JANUARY 2011

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J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 1 V O L . 9 2 N O . 1

The International Journal of Motion Imaging

On Our Cover: A divorced father of two (Javier Bardem) confronts his mortality
in Biutiful, shot by Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC. (Photo by José Haro, courtesy of
Roadside Attractions.)

FEATURES
30 Letting Go
Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC and Alejandro González Iñárritu
make spiritual connections on Biutiful

42 Tough Love
42

Hoyte van Hoytema, NSC, FSF works David O. Russell’s

corner on The Fighter

52 Back to the Grid

Claudio Miranda, ASC enters futuristic arena with
Tron: Legacy

64 A League of His Own 52

Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC explains the path that led him to
the Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award

DEPARTMENTS
8 Editor’s Note
10 President’s Desk 64
12 Short Takes: “Eye of the Storm”
18 Production Slate: The Tempest • All Good Things
78 Post Focus: EFilm at Universal• HPA Awards
82 Filmmakers’ Forum: Jody Lee Lipes
84 New Products & Services
88 International Marketplace
89 Classified Ads
90 Ad Index
92 In Memoriam: Michel Hugo, ASC
94 Clubhouse News
96 ASC Close-Up: Jack Couffer

— VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM TO ENJOY THESE WEB EXCLUSIVES —

Podcast: Phedon Papamichael, ASC on Knight and Day
DVD Playback: Psycho • Videodrome
 J a n u a r y 2 0 1 1 V o l . 9 2 , N o . 1
The International Journal ofMotion Imaging

Visit us online at
www.theasc.com
————————————————————————————————————
PUBLISHER Martha Winterhalter
————————————————————————————————————
EDITORIAL
EXECUTIVE EDITOR Stephen Pizzello
SENIOR EDITOR Rachael K. Bosley
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Jon D. Witmer
TECHNICAL EDITOR Christopher Probst

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Stephanie Argy, Benjamin B, Douglas Bankston, Robert S. Birchard,
John Calhoun, Bob Fisher, Michael Goldman, Simon Gray, Jim Hemphill,
David Heuring, Jay Holben, Mark Hope-Jones, Noah Kadner, Jean Oppenheimer,
John Pavlus, Chris Pizzello, Jon Silberg, Iain Stasukevich,
Kenneth Sweeney, Patricia Thomson
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ART DEPARTMENT
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Marion Gore
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e-mail: diella@ascmag.com
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CIRCULATION, BOOKS & PRODUCTS
CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Saul Molina
CIRCULATION MANAGER Alex Lopez
SHIPPING MANAGER Miguel Madrigal
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ASC GENERAL MANAGER Brett Grauman
ASC EVENTS COORDINATOR Patricia Armacost
ASC PRESIDENT’S ASSISTANT Kim Weston
ASC ACCOUNTING MANAGER Mila Basely
ASC ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE Corey Clark
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 American Society of Cine matographers
The ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but
an educational, cultural and pro fes sion al
or ga ni za tion. Membership is by invitation
to those who are actively en gaged as
di rec tors of photography and have
dem on strated out stand ing ability. ASC
membership has be come one of the highest
honors that can be bestowed upon a
pro fes sional cin e ma tog ra pher — a mark
of prestige and excellence.

OFFICERS - 2010/2011
Michael Goi
President
Richard Crudo
Vice President
Owen Roizman
Vice President
John C. Flinn III
Vice President
Matthew Leonetti
Treasurer
Rodney Taylor
Secretary
Ron Garcia
Sergeant At Arms

MEMBERS OF THE
BOARD
John Bailey
Stephen Burum
Curtis Clark
George Spiro Dibie
Richard Edlund
John C. Flinn III
Michael Goi
Stephen Lighthill
Isidore Mankofsky
Daryn Okada
Robert Primes
Nancy Schreiber
Kees Van Oostrum
Haskell Wexler
Vilmos Zsigmond

ALTERNATES
Fred Elmes
Rodney Taylor
Michael D. O’Shea
Sol Negrin
Michael B. Negrin

MUSEUM CURATOR
Steve Gainer
6
 Editor’s Note
Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC is clearly held in high
esteem by his collaborators. Oliver Stone sang his praises
in our October coverage of Wall Street: Money Never
Sleeps, and within this month’s overview of Biutiful
(“Letting Go,”page 30), director Alejandro González Iñár-
ritu offers his own endorsement in a sidebar commentary
(“Iñárritu on Method,” page 38). “The visual grammar of
this film was very delicate and sophisticated because it
had to combine the social, the physical, the metaphysical
and a hyper-realistic approach,” Iñárritu notes. “To me,
Biutiful is by far Rodrigo’s most lyrical and poetic work.
Realistically and metaphorically, he found light in the dark-
est places possible.”
The film offered Prieto ample opportunity to be creative. The emotional journey of the
main character, Uxbal (Javier Bardem), led Prieto to suggest the unusual strategy of shifting
from 1.85:1 to anamorphic 2.40:1, with a transition point that combined the 1.85 format
with anamorphic lenses. “I suggested we test starting at 1.85 and eventually opening up to
2.40 to represent the transition from [Uxbal’s] tight control to ultimate release,” he says.
“There was some concern that the shift would be too jarring, but we decided it worked.”
That spirit of experimentation is also evident in David O. Russell’s boxing drama The
Fighter, which allowed cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, NSC, FSF to blend drama
scenes shot on 2-perf 35mm with fight sequences shot on Betacam-SP. For the former, van
Hoytema used Aaton’s Penelope camera, and for the latter, he employed vintage Sony video
cameras. “When shooting 2-perf for [2.40:1] output, you expose far less negative than 4-
perf, saving a lot of money, and if you are interested in getting grain and texture, it’s the way
to go,” the cinematographer tells Michael Goldman (“Tough Love,” page 42).
The sci-fi spectacle Tron: Legacy required Claudio Miranda, ASC to combine a variety
of strategies, including 3-D camera rigs, LED and Electro Luminescent lighting technology,
high-speed cameras and face-replacement animation effects. As Miranda explains to Noah
Kadner (“Back to the Grid,” page 52), some of the lighting was built directly into the futur-
istic costumes worn by characters in the computer environment known as the Grid: “The
suits really drove the pastel look of the digital world. We wanted to see the suit lights cast-
ing interactive light from character to character and have everything look as luminous as
possible, like the glow of a computer monitor.” Further insights into the production are
offered in a sidebar Q&A with Digital Domain’s visual-effects supervisor, Eric Barba, and head
of animation, Steve Preeg (“Barba and Preeg on Tron: Legacy,” page 60).
This issue also offers a heartfelt salute to cinematographer Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC,
a longtime friend of the magazine who will receive the Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award
on Feb. 13. Though still in his prime and shooting as artfully as ever, the seemingly tireless
Deakins has built a legacy of excellence that simply demanded the ASC’s highest honor. Pat
Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.

Thomson’s account of his remarkable career (“A League of His Own,” page 64) offers illu-
minating details about his formative years, insights earned after decades of experience, and
a sidebar on True Grit, Roger’s latest collaboration with the Coen brothers.

Stephen Pizzello
Executive Editor
8
 President’s Desk
As the new year kicks into gear, there is a lot happening in the industry: more new digital
cameras, higher-resolution post workflows, 3-D proceeding full steam, and more sophisticated
virtual production. How is a humble cinematographer supposed to keep up with all this? Because
the production and distribution of feature films, television programming and Web content are a
global business, it is more important than ever that we all be on the same page at the same time
on technology, and that we understand where the craft of cinematography is going.
For this reason, the ASC will host an International Cinematography Summit Conference from
May 2-5, 2011. Every cinematography society in the world has been invited to send a representa-
tive to this milestone event. This is not a film festival, nor is it a trade show. It is a work group of
the leading practitioners of our craft designed as a means to discover where our differences and
common ground lie; it is an opportunity to learn from the tools and techniques that are being used
on the other side of the world; and it is a forum to establish more open communication among
those who have chosen cinematography as our life passion.
The conference is especially significant at this moment, although it has been in the planning
stages for almost 18 months. When Mauro Fiore, ASC won the Oscar forAvatar last year, it seemed
to amplify speculation about the future of cinematography. This conference will address where we
are going and, more importantly, help all of us understand how changes and trends in our profes-
sion affect our countries’ industries. It is the necessary next step in coordinating our common goals.
Part of the conference will be devoted to demonstrations of current technology, such as virtual production and 3-D, and there
will be a detailed analysis of various film and digital archival methods used by innovators in the preservation field. The Acad emy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will present a new capture-medium/post paradigm designed to enable the maximum input of a
camera’s resolution and color-space capabilities into a common post workflow. Leading developers of digital cameras and film emul-
sions will speak about what is coming in the next five years, not from a marketing perspective, but with an emphasis on stabili zing
the industry.
But the most important part of the ICSC will be the dialogue it will create among cinematographers worldwide. We’re not
inviting people to come and listen to a bunch of lectures; we want to hear what everyone has to say. There are issues and concerns
in some countries that other countries have already resolved. Let’s share that knowledge. Though we exist in a global industry, we
tend to work in an insular way. The extraordinarily innovative artistry that many of our fellow lighting masters have accomplis hed,
and the means by which they have achieved their results, may never be seen by the world or acknowledged for its originality. If we
are to live and grow as artists, and harness the potential that new technologies offer us, we must open our eyes to what our fellow
craftspeople are doing in other parts of the world.
I have been traveling a lot recently, speaking to cinematographers and students in many countries, and I have been amazed
by the common elements of our aesthetic approach, regardless of region, and by the bold visions of those who see the world from
a different perspective. Festivals such as Camerimage and the efforts of organizations such as Imago have kept the flame of vis ual
artistry burning brightly for many years. And the bond that the Korean Society of Cinematographers and the Japanese Society of
Cinematographers have shared over the last 25 years is truly inspiring. The artistic interchange that results from simple commu ni-
cation between countries opens the door for all of us to learn and grow, to reach for new forms of visual expression.
For the ICSC, each society has been asked to bring a five-minute reel of the best work its members have produced, spanning
the entire history of their industry. All of these pieces will be screened as part of our welcome dinner on the first night ofthe confer-
ence. If that evening has even a fraction of the magic I felt when I watched a young student’s cinematography during my trip to
Portrait by Owen Roizman, ASC.

India, this will prove to be a most magical gathering.

Michael Goi, ASC

President

10 January 2011 American Cinematographer

 Short Takes
Singer Ben Lovett
pilots an airship
into a fierce
storm in the
music video for
his song “Eye of
the Storm.”
Cinematographer
Craig Kief utilized
bluescreens,
black lights and
fluorescent tape
to isolate key
elements of the
imagery that
would later be
combined with
CG effects.

by steam. The video tells the story of a lonely captain (played by

Lovett) battling to keep his airship afloat in the midst of a raging
tempest. Alender decided to shoot all of the action against blue-
screen, using minimal set pieces and props, and he asked cine-
matographer Craig Kief, a fellow Florida State University alumnus,
to step behind the camera. “Craig is always game when I call him,
even when we’re doing something weird,” says Alender. Kief says
he was immediately drawn to the images Alender proposed. “A lot
of the work I do, mostly commercials and music videos, has exten-
sive visual effects, so this seemed like a natural fit,” says the cine-
matographer.

