Brentlie Samuel: Id have to say Norman Rockwell.
Daniel Watkins: El Greco brought a sense of

time to what is objectively a medium of finite
space. As such, his paintings have almost felt like
tracking shots, your eye standing in for the camera. Hes the only painter that comes to mind
Kevin Powell: Two artists really inspired me at whose work approaches cinema.
a young age with their use of light: J.M.W. Turner, especially his painting The Slave Ship; and Car- Miguel Angel Rivera Alvarez: William
avaggio, specifically The Calling of Saint Blake.
Matthew.
Cesar Guerrero: Goya.
Matthew Antonino: Renoir, for his use of
color and composition. His paintings give beauty Tobias Dodt: Mostly Dutch landscape painters,
and life to otherwise ordinary moments. His light in particular members of the Hague School, and
is never too heavy or dark for my taste. I love the Caspar David Friedrich of the Romantic era. Also
soft, golden quality of his lighting. I just really like Adolph Menzel and Lesser Ury, who used light so
the idea of having a more beautiful reality for my beautifully. Georges de La Tour and Caravaggio I
films.
found extremely influental. And, of course, John
Singer Sargent, Edward Hopper and the French
John Ned: I like to think of Bruegel as the first Impressionists.
great cinematographer.
Jean-Louis Bompoint: Norman McLaren,
Mahboob Alam Qazi: Bonjour, Monsieur Edward Hopper, Yves Tanguy, Mondrian and
Courbet (1854), a Realist painting by Gustave Picasso.
Courbet.
Rajendra Biswas: Delacroix.
Luca Travaglini: Monet.
Franz Salvatierra: Claude Monet. He had an
David Dunsmoor: For me, it would have to be impressive way of capturing the nuance of real
the sculptures of Alberto Giacometti and the lighting and colors of environments and appropaintings of Adolf von Menzel. Giacomettis priating them for expression, something I
sculptures show a grotesque and worn side of a attempt to do in my own work.
tortured soul, and Menzels use of light and
shadow is brilliant!
To read more replies, visit our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/AmericanCinematographer
Photos by Franois Duhamel, courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures.
Ken Hull: Rembrandt, for how he lit faces. Ver- Richard Vialet: Painters: Jack Vettriano,
meer, for his clarity of composition and for light- Edward Hopper, Rob Hefferan and John Salmiing an environment.
nen. Photographers: Gordon Parks, Gregory
Crewdson, Nan Goldin, Saul Leiter and Roy
Adam Chambers: M.C. Escher one object, DeCarava. These artists inspire me because their
different ways to view it, [and] each one makes work has a strong sense of place and evokes a
sense to the viewer.
strong story with the imagery.
F e b r u a r y
2 0 1 4
V o l .
9 5 ,
N o .
Visit us online at
www.theasc.com
PUBLISHER Martha Winterhalter
EDITORIAL
EXECUTIVE EDITOR Stephen Pizzello
SENIOR EDITOR Rachael K. Bosley
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Jon D. Witmer
TECHNICAL EDITOR Christopher Probst
PHOTO EDITOR Julie Sickel
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Benjamin B, Douglas Bankston, Robert S. Birchard,
John Calhoun, Michael Goldman, Simon Gray,
David Heuring, Jay Holben, Noah Kadner,
Jean Oppenheimer, Iain Stasukevich,
Patricia Thomson
ART DEPARTMENT
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Marion Kramer
ADVERTISING
ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Angie Gollmann
323-936-3769 FAX 323-936-9188
e-mail: gollmann@pacbell.net
ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Sanja Pearce
323-952-2114 FAX 323-876-4973
e-mail: sanja@ascmag.com
CLASSIFIEDS/ADVERTISING COORDINATOR Diella Peru
323-952-2124 FAX 323-876-4973
e-mail: diella@ascmag.com
CIRCULATION, BOOKS & PRODUCTS

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

ASC EVENTS COORDINATOR Patricia Armacost
ASC PRESIDENTS ASSISTANT Delphine Figueras
ASC ACCOUNTING MANAGER Mila Basely
ASC ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE Nelson Sandoval
American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 94th year of publication, is published
monthly in Hollywood by ASC Holding Corp., 1782 N. Orange Dr., Hollywood, CA 90028, U.S.A.,
(800) 448-0145, (323) 969-4333, Fax (323) 876-4973, direct line for subscription inquiries (323) 969-4344.
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Sheridan Reprints at (800) 635-7181 ext. 8065 or by e-mail hrobinson@tsp.sheridan.com.
Copyright 2014 ASC Holding Corp. (All rights reserved.) Periodicals postage paid at Los Angeles, CA
and at additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA.
POSTMASTER: Send address change to American Cinematographer, P.O. Box 2230, Hollywood, CA 90078.
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American Society of Cinematographers

The ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but
an educational, cultural and professional
organization. Membership is by invitation
to those who are actively engaged as
directors of photography and have
demonstrated outstanding ability. ASC
membership has become one of the highest
honors that can be bestowed upon a
professional cinematographer a mark
of prestige and excellence.
OFFICERS - 2013/2014
Richard Crudo
President
Owen Roizman
Vice President
Kees van Oostrum

Vice President
Lowell Peterson
Vice President
Victor J. Kemper
Treasurer
Frederic Goodich
Secretary
Isidore Mankofsky
Sergeant At Arms
MEMBERS OF THE
BOARD
Curtis Clark
Richard Crudo
Dean Cundey
George Spiro Dibie
Richard Edlund
Fred Elmes
Victor J. Kemper
Francis Kenny
Matthew Leonetti
Stephen Lighthill
Michael OShea
Lowell Peterson
Owen Roizman
Rodney Taylor
Haskell Wexler
ALTERNATES
Isidore Mankofsky
Kenneth Zunder
Steven Fierberg
Karl Walter Lindenlaub
Sol Negrin
MUSEUM CURATOR
Steve Gainer
Wise cinematographers do some homework before shooting historical movies. During prep on The Monuments Men,
ASC member Phedon Papamichael, director George
Clooney and producer Grant Heslov screened various World
War II documentaries and features to get a feel for their
projects milieu. Monuments is based on the true story of
the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Program, a group
of architects, artists and art historians the U.S. government
assembled and dispatched to save artworks from Nazi
destruction. In Mark Dillons coverage (Allies of Art, page
34), Heslov notes, We wanted our film to feel vital and
new and fresh, not like a museum piece. We also wanted a
very rich look; we wanted it to feel almost painterly because
its a film about art. He adds that Papamichael has all the qualities he and Clooney sought
in a cinematographer: Hes a great shooter, hes fun and easy to be around, and hes fast.
This issue also profiles three other cinematographers who exemplify excellence in
their profession: the recipients of this years career-achievement honors at the ASC Awards,
which will be held Feb. 1.
Dean Cundey, ASC cleared a spot on his mantel for the Lifetime Achievement
Award, which salutes a versatile rsum that includes a variety of genres: drama (Apollo 13),
sci-fi (Jurassic Park, Escape from New York), horror (Halloween, The Thing), romance
(Romancing the Stone) and comedy (Who Framed Roger Rabbit and the Back to the Future
trilogy). In Jean Oppenheimers profile of Cundey (Calm, Cool, Creative, page 44), his
praises are sung by several collaborators, including directors Steven Spielberg and John
Carpenter, actor Kurt Russell and production designer Rick Carter. Reflecting on his ASC
honor, Cundey offers, There are certain awards we covet, but they are typically for one
project, whereas the Lifetime Achievement Award represents recognition for a lot of different things, the culmination of a variety of projects and achievements. Its the best thing one
could ever receive.
Eduardo Serra, ASC, AFC, honored with the Societys International Award, has also
proven his versatility by shooting an impressive range of films all over the world. The list
includes The Wings of the Dove, Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Hairdressers Husband, Blood
Diamond and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and Part 2. In a profile by MarkHope Jones (Serving the Story, with Style, page 54), Darius Khondji, ASC, AFC testifies to
Serras talent: Eduardo has been able to go beyond and reach another level, which is why I
think he truly deserves all of the praise heaped upon him.
Richard Rawlings Jr., ASC earned the Societys Career Achievement in Television
Award after following in his fathers footsteps. He became a cinematographer in the late
1970s on the series Charlies Angels and worked on a string of successful shows that included
Matt Houston, Stingray, L.A. Law, Boston Public, Gilmore Girls, Paradise and Desperate
Housewives. Jon Silbergs overview of his work (Distinguished Service, page 64) offers both
anecdotes and insights.
This issue also includes a recap of the first ASC Master Class, conducted in Los
Angeles last fall (Learning from the Masters, page 74), and articles on the artful documentaries Tims Vermeer and Visitors (Production Slate, page 24).
10
Stephen Pizzello
Executive Editor
Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.
Editors Note
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Despite the endless arguments about the switchover from film to digital acquisition many
of which continue, ridiculously, to this day there can be no doubt that cinematographers
now have a number of new tools at our disposal. Whether they actually help us do our jobs
more creatively or efficiently is debatable. I believe they do, for the most part, though they
demand an intense level of supervision through every step of the process. As for what has
been lost in the transition, though, it seems that saying goodbye to our favorite emulsions is
the least of it. Many of us who made our bones photochemically and have now digitally
redefined ourselves mid career would agree that set procedures have definitely taken a hit.
Take, for example, some habits picked up by camera assistants that would have been
unthinkable in the film era. First, there is simply too much reliance on monitors as a focus aid.
Of course, the image quality of monitors is much better today, but no matter how attentive
the assistant might be, he or she must chase the actors movements in order to keep the
image sharp. The result is an inevitable softness or breathing of focus, especially in tighter
shots or shots with reduced depth-of-field. Ive become so sensitized to this that I can spot it
in almost every movie and TV show I see. Its curious how quickly this practice has caught on,
and Ive heard assistants defend it to the point where I suspect they might need to have their
eyes examined.
A bit of advice: Every once in a while, dig through one of those set bags you lug around
and get out the tape measure! If youre worried about your work being instantly judged on high-acuity screens back in video village,
my friends, you have no idea what the hot seat is like until youve seen the image optically projected a day later on the big screen
in the dailies theater. Hmmm feet and inches and a couple of reference points on the set worked pretty well back then. I assure
you, they still work now. Training your eye at the film plane and sensitizing yourself to distance is the key.
Another trend is to take one of the great advantages of digital technology a smaller, lighter camera and turn it into a
behemoth that dwarfs even the heaviest film-camera configuration. The size of what we often work with now can be hilarious, a
complete abrogation of so much of what this revolution was supposed to be about. Manufacturers whose products cannot function without a number of add-ons bear most of the responsibility, but (and Ill be crucified for this) many camera assistants add to
the problem. (For the record, I came up through the ranks of the camera department, starting as a loader and finishing as a focus
puller 12 years later. I know the job.) I accept that much of whats screwed to, taped to or plugged into the camera is there for a
reason, but lets be honest: Some of it is redundant, indulgent or just there for the ride. Compared to the streamlined efficiency of
a Panavision or Arri film camera, this is an enormous step backward.
Other issues that have taken root in the digital era to the detriment of our working process: 1) overly casual and noisy sets;
2) letting the camera run without cutting between takes, which in all but a few applications is lazy, sloppy and unprofessional, not
to mention expensive and time-consuming in editorial; 3) the fact that everyone is now a critic in video village; 4) the overuse of
multiple cameras, primarily in TV (Lets see, we have three on the main action, so lets put a couple of GoPros up there and a few
DSLRs over there!); 5) striving for as many setups as possible instead of as many good setups as possible; and 6) the overabundance
of chefs in the kitchen. And the list goes on.
Lest this come off as a personal bitch session, I should note that everything Ive mentioned is common fodder for discussion
when cinematographers get together, and, as you might imagine, I know quite a few cinematographers. I imagine many of our
crewmembers have complaints about us. Maybe Ill address some of those here one day but notice I said maybe.
Still, and this is perhaps the strangest irony of all, as much as we might gripe from time to time, theres nothing else in the
world any of us would dream of doing.
Richard P. Crudo
ASC President
12
February 2014
American Cinematographer
Photo by Douglas Kirkland.
Presidents Desk
T V LO G I C O N B OA R D M O N I TO R
C I N E TA P E M E AS U R E C O N T R O L
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THE CINEMA EOS C500 PL

AS CONFIGURED BY THE CREW OF HUMAN VOICE
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or trademarks in other countries. All other products and brand names are registered trademarks, trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.
EDOARDO PONTI
DIRECTOR
// RODRIGO PRIETO, ASC, AMC
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
// ZORAN VESELIC
FIRST AC
Human Voice was born at the Tribeca Film Festival, where director
That was the rst step of a journey that soon landed the duo in
Edoardo Ponti rst met Rodrigo Prieto. The two clicked, and shortly
Rome with renowned AC, Zoran Veselic, and a Cinema EOS C500
thereafter, Ponti approached the celebrated cinematographer with
PL. With its dynamic range and 2K 12-bit color depth, the fully
a script for a 25-minute lm written for Pontis mother, Sophia Loren.
congured camera provided the warm skin tones and detail the
team needed to bring this beautiful, romantic lm to life.
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Canon 15.5-47mm Cine Zoom Lens, the EOS C500 PL enables
efficient workow while providing the freedom to quickly
switch from studio mode to handheld. Its just one more way
Canon can help you bring your story to life.
Watch the Human Voice crew discuss this configuration at:
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STORY TAKES YOU
Short Takes
Killer Visuals
By Iain Stasukevich
When cinematographer Eben Bolter first worked with director Paul Davis, on the 2012 short film Him Indoors, he found Davis
to be the sort of director I love working with he has loads of
ideas, and hes very good at adapting, listening and collaborating.
The production went well, but the filmmakers agreed their next
project had to be more ambitious. That led to The Body, a short film
about a murderer who uses Halloween as a cover to get away with
his crime.
The script for The Body presented Bolter with scenes in a
mansion, on the streets of London, at a loft party, and in the woods.
We had a bit more kit and crew for this one a gaffer and two
sparks [electricians], a very good key grip, a great Steadicam operator, and a core camera team of a focus puller, a loader and a
trainee, says Bolter. That allowed us to dream a little bigger!
Bolter shot The Body in the 2.40:1 aspect ratio with an Arri
Alexa Plus, recording in ProRes 4:4:4:4 Log-C internally to SxS cards,
and Cooke S4i prime lenses from Arri Media. Id shot a couple of
features with Cooke S4s, and in this world of digital ultra-sharpness,
I like their warmth and elegant softness, says the cinematographer.
Also, our references for The Body were some fairly recent horror
films that had more of a classic 35mm look. Davis adds, Specifically, we wanted this movie to look as though it could be a segment
of the anthology Trick r Treat [2007, shot by Glen MacPherson, ASC,
CSC]. We wanted that Halloween look, with the browns, the
oranges, and the deep blues in the shadows.
The Body opens with a long establishing shot that begins with
a high, wide view of London at night, then pulls back through a
window and tracks across an apartment, up a set of stairs and
16
February 2014
through a bedroom, finally landing on the bathroom-mirror reflection of the Man (played by Alfie Allen). We wanted to challenge
ourselves, and a shot like that tells you the filmmakers are being
ambitious, says Bolter.
Originally, the opening was set up to play as a montage, but
once we set up the Steadicam and all the lights, I realized we could
do it all in one snaking camera move, Davis explains. The shot is set
to the strains of a theme from Tchaikovskys Swan Lake, and the
filmmakers were able to take advantage of the locations built-in
speaker system to play it in every room, which helped Steadicam
operator Rob Hart hit precise marks at certain points in the song.
We did shot lists, but often wed get to the set, work out
the blocking, and then come up with [different] Steadicam shots
that allowed us to develop the story in a smooth way, Bolter recalls.
The continuous shots helped us to build tension, whilst gradually
revealing story information in a more organic way.
He lit with an eye towards reality and used practicals to
provide motivation. In the mansion location, it was a matter of turning practicals on or off, swapping out low-wattage bulbs for brighter
ones, and dimming and diffusing bulbs to set the right look. In that
way, the film is quite lit, but we always tried to give ourselves
enough flexibility that the actors could move around, says the cinematographer. After that, it was about supplementing practical
lights to give things a bit more pop and shape, and to be more deliberate than completely naturalistic.
After the bathroom-mirror scene, a second Steadicam shot
follows the Man downstairs. A 150-watt Dedolight with 250 diffusion provided a backlight on the stairs, and a tungsten-balanced
Litepanels 1x1 LED positioned down the corridor created an edge for
the actor when he hit a mark at the bottom of the steps. The parlor
where the body is found was lit from overhead with a 500-watt
Unit photography by Colin J. Smith. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of the filmmakers.
A murderer
(Alfie Allen)
attempts to use
Halloween to
cover up his
crime in the
short film The
Body, shot by
Eben Bolter.
Top: The Man stands beside his tarpaulin-wrapped victim, whom partygoers mistake for a prop.
Middle: Bolter (left) and director Paul Davis (looking through camera) set up a shot with actor
Jack Gordon. Bottom: A shot from the scene.
18
February 2014
China ball, while a soft edge was provided

by a medium Chimera Pancake with an 800watt Lowel Tota-light suspended from a
Manfrotto Mega Boom in the back corner
of the room.
The production had permission to
shoot on the streets of South London, but it
didnt have permission to stop traffic or
pedestrians. We had to work quickly,
ideally without drawing crowds, says
Bolter. He shot the night exterior between
T2 and T2.8 and supplemented the sodiumvapor streetlights with Litepanels 1x1 LEDs
running off V-lock batteries.
Bolter points out a moment early in
the scene when one of his lights makes a
cameo appearance. When the Man comes
through the park gates with the body and
walks toward camera, you can actually see
[a 400-watt HMI Joker Bug with mediumflood lens] as clear as day! My gaffer, Cullum
Ross, and I set it up in a pub garden and
didnt think anyone would spot it. We just
wanted an edgelight on the actors in the
background, but the Alexa is so good in low
light that at ISO 800 with the Cookes wide
open, I couldve shot that scene without
anything extra.
On the street, the Man encounters
an old schoolmate and his friends on their
way to a loft party. Impressed by his
costume, they implore the Man to join
them. The party was shot in an empty warehouse in central London. Bolter explains,
The action involved three areas: the
entrance, where we had LED fairy lights and
candles for a warm tungsten feel; the bar,
where the Man has a conversation with a
woman, has a blue-neon feel; and the
dance floor, where we used sweeping
purple and orange spotlights to make it feel
fun and disco-like. The principals were lit
with either 19" or 30" Jem Balls, while
tungsten-balanced 4x4 Kino Flos behind
them provided a soft 34-backlight wrap.
As the party winds down, the Man
insists on leaving with the body, which must
be buried in the woods by 3 a.m. in order for
him to collect his bounty. The revelers,
delighted by the idea of a scavenger hunt,
invite themselves along. On location in the
woods, Bolter lit to T2.8-T4 using the moon
and a small fire as his main motivation. The
hard moonlight edge was created with a 6K
HMI gelled with Plus Green and augmented
by a Litepanels 1x1 LED and two daylightbalanced 4x4 Kino Flos gelled with Plus
Green. A 4K HMI Par was pushed through a
6'x6' frame of tracing paper or bounced off
a white 8'x4' polystyrene to provide the
moon-motivated side keylight. A flame bar
provided the firelight and was augmented
with 500-watt China balls, a tungstenbalanced 4x4 Kino gelled with 12 CTO, and
two bounced 1Ks on flicker boxes. That
gave us at least 180 degrees of free movement, Bolter points out. I couldnt make
big sweeping changes to our shots because
we were on a tight schedule. It was only
tweaks here and there.
The final grade was performed at
The Mill London by colorist Houmam Abdallah, who worked on a FilmLight Baselight
from a sizzle reel provided by Bolter. Once I
wrap a feature or a short film, Ill usually take
a greatest hits of the rushes and start to
play with the grade, the cinematographer
says. Im quite a fan of soft vignettes that
draw the eye a little more to the center of
the image, and I also like to do an imperceptible gradient to make one side darker or
lighter. The Body ended up looking different
than my sizzle reel, but not greatly. Houmam
pushed the colors and gave us something
sharper and more contrasty. The final deliverable was a 2K DCP.
After premiering at FrightFest in
London, The Body made its U.S. debut at
Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. We were
also thrilled to win the Mlis dArgent [for
Best Short Film] at Sitges, adds Bolter.
Top: Maggie
(Hannah
Tointon) and
other revelers
accompany the
Man into the
woods, where
he must dispose
of the body.
Middle: The
filmmakers light
the scene inside
the van. Bottom:
Davis and Bolter
confer on
location.
20
February 2014
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Production Slate
Mirroring a Master
By Patricia Thomson
Art scholars have long suspected that 17th-century Dutch

artist Johannes Vermeer used an optical device when painting. The
Dutch had created the first telescopes and microscopes just one
generation earlier, and lens fabrication had recently taken a great
leap forward. This was the moment when a German astronomer
coined the term camera obscura, naming a device that had been
kicking around the studios of European astronomers and artists since
Leonardo da Vincis day. It was the camera obscuras projected image,
art historians hypothesized, that inspired Vermeer. Little is known
about his work methods from primary sources, but his canvases
contain tantalizing clues, such as blurry foreground objects, circles of
confusion, and, for instance, a faint blue fringe around a cloak that
is much like the chromatic aberration of an imperfect lens.
How Vermeer rendered these effects is a question that began
nagging Texas-based inventor Tim Jenison when he read David Hockneys book Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of
Old Masters. Jenison, who revolutionized desktop video with inventions such as DigiView, VideoToaster and LightWave 3D, sensed a
kindred spirit in Vermeer. Although Jenison had never picked up a
paintbrush, he wanted to do a Vermeer: reconstruct the scene in
24
February 2014
The Music Lesson and then paint it using Vermeers optical device.
What that device would be was the mystery Jenison had to solve.
Production on Tims Vermeer began in 2008, after Jenison
casually mentioned his obsession to longtime friend Penn Jillette, the
verbal half of the comedian/magician team Penn & Teller. Jillette
insisted that Jenisons project be documented and volunteered to
produce the project with Farley Ziegler and Teller, who also directed.
Soon, cinematographer Shane F. Kelly came aboard, and the team
spent the next five years chronicling Jenisons work.
Kelly, whose credits include A Scanner Darkly (AC July 06)
and Urbania (AC May 00), had two things the production needed:
He lived in Austin, Texas, just an hours drive from the warehouse in
San Antonio where Jenison was reconstructing Vermeers studio,
and he owned a Red One. Some footage had already been captured
in 4K with a Red in Delft, Vermeers hometown, by Amsterdambased cinematographer Robert Berger, and Jenison was a fan of the
image quality. Tim is fascinated by everything, and at that time, the
Red One was groundbreaking, says Kelly. It was 4K in an affordable package, and he wanted to explore that a bit more, so he
bought one. As the shoot evolved, Kelly shifted to a Red Epic-X
(and from Red Drives to RedMag SSDs), continuing to capture in 4K.
The setup in Jenisons studio comprised nine digital cameras,
a mix of Reds (used with Zeiss Compact and ZF primes, Nikon
Tims Vermeer photos by Tim Jenison and Shane F. Kelly, courtesy of High Delft Pictures and Sony Pictures Classics.
In the midst of
re-creating
Vermeers
painting The
Music Lesson,
Tim Jenison
discovers a
tiny error in
the artists
original.
primes, and a Nikon 17-35mm T2.8 zoom)

and Canon DSLRs (used with Canon EF 2470mm f4 zooms) and camcorders, plus
multiple iterations of antique optical
devices. Altogether, 2,400 hours of footage
was accumulated during the 1,825-day
project, which included 130 days of actual
painting.
Jenison intended to make his own
camera obscura using 17th-century techniques, from firing the glass to grinding it by
hand. Thats the depth of his obsession,
Kelly marvels. I collect lenses, but Tim
wanted to make them. For specs, Jenison
turned to Philip Steadman, author of
Vermeers Camera. Through a geometrical
analysis of six Vermeer paintings, Steadman
established not only the use of a lens, but
the dimensions of The Music Lessons room,
its vanishing point, viewpoint (i.e., position
of the lens), and focal point. I verified
Steadmans measurements with Lightwave
3D, and they jibed, says Jenison. I knew I
needed a focal length of approximately 28
inches. Then, I had to work from the focal
length to the curvature. He also turned to
Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes by Vincent Ilardi. This type of lens
would have been the same used in a telescope, about the same diameter and focal
length, Jenison says of his 4" creation.
They were everywhere by Vermeers
time.
The path Jenison followed was a
lens-making method that began in the late
1500s. Eyeglasses were invented around
1290, and they were made by blowing a
sphere, breaking it and then grinding the
back flat, he explains. The sphere part of
the lens is very imperfect, and if you put one
in a camera obscura, it would make a really
blurry image. But at the end of the 1500s,
the Germans started grinding the sphere
instead of blowing it, and lenses suddenly
got a lot better. The Germans used a
lap, a grinding tool shaped like a dish, for
convex lenses, and a cannonball for
concave lenses.
In his warehouse, Jenison sprinkled
glass crystals into his lens mold, then fired
that in a pottery kiln to get the rough
shape. You could start with a piece of flat
glass, but I did this knowing it would save
time grinding, and also to use imperfect
glass, he says. Mine had bubbles and
Top: Before tackling his Vermeer, Jenison tests his comparator mirror by painting a replica of his
father-in-laws portrait. Bottom: He discusses his experiment with artist David Hockney.
little variations of hardness that affected the

quality of the grind. It had inclusions, like
dirt from the mold. None of these things
mattered a bit for the experiment.
He created some brass laps on a
metal lathe. Then came endless hours of
grinding, with the lens revolving on somewww.theasc.com
thing resembling a potters wheel. I used a

big slab of granite, which I put on a table
and spun around, he says. In Vermeers
time, various grades of wet sand would
have been used to grind, and a diatomaceous earth would have been used to
polish. Jenison permitted himself a halfFebruary 2014
25
dozen grades of modern abrasive and

modern polish.
The result, Kelly attests, was impressive. Id love to have a lens like that, says
the cinematographer. It had beautiful
aberrations that gave the projected image a
certain look you just wouldnt get with a
modern lens.
Jenisons adventures in lens making
were just one small part of his quest. As
Tims Vermeer chronicles, he soon realized
that Vermeer could not have worked with a
camera obscura alone. It is a draftsmans
tool, good for tracing lines, but Vermeers
canvases contain no underlying sketch.
Could he have simply applied brush to
canvas under a projected image? No, Jenison found. As he demonstrates in the film,
its impossible to match colors because a
colored projection changes the hue and
value of the pigment it falls upon.
Jenisons breakthrough was his
comparator mirror. A simple instrument
that could have been in Vermeers kit, it
comprises a small first-surface mirror on a
stick. Positioned at a 45-degree angle to the
subject, it allowed Jenison to match colors
perfectly as his gaze shifted back and forth,
comparing paint and reflection at the
mirrors edge. Jenison could build an entire
painting this way, and he did, first using a
black-and-white photo that he re-created
with remarkable fidelity.
His next test combined the comparator mirror with the camera obscura, a
combination that would explain both the
optical artifacts in Vermeers paintings and
his color wizardry. Jenison set up his drafting
table inside a chamber-sized camera
obscura and projected a simple white jug.
That worked, too, but Jenison allowed
himself a cheat: The jug was blasted with
light from a 2.5K HMI Fresnel.
Next came the critical test. After
painstakingly re-creating The Music Lesson
scene, Jenison tried his device using only
natural light, but the projection was too
weak and blurry. Next, he thought of
projecting onto a mirror instead of white
Masonite, thus marshaling all the light
waves in one direction. That made the
image 250 times brighter. Even better was a
concave mirror, which enabled Jenison to
see more of the image. With brightness
increased 250-fold, he realized he no longer
Top: Jenison
visits the
Metropolitan
Museum of Art
to study
Vermeers
Woman with a
Lute using
surgical loupes
he created.
Middle: The
inventor spends
hours polishing
a handcrafted
lens. Bottom:
Jenison
examines one
of his optical
devices.
26
February 2014
Cinematographer Shane F. Kelly experiments with a mirror during the shoot.
needed a dark chamber. He shed the

camera obscura, retaining only its lens in
combination with the two mirrors.
At that point, Kelly breathed a sigh
of relief. When he took the tent away, I
could finally see what was going on! says
the cinematographer. The camera obscura
was a black tent with a hole for a lens and
a very dim projection. If Id put any light in
there, it would have affected Tims ability to
see the projection. Kelly tried his best,
however. Id do a little edge light on Tim,
then get enough light reflected back whenever he leaned into the painting. He
controlled spill by positioning Litepanels
LEDs behind Jenison and flagging the light
off the painting. But at times, Jenison
recalls, you could barely make out my
face, and that was using a [Canon] 5D at
ASA 25,600 with a T1.2 lens! It was very
grainy. We did some noise reduction, but
essentially, you just cant shoot in a dark
room.
For his final configuration, Jenison
inserted his handmade lens into a Cambo
8x10 studio-camera lens holder. It was just
what the doctor ordered, he says. You
can tilt and offset it left or right with little
knobs and focus by racking the thing up
and down the rail.
Also mounted on the Cambo rig
was a Canon Vixia HF21, one of several
28
February 2014
camcorders that ran continuously. (The

others were Vixia HF S20s, S30s and 11s.)
These facilitated close-up dissolves of the
painting in progress. Additionally, two
Canon EOS 5D Mark IIs and three Canon
Rebel XS DSLRs recorded time lapse, one
frame every 10 seconds. Two were above
the painting and a third looked toward the
studio from the perspective of the handmade lens. A fourth in the far corner
showed the rooms entire setup, while a
fifth, outside, shot the sky.
All of the Canon cameras were
interfaced through USB to a central
computer and controlled using DSLR
Remote Pro, says Jenison. I could just
start the computer, and it would command
the cameras to start taking pictures and
simultaneously download the data into the
central computer. That way, I didnt have to
mess with cards. At the end of each day, Id
make two backup copies of everything
wed shot.
Jenisons nightly Skype chats with
Ziegler were also recorded, and these serve
as Jenisons confessionals in the film. They
were captured with Jenisons Red One, set
up like a Teleprompter (with its own 45degree mirror) so he would appear to be
addressing the camera.
All material was recorded at 30 fps.
In retrospect, that choice wasnt the best,
Jenison notes. I assumed this would only

be seen on television, and I thought most of
it would be shot on the 5D, which didnt
have a 24-frame mode. The conversion
from 30 to 24 fps is highly imperfect; you
get motion artifacts. But thats the way we
started, and thats the way we stuck it out.
Initially, editor Patrick Sheffield
received files transcoded to ProRes 4:4:4,
but he eventually asked for raw R3D, which
he transcoded to ProRes LT. Sheffield notes,
Having access to the raw files also allowed
me to resize shots as needed without loss of
clarity, and to do interim color correction on
sections of the film [using Color] to try out
looks in advance.
The final grade was done at Finland
Finish in Austin. Roughly half the files were
R3D and half were from DSLR and
consumer/prosumer cameras. Due to this
mixed bag, the documentary was finished
in HD. We took the render out at
1920x1080 for converting from 30 fps to
24 fps, using a Teranex to create a 24-fps
master, says colorist Nick Smith. Afterwards, a slight upscale to 1998x1080 was
handled in DaVinci Resolve. Those files were
then delivered for [2K] DCP processing via
EasyDCP.
Kelly is particularly grateful for one
prescient decision the team made early on.
When we started shooting, it was the early
days of Red, and there were a lot of
unproven workflows, says the cinematographer. When we transcoded everything
into ProRes for the editor, we didnt change
the file names. When I went in for the final
color correct, there were boxes and boxes of
hard drives, and when Nick and I sat down
to go through them, finding shots was
surprisingly easy.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
Digital Capture
Red One, Epic-X;
Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Rebel XS, Vixia
Zeiss Compact, ZF; Nikon; Canon
A Black-and-White Reverie
By Mark Dillon
Like Godfrey Reggios experimental

documentaries Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of
Balance, Powaqqatsi: Life in Transformation
and Naqoyqatsi: Life as War, his latest
feature, Visitors, is dialogue free and showcases music by Philip Glass. Whereas
Koyaanisqatsi offers a colorful symphony of
sped-up images, however, Visitors takes the
opposite approach, featuring intimate
black-and-white tableaux shot in slow
motion. The 87-minute feature comprises
74 shots, which were captured by cinematographers Graham Berry, Tom Lowe
and Trish Govoni.
This is poetic cinema, which for me
is about giving people a sensation, an
emotion and a perception, explains
Reggio. The intention is to have the audience feel something, and thats going to be
different person to person. Im not interested in narrative films. Its a pictorial
composition.
Reggio began planning Visitors in
2003. When funding became available, in
2010, he commenced scouting locations in
Louisiana, his home state. The shoot took
place in four stages between September
2010 and September 2012, and Reggio and
his collaborators worked from talking
papers he had created in lieu of a screenplay. I used that to communicate about
what the film is and what the photography
would be, he explains.
The filmmakers avoided juxtaposing
shots that might create a particular mean30
February 2014
ing. Sometimes when we put two

thoughts together, they would start to add
up to a specific didactic idea, and wed say,
We dont want to do that, recalls coproducer/associate director Jon Kane. We
were keeping it atmospheric so the viewer
could bring his own ideas to the film.
The images were captured mostly in
color and then transformed into black-andwhite in post, a decision that was finalized
during production after Reggio saw Lowes
monochromatic infrared photography,
which includes images of Six Flags New
Orleans (nearly destroyed by Hurricane
Katrina) and the swamplands at Louisianas
Atchafalaya Basin. Tom was doing this lush
black-and-white stuff that was so stunning
we decided to make the portraits blackand-white to match, and then it all became
black-and-white, Kane recalls.
Lowe, who specializes in time-lapse
cinematography, suspended work on his
own documentary, TimeScapes, to join
Reggio in New Orleans. Reggio showed him
some black-and-white infrared photos and
asked if something similar could be accomplished with moving images. Lowe
proceeded to line up a couple of Canon
EOS 5D Mark II cameras modified to shoot
black-and-white IR, and he shot sun and
clouds passing over skeletal roller-coasters
and an Art Deco hospital building, which
eventually came to serve as a recurring
monolith in the film.
The filmmakers later secured a Red
One that was also modified for IR, and used
it to capture high-speed shots in 3K
Redcode 42 at 48 fps. This footage was
recorded to a 128GB Red Ram SSD drive,