Photos by Craig Cantey. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Soapbox Films.
The visual effects for “Eye of the Storm” called for the
creation of the airship and all of the weather effects, and also for
picking out specific details in Lovett’s costume and the props. Typi-
cally, this would be accomplished by chroma-keying the bluescreen

I Creating an Animated “Eye of the Storm”

By Iain Stasukevich
“A couple of years ago, I saw a short animated film by
Anthony Lucas called TheMysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello ,
and it blew me away,” recalls director Christopher Alender. “The
animation was done with silhouettes and collage backgrounds, and
it got me wondering if I could do the same thing with live action.”
Alender put the idea on hold until singer/songwriter Ben
Lovett, a close friend, asked him to produce a music video for a song
on his album The Fear. When Alender listened to the album, the
track “Eye of the Storm” jumped out at him. “It’s like a soundscape
with a very cinematic feel,” he observes.
Like Jasper Morello, the video for “Eye of the Storm” is set in
a steampunk world, a highly technological Victorian society powered
elements of the frame, but Alender intended to shoot 4K with the
Red One MX (recording to Red Drives and Compact Flash cards),
and he didn’t want the CPU-hogging process to impede the post
workflow. “It really slows you down, especially if you’re experi-
menting and working with high-resolution imagery,” he says. “We
worked with the 4K sources but mastered in a 2K comp.”
Alender and Kief came up with a way to isolate the elements
they wanted to remove by shooting under black lights and using a
luma key instead. The idea is based on an RGB image being split into
three separate monochrome channels, with each channel contain-
ing a separate luma key based on a defined level of exposure. Kief
and Alender experimented with different kinds of fluorescent tape
and paint until they found the ones that reacted best to ultraviolet
light. “Green fluorescent tape was the most powerful, so we used
it to build part of the captain’s wardrobe,” says Alender. “Orange

12 January 2011 American Cinematographer


To create the
impression of the
singer’s scarf
blowing in the
wind, the scarf
was puppeteered
with monofilament
as Lovett walked
on a treadmill.
Electric fans were
also used in
conjunction with
the monofilament.
reacted powerfully in the red channel. That
left blue, which we used for the back-
ground and treated like regular blue-
screen.”
While shooting, Kief used a Sony
BVM-L230 HD reference monitor, which
allowed him to view one color at a time,
giving him a preview of what the individual
luma keys were going to look like. (The film-
makers also monitored an RGB composite
for keying white elements.) “When you
look at the different channels, the most
saturated colors become bright white, and
everything else falls pretty close to black,”
says Kief. “My primary goal was to give
each color as much separation as possible.”
Kief and Alender are aware of the
similarities between their process and the
photochemical bluescreen process, where
composites were achieved by taking shots
with bluescreen elements and re-
photographing them through a blue filter in
black and white so only those elements are
14 January 2011
exposed. This creates the holdout matte
that cuts out the area of the background
plate dedicated to the foreground when the
two are combined. “We did a lot of experi-
menting,” says Kief. “We weren’t 100-
percent sure what the shot was going to
look like in the end, particularly the back-
grounds, but Chris was meticulous about
storyboarding every single shot, and we
followed those boards exactly.”
The airship set, which was placed in
a corner of Soapbox Films’ 10,000-square-
foot soundstage in Burbank, Calif.,
comprised little more than a ship’s wheel, a
captain’s chair and a treadmill (for walking
shots). The skeleton crew included
producer/puppeteer Kris Eber, who hides in
plain sight, puppeteering Lovett’s scarf with
filament from atop stepladders or crouching
behind flags, catching the books he tosses
into a furnace. (The furnace is CG.)
The team didn’t shy away from
dramatic camera moves, despite the extra
American Cinematographer
work required to track the shots in post.
Creating digital moves in post was briefly
considered, but, Kief notes, “Chris and I
prefer to create a move in-camera because
a move created in post never looks as good
— the three-dimensional perspective
doesn’t change.”
The Digi Blue background was lit
with Kino Flo bluescreen tubes, and the
foreground was lit with a pair of 4x4 Kino
Flo heads outfitted with black-light tubes.
Kief brought the black-light Kinos as close
and flat to the lens plane as possible for the
cleanest reflectance; if the lights were even
slightly off axis, he’d get shadows on the
fluorescent tape.
In the shots where Kief wanted to
pull some detail out of Lovett’s face, he’d
use tungsten lights. Two 2K Mighty Moles
were outfitted with Mole Shutters for light-
ning effects, a couple of 1K nook lights on
dimmers provided the illumination from the
roaring fire in the airship’s furnace, and vari-
ous tungsten sources were placed at strate-
gic angles to bring out reflective highlights
on bits of metal in Lovett’s costume and the
props. “The black light was actually strong
enough that we were also getting a lot of
fill directly from the fluorescent tape,”
recalls Kief. In some scenes, the reflectance
is so bright, the collar almost serves as a
bounce surface.
The production’s Red One MX was
provided by Keslow Camera in Culver City,
Calif. “It’s a real step forward and a real joy
to be able to work with the Red at 500
SonyPictures.com/Awards
 lend a slight distortion to the close-ups.
Most of the video was shot with a 14mm
lens. Kief also wanted to keep a shallow
depth-of-field, so he shot every scene by
setting the frame, opening the iris all the
way and then lighting for the proper expo-
sure level.
Top and middle:
Lovett positions
In post, Alender started with the raw
himself for a 4K frames, which look a lot like screen shots
shot as a from Tron (1982): orange for the small
crewmember details in Lovett’s shoes, jacket and helmet;
operates a
small fan. The
green for his goggles and bits of detail on
Digi Blue his jacket; and blue for the outline of the
background singer and the props. Alender peeled apart
was lit with the RGB channels in Adobe After Effects,
Kino Flo
bluescreen
handling most of the rotoscoping, including
tubes, and the crew and wire removal, and some of the
foreground was compositing and 3-D animation. “Wes Ball
lit with a pair and his company, Oddball Animation,
of 4x4 Kino Flo
heads outfitted
stepped in to help with a lot of the final
with black-light product, and they’re really taking it to the
tubes. Bottom: next level with gorgeous sky environments
Kief takes the and realistic particle effects,” says Alender.
helm on set.
“They also did the character animation for
the demon creature. As more and more
talented specialists jumped onboard, I
evolved into more of an art director on the
post side of things — I roughed out a lot of
the stuff that others executed.”
Kief and Alender see projects such as
“Eye of the Storm” as great opportunities
ASA,” says Kief. “Before the MX, rating the chip would have been really problematic to experiment with art, media and technol-
Red at anything higher than 200 would because there’s so much junk in the blue ogy. “We both love pushing the envelope
start to introduce a lot of noise, and a good channel. If we hadn’t had access to the MX, creatively and technically,” says Kief. “It’s a
signal-to-noise ratio is important when we would’ve picked a different camera alto- lot of fun working with Chris. He’s been at
you’re trying to pull keys. The new sensor is gether.” the helm on some of my most unique
so clean that I can start at 500 ASA and Kief used T1.9 Zeiss Ultra Prime projects.” ●
have no problem going to 800 ASA.” Alen- lenses, shooting as wide as possible to
der concurs, “Using a Red with the original accentuate the graphic compositions and

16 January 2011 American Cinematographer

 F OR YOU R CON SIDER ATION

Best Picture
Best Cinematography

The Company Men

PLEA SE VISIT
www.thecompanymenfilm.com and www.twcawards.com
FOR MORE INFORM ATION
Artwork © 2010 The Weinstein Company. All Rights Reserved.
 Production Slate
Prospera (Helen
Mirren) summons
all the forces of
nature to whip up
a storm and sink
her enemies’ ship
in The Tempest, a
production that
involved extensive
location work in
Hawaii.

I The Tempest Hits Hawaii

By Iain Stasukevich
In William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the Duke of Milan,
The Tempest opens with one of Dryburgh’s shots, made on
that first morning in Hawaii: a close-up of a sandcastle with storm
clouds looming in the distance as violent waves crash on coastal
shelves of volcanic rock. A downpour begins, melting the castle in the

The Tempest photos by Melinda Sue Gordon, SMPSP, courtesy of Tempest Productions, LLC.
Prospero, is usurped by his traitorous brother, Antonio, and Alonso, hand of Miranda (Felicity Jones), Prospera’s daughter. In the distance,
the king of Naples, and exiled to an island where, some years later, he a raging tempest threatens a ship carrying Antonio (Chris Cooper),
is able to exact his revenge. Julie Taymor’s film adaptation stars Helen Alonso (David Strathairn), some members of Alonso’s family, and
Mirren as Prospera, the wife of Milan’s duke. In this version of the tale, their entourage.
the duke is killed by Antonio, and Prospera is accused of murdering Prospera appears to command the elements, but it’s really the
her husband with witchcraft. She is exiled to a distant island, and from sprite Ariel (Ben Wishaw) who does her dirty work. Visual-effects
that point on, the story hews fairly closely to Shakespeare’s original supervisor Kyle Cooper directed the sequence in which Ariel, with the
plot. aid of computer-generated water, wind and fire, wrecks the CG ship.
The Tempest’s cinematographer, Stuart Dryburgh, ASC, and (The film’s visual effects were created by Cooper’s company, Prologue
production designer, Mark Friedberg, had worked together on a Films.) On Hawaii’s Big Island, Dryburgh shot the live-action portion
number of projects, including Taymor’s Across the Universe , shot by of the scene, which required a full-sized mockup of the period ship,
Bruno Delbonnel, ASC, AFC. (Dryburgh did some additional photog- complete with mast, deck and practical cabin. Dump tanks flooded
raphy on that film, collaborating closely with animation director Kyle the set with water and giant fans sprayed it in every direction, and
Cooper on the “Strawberry Fields” sequence.) When The Tempest’s 18K HMIs backlit a thick layer of smoke to create the impression of a
original director of photography, Christopher Doyle, HKSC, departed stormy day exterior.
the film after a few weeks of shooting, Friedberg campaigned on The Hawaiian island of Lanai, with its lava flows, craters and
Dryburgh’s behalf, and just two days after getting the call, Dryburgh rocky cliffs, stands in for Prospera’s isle. (All of the photography on
was on a plane to Hawaii with the script in hand. Lanai was done by Doyle. Dryburgh completed the location filming
He showed up to set the next morning and dove right in. “I on Big Island.) Throughout the shoot, the filmmakers exploited each
felt like I’d seen enough Shakespeare to know how it could work on location’s unique topography to accentuate the story’s supernatural
film,” says Dryburgh, citing Peter Brook’s King Lear, Franco Zeffirelli elements. “There’s a sense that the island is all things to all people,”
and Baz Luhrmann’s very different interpretations of Romeo and says Dryburgh. “It has a very diverse landscape: there’s seashore,
Juliet, and Taymor’s Titus (AC Feb. ’00) as notable cinematic transla- swamps, deep forests, high deserts, bare rock and orange-red earth.
tions of the Bard. We weren’t worried about one scene matching the next.” ➣

18 January 2011 American Cinematographer

 “The 9000PL takes impossible lighting and gets
amazing images–very smooth, very filmic. And
it’s easy to just pick up and shoulder. For my next
project, I want this camera.”
–Francis Kenny, ASC

SRW-9000PL
digital motion picture camcorder

Bring it on.
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on the most challenging assignments. And shines. The PL mount welcomes your 35mm motion
picture lenses. S-Gamut extends your color palette while S-LOG gamma preserves your vision from
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© 2010 Sony Electronics Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Features and specifications are subject to change without notice.
Sony, CineAlta, HDCAM-SR, XDCAM, “make.believe” and their respective logos are trademarks of Sony.
 Once location photography wrapped,
production moved to Steiner Studios in
Brooklyn, N.Y., where Dryburgh’s collabora-
tors included key grip Rick Maroquin, gaffer
Bill O’Leary, A-camera operator Lukasz
Jogalla, and B-camera/Steadicam operator
Carlos Guerra. (A-camera 1st AC Glenn
Kaplan stayed with the production from start
to finish.)
Taymor wanted to set The Tempest in
a fantasy world that would feature costumes
and imagery from many different periods of
history. Technical accuracy wasn’t as impor-
tant as the emotions the images would elicit.
“We went from a speck of rock in the middle
of the Pacific to an industrial warehouse in the
middle of Brooklyn, but Julie didn’t want us to
worry about discrepancies,” says Friedberg.
Rather, the director encouraged her lead
creatives to design their work to stand out.
The goal with the subterranean grotto
where Prospera and Miranda reside was a feel
that was “sparkly and magical, not dark and
scary,” says Dryburgh. “The cave and the
courtyard are almost 100-percent practical,
and a lot of my conversations with Mark were
about how to light the volcanic rock, which
was made of Styrofoam and paint.” To create
low, slanting sunlight, “as if the sun is just
peeping over the edge of the cliffs,” O’Leary
and his crew rigged four Nine-Light Maxi-
Brutes in a lift in a cross configuration “and
just peeked them over the set wall at quite a
shallow angle,” recalls the gaffer. “They were
through a light diffusion just to fuzz out the
edges, and an effect color was used instead
of the usual CTO to add warmth.” Dryburgh
adds, “We also used Maxi-Brutes through
diffusion to push ‘daylight’ through the
mouth of the cave, and we had narrow-beam
[Source Four] Lekos on a pipe grid overhead
to create small, intense beams of light to
Top: Rear projection suggest light creeping into the cave through
provides the
background in a shafts in the rock.”
flashback to Prospera’s Other scenes required a less realistic
life in Milan. Middle: approach. When Prospera recalls Antonio’s
Prospera counsels her
daughter (Felicity act of treason, the film flashes back to
Jones) in their the events in Milan, which appears to be
underground home. seen through a hazy filter. To create this
Bottom:
Cinematographer effect, Dryburgh actually placed sheets of
Stuart Dryburgh, ASC. scratched Mylar, supplied by the art depart-
ment in different patterns and textures, in
front of the lens. Friedberg had a miniature-
scale mockup built out of cardboard cutouts
in forced perspective. These models were