while the Canon time-lapse material was
captured in the raw format to Lexar 300x
32GB CF cards.
Lowe shot the swamplands using a
rig he assembled with Kenyon gyrostabilizers for the Red camera, which would often
rest on his knee. Accompanied by his first
assistant, Dustin Kukuk, and boat captain
Roy Blanchard, Lowe captured five days
worth of IR Cyprus trees, lily pads and other
natural elements. Godfrey trusted me to
shoot what I felt was worthy, Lowe recalls.
He said, I dont care how much footage
you shoot. Im not looking for coverage. Im
only looking for special things. If you come
back with nothing, I wont care. That was a
relief on one hand, but on the other, he put
it on me to figure it all out! But I was so
inspired by everything I saw that finding
special shots was easy.
Lowes time-lapse gear included a
CamBlock three-axis motion-control
system. One or two hours of shooting
would yield one shot in the final film, with
Lowe capturing one frame every three or
four seconds. He shot completely with
natural light, and the IR filters created
dramatic looks such as blackened skies.
Lowe used 10mm, 12mm and 16mm Zeiss
Ultra Primes, as well as the extreme-wideangle 8R/T2.8. If you window down a Red
One to 3K, you lose some of the field-ofview, so we had to use a very wide lens to
get a perspective that looked like, say, a
14mm, he notes.
Berry, who is based in France, first
collaborated with Reggio on Powaqqatsi.
Visitors photos and frame grabs courtesy of Cinedigm.
Among the
images
cinematographer
Tom Lowe shot
for Godfrey
Reggios Visitors
were infrared
vistas of the
hurricanebattered Six
Flags New
Orleans. Lowe
shared
cinematography
duties on the
film with
Graham Berry
and Trish
Govoni.
Unfamiliar with Red cameras, he ramped

up with a days training at Londons VMI
rental house. Camera tests were conducted
at Digital FX in Baton Rouge, and the facility also supplied equipment. Dan Gutt
served as the productions digital-imaging
technician.
In keeping with the theme of
watching, Visitors features people young,
old and in-between staring into the
camera. The crew shot 143 of these
portraits at a retirement home in New
Orleans; the subjects were a mix of adult
extras and residents of the facility. Reggio
notes that the sheer quantity of the material made digital acquisition an obvious
choice. That would have been prohibitive
in 35mm, Reggio says. Shooting 16mm
would have been economically feasible,
but I wouldnt have gotten the image I
wanted. Therefore, we decided the Red
camera was best. The blacks were deeply
black, which is important to me; it creates
the illusion of depth and dimensionality in a
two-dimensional medium.
Berry shot the portraits at 48 fps
with a Red One in Redcode 36, setting the
camera on a PeeWee dolly and tracking
15'-20' from each subject. The crew moved
in slowly for one to two minutes at a fixed
focal length, which, Berry says, lent an
unsettling vibrancy to the image. He credits key grip Daniel J. Rector with pushing
the dolly at a snails pace with a precise and
incredibly smooth movement time after
time, and sometimes incorporating a jib
movement as well. Subjects were lit by
bounced HMIs off a reflector, as well as by
a side kicker and a hair light. A black-velvet
background became the template for
portraits throughout the film.
Berry also shot non-time-lapse IR
images at Six Flags, and captured a magnificent oak tree in New Orleans Audubon
Park that Reggio had played under as a
child. The latter shot involved 200' of track,
a PeeWee dolly and an OConnor Ultimate
fluid head for tilting. In addition to the dolly
work, there is a Steadicam shot through a
destroyed New Orleans shopping center.
(Brandon Baudier and Steve Acheson were
the Louisiana Steadicam operators.)
Berry mainly used a 24-290mm
Angenieux Optimo zoom, and he also
tapped a Technovision/Cooke 18-90mm
Top to bottom: The swamplands at Louisianas Atchafalaya Basin; a close-up of Triska, a lowland
Silverback Gorilla at the Bronx Zoo; a portrait of one of the films child subjects; an Art Deco hospital
in New Orleans.
www.theasc.com
February 2014
31
Govoni (left) and Reggio plan a high-speed shot of seagulls.
T2.3 zoom and 12mm, 24mm and 50mm

Ultra Primes. Reggio monitored the images
(with a LUT applied) on set via a DCpowered HD monitor. The production
projected dailies in a rented downtown
New Orleans mansion at the end of each
shooting day. Our editor, Chris Besecker,
also functioned as our dailies facility,
handling the dailies with a Red Rocket card
and a Mac Pro throughout the shoot in
New Orleans, notes visual-effects supervisor Max Blecker of Opticnerve.
One of the movies key images,
featured in both the opening and closing
shots, is a gorilla looking into the camera.
Reggio says he sought to explore the notion
that we human beings have not seen
ourselves until weve been seen through the
eyes of another animal. Berry made several
unsuccessful attempts to film gorillas in the
Bronx Zoo, where he contended with
weather and uncooperative apes, and
several months later, the production
returned to the zoo for another round of
tries, this time with New York-based cinematographer Govoni at the camera, which
was now a 5K-capable Red Epic.
Govoni used the Epic at frame rates
and compression ratios ranging from 48 fps
at 7:1 compression to 96 fps and 120 fps at
13:1 compression, recording to 128GB and
256GB RedMag SSDs. She used the 24290mm Optimo with a doubler to shoot
the gorillas, which were 30 yards away
behind protective glass. In the final attempt,
the crew arrived around 7 a.m., and one
32
February 2014
ape eventually complied, enabling them to

get the shot by 4 p.m. Govoni had the
camera on a spreader with wheels and shot
with natural light. She recalls, I was trying
to find the one gorilla sitting the longest,
and there were six people behind me
saying, Theres one on your right looking at
us! Theres one on your left! When we
finally got it, it was incredible. It was a shot
Godfrey had wanted for so long, and he
was so happy! A black background was
added to the shot digitally at Opticnerve.
Govoni shot more human portraits
at Brooklyns Nut Roaster Studios, and this
time, the subjects were adults whose gaze
was fixed by having them play video games,
and children who were asked to watch a TV
screen to keep their eyes from wandering. A
similar technique was used to capture a
group of sports fans reacting to a televised
basketball game. Basically, we built a kind
of Teleprompter with a 63-inch flat screen
that was rigged flat/tabled and then tilted
up to about a 30-degree angle, she
explains. A half-silvered glass was rigged
vertically and then tilted down to reflect the
image on the flat screen, which had been
flipped. I was behind the glass with the Epic
and the Optimo, shooting the reactions of
the people watching the screen. We used
that size television because that was the
largest piece of half-silvered glass we could
find.
Govoni also captured close-ups of
hands that appear to dance as they operate
digital devices such as a mouse or tablet.
(The devices were removed from the final

shots.) The crew lit the hand models from
above or below, depending on the action.
They used 5K Fresnels through multiple
layers of diffusion overhead and bounced
2K Mighty Moles into bead board from
underneath through frosted Plexiglas, creating small pools of light.
Govoni captured a studio shot of a
crowd walking toward the camera at
300 fps with a 2.5K Phantom Flex and a
Hawk 150-450mm T2.8 zoom lens. She
also used the Phantom Flex at speeds ranging from 300 fps to 1,500 fps for shots of a
dancing crash-test dummy, and cascading
garbage at a New Jersey dump. She also
shot seagulls at 1,200 fps. We went to the
Phantom when we wanted to shoot higher
frame rates than the Epic could handle,
Govoni notes. This raw footage was
recorded to 256GB and 512GB Phantom
CineMags.
At New Yorks Harbor Pictures,
colorist Joe Gawler handled the final grade,
working in DaVinci Resolve. [Footage] shot
below 4K was upscaled to make it blend in
with the higher-resolution material,
explains Blecker. Things shot above that
threshold were cropped and scaled down to
various degrees, depending on the final
framing decisions.
The post team made ProRes proxies
of the material and off-lined in Apple Final
Cut Pro 7 and Premiere Pro CS6. Most of the
effects work was done in Adobe After
Effects or Nuke with proxies, but also often
JPEG sequences that were slowed or
composited and rendered out in ProRes for
editorial. Final deliverables were both 4K
and 2K. The films premiere screening at the
Toronto International Film Festival was 4K
and included a live orchestral performance
of Glass score.
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Digital Capture
Red One, Epic; Canon EOS 5D Mark II;
Vision Research Phantom Flex
Zeiss, Angenieux, Cooke, Hawk
Allies of Art
Phedon Papamichael, ASC creates a

period look for the World War II
story The Monuments Men, in which
intrepid art experts save priceless
treasures from Nazi destruction.
By Mark Dillon
|
S
34
oldiers and civilians are the foremost casualties of war, but

in times of conflict, some of humankinds most important
achievements, its great paintings and sculptures, are also
threatened with destruction. It is estimated that during
February 2014
World War II, the Nazis stole more than five million artworks
from the countries they vanquished. Some were to be
displayed in Adolph Hitlers proposed Fhrermuseum, some
were divvied up among the top brass, and some were sold to
fill the Third Reichs coffers. When Germany began losing
ground in the war, the fate of this looted treasure was thrown
into question, so the U.S. government created the
Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Program and sent the
architects, artists and art historians comprising it a.k.a. the
Monuments Men to the front to rescue as many artworks
as possible before the Nazis could destroy them.
This is the subject of The Monuments Men, a feature
drama based on the book of the same name by Robert M.
Edsel. The projects director, George Clooney, also co-wrote
the screenplay and co-produced the picture with Grant
Heslov. Clooney tapped cinematographer Phedon
Unit photography by Claudette Barius, SMPSP, courtesy of Sony Pictures

Entertainment. Lighting diagram courtesy of Tobias von dem Borne.
Opposite: In The
Monuments
Men, the U.S.
government
sends a group of
architects, art
historians and
museum curators
behind enemy
lines to save
precious cultural
artifacts from
Nazi destruction.
This page, top:
James Granger
(Matt Damon)
meets with Frank
Stokes (George
Clooney) to
discuss the
mission. Bottom:
Clooney shifts
gears to direct a
scene alongside
cinematographer
Phedon
Papamichael,
ASC (wearing
hat) in a Cologne
military hospital.
Papamichael, ASC to shoot the project

after working with him on The Ides of
March. Heslov, who has directed
commercials Papamichael has shot,
says, Phedon checks off all the boxes
George and I look for: Hes a great
shooter, hes fun and easy to be around,
and hes fast. George has a strong opinion about how he wants things to look,
and Phedon quickly figures out the best
way to achieve that. He is a great collaborator.
Immediately after wrapping
Alexander Paynes Nebraska, just before
Christmas 2012, Papamichael hopped a
plane out of Omaha to Berlin to do
preliminary scouting. He began 10
consecutive weeks of prep in early
January; this phase largely involved
firming up locations with production
designer James D. Bissell and conducting camera tests. At the time, Clooney
and Heslov were busy collecting prizes
for their production of Argo (AC Nov.
12), but the day after the Academy
Awards, they flew to Berlin for the rest
of prep.
Papamichael, Clooney and
Heslov screened World War II documentaries that included The Rape of

Europa, which was coproduced by
Edsel, for historical context and to get a
feel for physical details such as the
Monuments Mens appearance. They
also reviewed World War II dramas
www.theasc.com
from the 1960s and 1970s, including

The Guns of Navarone, The Great Escape,
The Dirty Dozen and A Bridge Too Far
(AC April 77). Those are the movies
George and I grew up on, and those are
the ones that influenced us the most,
says Heslov. But we also wanted our
February 2014
35
Allies of Art
Top: Granger examines documents with French museum curator Claire Simone (Cate Blanchett).
Bottom: Members of the team study up before they embark on the mission. Portraying various
characters are (from left) Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Damon, Hugh Bonneville, John Goodman
and Jean Dujardin.
36
February 2014
film to feel vital and new and fresh, not

like a museum piece. We also wanted a
very rich look; we wanted it to feel
almost painterly because its a film about
art.
Papamichael also watched Steven
Spielbergs Saving Private Ryan (AC
Aug. 98) because The Monuments Men
features a Normandy landing scene, too.
However, when the landing crafts gate
opens and the Monuments Men jump
out, all is quiet; the fighting has ended,
and nearly everybody has moved on. I
think [Spielbergs crew] shot three or
four weeks doing that sequence, and we
shot ours in three hours, Papamichael
says with a chuckle.
Made on a budget Heslov
describes as less than $70 million, The
Monuments Men began 70 days of principal photography in March. Filming
was done mostly in Germany on location and at Studio Babelsberg. Berlin
stood in for Paris, with the 19th-century
war memorial the Neue Wache
doubling for Frances Jeu de Paume,

which the Nazis used as a clearinghouse
for stolen art. Existing Berlin buildings
were modified both physically and with
CGI, which allowed for the addition of
swastikas, which are illegal to display in
Germany. Shooting also took place in
the mountainous northern Harz region,
which provided mines similar to the
ones where the Nazis stashed artwork
and gold. The production moved to
England for a couple of weeks, shooting
in locations that included the former
Duxford Aerodrome, a Royal Air Force
base in Cambridgeshire. In the film, its
where the Monuments Men touch
down in Europe and endure basic training before being briefed on their
mission. The Camber Sands, near the
small East Sussex town of Rye, doubled
for Omaha Beach.
The filmmakers decided to use
both 35mm and digital capture, and
both anamorphic and spherical lenses.
George and I love to shoot film we
The team explores a mine where the Nazis have stashed artwork and gold stolen from all over Europe.
www.theasc.com
February 2014
37
Allies of Art
Top: Clooney watches special-effects supervisor Gerd Nefzer torch a painting. Middle:
Crewmembers work amid bombed-out ruins for a scene staged in Siegen, Germany. Bottom: The
filmmakers prep a scene depicting Nazi soldiers on Lisieux Road.
38
February 2014
love the look of it, Heslov notes. We

know its dying and were definitely
swimming upstream. We figured this
could be our last shot. However,
Papamichael wanted them to be open to
shooting digitally, and prepared tests
comparing the Arri Alexa Plus to
35mm for day exteriors in open sky and
snowy conditions with white smoke.
We had scenes set at Pattons camp in a
winter forest, with snow everywhere and
white smoke coming from dozens of
tents, and that, in combination with the
white sky, seemed to render better on
film, says the cinematographer.
In all day-exterior situations,
digital is very sensitive toward secondary
bounce sources, especially green trees
and green grass, Papamichael continues. This creates a tricky balance with
skin tones, which still feel more natural
on film. But when we shot tests of lowlight interiors lit by lanterns or flashlights, or big night exteriors, it was
pretty hard to distinguish digital from
film. It gives you a great advantage to be
able to shoot at 800 ASA or 1,000 ASA
with the Alexa. Plus, George likes to
work extremely fast. We never did full
night shoots; sometimes we only did
five hours of shooting, with minimal
setups or coverage, and the Alexa helped
facilitate that.
In the end, most interiors and all
night exteriors about 60 percent of
the picture, according to Papamichael
were shot on the Alexa. Day exteriors were shot on 35mm using an
Arricam Lite. Digital footage was
captured simultaneously in ArriRaw (to
a Convergent Design Gemini 4:4:4
recorder) and in ProRes 4:4:4:4 (to Sony
64GB SxS cards). Joshua Berkowitz, the
productions digital-imaging technician,
explains, The Gemini mags were sent
to the lab, and we downloaded the
ProRes material on set as backup. We
did not use it, though, because the
ArriRaw was really stable.
From the get-go, Clooney liked
the idea of shooting with anamorphic
lenses. Papamichael usually works with
a Panavision package, but because he
was gearing up out of Berlin, he instead
chose a combination of Hawk V-Lite

and V-Plus 2x anamorphic lenses
(procured from Arri Rental). The
Hawks are not as crisp as some of the
more modern anamorphic lenses
they have an older feel, he observes.
They take off the curse of digital
sharpness and help give the image a
more filmic look, but I thought they fell
off too much on the edges when they
got wider than 50mm, so for anything
wider than that, I used 18mm, 21mm
and 27mm [Arri] Master Primes. We
had to change the gates on the
Arricams when we went from anamorphic to spherical or vice versa, and that
was a bit of a hassle, but the camera
crew was very quick, so it didnt really
hold us up.
Top: Claire pursues Nazis as they leave Paris on a train filled with stolen art. Bottom: A lighting diagram details
Papamichaels strategy for the scene.
www.theasc.com
February 2014
39
Allies of Art
Top: Clooney
directs at the
Santa Maria
delle Grazie in
Milan. Bottom:
The director
blocks out a
scene in Bruges
Cathedral with
Papamichael,
production
designer James
Bissell and
Steadicam
operator Scott
Sakamoto.
Papamichael says he was able to

maintain a T4 even for night work with
the Hawk lenses thanks to the Alexas
sensitivity. For day exteriors shot on film,
he would stop down to T5.6 or T8
max, he says. The softer quality of the
Hawks made lens filtration largely
unnecessary, although Papamichael did
use Tiffen Glimmerglass when shooting
close-ups of Cate Blanchett, who
portrays French museum curator
Claire Simone. The crew also had
40
February 2014
an Angenieux Optimo 24-290mm

spherical zoom on hand for long-lens
shots. Visual-effects supervisor Angus
Bickerton captured the Hawk anamorphic-lens characteristics during prep
and added them to the spherical-shot
footage in post for consistency.
Papamichaels key crew included
longtime gaffer Rafael Sanchez, whom
he brought over from the States, Berlinbased gaffer Bjoern Susen, and U.K.
gaffer Perry Evans; key grip Glenn
Knig; A-camera 1st AC Luc Pallet;

B-camera operator Berto Lecluyse;
B-camera 1st AC Lars Richter;
and Steadicam operators Alessandro
Brambilla, Joerg Widmer and Scott
Sakamoto. We usually ran just one
camera, but wed run two for performance during longer dialogue scenes
because George doesnt like to repeat
things a lot, Papamichael notes. Most
of the time we did one or two takes, so
everybody had to be ready for Take
One to be technically perfect. It kept
everyone on his or her toes.
Papamichael operated the main
camera, a role he assumes only on
certain projects. Both George and
Alexander Payne like to keep it a little
more intimate around camera, he says.
It enables us to have more streamlined
communication. They dont sit away
from set in a tent or any kind of video
village. Playback occurs only on rare
occasions. Because George was also
acting in this film [portraying Frank
Stokes, who convenes the Monuments
Men], it was nice to have me right there
at the camera. It helped the whole feedback process.
The production used QTake HD

for video assist. A look-up table
Papamichael created with Berkowitz
was fed to the cinematographers 17"
HD OLED monitor, from which he lit
and operated. The LUT had a higher
contrast setting, with deep blacks, says
Papamichael. Clooney and Heslov,
meanwhile, shared a 17" TVLogic
LCD monitor, and Berkowitz had a 24"
OLED, from which Papamichael got
feedback regarding focus and lighting.
Papamichael notes that Clooney typically did not check his screen when
appearing in a scene, leaving it instead
to the cinematographer and Heslov to
confirm whether a take was good.
Several scenes were shot in
burned and abandoned mines that
offered no source of illumination. For
those, Papamichael relied mostly on
period practicals fitted with stronger
bulbs, including work lights, militaryissue flashlights and lanterns the actors
held. These were sometimes augmented
with what Sanchez calls the Fish
Light, small Chimeras fitted with
three 250-watt Soft White ECA
Photofloods bulbs and an egg-crate
grid, or 500-watt Jem Balls, which were
used handheld and moved in sync with
the actors. The crew also carried white
cards so the actors could bounce their
practicals into them. They all became
pretty good at lighting themselves,
Papamichael observes. For large mine
caverns shot onstage at Babelsberg, a
general low-key ambience was created
with Nine-light Maxi-Brutes bouncing
off several 12'x12' UltraBounces flown
overhead.
A night sequence showing Claire
racing on her bicycle in pursuit of Nazis
leaving Paris with a train full of stolen
art was more involved, but still,
Papamichael strove to keep things
simple. My big night-exterior lighting
setups usually have one large source, and
then I use whatever practicals are in the
shot, he says. Typically, wed strategically place streetlamps provided by the
art department and augment them with
small sources to create individual pools
of light. I have a very naturalistic
Allies of Art
The team
captures a
shot of Nazis
preparing to
set artworks
ablaze.
approach. I dont fill a lot. I let things fall

off and always make sure there are dark
areas in the frame so that even if something is front lit, theres still good
contrast.
Claires pursuit of the train was
filmed in Berlins Nikolaiviertel neighborhood, and the single large source
behind Blanchett was an Arri T12

gelled with CTO high up on a
Condor. Practical streetlamps were each
fitted with a 150-watt bulb and an additional outside bulb, and shop and
restaurant windows projected a row of
three 650-watt Fresnels with White
diffusion, an Ianiro 800-watt Redhead,
and a couple of 1Ks behind Light Grid.

The Alexa was shooting at a T2.8,
which I allowed myself to open up to
when using the Master Primes, says
Papamichael.
For
other
night
work,
Papamichael would usually use 20K
Fresnels, Nine-light Maxi-Brutes or
Dinos because, as he says, This is a
period piece, and I dont really use blue
moonlight. Any urban situation I play
warm, usually going with big tungsten
units.
For film work, Papamichael used
Kodak Vision3 500T 5219 rated
normally. The negative was processed at
Arri Film & TV Services in Berlin. I
wasnt concerned about using the
higher-speed stock because I wanted to
feel some grain, says the cinematographer. I think that conveys that older
period look, and we planned to add
grain to the digital footage in post.
Papamichael and Berkowitz did
preliminary grades of the digital mater-
ial on set at the DIT station, which was

equipped with DaVinci Resolve. At the
end of each day, Berkowitz sent DPX
files to Arri as reference for dailies
colorist Steffen Paul.
Arri created our Blu-ray dailies
off the ArriRaw based on our colorcorrected LUT, and they also matched
our film footage to single-frame stills I
shot with the Alexa whenever we shot
film, applying our LUT as a reference,
recalls Papamichael.
The cinematographer notes that
Clooney doesnt like a lot of fancy
camerawork. Most of the moves in this
film are traditional dolly moves. The
camera never moves in a way that
makes a statement. Moves are almost
always motivated by the actors movements. We often used a 4-foot slider for
short moves like push-ins.
Because of the productions
financing, the final grade was performed
in London at Technicolors Soho facility
by U.S. colorist Skip Kimball, who used
DaVinci Resolve 10. Papamichael

crossed the pond for the process and
says his goal was to ensure good saturation with solid blacks, while also maintaining natural-feeling skin tones. I
wanted to achieve and maintain that
painterly quality we set out to achieve
without being too aggressive with the
contrast. I was after subtle but rich
tonality.
The picture was edited by
Stephen Mirrione on an Avid system,
while conforming was done on
Autodesk Smoke. The negative was
scanned at 4K on a Northlight, and an
Arrilaser was used for the 4K filmout. I
had to match the geometry between the
flat and anamorphic, and then I applied
a film grain to the Alexa footage to
match the 35mm, Kimball explains.
Trying to give the film scenes the same
level of shadow detail that the Alexa
raw material had in the low end was
perhaps the biggest challenge, he adds.
Papamichael was excited to work
on such a large canvas after doing a

completely different kind of project for
Payne. It was fascinating going from
Nebraska, which is basically two characters in a car and a very stark landscape,
to a World War II story loaded with
movie stars and classical Hollywood
lighting. Thats what cinematographers
love about the job: Its different every
time!
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Digital Capture and 35mm
Arri Alexa Plus; Arricam Lite
Hawk V-Lite, V-Plus;
Arri Master Prime;
Angenieux Optimo
Kodak Vision3 500T 5219
Digital Intermediate
Calm,Cool,
Creative
44
February 2014
Dean Cundey, ASC receives

the Societys Lifetime
Achievement Award for
his vivid contributions to
cinematography.
By Jean Oppenheimer
|
Photos by Ron Batzdorff, SMPSP, and Murray Close, courtesy of Universal Pictures and Walt Disney Pictures.
Escape from New York and Halloween photos by Kim Gottlieb-Walker from her book On the Set with John Carpenter.
othing ruffled Dean, even

when I was pushing him,
director Steven Spielberg says
with a laugh, referring to
Dean Cundey, ASC, this years ASC
Lifetime Achievement honoree. And I
push a lot to get as many shots a day as
I possibly can. Spielberg tapped
Cundey to shoot Hook (AC Dec. 91)
and then Jurassic Park (AC June 93)
after admiring the cinematographers
work on Who Framed Roger Rabbit (AC
July 88) and Back to the Future (AC
Dec. 89), which Spielberg produced
and Robert Zemeckis directed.
Dean relieves the pressure of
production just with his dry, wry sense
of humor and his cool, collected
demeanor, Spielberg adds. He brings
a calming influence to the entire
company, including the actors.
Kurt Russell, who starred in
three films Cundey shot for John
Carpenter Escape from New York
(1981), The Thing (1982) and Big
Trouble in Little China (AC June 86)
wholeheartedly agrees. In fact,
Russell recommended Cundey to
Zemeckis when the director was looking for someone to shoot Romancing the
Stone (1984). Bob was looking for a
very even-keeled cinematographer
because he knew Romancing the Stone
would be a very trying and difficult
shoot, Russell recalls. He wanted
somebody who had a great temperament and great abilities, and thats
Dean. He is very smart, levelheaded
and unflappable, and he has a wonderful dry wit.
Cundeys equanimity is legendary. William Coss, Cundeys first
assistant on such films as What Women
Want (2000) and The Holiday (2006),
says, Dean never raises his voice, and
he goes about things in a logical
manner that makes it easier on everybody. Raymond Stella, who served as
the camera operator for Cundey on
more than 30 pictures, notes, I never
actually heard Dean curse, but I was
told it happened once.
Cundey credits his parents with
helping him learn how to roll with the
Opposite: On set
for Escape from
New York, Dean
Cundey, ASC
points out a detail
to (from left)
director John
Carpenter, camera
operator Ray
Stella, gaffer Mark
Walthour and 1st
AC Clyde Bryan.
This page, top: A
portrait of Cundey
by Owen Roizman,
ASC. Bottom:
Cundey tests the
hero blade on the
set of Halloween,
his first feature
with Carpenter.
punches. They encouraged my sister

and me to pursue activities that interested us, but they never chastised us for
doing something that didnt succeed,
he says. It was always, What did you
learn from that? That helped me
www.theasc.com
develop a tolerance for things not going

right.
His mother, Margaret Unger
Cundey, was an especially important
influence in his life. She taught my
sister and me critical thinking, how to
February 2014
45
Cool, Calm, Creative
Top: After stills photographer Kim Gottlieb-Walker advised Carpenter and Cundey to point when photos
were taken to create a better shot, the filmmaking duo had fun illustrating the technique. Bottom: On
set for Escape from New York, actor Isaac Hayes poses with Bryan, Cundey, Walthour and Stella.
46
February 2014
analyze life situations. When dealing

with people, its very important to not
rob them of their dignity, even if they
have offended you. I remember my
mother saying, Dont get angry. That
person is trying to make you [feel small]
or make himself look better. And she
herself was always so reasonable. It was
never, You have to do this because Im
your mother. It was always, You should
do this, and heres why.
Cundey considers himself fortunate to have grown up when and where
he did. He was born in the Los Angeles
suburb of Alhambra in 1946. With the
war over, America went into this happy,
Leave It to Beaver period, he remarks.
It was a time of economic growth, and
all that stuff that made for a comfortable social structure. He was fascinated
with science, magic and movies from an
early age, and he also possessed a keen
curiosity about how things worked.
He was 8 or 9 years old when he
saw 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and
when Disneyland opened the following

year, he explored the sets that were put
on display. It had all looked and seemed
so real onscreen, but then I wandered
around the sets and saw that things were
made of plywood and covered with
brown stucco to look like rust, he
recalls. I understood the illusion.
Cundey bought his first issue of
American Cinematographer when he was
14, but when he started thinking seriously about pursuing a career in filmmaking, he decided to become a
production designer. When he paid a
visit to the Art Directors Guild and
asked what he should study in college,
he was advised to pursue a degree in
architecture. I looked at what was
required for a major in architecture,
recounts Cundey. Drawing? Okay.
Graphics? Okay. Calculus, beam stressing and structural analysis? Wait a
minute. That seemed overkill for what I
wanted to do. My mother, on the other
hand, was delighted because she felt I
could at least fall back on kitchen and
bathroom remodels if moviemaking
didnt work out!
Cundey attended California State
University-Los Angeles for two years
and then transferred to the University of
California-Los Angeles to study film.
One of his UCLA instructors was
legendary cinematographer James
Wong Howe, ASC, and Howes teaching assistant was future ASC member
Stephen H. Burum. All the students
were dedicated, but people have certain
talents, and it was clear that Dean
grasped lighting and camera, recalls
Burum. It was just in [his] DNA.
Cundey credits Howe with finally
steering him toward cinematography.
He taught us the mechanics of working
with lights as well as the artistry.
Because he was a working professional,
he [gave us] a practical sense of working
on a set. He would arrange a three-wall
set and say, Okay, today this is a seedy
motel room, and he would light it from
scratch, leading us through the thought
process.
Cundeys first jobs after graduation were low-budget affairs on which
Top: Cundey and

Bryan play in the
Escape from New
York band.
Bottom: Cundey
checks out a
capsule used in
the movie.
www.theasc.com
February 2014
47
Top: Cundey and

his colleagues
capture some
action on the
Universal Studios
lot for Back to
the Future Part II.
Bottom: The
cinematographer
poses in front of
the main location
for Road House.
he accepted any position available,

including makeup artist, editor and
gaffer. To market himself as a cinematographer more effectively, he
customized a Dodge Maxi van and
outfitted it with camera and lighting
equipment. He also put together a crew,
which included Stella.
Stella still marvels at Cundeys
48
February 2014
patience. On their first job together, a

short film, they were shooting high
speed when the magazine jammed. We
had already shot half the mag, recalls
Stella. It was the first jam Id ever dealt
with, and I didnt know what to do, so I
pulled the film out and took it over to
Dean. Is that the film we just shot? he
asked. I said, Yes, and he said, Oh.
Next time, save as much as you can.

Most guys would have torn my head
off!
Cundeys lifelong passion for
science and technology has proven a
tremendous asset in the face of the
industrys constant evolution. We make
the real world bow to imagination, and
we use science-based, real-world things
to achieve that, he observes.
Dean not only embraces new
technology, he also understands it!
Carpenter notes wryly.
Spielberg recalls wanting a radical
key-to-fill ratio for Jurassic Park, and I
knew Dean could do it. Dean also had
great ideas about how to light the
dinosaurs to make us think we were
seeing more than we actually were. He
lit Stan Winstons full-size animatronic
creatures using edgier light to make
them look larger and more ferocious.
And he was great at separating the characters from the background.
Dean also convinced me to build
more sets, Spielberg continues. He
said, I can make the inside look like
outside, and well have much more
control. He made us believe we were
actually back in Hawaii or, in the

context of the story, Costa Rica.
Cundey loves confronting new
challenges. On Jurassic Park, we were in
completely unfamiliar territory, and we
constantly had to be thinking. You cant
run on autopilot or fall back on formulas in that kind of situation. We were
trying to sell the audience on the idea
that dinosaurs had actually been created,
and the audience really does buy it!
As impressed as Cundey was
by the CGI creatures, he considered Winstons animatronic dinosaurs
equally mind-blowing. The T-Rex was
18' high and operated by a sophisticated
computer system. You had to be very
careful when standing around the creature, says the cinematographer. If the
computer shorted out for any reason,
the [T-Rex] could lunge!
Visual-effects supervisor Ken
Ralston, who worked with Cundey on
Roger Rabbit, Death Becomes Her (1992)
and the Back to the Future trilogy,
declares, When youre on a film with
Dean, its really teamwork. He is interested in the technical problems we have
to solve, and he is incredibly helpful in
getting what we need to make the shots
work. Plus, he is just hilarious. The
demands on a Zemeckis film are great,
and Dean met them with aplomb and
panache, and he also kept me and everybody else chuckling.
Cundey earned an Academy
Award nomination for Roger Rabbit,
which combined hand-drawn animation with live-action footage, requiring
compositing via an optical printer.
Dean helped create a lot of the motioncontrol techniques used in Roger
Rabbit, notes Burum. Cundey also
worked with Industrial Light & Magic
on designing the two VistaFlex cameras
used to shoot the picture. ILM did a
brilliant job building them from
scratch, says Cundey.
The custom cameras required
blimps, and companies in New York
and London (where most of the film
was shot) said they would take six
months to build. With production set to
begin in three weeks, Cundey, who was
Top: Cundey
adjusts models
used as stand-ins
on the set of
Who Framed
Roger Rabbit.
Middle and
bottom: Cundey
at work on Hook.
www.theasc.com
February 2014
49
Clockwise from
top: Cundey
confers with
director Steven
Spielberg while
shooting Jurassic
Park; the
cinematographer
at the camera;
Cundey dons
prehistoric garb to
play a scene with
Rick Moranis for
The Flintstones.
in England, researched sound-deadening materials, purchased a drawing

board and drawing instruments, and
sketched several diagrams, which he
then sent to ILM. Their shop built the
blimp and shipped it over to England,
and it fit, he recalls.
My dad is really excited by figuring out how to do something that has
never been done before, says
Christopher Cundey, the cinematographers son.
As a visual-effects artist and
visual-effects supervisor, Christopher
has collaborated with his father on
50
February 2014
several projects, among them the PBS

documentary The Face: Jesus in Art
(2001), for which Dean won an Emmy
Award. The production filmed at St.
Catherines Monastery in the Sinai
desert, on the lowest level of the catacombs of Rome, and inside the Sistine
Chapel. The senior Cundey describes
the night spent in the Sistine Chapel:
Nobody had ever shot motion pictures
of the images on the ceiling before, and
the curator of the Vatican told us we
would have to do it at night, when there
would be no tourists. The Vatican even
built a 40-foot scaffold for us so we
could get level with the paintings!