20 January 2011 American Cinematographer

 Near right: The
filmmakers
prepare to shoot
actor Ben
Wishaw beneath
a shallow water
tank to create
the illusion that
the fairy Ariel is
underwater. Far
right:
Greenscreen was
used for a
sequence in
which Ariel
transforms into
a scary,
feathered
creature.
photographed and then digitally rear-
projected or composited into full-size live-
action scenes. “I really like those scenes
because I had complete control over the
lighting, and the final effect is not quite
perfect, which gives it a lovely, magical feel,”
says Dryburgh. Friedberg concurs, “Some-
times you don’t have any option but to imply
things. It’s like poetry, and when you work
with Julie, exercising poetic license is part of
the job.”
Rendering the character of Ariel
required the combined efforts of the cine-
matographer, production designer and
visual-effects team. Wishaw was unable to
travel to Hawaii, but he appears in many of
the island’s exterior scenes, where Ariel
frequently interacts with Prospera. Taymor
was keen to film these scenes with both
Mirren and Wishaw present, so only back-
ground plates and a few wide shots were
photographed on location. Dryburgh filmed
the actors together at Steiner, and Cooper
later separated them. “We tried to not over-
lap them physically, because those effects
can be more difficult,” Dryburgh remarks.
Difficult or not, Cooper approached
the process with a strictly can-do attitude.
“Julie had a lot of fantastic ideas — they
were good and also kind of outrageous,” he
says. “Some of the things she described
would have called for industrial-strength
effects were it not for her affinity for a hand-
crafted look. The goal wasn’t seamless, high-
gloss visual effects. It was about something
more spirited.”
Some character effects didn’t involve
22 January 2011
any digital work at all. For scenes that show
Prospera conversing with Ariel through the
reflecting pool in her courtyard, the film-
makers suspended a shallow, glass-
bottomed water tank 4'-6' off the floor with
pulleys, and Wishaw was placed beneath
the tank and photographed through a layer
of rippling water. Rear-projected reflections
on the water and the use of foreground
elements tie the effect into the real world. (In
most cases, however, some CG was used for
compositing purposes. All in all,The Tempest
contains approximately 330 visual-effects
shots.)
Just as Ariel takes the shape of the
elements, he can also transform into other
creatures. A key sequence sees him lure the
king and his men onto a barren volcanic
shelf with a mirage of lavish food and drink.
When the men try to pick up the food, the
banquet table explodes, revealing Ariel in
the form of a horrifying, black harpy. The
transformation begins when Prospera drops
a black feather into a vial of strange liquid.
The glass explodes in slow motion (shot at
1,000 fps with a Phantom HD by 2nd-unit
cinematographer David Dunlap), and the
single feather becomes many, each taking
the shape of an individual Ariel.
“Then we cut to Ben in his costume,
covered in black, oily makeup with these
huge wings suspended on cables from the
roof, and he’s sitting on a pile of Mark’s
glassy volcanic rock in front of a green-
screen,” explains Dryburgh. Creating the
hundreds of screeching harpies was as
simple as capturing Wishaw on a wire rig in
American Cinematographer
front of a greenscreen and multiplying the
image.
Dryburgh’s goal in the digital grade,
which was handled by senior colorist Yvan
Lucas at EFilm in Hollywood, was to let each
scene stand apart rather than try to tie every-
thing together visually. “Each location was
chosen by Julie to convey the feeling she
wanted for that scene,” explains the cine-
matographer. “In the DI, we tried to
enhance and support the ideas that were
formulated in these choices; we tried to
support the uniqueness of each location
with our grading choices.”
Dryburgh supervised Lucas’ work
from New York, transmitting notes and then
assessing the results. “It was more like work-
ing with the old-time film timers, where
you’d look at the work print, discuss the
look, and then say, ‘See you in three days
when the first print is ready.’ Even when I
can physically supervise the grade, I prefer to
let the colorist make a contribution based on
my briefing, rather than sit there and call
every light. If you’re working with someone
who knows his stuff, you’d do well to let his
knowledge and creativity come into play.”
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
3-perf Super 35mm
Arricam Lite
Angenieux and Cooke lenses
Fujifilm Eterna 500 8573;
Kodak Vision3 500T 5219
Digital Intermediate ➣
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B e c a u s e i t m a t t e r s .
 all have a shred of that person in us.”
After interviewing a number of young
cinematographers for All Good Things ,
Jarecki decided he wanted a cameraman
with considerable experience. “The young
ones seemed like they would come up with
clever ideas every second, and I felt the film
might become gimmicky,” he explains. He
thought of Michael Seresin, BSC, and called
Alan Parker ( Angel Heart ) and Alfonso
Cuarón ( Harry Potter and the Prisoner of
Azkaban; AC June ’04), who said his instinct
was correct. “Michael’s powerful images in
films like Angel Heart and Angela’s Ashes ,
and even The Prisoner of Azkaban , which I
feel is the most cinematic of the Potter films,
show that he is someone who cares deeply
about the mystery of film,” Jarecki observes.
“His work suggests that he thinks a film
should not just be a continuation of reality.”
After several long-distance discus-
Above: Katie
sions about the script — with Jarecki in New
(Kirsten Dunst) York and Seresin at home in New Zealand —
becomes Seresin decided to sign on. “I like a dark story
increasingly
unhappy in her
because it demands more from an audi-
marriage to ence,” says the cinematographer. “I like
David (Ryan movies that gravitate toward the underlit,
Gosling) in All
Good Things,
darker side of life. When there are a lot of
shot by Michael shadows, the audience isn’t quite sure if they
Seresin, BSC. can see something or not, and their imagina-
Right: The early
days of the
tion starts to work.”
young couple’s The story covers about 30 years, from
marriage are the mid-1970s to 2001, and Seresin was
rendered in a
brighter, more
keen to differentiate the periods subtly. “I
colorful palette. very consciously did not want the film to have
a ‘then’ and ‘now’ feel in terms of a grainier
Seventies and a slicker present day — that
would have been too intrusive,” he says.

I Dark Family Dynamics

By Ted Elrick
Robert Durst seemed to have every-
thing, including financial success, courtesy
of his family’s real-estate dynasty in Manhat-
tan, and a beautiful and loving wife, Kath-
leen McCormack. When Kathleen mysteri-
ously disappeared in 1982, some family and
friends suspected Robert of murder. Her
body has never been found, and her disap-
pearance remains the most notorious miss-
ing-person’s case in New York history.
Intrigued by the unresolved aspects
of the Durst case, director Andrew Jarecki
(Capturing the Friedmans ) teamed with
producer/writer Marc Smerling and writer
Marcus Hinchey to develop a fictional thriller
based on the events. The result is All Good
Things, which focuses on the Marks family:
David (Ryan Gosling); his wife, Katie (Kirsten
Dunst); and his real-estate mogul father,
Sanford (Frank Langella).
“I’m always attracted by monster
stories,” says Jarecki. “When you look at
the truth behind a monster, you often find a
real person who had hopes and dreams,
and then things turned out differently. I
think we tend to take people who do dark,
awful things and put them in a box, saying,
‘That person is obviously totally different
from me, and I don’t have to worry about
anything because I don’t have a shred of
that person in me.’ But the reality is that we
“We lit the two distinct periods in quite
different ways. For the Seventies, we used
brighter, high-key lighting, as well as brighter
All Good Things photos courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
colors in the wardrobe and art direction. The
latter period, around 2001, was lower key,
with more contrast and deeper shadows, and
with darker clothes and set colors.
“The Seventies was when the world
sort of changed from black-and-white to
color,” continues the cinematographer. “It’s a
bit of a cliché to have the story start with
bright, sunny colors, but that’s how it was for
people who were young then. As the story
progresses, we gradually start introducing the
idea that things aren’t quite right. We keep
some of the bright colors as a counterpoint,
but I felt that some of the images could still

24 January 2011 American Cinematographer

“Over 100 episodes with Clairmont and still counting.”
Marshall Adams

www.clairmont.com

Above: David
reluctantly takes
a position at his
father’s multi-
million-dollar
business. Right:
Katie offers
comfort as the
stress of his
job starts to
take a toll.
suggest something a bit darker to the audi-
ence. We get more and more into night
photography as the story gets darker.”
During prep, Seresin did extensive
testing at Technicolor New York, “more to
show Andrew a few ideas for the look of
the film,” he says. “Tech New York is family,
and I love working with them.” Seresin
tested the digital equivalent of Technicolor’s
ENR process, but, he notes, “this was more
of a guide for lighting contrast ratios, and
reminded me of an approach rather than
serving as a blueprint for the look of the
film. I love the photochemical ENR process,
which is hard to do these days. But the digi-
tal version is getting close.” (The final digital
grade was done at Company 3 by colorist
Matt Turner.)
Apart from some home-movie
footage, which was shot on Super 16mm,
26 January 2011
Seresin decided to shoot All Good Things on
Kodak Vision3 500T 5219. “I love some of
the older film stocks because you can get a
sort of lovely patina — some call it grain —
and I was tempted to try and find some
older stock [for this movie], but I decided I
preferred the challenge of working with a
modern stock,” he observes. “I think so
much of today’s film stock looks too perfect,
too glossy, and I think we managed to get
some of that patina in 5219. Somehow, it
arrived.
“I recently had a showing of Angel
Heart on film, and it looks so different from
the DVD,” he adds. “The digital transfer
looks so slick, smooth and sharp. It’s missing
that texture from the film stock.”
The production’s camera package,
provided by Panavision, comprised an Arri-
cam Studio and Lite and a backup
American Cinematographer
Moviecam Compact. For the home-movie
footage, Seresin used a Bolex H-16 Rex-5
“and mostly a 10mm Switar lens. That
seemed truer and more appropriate than
shooting 35mm and degrading it in post.
“Cameras are not a big deal to me,”
Seresin continues. “I like the new Arris, but to
be dead honest, if I had a chip in my head
and could just imagine the picture and then
download it, I would. I’m not the world’s
most technical cinematographer!” Lenses
are another matter, however. “I have a set of
Cooke S4 primes and Cooke zooms that
follow me everywhere. They came out of JDC
[Joe Dunton Co.]. Joe is a technical genius
and a great friend, and I’ve used his spherical
and anamorphic lenses on pretty much every
movie I’ve done.” On All Good Things ,
Seresin used a full set of S4s and the Cooke
18-100mm zoom.
Although the shoot took place in
Connecticut and New York, Seresin was able
to bring Peter Bloor, his longtime gaffer in
Great Britain, aboard as the lighting consul-
tant. “Peter and I first worked together on
Midnight Express when he was just an elec-
trician,” notes the cinematographer. “I finally
persuaded him to work as a gaffer, and
we’ve done more than a dozen movies
together.” Seresin has high praise for the
rest of the crew, which included A-
camera/Steadicam operator Gerard Sava, A-
camera 1st AC Stanley Fernandez, B-camera
operator Tom Weston and B-camera 1st AC
Paul Colangelo, all out of New York. “I am
tough on a crew, and they were brilliant,”
says Seresin. “We had a lot of handheld and
Steadicam work, and a lot of location work.
Some days we had two [company] moves, so
you end up working at the speed of your
slowest truck. We were filming at a time
when everyone was taking advantage of
New York’s tax breaks, so we were lucky to
get such a great team.” Bloor agrees, adding,
“We worked some incredible hours, and the
crew never moaned or groaned; we just all
got on with it.”
Connecticut stood in for much of the
New York photography, with a large, vacant
house standing in for three different loca-
tions: David and Katie’s Manhattan apart-
ment, Sanford Marks’ stately home, and the
den where David practices “scream therapy.”
Of the latter room, Seresin recalls, “There
was a crazy quality to the design of the ceil-