When we broke for dinner at midnight,
the guards brought in these 200-yearold wooden pews for us to sit on. We sat
there, eating our pasta and looking up at
the ceiling. His face lights up at the
memory. Nobody gets to do that! I so
appreciate the opportunities my job has
afforded me.
Cundey joined the ASC in 1986
after being proposed for membership by
Burum, Allen Daviau and John
McPherson. He has since earned two
ASC Award nominations, for Hook and
Apollo 13 (AC June 95), but he says he is
especially proud to receive the Societys

Lifetime Achievement Award. I was
telling [ASC Awards Committee
Chairman] Lowell Peterson that there
are certain awards we covet, but they are
typically for one project, whereas the
Lifetime Achievement Award represents recognition for a lot of different
things, the culmination of a variety of
projects and achievements, says
Cundey. Its the best thing one could
ever receive.
Production designer Rick Carter,
who collaborated with Cundey on
Jurassic Park, maintains, With Dean,
the work is always about what the story
and the director need. He never tries to
show off what he can bring to the table.
I have been fortunate to work with a lot
of good collaborators, but I think Dean
is a one-of-a-kind personality, in that he
sets a tone that encourages everybody to
rise to that level, yet he never tries to rise
above everybody else. Hes not showy or
flamboyant, and its great that the ASC
is honoring him.
Clyde Bryan, who has served as
Cundeys first assistant for more than 20
years, agrees, noting, Deans success has
Top: Cundey
stands outside a
spacecraft
simulator on the
set of Apollo 13.
Bottom: Cundey
and Apollo 13
director Ron
Howard discuss
their approach.
www.theasc.com
February 2014
51
Cundey enjoys an industry event with his wife, Tisha.
never gone to his head. Many people

change in this business, but not Dean.
Cundeys daughter, Michelle,
observes, Despite the long hours he
worked, my father would spend hours
with Chris and me on school projects.
52
He has a real thirst for knowledge and is

always reading or studying something
on the side.
Giving back is also important to
Cundey, who has served as UCLAs
Cinematographer-in-Residence and
taught lighting workshops and seminars

at Mole-Richardson Co., the Art
Center College of Design in Pasadena,
and the North Carolina School of Arts,
among other locations.
Very early in his career, Cundey
recalls, he had to shoot something dayfor-night, and he had never used the
technique before. He knew from reading AC that Conrad Hall, ASC had shot
part of The Professionals day-for-night,
and he also knew that Hall was shooting a film on the Paramount lot. He had
never met Hall, but I called the stage
and asked for him, and, to my amazement, he came to the phone. I said, You
dont know me, but I am about to shoot
day-for-night for the first time, and I
would like your advice. Connie said,
You know, its kind of hard to explain
over the phone. I thought, Okay, heres
the brush-off, but then he said, Why
dont you come to the set and well talk
about it. Can you be here in an hour?
He arranged a drive-on pass for
me, and we sat and talked while he

worked. Hed go off and light and then
come back to continue our discussion.
Day-for-night? Heres what youve got
to do . Heres a guy who had been
nominated for an Academy Award, and
I hadnt even done a film he had heard
of! I thought, Wow, if I am ever in that
position.
Cundey pauses a moment.
Making the impossible seem plausible
has always appealed to me.
Cundey works out a shot for Escape from New York.
53
Serving the Story,
with Style
Eduardo Serra, ASC, AFC

is honored by his peers with
the ASC International Award.
By Mark Hope-Jones
|
54
February 2014
Photos by Karen Ballard, SMPSP; Jaap Buitendijk, SMPSP; Frank Masi, SMPSP;
Philippe Pavant de Ceccaty; Moune Jamet; and unknown photographers, courtesy of Helene Serra and the AC archives.
ver the course of his 40-year

career, Eduardo Serra, ASC,
AFC, has shot an extraordinary
range of films in many different
languages and countries, proving he is
equally at ease working alongside
American and European directors.
Through all this varied output, his
dedication to a soft, simple lighting
style that aims purely to serve the story
has won him the admiration of peers
on both sides of the Atlantic, and this
month, the ASC will honor him with
its International Award.
Born in Portugal in 1943, Serra
was first exposed to moving pictures at
age 4, when his parents started taking
him to see Disney cartoons at an
ornate Italian theater in Lisbon. As he
grew older, he watched the limited
feature films that passed the strict
Portuguese censorship of the time:
some American pictures, the British
Rank productions, and certain Italian
and French comedies. After briefly
considering a career in engineering, he
followed his primary interests in politics and film, getting involved in film
clubs at his university and writing a
weekly column for a newspaper
opposed to Salazars dictatorship. At
age 19, he fled Portugal for Paris,
partly to avoid political persecution,
partly to avoid being drafted to fight in
the colonial war, but most importantly
to pursue a life in film. From its very
beginnings, his career would have to
be an international one.
In Paris, Serra devoured the
films he had not had access to in
Lisbon. During the first month he
arrived, in 1963, he saw more than 100
movies, virtually taking up residence at
the Cinmathque and spending every
minute he could there for the next two
years. Ive probably seen about 95
percent of everything important made
between 1895 and 1955, he says. My
favorite period is the end of the silent
era, from 1927 to 1929. I still think
that films like Sunrise, The Crowd, The
Wind, Lonesome and Wedding March
are unmatched achievements. I am
fascinated by the fact that they were
Opposite: A photo of ASC International Award recipient Eduardo Serra, ASC, AFC, from the
Serra familys archive. This page, top: Serra in Greece, 1965. Bottom: Serra looks out from
behind the camera.
www.theasc.com
February 2014
55
Top: Serra on
the set of a
1989 Artcore
documentary
about European
contemporary
painting,
directed by
Heinz Peter
Schwerfel.
Bottom: Serra
supervises a
setup for the
French comedy
Pinot simple flic
(1984).
the fruit of a dying art form.

Serra was initially drawn to
directing, but the first film school to
accept him in Paris was the Vaugirard
(now the Louis-Lumire), which
trained cinematographers rather than
directors. His path was set. He was still
a foreigner in France, however, and had
56
February 2014
few connections, so work was sparse for

the first few years after graduation. To
fill his time, he enrolled at the Sorbonne
and earned degrees in art history and
archeology, a diversion he looks back on
with affection and gratitude.
Serra finally found work on a
film set as a loader for the great French
cinematographer Pierre Lhomme,

AFC. Pierre was the father of
modern French cinematography,
because he made the transition from
old to new, says Serra. Even though
he started from a classical background, he was also involved in the
Nouvelle Vague, and he always
managed to do something different
and unexpected. I learned from Pierre
that traditional tools and ways of
working are not always the only
choice. I also observed his use of
natural light and its reproduction by
artificial means.
Before long, Serra was pulling
focus and working with such cinematographers as Claude Renoir;
Bernard Zitzermann; Jean Boffety;
Jean-Franois Robin, AFC; and
Claude Agostini. After gaining experience on roughly 30 productions as a
first assistant cameraman, he started
shooting films himself, though it took
him awhile to properly heed
Lhommes example and stop doing
things the way they were normally
done. He notes, I remember using
strong, blue backlight for night exteriors until, after a few films, I asked
myself why I was doing that, because I
didnt even like it. On one film, the
production designer built some
catwalks, and the gaffer said we could
put various lights up there. I went
along with it, but then in the dailies I
had this horrendous toplighting that
looked 30 years out of date. The point
is that things can just happen by
themselves; you need a clear vision to
know what you want and how to stop
the machine. It takes a few years and a
few films to be able to say, No, that is
not what I want. I want it this way.
You need a
clear vision to
know what you
want and how to
stop the machine.
Top: Serra poses

with one of
mans best
friends. Middle:
Serra with his
friend Patrice
Leconte on the
set of The
Hairdressers
Husband (1990).
Bottom: Serra
(bottom right)
holds his award
for Outstanding
Photographic
Achievement,
presented by
Eastman Kodak,
for his work on
The Wings of the
Dove (1997).
Early on, he formed a special

connection with director Patrice
Leconte, and the two have worked
together many times throughout their
careers. Patrice and I share an
emotional relationship with light,
says Serra. He is as fast as he is
precise; he lays down the rules for a
film from the beginning and doesnt
change them. At the start of The
Hairdressers Husband [1990], he told
me, South of France, summer, all the
light is coming from the window,
adding that he wanted to catch the
moment just before perspiration
begins to appear on the skin. On The
Widow of Saint Pierre [2000], I knew a
few basic things: it had to be cold, with
light coming from one direction; I had
to avoid blue skies and postcard views;
and I had to have a bit more contrast
than usual. With Patrice, [the visual
www.theasc.com
February 2014
57

Then, on The Hairdressers Husband, I
used 400 of them as a skylight instead
of space lights, which was rather a new
idea. For his work on the picture,
Serra was nominated for a Csar
Award.
The lighting style Serra was
developing attracted the attention of
other cinematographers, with whom
he has always been happy to share his
knowledge and experience. An early
beneficiary of his kindness was Darius
Khondji, ASC, AFC, who recalls, I
first met Eduardo as a teenager
because he was a good friend of my
sister. I became interested in cameras
Every change of
country for a movie
can be an enriching
experience for any
member of a
cinema crew.
Top: Robert Alazraki, AFC and Serra confer on the set of The Bridesmaid (2004); Alazraki briefly took
over director of photography duties on the film while Serra traveled to Los Angeles for the Academy
Awards, where he had been nominated for his work on Girl with a Pearl Earring. Bottom: Serra and
director Claude Chabrol.
style] can be set within 10 minutes.

Serras work with Leconte was a
crucial step toward his lifelong preference for single soft sources, and led
him to become one of the first cinematographers to work with fluorescent
fixtures. He explains, I became interested in fluorescents because they are a
58
February 2014
light that has a shape. If you change

their orientation from vertical to horizontal, they change the look of a nose
they change the face. I first used
them on Les Spcialistes, in 1983. I
had to import the lights from the
United States because I couldnt find
any good fluorescent tubes in France.
and film, and went to study at New

York University. When I came back to
France, Eduardo was the first person
to help me work in the film industry; I
visited some of his sets when he was
just starting as a cinematographer. He
was very generous and taught me a few
things when I really didnt know
anything.
Then I started to see his work,
which had a wonderful softness to it,
Khondji continues. At a time when
everybody was going for sharp and
contrasty images, he was maybe the
only one, except for Philippe
Rousselot [ASC, AFC], to go for
something softer. When I look back
now, I think what he was doing was
quite groundbreaking.
Having already worked on
Top: A shot from

the final
sequence of
What Dreams
May Come
(1998).
Middle: The
cinematographer
considers a
setup. Bottom:
Serra on the set
of Unbreakable
(2000) with
director M.
Night
Shyamalan.
French, Portuguese, Brazilian and

German productions, Serra began to
shoot English-language films as well,
with early examples including Tropical
Snow (1988) and Lapse of Memory
(1992). He notes, Every change of
country for a movie can be an enriching experience for any member of a
cinema crew, even for technicians. I
found I could adapt myself to different
ways of working while maintaining
the same direction in terms of my
aesthetic choices.
On Vincent Wards Map of the
Human Heart (1992), Serras camera
crew included a young loader named
Seamus McGarvey, a future member
of both the ASC and BSC. McGarvey
recalls, Seeing how Eduardo worked
[with] his wonderful eye and sensibility showed me a whole different
approach to lighting, one that technically on the face of it was very
simple. He didnt use a huge amount
of light, but he used it very well, and I
had never seen that degree of underexposure before. I was a young clapper
loader coming out of film school, and
his bravery with darkness was a revelation to me.
Serra worked in England on
Funny Bones (1995), directed by Peter
Chelsom, and then again on Michael
Winterbottoms Jude (1996), which
won him a Camerimage Silver Frog
and teamed him once more with
McGarvey, who was tasked with additional photography this time around.
McGarvey recalls, My gaffer, Lee
www.theasc.com
February 2014
59
Top: Jewish
resistance
fighters led by
Tuvia Bielski
(Daniel Craig)
are ambushed
by Nazis in this
scene from
Defiance (2008).
Bottom: Serra
talks with
director Edward
Zwick on
location in
Lithuania.
Walters, and I used to laugh because I

had a little light meter that I would
secretly bring out to look at what
Eduardo was doing with exposure, and
I often couldnt even get a reading!
When Lee and I started shooting our
own feature films, if the light was
fading at the end of the day to the
60
February 2014
point where we had to stop, Lee

would always joke with me and say,
Youre going to need Eduardos
meter!
Jude was an anamorphic film,
and Serra brought to it his compositional experiences on Lecontes films,
almost all of which were framed in the
2.40:1 format. Widescreen is not just

for dramatic landscapes, Serra
observes. It can also capture human
relations very efficiently, conveying
psychological subtleties and unspoken
feelings. McGarvey recalls conversations with Serra on the subject, and
notes, Eduardo would talk about the
ability to frame two close-ups within
the same frame. Its a great way of
describing intimacy without a cut
you can see the relationships between
people without the lie of the edit. And,
of course, Eduardo is also so good
with choreography and movement
within a frame. Im constantly returning to the things he told me. Those
little jewels of information seem to
apply to almost everything I shoot.
Serras work on Iain Softleys
The Wings of the Dove (AC June 98)
brought him his first Academy Award
nomination, as well as other accolades.
It also brought him to the attention of
many filmmakers in the United States,
among them Robert Primes, ASC,
who later proposed Serra for membership in the ASC. Primes explains,
There are films where I can retain my
Top: The evil

Voldemort (Ralph
Fiennes)
demonstrates his
dark power in a
scene from Harry
Potter and the
Deathly Hallows:
Part 2 (2011).
Bottom: Serra
prepares a forest
scene on the
Deathly Hallows
set.
objectivity and intellectually appreciate

the craft or innovation of the cinematography, but The Wings of the Dove
was so beautiful that it took me out of
that analytical mindset and simply
moved me emotionally, which is, of
course, the goal of the art form.
Khondji, who also proposed
Serra for ASC membership, had a
similar reaction. When I saw The
Wings of the Dove, I realized how great
a cameraman Eduardo really was, he
says. He has been able to go beyond
and reach another level, which is why I
think he truly deserves all of the praise
heaped upon him.
Serra became an ASC member
in 2002, and by that time, he had
already been an active member of the
AFC, serving as president from 19951997. He is also an honorary member
of the Portuguese Cinematographers
Association, the AIP. Maintaining a
deliberately international flavor to his
career, he continued to combine
British and U.S. productions with
European films. I always loved
moving from one to the other, he says.
I tended to have more means at my
disposal with American movies, which

is very gratifying and allows you to
push the limits of the art, but I also
enjoyed, once back in Europe, having
to work more simply.
In the mid-1990s, Serra began
an important collaboration with
Claude Chabrol, working alongside
him on seven films before the directors
www.theasc.com
death in 2010. Like Patrice Leconte,

Chabrol was very elegant in his human
relationships, says Serra. In cinema
you have different families; I always
chose to work with people who saw
the relationships that way. Apart from
his great kindness, Chabrol was an
enormously skillful filmmaker and was
able to direct a crew very quietly, and
February 2014
61
The cinematographer takes a spot-meter reading.
because he was also very interesting

and witty, each movie with him was
like a feast. He wanted to concentrate
on his directing and not be distracted
by shooting problems, so he almost
62
always worked with the same crew, in

which he had complete trust. I miss
him a lot.
Serra reteamed with Vincent
Ward for What Dreams May Come (AC
Nov. 98), working with several different film stocks to help craft a painterly
look and to distinguish different
settings and moods. Combining
multiple stocks, as well as pushing
them fairly hard, is something he has
done on many of his projects. I
always used to say that Fuji was better
for photographing a woman, and
Kodak was better for photographing a
gun, says Serra. By that I meant that
Fuji stock was more flattering,
whereas Kodak was suited to big
Hollywood films with action or
effects. But Ive always enjoyed mixing
stocks and having a choice.
On Unbreakable (AC Dec. 00),
Serra worked with director M. Night
Shyamalan to develop color arcs for
different characters, exploring the
subtle ways in which color can affect
an audience. He also continued his
characteristically soft, minimal lighting, making use of Aurasoft fixtures as
single-source lights that could be used
with HMI globes for exteriors and

tungsten halogen for interiors.
The film for which Serra is
perhaps best known is Girl with
a Pearl Earring (AC Jan. 04),
which garnered him his second
Academy Award nomination and a
Camerimage Bronze Frog, among
other honors. His exquisite naturalistic lighting of sets through windows
on the film, which explores the life
and work of the great Dutch painter
Vermeer, further cemented Serras
reputation as a cinematographer of
rare sensitivity.
Other notable credits include
Beyond the Sea (AC Dec. 04), Blood
Diamond (2006) and Defiance (AC
Jan. 09). Not long after wrapping the
latter picture, Serra was asked to shoot
the final two installments of the Harry
Potter series, Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and Part 2
(AC Aug. 11), which were filmed
back-to-back and required the cine-
matographer to move to London for

the two-year shoot. Calling on a
careers worth of experience, Serra
pushed film stocks, utilized flame
sources and embraced darkness as a
compositional element to create an
appropriately mature and tenebrous
look for the franchise finale. He even
got to light a scene entirely with fluorescents.
Most recently, Serra shot
Lecontes A Promise (2013), capturing
images digitally for the first time in his
career while working with an Arri
Alexa. He reports, Shooting digitally
didnt influence the way I light, but I
was very satisfied with the result.
Of his ASC International
Award, he comments, It is an honor,
of course. The ASC is a community of
talents, allowing exchanges about our
work and our experiments. It has
widened my horizons.
A portrait of Serra by Portuguese photographer

Augusto Brazio.
63
Distinguished
Service
64
February 2014
Richard Rawlings Jr., ASC

receives the Societys Career
Achievement in Television Award.
By Jon Silberg
|
Photo on p. 64 by Owen Roizman, ASC. Additional photos by Fred A. Sabine, Bud Gray and unknown photographers, courtesy of Richard Rawlings Jr.
Top: Future ASC

member Richard
Rawlings Jr. wraps
an arm around his
father,
cinematographer
Richard L. Rawlings,
ASC, while posing
with 1st AC Bob
Dawes and 2nd AC
Hal Schiffman on
the set of the TV
movie Widow
(1976). Bottom:
Rawlings Sr.
(kneeling) serves as
first assistant under
James Wong Howe,
ASC on the film My
Reputation (1946),
starring Barbara
Stanwyck and
George Brent.
ou could say that Richard Rawlings

Jr., ASC, who will receive the
Societys Career Achievement in
Television Award this month, was
born with photography in his blood.
His great-grandmother owned one of
the first Kodak Brownies and was an
avid photographer. His father, Richard
Rawlings Sr., ASC, took the love of
image making to the professional level,
notching cinematography credits on an
array of now-classic TV series after
working his way up on the crews of such
ASC luminaries as James Wong Howe
and Ted McCord. Following in his
fathers footsteps, the junior Rawlings
enjoyed three decades as a television
cinematographer, starting with Charlies
Angels in the 1970s and wrapping with
Desperate Housewives in 2008.
Despite Rawlings early exposure
to the business, and the hours he spent
shooting stills and learning to develop
and print his own work, he recalls that it
was a high-school teacher who solidified his sense of photography as a vocation. Though his father was enjoying
shooting such series as Wagon Train, Sea
Hunt and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, the

young Rawlings was planning to pursue
a career in the U.S. Navy. However,
some transformative events during his
final year of study at Grant High School
www.theasc.com
in Van Nuys, in 1960-61, changed his

mind.
One was a photography class he
took. The instructor, Jim Menkin, sent
students out on a simple still-life assignFebruary 2014
65
Top left: Director of photography Ed Plante talks with

Rawlings on the set of Gunsmoke in 1973. Top right:
Rawlings holds a lion cub while working as a camera
operator on the TV movie The Beasts Are on the
Streets (1978). Bottom: Rawlings places an Arri in the
nose of a B-25 while working alongside Bob Dawes on
the TV movie Returning Home (1975).
ment. If you find that when you put

your eye to the camera, you actually
climb into the scene, you probably have
a gift for photography, Rawlings
recalls Menkin saying. And thats
exactly what happened to me!
Meanwhile, some teachers at the
school were already cautioning students
about the conflict brewing in Vietnam.
Times were very different then, and it
was a very liberal school, he notes. My
history/government teacher was very
interested in what was going on in
Vietnam, and, in fact, he devoted the
entire semester to it, exploring the
history of Frances involvement and
what might be motivating Americas
interest in the region. That was a big
influence on me. Around that same
time, a good friend of mine who had
joined the Army after graduating was
killed in combat after just three days in
Vietnam.
Rawlings decided to alter his
plans. I talked to my dad about how I
might find work in the motion-picture
industry, and he said, More than likely,
Ill be able to get you the job, but youve
got to keep the job. He also told me that
whenever I could get on a set, I should
keep my eyes and ears open and my
mouth shut. He always encouraged me
66
February 2014
to just watch people light and see how

the camera crew worked.
In 1962, with his fathers help,
Rawlings landed a job in the mailroom
at Warner Bros. It was the same place
where his father had started his own
film career in the 1930s. He even
reported to his fathers former boss,
who still ran the department. In 1963,
Rawlings joined the California Army
National Guard, in which he served for
six years. I always believed, and still do,
that the armed services are very important, and I wanted to serve in some
capacity, he says.
In 1965, Rawlings moved into
the camera department as a loader.
Working his way up the ranks, he
served as a second assistant for his
father on Gilligans Island. As with many
series in the mid-1960s, the show was
transitioning from black-and-white to
color, and a lot of executives and
producers had opinions about how
color should affect the way the show
was shot. The popular wisdom was to
move away from hard backlight and
crosslight and allow the contrast and
separation to come from the colorful
hues of sets and costumes. According to
Rawlings, his father believed that made
more sense in theory than in practice.
He explains, On a feature film, youve
got time to collaborate with wardrobe,
makeup, production designers and set
decorators to get just the right colors to
give depth and dimension to the scene,
but in TV, you dont have time for that.
Rawlings saw that his father and
the shows gaffer still made use of kickers and strong backlight for modeling
the performers and separating them
from the background. They worked
very quickly and were still able to make
each castaway look his or her best.
This provided another key lesson: In
TV, you dont have the luxury of changing the light because its not working,
says Rawlings. When you bring that
light in, its got to be where its
supposed to be.
If there was any question that
Rawlings was learning from a qualified
teacher, it was put to rest when CBS
Top: A shot taken

on the set of the
series Charlies
Angels, which
Rawlings shot
from 1978 to
1981. Middle:
Rawlings poses
with star Cheryl
Ladd. Bottom:
Rawlings aboard
a sailboat while
shooting one of
the shows
episodes in
Hawaii.
www.theasc.com
February 2014
67
Top: Rawlings (second from left) on the set of Guns of Paradise (1988-1990). Bottom: Rawlings (right)
poses with members of the Paradise crew. Next to him are (from left) actors Lee Horsley, Gene Barry and
Jack Elam; director Cliff Bole; actor Hugh OBrian and series creator David Jacobs.
President William S. Paley visited the

set and made a point of approaching the
young camera assistant. He told me,
Keep an eye on your dad hes a great
cameraman, and you can learn a lot
from him and end up in the same position, Rawlings recalls. I was 22 years
old, and that was a lot to take in.
Rawlings worked constantly,
moving from series to series as studios
throughout Los Angeles bustled with
network productions. He worked on
The Wild Wild West, Gunsmoke, The
68
February 2014
Doris Day Show and many others. In

addition to assisting his father, he
worked for other seasoned pros, such as
ASC members Ted Voigtlander,
Monroe Askins, William Spencer,
Charles Wheeler and John Nickolaus
Jr., who helped him learn a variety of
approaches to the craft. Rawlings
absorbed techniques that he used
throughout his own cinematography
career, even as changing styles and faster
emulsions altered his toolset.
With every actress I worked
with [as a cinematographer], regardless

of whether she was the lead or a guest
star, I would always take her aside and
explain, If you see me staring at you,
dont get worried. Im trained to see
what light does to your face, and Im
learning the different angles so we can
put the light in the perfect place for
you, he recalls. And I would guarantee
that the camera would not be turned on
unless she was lit properly. That way, she
didnt have to worry about how she
looked.
The opportunity to move up to
camera operator arose on the series
Apples Way, which was also shot by
Rawlings Sr. My dad had just turned
the series Kung Fu over to his operator,
Chuck Arnold, in order to pursue new
adventures, he says.
After spending the early 1970s as
a sought-after operator, Rawlings was
asked to take over cinematography
duties from his father on the hit series
Charlies Angels. Producer Aaron
Spelling wanted to reassign Rawlings Sr.
to the new series Dynasty. My dad said,
Spelling loves your work and the way
you interact with the actresses.
[Spelling] went to my dad my dad
didnt go to him.
It was the fall of 1978, and
Rawlings was shooting one of the most
popular shows on the air. It was also a
time when ASAs were climbing higher
than theyd ever been, and lighting styles
were changing. Id go onto other sets
and see all this bounce board up in the
perms, Rawlings recalls. Instead of a
hard light for backlight, theyd put up 4by-8 cards and bounce light. I started
doing things like that on Charlies Angels;
Id use bead board or white bounce for
fill instead of the Nine-lights and other
big units wed been using.
Rawlings stayed with Charlies
Angels until it wrapped in 1981, and he
continued working for Spelling through
the mid-1980s, shooting such series as
Matt Houston, which starred Lee
Horsley as a private eye. Rawlings loved
the work but admits that he sometimes
felt a bit constrained working for
Spelling, who wanted all of his shows to
have a bright, high-key look. He

wanted to see everything, says
Rawlings. I would take chances and try
things, but I had to stay within a certain
realm. I couldnt really get down and
dirty.
An exception arose after the
series Miami Vice became a hit. That
shows darker approach to visual storytelling helped inspire Spellings 1985
series Hollywood Beat, on which
Rawlings was encouraged to pursue an
edgier look. We used a lot of neon, a
lot of color, the cinematographer
recalls. We would often leave the
studio at 6 p.m., take the camera to
Hollywood Boulevard and run all over,
making use of the existing light. Wed
plug our lights into outlets at stores and
just shoot under streetlights, letting the
actors move in and out of the shadows.
The work was interesting, but
the show didnt survive beyond its first
season. Without missing a beat,
though, Rawlings moved onto a new
series from another TV mogul, Stephen
J. Cannell. Stingray starred Nick
Mancuso as a mysterious former spy
who used both cunning and powerful
connections to get people out of all
kinds of trouble. Here again, Rawlings
was happy to expand his work beyond
the confines of the soundstage to shoot
a variety of L.A. locations.
I remember a shot that [exemplifies] the way we worked, he recalls.
We were in a fifth-floor apartment in
Hollywood at night, and there were a
couple of practical lamps in the room.
Nick enters, silhouetted, walks across
the room, turns on a lamp and looks
out the window onto Hollywood
Boulevard. To bring up his face a little
and balance out the shot, we used some
little Honda taillights in sockets, wrapping some plastic and a little card
around them to prevent the light from
flaring the lens.
We were dancing all the time,
he recalls fondly. The director wanted
practicals, light through windows. It
seemed beautiful and exciting. It was
such a fun show to do.
The Western series Paradise
Top: Rawlings eyes a shot on the set of the TV series Weird Science in 1994.
Bottom: Rawlings talks with director Bruce Bilson on a boaat in Marina del Rey, Calif., for
Gidgets Summer Reunion (1985).
www.theasc.com
February 2014
69
allowed Rawlings to experiment further.
Production techniques had changed
considerably since the genre dominated
network schedules, and the cinematographer had no intention of spending as
much time onstage as his father had.
The show was shot at Disney Ranch,
and Rawlings convinced production to
let the schedule follow the sun each day.
They were great about it, he says. On
a Western, you want to shoot as much as
you can in backlight, and we could
always shoot in backlight or crosslight,
making use of the sun. I also suggested
shooting as much as possible on long
lenses; I used primes as much as I
could. For his work on Paradise, he won
an ASC Award in 1989, earned another
ASC nomination in 1990, and earned
Emmy nominations in 1988 and 1989.
In 1991, Rawlings began shooting Reasonable Doubts, the first of several
courtroom dramas on his rsum. We
had a wonderful production designer,
Jim Pohl, who created these big sets that
I would light through the windows, he
says. We had daylight coming in with
practicals inside, and it was a very nice
mixture of cold and warm light.
Reasonable Doubts brought
Rawlings another Emmy nomination,
and when it went off the air, he was
brought onto the last season of L.A.
Law. In order to help the cast cosmetically, Rawlings covered all the recessed
lighting in the office ceiling with Roscoe
scrim to knock it down to a soft fill.
Then, by lighting through windows
and creating half light and three-quarter
light with ground units, we were able to
achieve the look the producers wanted,
he says.
The cinematographer went on to
shoot a number of telefilms and other
series, including Desperate Housewives,
Gilmore Girls and Boston Public. For
Boston Public, created by David E.
Kelley, an enormous school set was built
within two adjoining stages in
Manhattan Beach, Calif. The idea was
to use a Steadicam to cover long walkand-talks through corridors and into
and out of classrooms. We set up the
entire space with a computerized
Top: Rawlings
with Whitney
Houston on the
set of Boston
Public. Middle:
Rawlings with
Dean Cain on the
set of Lois &
Clark. Bottom:
Rawlings and his
father on the set
of Paradise.
70
February 2014
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dimming panel, Rawlings explains.
There was one person just devoted to
the panel. We made all the practical
lights in the hallway look like Cool
White fluorescents, and all the overhead
practicals in the classrooms and offices
warm tungsten.
We would hide lamps so that if
the characters stopped, the Steadicam
operator could do a 360 around them,
and we could have special lighting for
that, he continues. I would light all the
walking parts, and the gaffer would
light the areas where they stopped. By
doing that, we could get a four- or fivepage scene and have the whole thing lit
in 20 to 30 minutes!
Rawlings says he always loved
working in television, partly because it
enabled him to stay in Los Angeles and
spend time with his family. He is grateful for every moment he was able to
spend with his wife, Diane; son, Matt;
and daughter, Kami. My wife and
wonderful kids were my inspiration, he
notes.
Although he is retired, Rawlings
continues to share his knowledge of the
craft with others. He recently taught
cinematography as part of a 16-week
course for wounded veterans at the
Wounded Marine Career Foundation
at Camp Pendleton, and he says he
hopes to do more of that. The value of
such programs, he explains, is not
merely to assist with career placement,
although many of those he has trained
have found work in related fields. Im
not a psychologist, but I think it helps
people with post-traumatic stress disorder when you open up the artistic side of
their brains, he says. I was lucky to be
able to explore that part of myself at a
young age, and I think it made an enormous difference.
When asked what advice he
might give budding cinematographers
today, Rawlings offers a bit of wisdom
his father once shared with him: If
youve got the time, experiment. Keep
trying to find a different artistic way to
make light work, and always trust your
eye, not your light meter.
Top: Rawlings
frames up a shot.
Middle: Rawlings
grew to love
horses while
growing up
around them on
his fathers
Western sets, and
says he knows
how to horse
whisper. Bottom:
This early photo
of Rawlings and
his wife, Diane,
is the
cinematographers
favorite picture.
72
February 2014
Learning
from the
Accomplished Society
members educate
cinematography students
during the inaugural
ASC Master Class.
Masters
74
February 2014
By Julie Sickel
|
wenty budding cinematographers from around the world

converged in Hollywood last fall
to attend the ASC Master
Class, conducted from Oct. 21-25 at
the Societys Clubhouse and other
Los Angeles facilities. It was the first
time the ASC hosted such an event,
but Society President Richard Crudo
says the organization has long sought
to launch this type of course as a
natural extension of its educational
outreach. We looked around at all
the other programs out there, and we
felt we had a lot more to offer,
Crudo explains. We have the best
people in the world at what they do,
all under the same roof. Thats our
greatest resource, and we felt it was
time to finally institutionalize it.
Instructors and guest lecturers
for the week included Christopher
Chomyn, ASC; Caleb Deschanel,
ASC; Dean Cundey, ASC; Curtis
Clark, ASC; Bill Bennett, ASC;
Rob Legato, ASC; associate ASC
member Joshua Pines; and James
Knight, the CEO of Knight Vision
Studios.
Day one of the program
focused on highlights of cinematography history via carefully selected
film clips, and participants discussed
how the cinematographers role has
evolved over the past century.
Everybody brought to the table their
respective admiration of cinema,
which inspired us to be what we are,
says ASC Vice-President Kees van
Oostrum, who helped organize the
curriculum. We thought that would
be a great way to inspire the students
as well.
Other days offered hands-on
seminars with Cundey and
Deschanel at the Mole-Richardson
Co. soundstage, where the students
worked with camera equipment
provided by Arri, Canon, Red and
Sony. The job of a cameraman is
pretty solitary in that you dont get to
spend a lot of time watching other
cinematographers work, observed
student Ryan Kernaghan, a cine-
Opposite:
Students of
the inaugural
ASC Master
class pose for a
group shot at
the MoleRichardson
soundstage.
This page:
Dean Cundey,
ASC leads a
discussion on
the second day
of class.
www.theasc.com
February 2014
75
matographer from Belfast, Northern

Ireland. Any chance you have to see
elite cameramen like Caleb and Dean
work, theres no substitute for that sort
of thing. Footage from both days was
sent to Technicolor for processing so
the students and instructors could
review their work later in the week.
Another day of the class focused
on technology and visual effects.
Clark, the chairman of the ASC
Technology Committee, led the
morning discussion, which addressed
workflow practices and how
cinematographers can incorporate
the Academy Color Encoding
Specifications and the ASC Color
Decision List into their work. The
afternoon session, led by Legato and
Knight, focused on integrating cinematography with visual effects.
On the final day, Bennett led
a commercial-lighting class that
provided instruction on photographing cars and other products. Los
Angeles-based cinematographer Isaac
Bellman said Bennetts segment made
a lasting impression. Ive never
photographed cars, and its something
Im hoping to do in the future, he
noted. [Bennett] spelled out precisely
his technique for lighting product
shots, and I found it fascinating.
Though the specific content of
Top: Caleb
Deschanel, ASC
talks to
students at
Mole-Richardson.
Middle:
Deschanel gets
animated during
a lighting
demonstration.
Bottom: Rob
Legato, ASC
leads a lesson
on working
with visual
effects as a
cinematographer.
76
February 2014
Top left: James Knight, CEO of Knight Vision, talks about

visual effects at the ASC Clubhouse. Middle: Curtis Clark, ASC
(center) leads a session on day three at Mole-Richardson.
Bottom: The students pose with Bill Bennett, ASC (seated).
Top right: ASC honorary member Larry Parker lines up a shot.
each lesson was left largely to the

instructors, Van Oostrum says the
Societys overall goal was to provide
students with as much practical training as possible. Many of us have
taught seminars and workshops, so we
pooled our experiences and decided on
the topics we could address if we had
all of these specialists in one spot, he
says. There are many people teaching
cinematography at a variety of different places, but few of those courses are
able to offer information and knowledge from every perspective.
The week wrapped with a
celebratory dinner at the Clubhouse, where students mingled with
ASC members and received certificates of graduation. Each participant
also received a one-year subscription to
www.theasc.com
February 2014
77