Director Andrew Jarecki (foreground) and Seresin line up a shot alongside
1st AD David Wechsler.
ing tiles, which is why we chose that room.
We had to shoot a really low angle to show
it, but it worked.” Another prominent
Connecticut location is the lakefront house
where David and Katie escape the city.
Fortunately for the crew, the production
cookeoptics.com
28
found a house whose interior did not
require much alteration to resemble a
1970s-era residence. “They even had a
yellow Princess telephone,” says Jarecki.
“All the phones in the house were dial, not
push-button.”
The Cooke Look
One Look. All Speeds
CookeOpticsLimited
British Optical Innovation and
Quality Since 1893.
The homeowner was very accommo-
dating, but drew the line when the filmmak-
ers asked if they could remove some tiles and
part of the wall from the shower so they
could shoot through the wall when Katie
joins her husband in the shower. When the
owner refused to allow the modification,
Bloor suggested building a working shower
outside the house: an interior in the exterior.
“It was a freezing night in Connecticut, but
the shower was boiling hot and full of
steam, sufficient so that Ryan and Kirsten,
who were nude, felt protected and comfort-
able,” says Jarecki. “It’s an extremely
emotional moment in the story that required
a lot of innovative thinking to pull off, and I
think it’s one of the most unique images of
the movie.” To light the shower, two 18"
3,200°K Kino Flos were positioned behind
the actors to silhouette their bodies, and a
650-watt spot through Lee 129 Heavy Frost
diffusion was rigged overhead.
Another key sequence involves the
disposal of a body from a bridge. The film-
makers originally thought of setting the
action on a causeway bridge, with lighting
T: +44 (0)116 264 0700
Canada, South America, USA:
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sourced by streetlights. “I suggested that we
instead try to find a disused railway bridge,
which are pretty common in upstate New
York and Connecticut,” says Seresin. “We
spotted one when we were driving back to
the hotel one day and did a quick U-turn to
check it out. That scene was big-scale cinema
for a film with this budget!” According to
Bloor, the crew rigged a mix of 12K and 6K
HMIs, “anything we could get our hands
on,” to light the bridge from the side oppo-
site the action. “We actually had a very
limited area to light because the goal was to
make it creepy,” says Bloor. Seresin adds,
“What’s great is that we got a sharp outline
of the profile of the bridge against the night
sky with mist and smoke.”
Seresin says he was particularly
pleased to work with Gosling and Dunst.
“What I love about actors like Ryan and
Kirsten is that they sort of suggest stuff to you
— you watch them, and you suddenly get an
idea,” he says. “For instance, for the scene
where David drags Katie out of her family’s
party by her hair, the conventional way to
shoot it would have been to look straight at
her and then look straight back at him. But
as I was walking past Ryan, I caught a glint
from the glasses he was wearing, and I
thought it made him look really evil. I usually
don’t like asking actors to do stuff for the
camera, but I asked him, ‘Have you ever
seen Rear Window?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, a
long time ago.’ And I said, ‘Remember how
the reflection on Thorwald’s glasses made
him look really evil? Do you mind if I just ask
you to move your head a bit left?’ He said,
‘No, that’s fine.’ So we shot him in profile
using a long lens to isolate him from the
background. It strongly suggests that
underneath it all, David really is quite evil.”
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
35mm and 16mm
Arricam Studio, Lite; Moviecam Compact;
Bolex H-16 Rex-5
Cooke and Switar lenses
Kodak Vision3 500T 5219/7219,
Vision2 50D 7201
Digital Intermediate ●
ERRATA
Some of the text in our November
tribute to William A. Fraker, ASC, BSC
(“King of Cool,” p. 64) was altered and/or
omitted because of a production error. The
statement by Fraker that begins at the
bottom of page 67 should read, “And that’s
one thing that’s lacking in some of the films
I’ve seen lately — there’s a vague plot, but
you don’t care about the characters.” The
sentence after that should read, “In another
career-spanning interview with Bob Fisher,
he stressed the single-mindedness required
to succeed in such a glamorous but
demanding profession.” Also, a quote from
Warren Beatty that begins at the bottom of
page 76 should read, “To Billy’s credit, we
got it done. The crowd had no idea what
was going on when two teams came out
wearing different uniforms.”
29
 LettingGo

Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC
discusses his approach to Biutiful,
his latest collaboration with director
Alejandro González Iñárritu.
By Benjamin B
•|•
T
he new film Biutiful is the latest collaboration between
director Alejandro González Iñárritu and cinematogra-
pher Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC, and although it does
not feature the kind of fractured narrative that character-
ized their previous features, Amores Perros (AC April ’01), 21
Grams (AC Dec. ’03) and Babel (AC Nov. ’06), it nonetheless
offers a similarly rich tapestry of characters and subplots. The
film focuses on Uxbal (Javier Bardem), a divorced father of
two, who hustles a living in Barcelona by selling goods from a
Chinese sweatshop to African street vendors, and by moon-
lighting as a kind of messenger between the dead and the
living — he possesses the eerie ability to see ghosts. When
Uxbal learns that he has a terminal illness, he struggles to
come to terms with his fate, all the while concealing his ill-

30 January 2011 American Cinematographer

 Opposite: Uxbal
(Javier Bardem)
helps his daughter,
Ana (Hanaa
Bouchaib), with her
homework in a
scene from Biutiful,
shot by Rodrigo
Prieto, ASC, AMC.
This page, top: An
HD frame grab from
the scene that
introduces Uxbal’s
tempestuous ex-
wife, Marambra
(Maricel Alvarez),
illustrates the film’s
naturalistic lighting
and intimate camera
style. Middle: In
another scene,
Marambra is bereft
after a confrontation
with her ex. Bottom:
Prieto scopes out his
options in a narrow
alley.

ness from his loved ones, including his

children, his tempestuous ex-wife,
Marambra (Maricel Alvarez), and his
brother, Tito (Eduard Fernández).
A few months after the film’s
premiere at the 2010 Cannes Film
Festival, AC caught up with Prieto to
discuss the project. In a separate conver-
sation, Iñárritu shared some observa-
tions about Biutiful and his approach to
Unit photography by José Haro. Photos and HD frame grabs courtesy of Roadside Attractions.

filmmaking. (See page 38.)

American Cinematographer: The
supernatural is an element that you
and Iñarritu haven’t tackled before,
and you chose to represent it in an
unusually naturalistic way. Why?
Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC:
On this film, we were aiming for a
subjective point of view that would
emphasize Uxbal’s perspective, and we
always wanted to stay believable, to
portray his environment the way he
would see it. His ability to see and hear
the dead is part of his reality, so we
didn’t want to depict that differently in
terms of the visuals. The metaphysical is
part of his everyday life, so I did not
emphasize it through special lighting or
camera gags for these moments. On the
whole film overall, I did allow myself to
be a little bit more stylized with the
lighting, but it’s always based on real
sources. I wanted the film to feel natu-
ralistic, but I did heighten the atmos-

ww.theasc.com
w January 2011 31
◗ Letting Go
Top: Prieto
(shouldering a
Panaflex
Millennium XL2)
and 1st AC Arturo
Castañeda (center,
with his back to
camera) stay close
to the action as
Ekweme (Cheikh
Ndiaye, far left)
and other African
street vendors
scatter during a
police raid. Typical
of his work with
director Alejandro
González Iñárritu,
Prieto shot most
of Biutiful
handheld. Bottom:
Prieto captures the
climax of the
police chase.

Alejandro, he described Uxbal as some-

phere of certain scenes through lighting
to align the viewer with Uxbal’s
thoughts.
One stylistic carryover from
your previous collaborations is the
emphasis on a handheld camera.
Prieto: Yes. I shot about 95
percent of the film handheld, but many
of the moves were carefully choreo-
graphed. We designed complex shots
that would tell the story without the
need to cut; the rhythm of the camera
one who is uptight and controlling at
the beginning of the film, and then, as
he is forced by his circumstances to
accept his fate, he is finally able to let go.
Alejandro wanted to find a way to
represent this transition visually. At first,
we talked about using tighter composi-
tions in the beginning and then going
wider as the story progressed. After that
conversation, I thought about it some
more and wondered if we could take
that a step further and play with the
aspect ratio. I suggested we test starting
at 1.85 and eventually opening up to
2.40 to represent the transition from
tight control to ultimate release. There
movement was meant to represent was some concern that the shift would
Uxbal’s emotional state. We tried to be too jarring, but we decided it worked,
keep him in frame most of the time, and and we thought it was subtle enough
the way the camera moves around him is that the average viewer wouldn’t notice
motivated by what he is focusing on. it. We start the transition with the tragic
There is a very unusual format scene in the Chinese sweatshop, where
change from 1.85:1 to 2.40:1, and from we stay with the 1.85 aspect ratio but
spherical to anamorphic, partway switch to anamorphic lenses. This
through the story. What motivated marks a very powerful, crucial moment
that choice? for Uxbal; his world truly starts to
Prieto: So you noticed? [Laughs.] unravel, and it’s the point where he
In one of the first discussions I had with either falls apart or decides to take

32 January 2011 American Cinematographer

 Top: This HD
frame grab
shows part of
the film’s
transition from
spherical 1.85:1
to anamorphic
2.40:1. Prieto
shot this
sequence in 1.85
with anamorphic
lenses. Middle
and bottom:
Uxbal’s long
walk ends at a
garish, surreal
nightclub, where
he seeks solace
in alcohol and
the opposite sex.

charge of putting his life in order. I felt

that anamorphic lenses would help
isolate him and convey his despair
because they would slightly alter the
texture of the image. I wanted the back-
grounds at this point to have that soft-
focus texture, that slightly liquid feel of
anamorphic. We made the aspect-ratio
transition a few scenes later on a crane
shot at the beach, using an angle of the
ocean to open the edges of the screen to
2:40. I shot most of the movie with
Panavision Ultra Speed [Z Series]
MKIIs, and for most of the anamorphic
work I used Panavision’s G-Series
lenses. Whenever there was a source of
light in frame, like a window, the MKIIs
would cause a slight flare, and they gave
the image a hard edge and contrasty feel
that we liked. For certain moments, we
enhanced the flare of bright sources
with a Tiffen Smoque Filter on the
camera.
The 1.85 anamorphic passage in
the film is very impressionistic, with
Uxbal crossing the bridge at sunset,
roaming the streets at night, and then
going to meet his brother at the night-
club.
Prieto: He is going through a
deeply traumatic moment, so we

ww.theasc.com
w January 2011 33
◗ Letting Go
wanted to use different techniques to
create the sense that things are out of
balance, that he’s confused and doesn’t
know where to go or what to do. We
wanted to create images that weren’t
straightforward, so we would, for exam-
ple, pass split diopters in front of the lens
to defocus some elements in the frame.
The film has a very rough,
powerful texture and a grainy, satu-
rated image. How did you achieve
that?
Prieto: From the beginning,
Alejandro felt it was important to have
film grain permeating the air. In part, it
was his reaction to all the digital devel-
opments — he feels that more and
more, movies tend to look too clean and
plastic. But film grain has actually been
an important part of the visual palette in
all our films, going back to Amores
Perros. Because Biutiful tells one story, I
didn’t want to mix as many film stocks as
I have on our other films. The stock I
tested in the beginning was Kodak
[Vision 500T] 5279, which we liked,
but it was being discontinued. So we
used [Kodak Vision2 500T] 5260,
which is similar to 5279 but has better
color reproduction. We found that
pushing 5260 by 1 stop, combined with
the USZ MKII lenses, gave us a texture
that we really loved. Pushing enhanced
the grain but also enhanced the contrast
and the color saturation, and that
became an integral part of the movie’s
look. However, I found that for night
scenes, when there’s a lot of black in the
frame, the pushed 5260 became a little
too milky and a little too blue in the
blacks. So for those scenes, I used
[Kodak Vision3 500T] 5219 pushed 1
stop; that gave the night scenes a little
less grain, but in the very dark, high-
contrast night scenes, it delivered deeper,
cleaner blacks. I rated both film stocks at
640 ASA. The film is bookended by
scenes set in the snow, and for those I
used [Kodak Vision2 50D] 5201, which
has a very clean grain. It’s the only part
The HD frame grabs on these pages show a late-afternoon interlude in which Uxbal and Marambra enjoy ice
cream with their children, and then quiet time as the day comes to an end. The filmmakers’ sleight of hand in of the movie that’s not pushed. I wanted
this location included placing greenscreen outside the window for the sunset scene and comping in the those scenes to be clean and pristine, to
background later, and shooting the evening scene day-for-night to accommodate child actors Bouchaib and have a very different feel.
Guillermo Estrella.
Like all of your films with

34 January 2011 American Cinematographer

Iñárritu, Biutiful was shot on location.
What kind of lighting did you bring to
the locations?
Prieto: I use Kino Flos a lot.
They’re very practical; they don’t require
much space or a lot of electricity, they
don’t get hot, and you can rig them
quickly. I use many different types,
including Flathead 80s and the 6-by-6
Blanket-Lite. Using a separate diffusion
in front of the Blanket-Lite, like an 8-
by-8 Full Grid cloth, gives you a very
soft source inside a location. We also
built 4-by-4-foot soft boxes with eight

“If you can find a

solution that’s
simple, it’s probably
the most effective,
so whenever
possible, I do it the
simplest way.”