Friends of the ASC, a hardbound edition of the American
Cinematographer Manual (10th Ed.)
and some apparel from the ASC
Store.
The ASC plans to offer future
master classes on a quarterly basis.
Our goal is to cut through all of the
nonsense and extraneous information
that really doesnt apply to our profession, and to give students the kind of a
specialized education they cannot get
anywhere else in the world, Crudo
says. This is only the beginning.
I learned a lot of techniques in
the class, but I think what struck me
most about the ASC members I met
was how nice they were as people,
noted student Eduardo Capriles of La
Pas, Bolivia. They were really cool
and excited about teaching. When I
first got here, I was very nervous. I
thought it was going to be a lot more
intimidating, but its really like a
family.
Top and middle:

Bennett
demonstrates
how to light
reflective objects.
Bottom left: ASC
President Richard
Crudo addresses
students at the
ASC Clubhouse.
Bottom right: ASC
Vice-President
Owen Roizman
takes the podium
during the final
dinner.
78
February 2014
The highly anticipated

10th Edition of the
American Cinematographer Manual
is now available!
Known as the lmmakers bible for several
generations, this invaluable resource is more
comprehensive than ever moving into digital
image capture. The 10th AC Manual was edited
by Michael Goi, ASC, a former president of the
Society. He is a key speaker on technology
and the history of cinema.
Completely re-imagined to reect the
sweeping technological changes our
industry has experienced since the
last edition, the 10th AC Manual is
vibrant and essential reading, as well
as an invaluable eld resource. Subjects
include:
6" x 9", Full Color

Hardbound edition 998 pages
Two-Volume Paperback
Volume One 500 pages
Volume Two 566 pages
iPad ebook
Kindle ebook
www.theasc.com
Digital capture and workow terminology

The explosion of prosumer cameras in
professional use
Previsualization
3-D capture
LED lighting
The Academy Color Encoding Specication
(ACES)
Digital camera prep
and more!
The AC Manual is available in a hardbound
edition, iPad and Kindle editions, and a twovolume print-on-demand paperback.
Filmmakers Forum
Shooting a Bromance on a Budget

By Nic Sadler
There is one thing we all learn as cinematographers: rarely

does a project have an adequate budget, at least when it comes to
camera, grip, electric and color grading. Whether the budget is $500
or $500,000,000, youll probably never hear a producer say, Sure,
you can have everything and everybody you need.
Low-budget independent filmmaking starts with that
premise. Everyone involved knows that what youre trying to achieve
is overly ambitious to the point of wishful thinking. Weve all been
there. You read a script you really like and think, Ill give my all for
this one. And from that point on, youll do practically anything to
make the film look as good as the script reads.
I met Herschel Faber shortly after reading his screenplay for
Cavemen, a bromantic comedy that appeared on Hollywoods
Black List. It read like an updated version of the 1996 indie hit
Swingers, a film I love. I liked both Herschel and the script, so I
decided to throw myself down the rabbit hole, knowing it would be
an 18-day shoot with a very modest budget. I did not want the film
to look typically indie, but hoped to instead lend it some of the
production value we ascribe to films with much bigger budgets. In
the romantic-comedy genre, its all about making the actors look
their best.
When shooting quickly, you have to accept that you will not
get all the control you would like, and you often make compromises
that can be addressed in post. The primary difference between
shooting on the Canon 5D in H.264 and an Arri Alexa in ArriRaw
comes down to flexibility in post. Given time to exercise the proper
care, a cinematographer can make a shot on a 5D with a domesticquality lens look fantastic, even on the big screen. But if you are
rushed and shooting with a 5D, the cameras lack of flexibility in post
80
February 2014
becomes its Achilles heel. Problems arise not with individual shots,
but with how those shots work as a sequence. From experience, I
knew that an Alexa recording in ArriRaw would be data intensive, so
when it came to color grading, I could make the images match from
shot-to-shot and have the best chance at maintaining control of skin
tones. Therein lies the paradox: Cameras with greater latitude are
more forgiving, more flexible and ideal when you need to shoot
quickly, but they are far more expensive than most indie budgets will
allow.
Every cinematographer needs allies, and Rufus Burnham of
The Camera House in Los Angeles is one of mine. I had a big favor
to ask. I knew they had recently acquired a set of Kowa anamorphic
lenses, and I wanted to test them for Cavemen. Pete Berglund, an
experienced first assistant who was working for Rufus at the time,
helped me do a quick test of the Kowas on an Alexa. We agreed
that if I were to use them, I should maintain a minimum shooting
stop of around T4 . At wider apertures, the lenses rapidly fell off in
contrast, and the anamorphic flares washed the image out and
became a bit unpredictable. At T4 , all four lenses (40mm, 50mm,
75mm and 100mm) looked pretty good. I also wanted to give my
first AC, Chris Keth, a fighting chance of keeping our actors in sharp
focus.
I knew anamorphic flares would contribute to the look of the
film, but that wasnt the primary reason I wanted to shoot anamorphic; I wanted to squeeze every last drop out of the Alexa sensor, yet
still work in widescreen. Cavemen is set largely at night. The main
interior is the cave where the protagonists live, a windowless
bunker lit with small practicals. The exteriors are predominately night
scenes shot in downtown Los Angeles, which is not an especially
well-lit area. We also had a sequence to shoot in the subway. Lowlight sensitivity was going to be a concern. My plan was to shoot
with an Alexa Studio, fill the entire 4:3 sensor with the anamorphic
Photos and frame grabs courtesy of the filmmakers.
Pete (Kenny
Wormald, left)
and Jay (Chad
Michael
Murray) scope
out a bar in a
scene from
Cavemen.
Cinematographer Nic Sadler frames up actress Alexis Knapp through a Kowa anamorphic lens
mounted on an Alexa Studio.
lenses, and then push the EI as far as I could.

The rationale boiled down to: the more
pixels, the less noise, the higher EI I could
get away with, and the less supplemental
light I would need.
Fortunately, Rufus agreed to supply
us with both the Kowas and the Alexa
Studio. We received another great favor
from Stephan Ukas-Bradley, who works for
Arris Burbank office. With Stephans help,
we secured a Codex Onboard S recorder,
which enabled us to shoot in ArriRaw.
A week before commencing principal cinematography, I shot some night-exterior tests in downtown L.A. with Chris Keth
and 2nd AC Vanessa Ward. I wanted to find
out where the line was between the highest sensitivity we could use and the most
acceptable level of picture noise we could
get away with. I also wanted to test some
new Digicon filters from Schneider Optics.
Herschel and I didnt want our locations to
look grainy or gritty; we wanted to lend
them a little glamour.
We viewed these tests via a Christie
4K projector, and the results were astonishing. After applying a Rec 709 LUT to the
ArriRaw files, bringing the exposure down a
little and adding a touch of additional noise
reduction, I felt confident we could push
the Alexa from its native 800 EI to 2,600 EI,
producing controllable noise levels while
maintaining good skin tones. The Digicon
filter helped lift the shadow detail without
making it feel at all muddy. In general, we
stuck with our T4 minimum stop, but we
broke the rule a few times when I thought
the situation warranted it. For interior
scenes, we kept the Digicon but returned to

the native 800 EI.
Our approach to lighting exterior
scenes was to control the ambient light in
the foregrounds, replacing it with our own
sources, and let the backgrounds look after
themselves mainly because we didnt
have a hope in hell of controlling the backgrounds. Key grip Justin Lesch used flags
and butterflies to kill streetlight pollution,
while gaffer Jose Aguire lit the foregrounds
to the 9 footcandles we needed to produce
good skin tones. Not having to use powerful light sources opened up some interesting
possibilities. In fact, working with a high EI
completely changed our lighting approach.
At 2,600 EI, you can get a decent exposure
from just about anything that emits light;
the challenge becomes controlling light
pollution and working your keylight into the
exposures you need for the background.
In my still photography, Ive used 7'
Octadome soft boxes made by Photoflex.
With a grid attached, the light is both
cosmetic and controllable. Id used them
with photographic strobes, so I called
Photoflex and talked to Nadine Frush about
continuous-light options. Her recommendation was a Constellation 3, which allows
three E39 bulbs to be used together inside
each Octadome. (Photoflex has since
released the Northstar, a 100-watt LED
fixture that we would have used if it had
been available.)
For our night exteriors, we used a
mix of 150-watt and 75-watt Maxi Daylight
5,500K CFL bulbs and 17-watt domestic
Phillips LED bulbs rated at 2,700K. Using car
81
batteries and inverters, Jose could power up

a 7' Octadome with LED or CFL bulbs and
place it anywhere within minutes without
having to run additional power. This
enabled us to move quickly on locations
that would ordinarily be more complicated
to light.
For our interiors, we used the Octadome with Phillips LED bulbs or a 1K tungsten bulb, supplementing the practical
lamps and China balls used as part of the
set dressing. We used very little conventional film lighting apart from the occasional Source Four Leko or 4' 4-bank Kino
Flo.
The workflow for Cavemen was
pretty straightforward. While recording in
ArriRaw to Codex, we simultaneously
recorded to SxS cards in ProRes 4:2:2 (HQ),
which went straight into Adobe Premiere.
We stored all of our digital assets on
G-Speed eS Pros. Post supervisor Sin Cohen
came onto the project shortly after we got
underway, pulling us out of the data hole
we had begun to sink into. Ryan Bozajian
supervised the visual effects and also served
as our dailies colorist.
Ryans plan was to pre-grade the
picture in Adobe Speed Grade using a
conventional monitor. He worked with me
to set up the overall look, creating any
complex windows, and then collaborated
with colorist Chris Martin at Spy, adding
final touches for a 2K finish while viewing
the images projected in the grading suite.
Using an XML workflow, we could seamlessly move between different post applications. This allowed us to take our time with
aesthetic decisions and spend the expensive
final grading session refining and polishing
the look.
Its really tough out there today for
independent filmmakers, who work for
modest fees but show extreme dedication.
Chances are slim that an independent film
will find theatrical distribution, and Im
proud to report that Cavemen was one of
the lucky ones. After premiering at the
Austin Film Festival last fall, the movie was
bought by Well Go USA, which will release
it in theaters Feb. 7.
Working on an 18-day shooting schedule with a very modest budget, Sadler and director Herschel
Faber sought to lend Cavemen the look and feel of bigger-budget romantic comedies.
82
February 2014
New Products & Services

Panavision Expands
Primo Family
Panavision has introduced the
Primo V series of lenses, designed to
work with todays high-resolution
35mm digital cameras.
Panavisions unmatched optical
expertise and high-quality manufacturing capabilities have now been
brought to bear on lenses adapted for
digital cameras, says ASC associate
Kim Snyder, Panavisions chief executive officer. Weve focused on providing cinematographers with the best tools to tell their stories with
vision and creativity. With the industrys ongoing transition to digital
capture, we want our customers to know they can continue to trust
Panavision to bring innovative, world-class solutions to the marketplace.
The Primo V lenses are designed to bring the look and feel of
Panavision Primos to digital cinematography, using the lens elements
from existing Primo lenses. Primo V lenses take advantage of specific
design adaptations to work in harmony with digital cameras, maximizing image quality while delivering Primo quality and character.
Cinematographers tell us that the hyper-sharp sensors in
todays digital cameras can result in images that are harsh and lack
personality, says Dan Sasaki, Panavisions vice president of Optical
Engineering. Thats one reason why theres so much emphasis on
glass these days. The Primo V lenses bring the smooth, organic flavor
of Primo lenses to the high-fidelity digital image. Our philosophy is
to take what cinematographers love about the Primos and update
them for the digital world.
Primo V lenses have been re-engineered to correct for the offaxis aberrations that result from additional optical elements such
as low-pass and IR filters that digital cameras require. Patentpending modifications eliminate the coma, astigmatism and other
aberrations introduced by the additional glass in front of the sensor
while preserving the desirable imaging characteristics of the Primo
optics. The resulting image appears more balanced center-to-edge.
The Primo V lenses are compatible with any digital camera
equipped with PL or Panavision 35 mount systems. (They cannot be
used on film cameras.) The internal transports and mechanics of the
Primo V lenses will retain the familiar Primo feel. Since the Primo V
lenses retain the essential Primo character, imagery from Primo V
and standard Primo lenses will intercut well. A set of Primo V primes
includes 14.5mm, 17.5mm, 21mm, 27mm, 35mm, 40mm, 50mm,
75mm and 100mm focal lengths.
For additional information, visit www.panavision.com.
SUBMISSION INFORMATION
Please e-mail New Products/Services releases to
newproducts@ascmag.com and include full contact
information and product images. Photos must be
TIFF or JPEG files of at least 300dpi.
Angenieux Extends Zoom Range

Thales Angenieux has introduced the Optimo DP Series 25250mm 10x zoom lens, which has been optimized for todays largeformat digital cameras.
The lens has been designed with a complex focus group for
minimal breathing, and it boasts a wide-open setting of T3.5
throughout the entire zoom range. The zoom fully covers Reds Epic
M-X and Epic Dragon sensors
on all formats below 6K. The
lens weighs only 16 pounds
and offers a close-focus
distance of 4'. Additionally, the
lens has an integrated filter
holder in the back for a
41.5mm screw-in filter. The Optimo DP 25-250mm also incorporates
the /i Technology metadata interface. The lens is compatible with
1.4x and 2x Optimo extenders and is available in PL or PV mount,
with on-the-spot interchange to Canon EF or Nikon F mounts.
The Optimo DP Series also includes the DP 16-42mm and 3080mm lenses, as well as the Optimo 3-D package, which consists of
optically matched 16-42mm Optimo DP and/or 30-80mm Optimo
DP lenses. With the addition of the 25-250mm zoom, the DP Series
now covers a focal-length range of 16-250mm.
For additional information, visit www.angenieux.com.
Leica Adds Summicron-C Line
CW Sonderoptic has introduced the Leica Summicron-C line
of prime lenses. These T2.0 lenses will initially be available as a set of
six focal lengths (18mm, 25mm, 35mm, 50mm, 75mm and
100mm), with four additional
focal lengths (21mm, 29mm,
40mm and 135mm) ready for
delivery within the first half of
2014.
The Summicron-C lenses
complement CW Sonderoptics
existing line of Leica Summilux-C
T1.4 primes. The Summicron-C primes employ a classic spherical-lens
design but feature special coatings to more closely match the color
and natural skin-tone rendition of the Summilux-C lenses; they also
exhibit excellent flare suppression with very low chromatic aberration
and distortion.
To accommodate modern electronic sensors, the SummicronC lenses have an image circle exceeding 34mm in diameter. All lenses
in the Summicron-C line weigh between 2.7 and 4.1 pounds, and all
share an identical size (4" long with a 95mm front diameter), except
for the 135mm, which is slightly longer.
The Leica Summicron-C lenses will be available directly from
www.theasc.com
February 2014
83
CW Sonderoptic via the Leica Store in Los

Angeles and also from Band Pro, distributor
of the Leica Summilux-C lenses.
For additional information, visit
www.cw-sonderoptic.de.
Telecine &
Color Grading
Jod is a true artist with
a great passion for his craft.
John W. Simmons, ASC
84
Contact Jod @ 310-713-8388

Jod@apt-4.com
New Views with iPro for Artemis

Chemical Wedding, the producer of
the iOS applications Artemis, Helios and
Toland, has collaborated
with Schneider Optics
to introduce the iPro for
Artemis system. Featuring a Super Wide Angle
lens specially developed
for Artemis by Schneider Optics, the system
expands the range of
lenses the Artemis Digital Directors Viewfinder
can replicate to include
lenses as wide as 12mm
(when used with Super 35mm-format
motion-picture cameras).
The Standard iPro for Artemis Kit
includes the Super Wide Angle Lens, an
iPhone case (4/4s or 5), a lens case that
doubles as a handle, and a lanyard. The
Master Kit also includes the 2x Teleconverter,
which extends the range of the Artemis
Viewfinder to 300mm. (The iPro for Artemis
system is also available for the iPad Mini by
means of an iPad Mini Lens Clip.) The
Artemis Digital Directors Viewfinder is only
calibrated to use the Super Wide Angle and
2x Teleconverter iPro lenses.
For
additional
information,
visit
www.chemicalwedding.tv
and
https://squareup.com/market/chemicalwedding.
rapher, says VER owner Vince Dundee.