Kino Flo bulbs to rig either on ceilings
or, for sidelight in tight spaces, against a
wall. I also used 1-by-1 Litepanels LED
units configured in a square of four,
usually diffused with Full Grid, to simu-
late soft lamp light, hiding the shallow
fixture behind lampshades or tucking it
behind bedside tables. For HMIs, I used
the K5600 400-watt and 800-watt
Jokers extensively; I can bounce them
for fill, or I’ll use the soft tube adapter,
which creates a powerful but narrow
light source that’s easily hidden behind a
doorframe. The 4K Alpha came in
handy to light through Full Grid diffu-
sion frames of different sizes. We used
18K HMI Fresnels through windows to
create sunlight. For tungsten, I also used
the Barger-Baglite DV-3 with Chimera
Medium Video Pro Shallow Bank, as
well as the 1K [Lowel] Rifa light. I use
Dedolights for accent lighting.
How did you light the scene that
introduces us to Uxbal’s ex-wife,
Marambra, where she bursts into
Tito’s bedroom, dances on the bed and
pours wine on him?
Prieto: That location was a tiny
room on the sixth floor that had a
balcony. My only lighting opportunity
was the window. The camera basically
does a 270-degree move in the scene. I
started on Tito waking up with my back
to the window, so we begin with frontal
light, and then I end up on the other
side of the bed, facing Marambra, with
the window behind her. We placed an
18K Fresnel on the balcony about 10
feet from the window, with a flag
cutting the direct light on Marambra
but allowing direct sunlight on Tito. I
used the sheers on the window to bloom
the light coming in, which created a soft
ambient light. So with one light source,
we had soft light for Marambra and a
hard light for Tito. We put white show
cards on the ceiling to create fill, and
when the camera came around on
Marambra, we opened up the lens 2
stops, ending up with a fill light that was
2 stops under. My focus puller, Arturo
Castañeda, has a feel for focus that’s just
incredible, and that gives me the confi-
dence to move freely. Luis Lattanzi, the
second AC, was doing the stop change.
It was a very small room, and they all
danced behind me as I moved around
with the camera, along with the boom
operator. We encountered this kind of
situation often in the cramped locations,

ww.theasc.com
w January 2011 35
◗ Letting Go
At a key moment
late in the film,
Ekweme’s wife,
Igé (Diaryatou
Daff), opens the
shutters in Uxbal’s
bedroom. Light
from two 18Ks
outside the
windows, diffused
by the sheer
curtains, flares the
lens as she opens
the shutters.
but we somehow managed!
That’s a very simple lighting
setup.
Prieto: Yes, and it’s one of my
favorite scenes in the movie. If you can
find a solution that’s simple, it’s proba-
bly the most effective, so whenever
possible, I do it the simplest way. I used
a similar approach in Uxbal’s bedroom,
for example when Igé [Diaryatou Daff]
opens the shutters. I had Condor lifts
outside with two 18Ks, one for each
window. When she opens the shutters,
the light comes in through the sheers,
fills the room and flares the lens. I also
had a 4-foot-2-lamp Kino Flo just out
of frame above the windows, so that
when the shutters were closed, we’d
have some ambient light representing
the daylight seeping in around the shut-
ters. I also put a 12K Par on scaffolding
outside the window that was exclusively
36 January 2011
bouncing off the white shutter to light
Igé when she’s standing in the dark
room. It’s a very natural-looking source,
but to get the exposure I had to use a
very powerful light.
So you used the shutters as a
bounce board?
Prieto: Yes, using the set itself to
bounce light in frame is something I did
quite a bit on this film.
How did you light the happy
scene involving Uxbal, Marambra and
their children eating ice cream in her
apartment?
Prieto: That was a practical loca-
tion on the fourth floor. I lit the scene as
sunset, as we wanted this to be a
precious moment for the family. We
didn’t like the view outside the window
much, and it wasn’t oriented toward the
sun, so we had to hang a greenscreen
outside the window and ask Daniel
American Cinematographer
Aranyó, our B-camera operator and
second-unit cinematographer, to shoot
a background plate with the sun at the
right position for our interior location.
We had an 18K gelled with Full CTO
on a scissor lift just next to the green-
screen creating the ‘sunset’ light. We put
Marambra close to the window so the
backlight would hit her hair and make
her more alluring. Uxbal has just a little
bit of sunlight on his face. It’s a mix of
color temperatures, which is what
happens at sunset — you get the warm
sun combined with the reflection of the
bluish sky. So there’s golden sun on the
bottom part of Uxbal’s face, while the
top of his face and the background are
cooler, lit by fill with a little bit of blue
in it — a 4-by-4 soft box overhead with
eight Kino Flo daylight tubes with ¼
CTB and Full Grid diffusion. For the
evening scene that follows the ice-
cream scene, we shot day-for-night,
blacking out the windows, and used the
same soft box with tungsten bulbs, but
with an egg crate made from strips of
black coreplex to make it a little more
directional and keep it off the walls.
What was your approach on day
exteriors, like the scene in which Uxbal
follows Marambra out into the street
and gives her money?
Prieto: The main thing for me
with exteriors is to schedule the time of
day to shoot each angle. We scheduled
that scene so we’d be in the shade of the
surrounding buildings for every shot. I
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 •|•
I don’t know if I’m a masochist, but I
hate soundstages, and not only
because I think that they will never
represent reality correctly. There’s some-
thing about the texture, the reality of
walls, the smell, the story of them, the
vibe. Even if the builder creates sets
exactly the same, the sets don’t have
soul. I think reality can never be
matched in that sense. The other reason
I shoot all my films on location is that
there’s something uncomfortable about
locations that, in a way, helps everybody
feel they are in real territory and not
making a film. I like that, and I think
it’s a very effective psychological
38 January 2011
Iñárritu on Method
environment.
You know, I’m not interested in
reality; I’m interested in the truth of the
universe that I try to portray. Like many
others, I am obsessive, meticulous, a
perfectionist, and as an exquisite
neurotic I can be unbearable as a direc-
tor because Idemand whatever number
of takes to get what I, the character and
the film need. (You can ask the actors.
Ha, ha!)
I wanted to shoot Biutiful in
chronological order because that not
only helps the actors travel correctly, but
also helps me and Rodrigo and the rest
of the crew really understand where we
American Cinematographer
•|•
are in time and space, which is what a
film is really made of. Film, for me, is
made of the tension and rhythm that
one image creates against another, and
if all of us are traveling in time and
space with the characters, we suddenly
begin to be affected by the film. And I
have to tell you that after three months
of shooting, we were completely
invested. We were living the experience,
and that made a big difference in the
final result.
It’s very difficult to describe
Biutiful because in it, I played with
elements that are new for me. It’s a film
that explores a timeless question —
Where do we go when we die? — in
the very specific and complex time we
are all living. It is close to a tragedy in
the classical sense, but it also has a
metaphysical element, and we don’t
know exactly the division between real-
ity and illusion. Visually, that was an
element of the film that was very diffi-
cult to find the right balance for; I
wanted to create a perfume of the
metaphysical element, but I didn’t want
to take the film into another territory.
If I use musical analogies, I
would say that Amores Perros is rock ’n’
roll, 21 Grams is jazz, Babel is operatic,
and Biutiful is a requiem. The visual
grammar of this film was very delicate
and sophisticated because it had to
combine the social, the physical, the
metaphysical and a hyper-realistic
approach.To me, Biutiful is by
far Rodrigo’s most lyrical and poetic
work. Realistically and metaphorically,
he found light in the darkest places
possible.
Over the years, Rodrigo and I
have developed a communication level
that is not only effective and very
productive, but also very profound. We
skip all those things that you normally
have to go through when you start
collaborating with someone. We just go
straight to the DNA.
— Alejandro González Iñárritu
didn’t use any lighting, just a handheld
3-by-3 white card for the eyes. When
Uxbal hugs her, I went low with the
camera to catch the flare from the
skylight in the moment when he relaxes
for a second in her arms. The shifting
color on their faces is the blue skylight
combined with warmth that came
from the sun bouncing off the brick
buildings.
Did you use any lighting in the
long sequence that shows Igé’s
husband and the other African street
vendors getting busted by the police?
Prieto: No, I didn’t. It’s all about
scheduling. Whenever I can, I try not to

“Using the set

itself to bounce
light in frame is
something I did
quite a bit on .1Ì.5J^o`e/-..
   
this film.” ttt+fkpfdeqlrq*qo^fkfkd+kbq

use any electrical lighting on day exteri-

ors, as I find it can look quite fake. FKPFDEQLRQ,ECC>`^abjv
   
As you mentioned, there are fpBrolmbÑpib^afkdqo^fkfkd`lropblka*`fkbj^
      
many dusk scenes in the film. Can you ^kaEAQSÌpfk`b/--2
   
talk about the scene that shows Uxbal
crossing the bridge?
Prieto: At that moment, it’s also
the dusk of Uxbal’s life. With any dusk
scene, it’s really tricky to schedule and
rehearse it and make sure you capture
the right moment. We had some Maxi-
Brutes gelled with Lee 013 Straw Tint
uplighting the buildings in the back-
ground, representing the sodium-vapor
streetlights at the location. We lit other
buildings in another part of the shot ECCCfij#QbibsfpflkRkfsbopfqvÎHlko^aTlicÏ
     
Mlqpa^j*?^_bip_bod)Dboj^kv

with Lee 728 Steel Green, as if metal-
halide streetlights were glowing up the
façades. I asked the production designer,
Brigitte Broch, to build in the fluores-
 ◗ Letting Go
Prieto checks the light on Bardem stand-in Francesc Sadurní.
cent fixtures that you see on the bridge,
so that as Uxbal walks on the bridge, he
goes in and out of pools of cyan fluores-
cent light with uncorrected Cool White
bulbs that contrast with the sodium hue
in the background. It was an extensive
lighting job; we wanted it to look real
and organic but somewhat enhanced.
The shot involved a very complex
choreography of the handheld camera
with the different elements surrounding
Uxbal. Getting everything right at the
exact moment of dusk light was quite a
challenge, but when we got it, it was
exhilarating. I have to mention that the
entire crew was great, and I think my
gaffer, Jose Luis Rodriguez, is one of the
best gaffers in the world. He was an
amazing support for me.
Can you talk about the sequence
in the nightclub? The extreme colors
and lighting provide a strong contrast
to the rest of the film.
Prieto: It was a lot of fun to
design that lighting, and again, we tried
to emphasize Uxbal’s point of view.
Alejandro came up with the idea of
having the strippers outfitted with latex
breasts on different parts of their bodies.
We wanted an unsettling feel; we
wanted to enhance the feeling that this
is the moment when Uxbal just lets go.
He decides to drink and forget about

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everything. We brought in most of the
lighting, gelling most of the units with
Rosco 90 Green and Storaro Orange.
We had robotic Mac 2000s projecting
patterns and colors throughout the club,
many pulsing Par cans, and a few strobe
lights. As Uxbal enters the room, he is
bathed in ultraviolet ‘black light,’ and we
shot without a UV filter on the camera,
which creates a hazy, atmospheric,
indigo light that contrasts with the
orange and green of the first part of the
scene. I also used a video projector with
bubbly images for one of the strippers
climbing up a wall. To emphasize the
otherworldly feel, we wanted more
dramatic lens flares, so we used the
special Panavision C-Series ‘Flare’
lenses in the club. I also used these
lenses for the scene after the club, where
a drunken Uxbal goes back home to
discover that his son has been left alone
by Marambra.
What about the very saturated
blue light that bathes the scene when
Uxbal talks to the woman in the booth?
Prieto: We lit the booth with two
4-by-8 Martin LC series RGB LED
panels that we positioned overhead. We
could program the panels with digital
video images, and I ended up choosing
waves of colors. What I liked about it
was that it didn’t have the hard edge of
standard nightclub lighting — there’s a
softer texture to the light — and we
could shift the colors as the scene
progressed. Mostly, I lit that area with
this sort of blue cyan with waves of
purple that I felt was more in tune with
Uxbal’s despair, until a red light flashes
as the music changes and they move to
the dance floor.
Mirrors seem to be a recurring
motif in the film. They figure in several
scenes, including the last one.
Prieto: We didn’t make a
conscious decision to use mirrors, but I
think that the feeling you get through-
out the movie is like Through the Looking
Glass, as though the mirror is another
reality. Peering into another dimension
is what Uxbal does; it’s his gift. We took
that all the way in the last scene, which
is the ultimate mirror shot. But we can’t
talk about that because it would be a
spoiler! ●
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1 and 2.40:1
35mm
Panaflex Millennium XL2
Panavision USZ MKII, G-Series
and C-Series lenses
Kodak Vision2 500T 5260,
50D 5201; Vision3 500T 5219
Digital Intermediate
Printed on Kodak Vision
Premier 2393
 Hoyte van Hoytema,
NSC, FSF mixes 2-perf
Super 35mm and
Betacam-SP for the
period boxing drama
The Fighter.

By Michael Goldman

•|•

Tough F
rom the earliest moments that producer/actor Mark
Wahlberg and director David O. Russell partnered to
develop The Fighter, they had raw and uniquely American
visuals in mind. Ironically, they turned to a European

Love
cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema, NSC, FSF, to get that
job done. Russell was impressed by van Hoytema’s work on
the Swedish feature Let the Right One In, and on the black-
and-white Swedish television show How Soon is Now?
What Russell hired van Hoytema to shoot was, at its
core, a gritty, reality-based drama. Wahlberg stars as Boston
boxer “Irish” Micky Ward, who learns how to be a champion
from his half brother, Dickie (Christian Bale), even as Dickie
battles drug addiction. The movie is built around the frame-
work of a real 1995 HBO documentary that covered Dickie’s
descent, portions of which were re-created by the filmmakers

42 January 2011 American Cinematographer

 as a framing device. Shot entirely in
Unit photography by JoJo Whilden, courtesy of Paramount Pictures.Additional photos courtesy of the filmmakers.
Lowell, Mass., The Fighter includes
extended boxing sequences choreo-
graphed and shot to mimic Ward’s real
fights in the late 1980s and early 1990s
as they were broadcast on HBO.
Because of Wahlberg’s relation-
ship with HBO via his series Entourage,
the Fighter team was given full access to
the network’s sports-broadcasting unit
so they could accurately re-create
portions of some of these fights. HBO
lent the production some personnel, and
the filmmakers’ equipment included
period-correct Betacam-SP standard-
definition ENG cameras (supplied by
Pittsburgh’s NEP Supershooters).
The filmmakers also took an
unorthodox approach to the drama
surrounding the boxing. Russell and van
Hoytema both wanted to be improvisa-
tional to a large degree — going hand-
held, mobile and as light as possible —
and when creative requirements and
budget considerations appeared to
suggest a digital format for principal
photography, van Hoytema instead
suggested using Aaton’s Penelope
cameras to shoot 2-perf Super 35mm,
an unusual move for a U.S. studio
picture. (The production prohibited the
use of Super 16mm.) The cinematogra-
pher was accustomed to shooting 2-perf
in Europe, and felt he could use the
format to more successfully accommo-
date Russell’s desire to shoot mostly
handheld or with a Steadicam in small
locations, often in limited light, while
working extremely fast. (Principal
photography took 38 days.) This
approach would also enable the film-
makers to capture grainy images to suit
the story.
“When shooting 2-perf for
[2.40:1] output, you expose far less
negative than 4-perf, saving a lot of
money, and if you are interested in
getting grain and texture, it’s the way to
go,” says van Hoytema. “I prefer 2-perf
over all the digital cameras I’ve tested.
“I find that workflows and proven
working methods are harder to change
or adapt in an established industry like
Hollywood’s, which may be why 2-perf
hasn’t really been used here,” he adds.
“In that respect, Europe seems a bit Opposite: Trainer Dickie Eklund (Christian Bale) raises
the arm of his half-brother, “Irish” Micky Ward (Mark
more flexible — in a smaller industry, Wahlberg),after a big win. This page, top: Ward
you need to be able to adapt.” takes a shine to Charlene (Amy Adams), a sharp-
Abel Cine Tech provided the tongued bartender. Bottom: Cinematographer Hoyte
van Hoytema, NSC, FSF shoulders an Aaton Penelope.
production with three new Penelopes,
ww.theasc.com
w January 2011 43
◗ Tough Love

Right: During a
key bout, Eklund
urges Ward to
dig deeper and
follow their
fight strategy.
Below: Ward’s
feisty mother,
Alice (Melissa
Leo), also serves
as his manager,
but he
eventually
concludes that
her career
guidance isn’t
optimizing his
prospects.

The zooming added a new axis to the

Angenieux Optimo 28-76mm zoom
lenses, and a set of Arri Master Primes
(ranging from 14mm to 150mm). Van
Hoytema chose three Fujifilm stocks
that he knew well, Eterna 250T 8553,
250D 8563 and 500T 8573. “I felt the
Fuji would respond well to lots of differ-
ent colors, and I had used it before, so
the choice was a comfort thing,” he says.
“It’s good to be acquainted with the
limits of your film stock; it gives you less
to worry about and more time to focus
on what’s in front of the camera.
“The Penelope allowed us to use
a small zoom, and with the Steadicam
rig this became a versatile and flexible
tool,” he continues. “I often handled the
remote zoom to make small adjust-
ments in movements and close-ups.
The Steadicam is very handy, but it
often also smoothes out moves and
becomes a bit too clinical or predictable.
equation and occasionally gave us unex-
pected results. Sometimes it added that
extra bit of tension and dirt.”
It was important to Russell that
the images “not look designed,” accord-
ing to van Hoytema. “We even wanted
things to look a bit messy, a little eclec-
tic,” he says. “We didn’t want people to
watch this film and directly pinpoint a
look or an obvious intention. For me,
[the visuals] had to be more closely
linked to the direct, emotional side, sort
of like jamming in a band.”
Because The Fighter is a period
piece, Russell wanted it to evoke the
palette and style of the early 1990s,
which meant lots of color in parts of the
frame and little color in other parts.
“We used some of the saturated look of
the big colors from the late Eighties,
but we also picked a palette for each
scene with [production designer] Judy
Becker so that we’d have only one bold
color in each frame, with the rest being
fairly monochromatic,” says Russell.
“Each [bold] color has a purpose, and
we use red very selectively. For example,
Micky wears a red shirt when he
confronts his family, and red also shows

44 January 2011 American Cinematographer

 After a violent
confrontation with
the police (top),
Eklund lands in
prison (middle),
where he urges
Ward to follow his
advice for an
upcoming bout
with a formidable
opponent.
Bottom: Ward’s
parents console
him after he
suffers a brutal
beating at the
hands of a much
heavier fighter.

up as blood in the ring.”

A-camera operator Geoff Haley
captured most of the drama sequences
with a Steadicam. Haley says this was a
direct result of Russell and van
Hoytema’s desire to improvise without
stopping frequently for reloads. “I’d say
this was the most difficult shoot I’ve
ever done as an operator,” Haley
observes. “We used the camera almost
in a stream-of-consciousness fashion,
which David excels at. He didn’t story-
board, per se, or design shot lists ahead
of time. Instead, he would show up on
the day with the actors and allow the
scene to organically play itself out. He
and Hoyte were adamant about wanting
a camera style that could adapt quickly
and easily with little or no down time.”
In fact, he continues, “David
rarely called ‘Cut.’ We just called ‘roll
out,’ so takes lasted as long as there was
film in the camera. But there was one
occasion, in the middle of a take, when
we were shooting in Dickie’s apartment
on a wide prime lens. We were about
five minutes into the take, and David
asked me to go to a longer lens and
move around Christian. I said, ‘Okay,
let’s cut and quickly change lenses,’ and
David yelled, ‘No, don’t cut!’ So, for the
first time in my career, I stopped and

ww.theasc.com
w January 2011 45
◗ Tough Love
Right: Ward goes
nose-to-nose with
WBU champion
Shea Neary
(Anthony Molinari)
during the prefight
introductions for
their2000 light-
welterweight title
bout in England.
The production
lent the fight
scenes extra
authenticity by
employingperiod-
correct Betacam-SP
standard-definition
cameras, which are
frequently visible
in frame. Below:
Ward exults after
defeating Neary
on an eighth-
round technical
knockout.

source is, and then bouncing a large

changed lenses on the Steadicam while
the film was still rolling through the
camera!”
Many settings were dingy, tight
locations such as apartments, gyms, jail
cells and police stations, and van
Hoytema’s source-lighting schemes
were central to the realism Russell was
pursuing. Indeed, gaffer Mike Moyer
calls van Hoytema one of the most
talented source lighters he has ever seen.
“Hoyte believes that if there’s a window,
he should light through the window,
and if there’s a door, he should light
through the door,” says Moyer. “The
way he achieves this is by creating large
‘eyebrows,’ basically reflective material
over every window or whatever the
light, in this case reflector flood Arrimax
18Ks, into that reflective material. We
hardly ever put a light up in the air;
lights always stayed on the ground, and
we used large bounces. One bounce was
120-by-12 feet, rigged off trusses and
motors over the side of a building, and
we had large lights on the street below,
over the face of the building, bouncing
up into it. By adjusting the angle of the
truss frame, we created a wonderful,
natural-looking bounce through the
windows that was very controllable.
With the bounce material in place, we
could just move lights to different posi-
tions on the ground to get different
angles of attack with soft light coming
through the windows.”
Van Hoytema says it was almost a
steadfast rule to light from the outside,
with very few exceptions for drama
sequences. The “eyebrow” is something
he has been utilizing for years, and he
suggests it’s a “simple way of lighting a
set while still being able to look out
windows. The floor is clean of lights, so
the camera can move around freely. You

46 January 2011 American Cinematographer

◗ Tough Love
Right: An
overhead grid of
Par 64 cans
illuminates the
ring in Lowell’s
Paul Tsongas
Arena, where all
of the fight
scenes were shot
over three days.
Below: Large
“eyebrow”
reflectors
suspended above
location windows
allowed van
Hoytema to
bounce lighting
into the interiors,
creating realistic
ambience.

or near buildings. Moyer says such

can throw light into the room without
blocking the view outside. The light will
fall off quite fast the farther it goes into
the room, so there is quite a dynamic
when the actors move around. We just
let them go dark away from windows,
and a bit of smoke helped carry the light
a bit further, reducing the contrast.”
Van Hoytema was equally
dynamic with the film’s extensive street-
lighting work during night filming,
because numerous sequences take place
on the urban streets of Lowell. In keep-
ing with the story’s period, van
Hoytema was committed to avoiding a
sodium look on the streets, so all street-
lights close to the filming were fitted
with metal-halide lamps (250-watt
4,000°K 90CRI) that were more
neutral.
Again, the goal was to light as
naturally as possible, bouncing light
across and around sections of streets
when actors were interacting up against
scenes were largely lit with three
Condors; one lifted a 20'x20'
Ultrabounce, one lifted a 48-light spot
Dino, and one lifted another 20'x20'
Ultrabounce to capture and bounce spill
from light shooting across the street.
For action in boxing arenas,
however, the shooting and lighting
paradigm changed to emulate HBO
broadcasts of three of those fights. All
of the boxing scenes were shot over
three days in Lowell’s Paul Tsongas
Arena. This was mainly because
Wahlberg wanted to do all choreo-
graphed fighting himself, and that work
left him exhausted, so the filmmakers
didn’t want to prolong it.
Russell was also keen to find an
approach to the boxing scenes that
would be different from the stylized
imagery in Raging Bull and Rocky.
Thus, he decided to avoid bringing
cameras inside the ring and close to the
actors, except for a brief montage in the
middle of the film and a few shots in
the climactic fight. “Mark really wanted
to shoot the boxing scenes so they
flowed in one big sequence, rather than
setting them up shot by shot,” recalls
Russell. “We did shoot a small fight
sequence that was stylized from the

48 January 2011 American Cinematographer

actor’s point-of-view, and I enjoyed
that, but otherwise, we shot those
scenes as if they were broadcasts of real
matches. There was a certain flow to
shooting in one movement with the
[Betacam] cameras rather than stop-
ping and starting. That gave a rawness MARK II

and realness to the flow of the fights.