Were creating a synergy that will provide
unmatched technical capabilities, cuttingedge equipment and outstanding customer
service to the television, feature film and
commercial production markets.
ASC associate Tom Fletcher, vice president and co-founder of Fletcher Camera,
adds, The nature of modern motionpicture production requires an everchanging variety of equipment and
the ability to scale up to meet the
needs of an often complicated and
demanding production environment. VERs extensive inventory,
engineering prowess and presence
in every incentive-driven production
center means that we can now
more fully serve the [directors of
photography] and ACs artistic and
technical needs alongside the financial and business needs of producers. My entire staff is excited to be joining
forces with VER to bring our thoughtful
customer service and extensive film and digital experience to a much wider range of
productions.
This new division will have a separate
identity from the rental company VER, with
a different local phone number, website,
traditional prep-floor space and dedicated
staff. It will use Fletchers existing Chicago
and New Orleans locations.
Fletcher Chicagos Sports Division
remains unchanged and will continue to
operate its downtown location until the
spring, when it will relocate to the citys
western suburbs.
www.verrents.com and www.fletch.com.
VER Acquires Fletcher Camera

Video Equipment Rentals and Fletcher
Chicago, Inc. have reached an agreement to
bring Fletchers 16mm, 35mm and digital
camera division into VERs cinema division.
This collaboration combines the strengths of
VERs extensive inventory, comprehensive
engineering and international reach with
Fletchers film experience, knowledgeable
staff and respect for the craft of cinematography.
We couldnt be more excited to have
Fletcher Camera advance VERs Cinema Divisions commitment to service the cinematog-
ProMax Enhances
Platform Storage
ProMax Systems, manufacturer of
shared-storage servers and video-editing
workstations, has announced additions to its
Platform shared-storage server line, which
also offers asset management, media
conversion and archiving. Ideal for diskbased backup, the new Platform Nearline
storage system expands upon the existing
Platform Online and Platform Studio lines. In
addition to new hardware options, software
developments across the Platform Series
have increased the functionality of every
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Platform system by adding features previously only available in the Enterprise Storage
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most demanding video-post workflows,
ranging from online and nearline to Enterprise levels, with capacities from 8TB to 512
Petabytes. The Platform Series offers perceptive functions and multi-location datamanagement controls that are easy to use
for workgroups of any size.
Platform opened up the concept of
scaling servers beyond just shared storage,
extending into a multi-functional, allpurpose workgroup server that can scale
storage, users, performance and workflows, says ProMax CEO Jess Hartmann.
The newest release of Platform builds on
that foundation and positions it as a significant player in the Enterprise market with
advanced data protection and management. These new Platforms are perfect
examples of ProMaxs goals in providing
powerful IT features that also maintain
simplicity of use.
ProMax has also significantly amplified Platforms scalability and expandability,
emphasizing the ease of scaling workflows.
Smaller workgroups, and those with
portable requirements, are a great fit for
ProMaxs on-set solution, Platform Studio.
Single Platform systems that expand up to
256TB meet the needs of most mid-sized
facilities. The Platform Nearline series fulfills
the extensive resource demands of Enterprise operations and offers the ability to
install multiple, synchronized Platforms
across several locations, with automated
data-management capabilities and multitiered storage deployments.
Additionally, ProMax has added
cross-platform Adobe After Effects rendering to the Platform line, allowing both
Windows- and Mac-based clients running
Adobe AE to submit render jobs to the Platform. This capability eliminates the need to
run time-consuming renders on workstations and frees users to get back to creative
tasks. The Platform AE Render features are
available now and are included as part of the
latest Platform Series models without additional cost.
www.promax.com.
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Cameras
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of ad and advertisers name can be set in capitals without extra charge. No agency commission or discounts on
classified advertising.PAYMENT MUST ACCOMPANY ORDER.
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and services pertaining to filmmaking and video production. Words used are subject to magazine style abbreviation. Minimum amount per ad: $45
CLASSIFIEDS ON-LINE
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February 2014
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Advertisers Index
AC Chemical Wedding 73
AC 79, 85
Adorama 13, 29
AJA Video Systems, Inc. 43
Alan Gordon 87
Arri 7
AZGrip 86
Denecke 87
Eastman Kodak C4
Film Gear (International), Ltd.
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Filmotechnic USA 52
Filmtools 84
Fox Searchlight 5
Backstage Equipment, Inc. 85

Glidecam Industries 17
Birns & Sawyer 86
Blackmagic Design, Inc. 9
J.L. Fisher 63
Jod Soraci 84
Canon USA Video 14-15
Camerimage 33
Kino Flo 53
Cavision Enterprises 86
Lights! Action! Co. 87
Chapman/Leonard Studio
Equipment Inc. 21
Maccam 6
Cinebags Inc. 87
Matthews Studio
Cineo Lighting C3
Equipment/MSE 86
Cinematography
Movie Tech AG 86, 87
Electronics 8
NAB 71
Cinekinetic 86
Next Shot 41
Cooke Optics 11
Ovide Broadcast Services 81
Panther Gmbh 42
Pille Filmgeraeteverleih
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Pro8mm 86
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Sony Electronics, Inc. 22-23
Schneider Optics 2
Super16, Inc. 86
SXSW 27
Technocrane 19
Visionary Forces 8
Willys Widgets 86
www.theasc.com 8, 62,
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The Opera Nova in Bydgoszcz served as the festival

center during the 21st edition of Camerimage.
ASC, AC Attend Camerimage

The 21st edition of the Camerimage
International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography recently wrapped in Bydgoszcz,
Poland. In the Main Competition, the Golden
Frog was awarded to cinematographers
Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski, for Ida;
the Silver Frog was awarded to Lorenzo
Hagerman, for Heli; and the Bronze Frog was
presented to Bruno Delbonnel, ASC, AFC,
for Inside Llewyn Davis.
Director Bodo Kox and cinematographer Arkadiusz Tomiak took top honors in
the Polish Films Competition for The Girl
from the Wardrobe. Cinematographer
Camille Cottagnoud won the Golden Frog in
the documentary-feature competition for
Winter Nomads, and Aage Hollander and
Marc Schmidt earned a special mention for
their work in Matthews Laws. In the documentary-short competition, the Golden Frog
was presented to cinematographer Johan
Palmgren for Grandpa and Me and a Helicopter to Heaven, and special mention was
given to Matthew VanDyke for Not
Anymore: A Story of Revolution.
Chayse Irvin, cinematographer of
Medeas, won in the Cinematographers
Debuts Competition, and Alice Winocour,
director of Augustine, won the Directors
Debuts Competition. In the music-video
competition, cinematographer Nicolas Loir
90
February 2014
and directors Fleur & Manu won for Best

Music Video for Gesaffelsteins Pursuit,
and Loir also won Best Cinematography for
Ghostpoets Cold Win.
In the student competition, cinematographer Zuzanna Pyda won the Laszlo
Kovacs Student Award (a.k.a. the Golden
Tadpole) for Such a Landscape, Erika Meda
won the Silver Tadpole for Zinneke, and
Anselm Hartmann won the Bronze Tadpole
for Funeral of Harald Kramer. Additionally,
Paul zgr won the Polish Film Institute and
Mastershot Special Award for Best Cinematography for Magnesium.
The jurors for the various competitions included ASC members Denis Lenoir,
Tom Stern, Adam Holender, Ed Lachman, Jeffrey Kimball, Jost Vacano,
Stuart Dryburgh, Joan Churchill,
Stephen Lighthill, Declan Quinn, Reed
Morano, Steven Fierberg, Glen
MacPherson, Daniel Pearl, Roberto
Schaefer, Caleb Deschanel, Phedon
Papamichael and Anastas Michos.
ASC members were also active in a
number of other festival events. Panavision
presented two seminars moderated by AC
contributor Benjamin B. For the first, Looking at Scenes, Steven Poster, ASC and
John Schwartzman, ASC joined Lenoir,
Papamichael and Zal in conversation, and
the second, Cinematography Tips, Techniques and Trends, featured Quinn, Rachel
Morrison, Piotr Sobicinski and Simon
Duggan, ACS. Arri also presented a number
of seminars, including a lighting workshop
with Stern and Morano, and the lecture
Considerations for the Future of Cinema
by ASC associate Franz Kraus, Arris
managing director. Kodak presented a
seminar in which Kodak Entertainment Division President Andrew Evenski was joined
by Delbonnel and Sean Bobbitt, BSC for a
conversation moderated by AC contributor
David Heuring.
American Cinematographer presented two sessions, Discovering the Lost
Films of Cinerama and Making a New
Film in Cinerama. Both events were

moderated by AC associate editor Jon D.
Witmer and featured panelists David
Strohmaier and Douglas Knapp, SOC.
On the publishing front, Jacek
Laskus, ASC, PSC unveiled the book Hollywood.PL, which features his still photos of
and interviews with a number of Polish filmmakers. Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC was
joined by Luciano Tovoli, ASC, AIC for the
introduction of the book The Art of Cinematography, which is illustrated by Storaros
double-vision photographs and written
by Lorenzo Codelli and ASC honorary
member Bob Fisher.
Camerimage also presented some
honorary awards: Slawomir Idziak, PSC
received the Lifetime Achievement Award;
Jim Sheridan received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Directing; Churchill received
the Award for Outstanding Achievements in
Documentary Filmmaking; Rick Carter
received the Award for Production Designer
with Unique Visual Sensitivity; John Turturro
received the Special Award for Actor-Director; Samuel Bayer received the Award for
Outstanding Achievements in the Field of
Music Videos; Schaefer and Marc Forster
received the Cinematographer-Director Duo
Award; and Ron Howard received the Excellence in Directing Award.
During the festivals opening ceremony, Stephen Lighthill, ASC presented
festival director Marek Zydowicz with a
plaque recognizing Zydowiczs honorary
membership in the ASC.
For additional reporting on the ASCs
presence at Camerimage, visit the Parallax
View and The Film Book blogs at
www.theasc.com.
Marsico Becomes Associate
New ASC associate member Frank
Marsico has more than 35 years of experience in the performing arts, broadcast television, and still-photography and motionpicture industries. He earned an MFA from
New York Universitys Tisch School of the
Photo of Clubhouse by Isidore Mankofsky, ASC; lighting by Donald M. Morgan, ASC.

Lenoir photo by Germain Suignard. Goodich photo by Tudor Lucaciu, RSC. Mindel photo by Alex Lopez. Papamichael photo courtesy of Kristin Petrovich Kennedy. Folio photo by Iain Stasukevich.
Clubhouse News
Arts, where he focused on lighting and

scenic design, and he was honored with a
Service Award from the American Society of
Lighting Designers. In 1993, Marsico
founded Shadowstone Inc. as a service
provider and resource for the lighting industry. A member of SMPTE, he continues to
work with various media.
Lenoir Honored During
Camflex Amiens
The second annual Camflex
Amiens, a French cultural event dedicated to
cinematographers and organized in
conjunction with the AFC, saluted Denis
Lenoir, ASC, AFC during the 33rd Amiens
International Film Festival. The festival
screened eight of Lenoirs films, including
Monsieur Hire, Demonlover, Righteous Kill
and Carlos. During the festival, Lenoir
presented excerpts from his visual biography in a session titled My (Artistic) Life in
15 Movies I Didnt Shoot, and he led a
master class with director Olivier Assayas.
Goodich Visits Bucharest
Frederic Goodich, ASC recently
visited the Universitatea Nationala de Arta
Teatrala si Cinematografica IL Caragiale in
Bucharest, Romania, where he presented
two master classes: Squeeze or Crop:
Anamorphic vs. Spherical and Documentary-Style Shooting. The sessions were
hosted by Sterian Alexandru, president of
the Romanian Society of Cinematographers;
Marc Galerne of K5600; Jacques Delacoux
of Transvideo; Ainara Porron of Sony; and
Rodrigo Ruiz-Tarazona of Cinelabs.
Breakfast Club Wraps 13 Season
The Friends of the ASC Breakfast
Club series had a strong showing in 2013,
with appearances by Society members

Amelia Vincent, John Bailey, M. David
Mullen, Dan Mindel, Paul Cameron and
John Toll. Additionally, the ASC introduced
a Coffee and Conversation series, the
first of which featured ASC members Dean
Cundey, Michael Goi and Daniel Pearl
discussing horror cinematography, and the
second of which featured ASC members
Christopher Baffa, Patrick Cady and
William Webb discussing television cinematography. All events were moderated by
AC associate editor Jon D. Witmer.
Friends of the ASC subscribers
can view these events online at
www.theasc.com.
Papamichael Keynotes
Createasphere
Phedon Papamichael, ASC
recently delivered the opening keynote at
the Createasphere Entertainment Technology Expo in Burbank, Calif. Presented in
association with American Cinematographer and moderated by AC associate editor
Jon D. Witmer, the conversation focused on
Papamichaels work on Nebraska and The
Monuments Men. The event was introduced by ASC associate Kristin Petrovich
Kennedy, president of Createasphere.
AC Wins Folios
American Cinematographer recently
won two 2013 Folio: Eddie Awards for
Editorial Excellence. The magazine took
home a Gold Eddie for Best Full Issue for the
Dec. 12 issue, and associate editor Jon D.
Witmer won a Silver Eddie for Best Feature
Article for his April 13 story on the
Cinerama production In the Picture. The
awards were presented in New York City.
www.theasc.com
Clockwise from top left: Denis Lenoir, ASC, AFC poses

with his Camflex Amiens award; Frederic Goodich,
ASC leads a master class in Bucharest; Dan Mindel,
ASC, BSC in conversation with the "Breakfast Club";
Jon D. Witmer (left) interviews Phedon Papamichael,
ASC at Createasphere; AC's Folio Award.
February 2014
91
Javier Aguirresarobe, ASC, AEC
When you were a child, what film made the strongest impression on you?
The Night of the Hunter (1955), which I saw when I was about 12.
Which cinematographers, past or present, do you most
admire?
Nstor Almendros [ASC] was, to me, a
master; his work in Nouvelle Vague films
taught me how to approach independent
projects. David Watkin [BSC] marked a sea
change in lighting; he was a master of the
use of bounced light. Conrad Hall [ASC]
gave us memorable films such as Road to
Perdition in his later years. Janusz Kaminski,
for his incomparable cinematography in
Schindlers List. Emmanuel Lubezki [ASC,
AMC] is a very important reference for me
today for his concept of lighting in The Tree
of Life and Children of Men.
What sparked your interest in photography?
My older brother was an industrial photographer, and he awoke in
me my vocation. I was helping him in the lab and studio by the time
I was 13. (I still remember the smell of the chemicals on my hands.)
From that time on, everything in my youth had the same destiny:
photography.
Where did you train and/or study?
I studied at a cinematography school in Madrid that was closely
connected to the Spanish film industry. The entrance examination
was very difficult, and very few students were admitted; there were
only nine students in the cinematographer department. We shot on
35mm film and shared our work with the other departments.
Who were your early teachers or mentors?
Unfortunately, I have almost always worked alone. Once I had an
opportunity to work with the great Spanish cinematographer Luis
Cuadrado, and it was a very good experience.
What are some of your key artistic influences?
I love Spanish classical painting Velazquez, Goya and Jos de
Ribera and Museo Nacional del Prado continues to be a school for
me. I remember the first time I saw Riberas The Piety. I was impressed
by the color, the composition and especially the naturalistic tone of
light; its an icon for me. I also use photography books and magazines
as references, and I often look to the great still photographers: Irving
Penn, Richard Avedon, J. Sieff and Peter Lindbergh. Finally, I am a curious observer and always have a camera in my hands. I love the architecture of large and small cities, and, of course, the light in different
places and situations.
92
February 2014
How did you get your first break in the business?

I worked as the cinematographer and producer on a very small
movie, The Death of Mikel, in Spain in 1983. It was a box-office
success, which allowed us to make more movies that then led us to
ruin.
What has been your most satisfying
moment on a project?
Overseeing the premiere screening of
Beltenebros, an almost black-and-white
movie I shot, in 1993. When I saw my
images on that big screen, I felt that all
my effort and dedication had made
sense. My life as a cinematographer had
been the best choice.
Have you made any memorable
blunders?
No memorable blunders, but my first
movie was a traumatic job filled with a lot of doubts.
What is the best professional advice youve ever received?
I dont remember ever receiving advice about my work from anyone
except my gaffers, who advised me not to be so impatient. However,
I once received this general advice: A movie is like the Tour de
France: Its not necessary to win all the stages. Its more important to
resolve the worst situations, maintain the consistency, and then
arrive in Paris as the winner.
What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you?
On my latest movie, the photographs of Gregory Crewdson were a
source of inspiration.
Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like to
try?
I have worked in many different genres, but my favorites are thrillers
and stories about real life. I also have unfulfilled dreams about pirate
movies, which fascinated me as a child, and Westerns.
If you werent a cinematographer, what might you be doing
instead?
I would be a still photographer or an editor of photography books.
I was also tempted to produce movies.
Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for
membership?
Steven Poster, Julio Macat and Rodrigo Prieto.
How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?
It is a very great honor, the realization of a dream.
Photo by Jon Aguirresarobe.
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FEBRUARY 2014

HAVE YOU TRIED

*Prromotions end Midnight 2/28/14

The International Journal of Motion Imaging

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Serving the Story, with Style

Learning from the Masters

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Art scholars have long suspected that 17th-century Dutch

primes, and a Nikon 17-35mm T2.8 zoom)

little variations of hardness that affected the

thing resembling a potters wheel. I used a

dozen grades of modern abrasive and

Cinematographer Shane F. Kelly experiments with a mirror during the shoot.

needed a dark chamber. He shed the

camcorders that ran continuously. (The

Jenison notes. I assumed this would only

Like Godfrey Reggios experimental

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recorded to a 128GB Red Ram SSD drive,

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Unfamiliar with Red cameras, he ramped

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T2.3 zoom and 12mm, 24mm and 50mm

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Phedon Papamichael, ASC creates a

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Papamichael, ASC to shoot the project