Because we used older video cameras
that were clearly meant for the small
screen, there was some banding in the
images when they were blown up, but I
feel that gives it a historical feel.”
The team used the same kind
of Sony BVP-900 and BVP-950
Betacam-SP cameras that were used to
capture Ward’s fights, and some of the Available with For all 35 mm lenses incl.
original HBO cameramen and techni- PL54-mount Optimo Rouge DP
PANA-mount
cians also worked on these scenes. (The
BNCR-mount
network even provided the same boxing
ring, ropes and arena advertisements
used for those televised matches.) “The
technique is essentially how HBO still Representative in U.S.:
covers boxing matches,” notes Haley. camadeus Film Technologies
Nor th Hollywood, CA 91605
“There were two long-lens cameras Tel. +1-818-764-1234 We accept www.denz-deniz.com
perched basically halfway up the
stadium stairs to get long-lens and wide
shots, and then they had two apron
cameras, handheld cameras just outside
the ropes to get more intimate coverage
of the fight. Those four cameras were
taping to isolated tape decks in the
production truck but were also being
cut together live by an HBO technical
director. That gave them a line cut they
could use as a starting point and that
David could use in editing, with addi-
tional material to choose from on tape.
Then, [B-camera operator] Dana
Gonzalez and I came in, abandoning
our film cameras and using Sony
[UVW-500] Betacams to cover all the
events happening outside the ring and
around the arena.”
Van Hoytema notes that he had
never shot or even watched boxing
before making The Fighter. He says
HBO’s guidelines for how to shoot
these scenes were easy to follow. “David
would sit at a table with monitors from
all the camera outputs, and let things
happen,” recalls the cinematographer.
“We’d work in sequences rather than
moments or beats. It was tough for
 ◗ Tough Love
action. “It was a box grid the dimen-
sions of the boxing ring, with about 35
medium Par 64 cans for each side of the
ring,” Moyer explains. “All the lenses
were turned, every other light, so that
one lens was horizontal and one was
vertical.”
The project’s post workflow was
handled at Technicolor facilities in
New York and Hollywood. The New
York house provided dailies, and the
Hollywood house handled the digital
intermediate, including up-rezzing
and converting the Beta-SP images.
According to post supervisor Chris-
topher Kulikowski, the standard-defin-
ition video footage blew up to 24-fps
Wahlberg, Bale and crewmembers prepare to shoot the movie’s opening scene on the streets of high-definition nicely while retaining
Lowell. Wahlberg, a Massachusetts native and one of the project’s producers, insisted that the
film be shot in his home state to capture the local flavor.
“the gritty quality of the video, which is
what David wanted.
David to see everything live on all the Lighting in the arena was largely “It was basically a two-step
monitors we had, so there was a lot of configured exactly as it was for HBO process,” Kulikowski continues. “They
playback on set. It was a bit of different broadcasts, creating what Russell calls “a shot in the Beta-SP format at 30 fps,
thinking for us to make the drama fit an harsh feel” on the big screen. A basic and then we converted it to HD at 24
established sports style.” truss grid over the ring lit most of the fps by running it through a Terranex

In the
shimmering
heat, a glassy
surface will
soon be
shattered. 352

Think LEE
www.leefilters.com
50
conversion box, and then later converted
all the video material to DPX files to be
incorporated into the DI files, retaining
the noise and imperfections of the orig-
inal Beta-SP. It was an enormous under-
taking largely because they shot six to
eight video cameras inside the arena;
organizing all that footage was challeng-
ing. The tapes were actually sent to Los
Angeles, where the conversion work was
done by Technicolor Creative Services.”
As far as massaging the 2-perf
35mm footage went, Kulikowski
suggests that today’s DI tools have made
those adjustments fairly straightforward.
“The DI requires everything to be
turned into a 4-perf anamorphic nega-
tive and print, so the optical-blowup
issue has gone away,” he says. “As far as
removing imperfections, you treat it like
a visual-effects sequence and paint those
out. Technicolor has great restoration
tools for that sort of work. Shooting 2-
perf means you have to take some more
time in post, but on the other hand, it
made their lives so much easier in he regards the cinematographer as
production for this kind of a movie.” “someone I think I can work with for a
The DI, handled by colorist Tony long time. He’s a very special guy. I like
Dustin, was the first of Russell’s career. people with a fresh eye who are not
This time, in a departure from the cynical or hungry.” ●
extensive post manipulation he has
requested on films like Three Kings (AC
Nov. ’99), the director asked Dustin to
be subtle, because he was satisfied that TECHNICAL SPECS
van Hoytema had largely achieved the
desired look in-camera. That was true 2.40:1
even with the Betacam footage, which
2-perf Super 35mm and
van Hoytema describes as “strangely Digital Capture
sharp and rough at the same time” on
the big screen — exactly what he and Aaton Penelope; Sony BVP-900,
Russell wanted. “Something really BVP-950
interesting happens with the texture
Angenieux Optimo and
when you convert Betacam to film,” Arri Master Prime lenses
says the cinematographer, “and when we
tested it in prep, David and I thought Fujifilm Eterna 250T 8553,
that looked better than the HD tests we 250D 8563, 500T 8573
made. We felt this was an obvious and
Digital Intermediate
quite logical way to do it, actually.”
Russell says his creative synergy Printed on Fujifilm
with van Hoytema was so complete that Eterna-CP 3514DI
51
 Tron: Legacy, shot by
Claudio Miranda, ASC,
mixes 2-D and 3-D
to update the
environments of the
1982 sci-fi hit.

By Noah Kadner

•|•

Back tothe Grid

I
t’s been nearly three decades since Kevin Flynn (Jeff
Bridges) first entered the high-stakes digital world of the
Grid in Tron. The sequel Tron: Legacy reveals that Kevin
disappeared in the Grid 20 years ago, leaving behind his
son, Sam (Garrett Hedlund), who has become an aimless
extreme-sports enthusiast. Legacy, directed by first-timer
Joseph Kosinski and shot by Claudio Miranda, ASC, takes
Sam into the Grid, where he is finally reunited with his father.
Among other challenges, the action-packed journey required
Miranda to shoot both 2-D and 3-D and help to further
evolve the digital facial-replacement techniques that played
heavily into his previous feature, David Fincher’s The Curious
Case of Benjamin Button (AC Jan.’09).
Fincher introduced Kosinski to Miranda in 2005 when
Kosinski was looking for a cinematographer to shoot a
commercial in Los Angeles. “Claudio and I have done another
14 or so commercials together since then,” says Kosinski. “He
has been a great friend and partner. He’s an amazing artist
with a great technical mind, and he’s always up for tinkering
with something new.”
The first steps toward realizing Legacy included the
creation of a teaser trailer, which premiered at Comic-Con in
2008. “At the time, [Disney] wasn’t sure there was demand for
a Tron sequel, and we knew that if we failed [at Comic-Con],
the project would be put on hold,” says Kosinski. But the
trailer was a hit, and the feature received a green light.
Principal photography commenced in April 2009 and was
done primarily onstage at the Canadian Motion Picture Park
outside Vancouver; location work for sequences set in the real
world was done around the city.

52 January 2011 American Cinematographer

 Opposite: Sam
Flynn (Garrett
Hedlund) follows
in his father’s
footsteps and
races a light cycle
within the world
of the Grid in
Tron: Legacy,
directed by Joseph
Kosinski and shot
by Claudio
Miranda, ASC.
This page, top:
Twenty years after
disappearing into
the Grid, Kevin
Flynn (Jeff
Bridges) is
reunited with his
son. Bottom: The
filmmakers
utilized digital
face-replacement
technology to
create Legacy’s
antagonist, CLU
2.0.

AC visited the Legacy set in June

2009,as the filmmakers prepared to
shoot a major action sequence and
close-ups of Hedlund simultaneously
on different stages. Kosinski started the
Unit photography by Douglas Curran. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Disney Enterprises, Inc.

day by showing off the Comic-Con

trailer in high quality and then review-
ing storyboards and cutout models of
key set pieces, many of which paid
subtle homage to the original film.
The groundbreaking visual effects
in the original Tron, shot by Bruce
Logan, ASC ( AC Aug. ’82), were
achieved primarily by painstakingly
rotoscoping and colorizing black-and-
white 70mm film and incorporating
state-of-the-art computer animation.
To enhance the sense of technological system, fitted with Sony HDC-F950s, system designed by Pace to handle inte-
progress that has marked the interven- was used on James Cameron’s Avatar rocular/convergence, mirror corrections
ing decades, the Legacy team chose to (AC Jan. ’10), and although the Legacy and iris; in addition, Steadman pulled
embrace high-definition video, and in team tested that rig, “we really preferred focus with a Preston remote-focus
order to further distinguish the digital the 35mm-sized sensor in the F35,” handset.
world created by Kevin Flynn from the Miranda says during a break in filming. Recording 1080p HD to Codex
real world, they shot sequences set in the “I loved its shallow depth of field and hard drives, the filmmakers devised
Grid in stereoscopic 3-D. After testing softer, more pleasing 3-D effect.” When their own guidelines for their 3-D work.
a number of options, Miranda decided shooting with the 3-D rig, 1st AC Jonas For example, referring to the point in
to work with Pace’s Fusion 3-D system, Steadman supported camera operator space where the two cameras’ lenses are
using a pair of Sony CineAlta F35 John Clothier from a specially converted aimed, and which determines whether
cameras. digital-imaging-technician station, objects appear to float in front of or
An earlier iteration of the Fusion where he used a Camnet touch-screen behind the screen plane, “we decided to

ww.theasc.com
w January 2011 53
◗ Back to the Grid

Top: Alan Bradley

(Bruce Boxleitner)
informs Sam that
he received a page
from the long-
abandoned Flynn’s
Arcade. Middle and
bottom: Aided by
digital extensions,
Flynn’s Arcade was
constructed at the
Canadian Motion
Picture Park
outside Vancouver.

not lock convergence with focus,”

Miranda explains. “We treated conver-
gence as a fixed point in 3-D space
that moves independently from focus,
which makes the screen appear like a
box you’re looking into, and keeps
things from leaping out unnaturally.
Additionally, we went against the ‘rule’
of deep-focus depth-of-field for 3-D
and let our backgrounds go really soft,
which helps guide the eye along with
the depth cues.”
The filmmakers framed for
2.35:1, and “we protected the top and
bottom of the 2.35 frame in order to
keep items from breaking the horizontal
frame lines,” notes Kosinski. “When the
brain perceives a depth cue disrupted by
those edges, it tends to ruin the illusion.”
Given the complexity and weight
of the dual-F35 3-D rig, Miranda
ruled out handheld and Steadicam
shots. “I would have needed Arnold
Schwarzenegger to carry that rig,” he
says with a laugh. “The style of cine-
matography we envisioned for Legacy
was well suited to dolly and crane shots.
Joe liked nodal shots on axis and linear,
deliberate camera moves from point A
to point B, which is logical for a movie
set inside a computer. Many of our sets
were elevated, and we spent a lot of time
on a Hydrascope telescoping arm
combined with a Titan crane and a

54 January 2011 American Cinematographer

Chapman G3 stabilized head. We also
modified a Graphlite, designed by
Pacific Motion Control, to work as a
gantry motion-control crane. Instead of
laying motion-control track on the
ground, the track and crane were
inverted to come from the ceiling. This
gave us great flexibility; I could reach
anywhere on set without laying track. It
also allowed me to create a perfect high-
speed circle track.”
Some of the action set in Legacy’s
digital world also required high-speed
photography. For this, Pace supplied the
production with a modified 3-D mirror
rig fitted with two optically linked
Vision Research Phantom HD
cameras, allowing Miranda to shoot at Top: Miranda motivated the lighting inside Flynn’s Arcade from hanging practicals, arcade-
game machines and the street outside. Bottom: Sam discovers his father’s secret lab, where
up to 1,000 fps while closely matching he inadvertently triggers a laser that digitizes him and transports him into the Grid, cuing the
the F35 material. film’s switch from 2-D to 3-D.
Legacy opens with a prologue set
in 1989 and then jumps ahead to the shot with a body double mimicking other scene; we didn’t want to draw any
present day; these sequences were shot his physical movements,” explains special attention to the effect.”
in 2-D with a single F35 on location in Miranda. Bridges’ facial movements In Legacy’s present day, Alan
Vancouver. The prologue features a were captured by means of a head- Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner, reprising his
young Sam (Owen Best) and Kevin, mounted rig with four witness cameras, role from Tron) prompts Sam, now 27,
and Bridges was able to play his younger and the body double, Miranda notes, to check on Kevin’s long-abandoned
self thanks to the facial-replacement “wore a gray mask to facilitate the arcade. In the first Tron, Flynn’s Arcade
technology pioneered by Digital replacement process. The double had a was a real location in Culver City, Calif.,
Domain for Benjamin Button . Button’s hairstyle and build similar to Jeff’s and production designer Darren
visual-effects supervisor, Eric Barba, younger self, so we could go without the Gilford painstakingly re-created the set
again collaborated with Miranda for mask on over-the-shoulder shots. As on at the Vancouver studio for Legacy.
Legacy. “Jeff was on set to digitally drive Benjamin Button, the idea was to treat Inside the arcade, “I didn’t use the orig-
the facial animation, and then we the lighting no differently from any inal film as a reference,” says Miranda.

ww.theasc.com
w January 2011 55
◗ Back to the Grid

“Our version of the look is less saturated

and has warmer tones. The place is
supposed to be dilapidated now, and it’s
lit by the glow of covered arcade-game
machines and sodium-vapor lights
motivated by the street outside. We
used conventional lights outside the
arcade — the big light through the door
was a 20K gelled with ½ CTO. In the
arcade, we put R40 tungsten lamps
inside the hanging practicals, creating
pools of light. The arcade machines lit
themselves, though I did augment them
a bit with some Blue Green Kinos
around the machine for lighting
Garrett. For ambience, we had a few
four-bank Kino Flos in soft boxes
overhead, but they were used very
minimally.”
Hidden behind the Tron video
game, which serves as a focal point in
the arcade, Sam finds a passageway that
leads to his father’s secret lab. “We put a
bunch of practicals in the lab, but turned
them all off in the end because we
decided to play things darker and more
mysterious. The only lights were the
20K [with ½ CTO] outside the
window and, for fill, a couple of 4-foot
single Kino Flos gelled with ½ CTO for
Top: Sam is discovered by a Recognizer, which casts a blinding beam of light akin to a helicopter fill.”The lab contains a laser capable of
searchlight. Miranda used a digital projector to give the light a subtle computer-grid effect. digitizing a human and transporting
Middle and bottom: Bridges wore a head-mounted rig fitted with witness cameras to capture
facial movements for CLU 2.0; the digitized face was then mapped onto a body double. him or her into the Grid — the same
mechanism that launched Kevin into

56 January 2011 American Cinematographer

◗ Back to the Grid
Sam is pressed
into play in the
lethal Disc
Arena, which
was constructed
onstage as a
mostly
bluescreen set.
the digital realm in Tron. When Sam
inadvertently triggers the laser, he, too, is
transported to the Grid, at which point
the film transitions to stereoscopic 3-D.
The world of the Grid includes
city streets, with long stretches of road-
ways and façades, which were built as
backlot sets with interactive lighting.
“We avoided traditional 1K and 2K
units,” says Miranda. Instead, he and
gaffer Drew Davidson employed Image
80s with Kino Flo 55 tubes for a 40'x40'
overhead soft box and some Philips
Color Kinetics lights. The latter “had
5,500°K and 3,200°K LEDs hooked to
a dimmer so we could mix color
temperatures, but we mainly used only
the 5,500°K side,” notes Miranda.
58 January 2011
“Instead of streetlamps, we integrated
Vision X 4-foot off-road-racing LED
headlamps everywhere,” says Miranda.
“They looked beautiful.”
Lost on the Grid, Sam is discov-
ered by a Recognizer, a U-shaped flying
troop carrier/prisoner transport that
appeared in a more primitive form in
Tron. The Recognizer casts a blinding
beam of light onto Sam, and Miranda
“wanted it to feel like a helicopter
searchlight, but a little different — the
beam has a subtle computer-grid effect
over it. We used a digital projector with
the grid pattern loaded up, and we
beamed it all around Sam to create the
effect.”
After being picked up, Sam is
American Cinematographer
taken to a room and fitted with a
skintight latex suit accented with glow-
ing piping, the uniform of all of the
Grid’s inhabitants. (Quantum Creation
FX supplied the suits.) In Tron, the
glowing effect was created in post
through frame-by-frame cel animation;
for Legacy, the filmmakers were deter-
mined to create the effect in-camera.
Gilford explains, “The primary lighting
in the costumes was EL [Electro
Luminescent] technology derived from
cell-phone displays; it’s a very thin lamp
sandwiched in a film laminate. The
suits were sculpted in 3-D using
[Luxology’s] Modo and [Pixologic’s]
ZBrush, and then sent directly to
manufacturing and cast in latex. The
actors wore lithium battery packs, and
we controlled the lights wirelessly to
conserve power; we’d turn the lights on
as the cameras started rolling and
switch them off right at ‘cut.’”
“The suits really drove the pastel
look of the digital world,” notes
Miranda. “We wanted to see the suit
lights casting interactive light from
character to chara cter and have every-
thing look as luminous as possible, like
the glow of a computer monitor. The
good guys have cool tones — blues,
purples and greens — while the bad
guys have the warmer reds and oranges.
“We really wanted the suits to
read bright, and we wanted to capture
their interaction with the sets and char-
acters,” the cinematographer continues.
The suits’ low light output necessitated
shooting with minimum levels of fill
light and keeping lenses at their widest
apertures. Miranda worked with a
selection of Arri Master Primes, favor-
ing the 25mm and 32mm. He turned to
the 14mm and 18mm to take in the
sets’ full scope. The cinematographer
also eschewed filtration in order to
minimize light loss and deliver pristine
imagery for post. “I generally lit to the
monitors and didn’t carry a light meter,”
says Miranda. “After a while, you get
used to lighting to the waveform.”
Once in the Grid, Sam is intro-
duced to the film’s antagonist, CLU 2.0,
who looks exactly like Kevin Flynn circa
 •|• Barba and Preeg on Tron: Legacy
T he following are excerpts from a
recent conversation with Digital
Domain visual-effects supervisor Eric
Barba and head of animation Steve
Preeg about their contributions to
Tron: Legacy.
American Cinematographer: The
original Tron was a watershed
moment for motion-picture visual
effects. Did you approach Legacy with
the goal of doing something no one
had ever done?
Steve Preeg: It was certainly a
concern that we live up to the original,
but any major visual-effects film
requires some level of new software
development, and we wrote a number
of tools specifically for Tron: Legacy ,
including new acquisition techniques
for animating CLU, and new render
technologies and tracking software.
Eric Barba: Our first step was to
build a previsualization team. This was
in 2008, before the live-action team was
hired. We started planning what we
were going to shoot and how we would
shoot it. We built art-department assets
into the previz to get an idea of how
things would work in front of a stereo-
scopic lens. We planned out every
sequence and every shot, determining
what would be synthetic and what
would be practical and how to build
both. The disc game was an early
sequence that helped us establish the
look of the Grid. What do the discs
look like when they hit a wall? What
effect do they leave behind? How hot
should they be optically? The other
thing that helped us establish the Grid’s
look was the first shot of the new
Recognizer. I kept telling my crew, ‘This
is the first time people will see a
Recognizer. It needs to be massive, and
it needs to be the coolest thing we’ve
never seen before.’ We did 120-odd
versions of that shot before Joe
[Kosinski] and I were both happy with
it.
Let’s talk about the CLU char-
acter, a photo-real re-creation of a
60 January 2011
young Jeff Bridges.
Preeg: The first time Eric and I
did something like that was on
Benjamin Button , but CLU was more
difficult because everyone has seen Jeff
Bridges in his thirties, whereas no one
has seen Brad Pitt at 80. We looked at
different films and pictures of Jeff from
that era and tried to figure out the
things about him that are constant.
What new techniques did you
develop for this process?
Preeg: Jeff wanted to be on set
interacting with the other actors, so we
developed a system that used four
helmet-mounted cameras, similar to
what was done on Avatar, to capture his
performance. While Jeff performed his
CLU scenes with the other actors, his
body double, John Reardon, studied
Jeff’s movements and performance.
When it came time to shoot, John,
wearing a gray hood covered with
tracking dots, would mimic Jeff, and
then we would replace John’s head with
Jeff’s CG features, based on perfor-
mance data we captured with the
helmet cameras. We also built a library
of facial performance motions based on
the Facial Action Coding System Paul
Ekman developed in the 1970s — it’s a
140-point map of hundreds of human
facial expressions. The points represent
the regions of the face that move in
relation to one another, and they let us
determine what muscles were activated
American Cinematographer
•|•
to move those points to a given posi-
tion. We walked Jeff through a FACS
session, recorded his face, and built a
database of expressions, and then [our
propriety program] Faceplant trans-
planted Jeff’s muscle system to CLU’s.
Barba: We did some face
replacement for Sam [Garrett
Hedlund] as well. During the light-
cycle scenes, we used a four-camera
Red One array to photograph Garrett’s
face and project it back into Sam’s
helmet. That whole system came from
Joe wanting to shoot from any direc-
tion.
How do you know when you’ve
successfully animated a believable-
looking CG human?
Preeg: That’s for the audience to
decide. I’m proud of my work, but I’m
so close to it that all I see are the imper-
fections.
Barba: It’s hard to put down that
paintbrush — they have to rip it out of
your hand! We had an amazing team.
All 1,500 visual-effects shots came
through Digital Domain in Venice, but
we also worked with our Vancouver
office and companies in Northern
California, Mexico City, Mumbai,
Toronto and Thailand. When it comes
together on the big screen, all you can
do is cross your fingers and hope the
audience loves it.
— Iain Stasukevich
1982. Once again, face-replacement was
employed to capture Bridges’ facial
movements and map them onto a body
double. “The CLU character could only
exist post- Benjamin Button ,” says
Kosinski. “With other digital creatures,
you can get away with a lot, but with a
digital human being, 99 percent isn’t
good enough. It’s a gut reaction when
something’s not right in a shot of a digi-
tal human — it could be an eyeline, a
lighting match or lip sync. The actors all
understood we were pushing the enve-
lope with this process.”
CLU 2.0 keeps his command
center on the bridge of the Rectifier, a
huge, floating battle cruiser. The bridge
set incorporated extensive practical
LEDs covered with orange-tinted film
and milk Plexiglas over which heads-up
display graphics were placed in post.
“We placed a big soft box with Image
80s overhead and had LED ribbons in The set for
the floors and walls,” Miranda details. Kevin’s
“There were literally miles of LED safehouse recalls
the “alien zoo”
lighting strung all over the place. We from 2001: A
also installed 4-foot and 2-foot single Space Odyssey,
Kinos in the walls, and we had sheens of with a low
ceiling and a
light everywhere.” glass floor lit
After he receives his “digital from underneath
duds,” Sam is taken to the Disc Arena, with Kino Flo
Image 80s
where he is forced into a deadly game in controlled by a
which players fling light discs at one GrandMA
another. Being hit by a disc is fatal. In dimmer board.
anticipation of the sequence’s extensive
visual effects, the Disc Arena footage
was shot almost entirely against blue-
screen, which Miranda lit with overhead complete reflections of the actors, which below.” Each Image 80 was individually
soft boxes fitted with Image 80s with would later be mapped onto the virtual connected to a GrandMA dimmer
KF55 tubes. During AC’s set visit, set extensions. If the angle got too high, board, which enabled Miranda to create
Miranda deployed the 3-D-linked we’d switch to pure glass floors for more geometric chase patterns for various
Phantom HD camera rig to capture muted reflectivity.” effects. “Once the floor panels were
shots of martial artist Anis Cheurfa as Once he survives the games in going, the safe house didn’t need much
Rinzler, CLU’s main enforcer. Miranda the Disc Arena, Sam meets Quorra augmentation,” says Miranda. “We shot
and Kosinski asked for a few extra takes (Olivia Wilde), who takes him to a safe one of my favorite scenes in there, when
to enable Cheurfa, hurtling through the house, where, at last, he meets his father. Sam speaks with Quorra and their suits
air on a wire harness, to time his flying The minimalist abode is reminiscent of are actually lighting and interacting
kick perfectly into the Phantom’s the “alien zoo” from the final scenes of with each other.”
Lexan-protected lenses. Gilford ex- 2001: A Space Odyssey. Davidson recalls, Sam and Kevin unite to escape
plains the various lighting setups: “Most of the other sets were built with the Grid and return to the real world, a
“Depending on the shot requirements, high ceilings, but the safe house had a journey that leads them to the End of
we used different floor surfaces to get low ceiling, along with a floor consisting Line nightclub,which was still under
the interactions right. At certain angles, entirely of 6-by-6-foot glass panels. We construction when AC visited the
we’d use mirrored floors to see the used Image 80s to light each panel from production. Eschewing the trend of

ww.theasc.com
w January 2011 61
 ◗ Back to the Grid
Kosinski (lying
on the floor)
works out an
angle with
Miranda (right)
and Hedlund.
partial sets surrounded by bluescreen in
large-scale visual-effects movies, the
filmmakers chose to construct almost
the entire set with a minimum of blue-
screen outside the club’s windows,
providing a more realistic stage for the
performers and camera. “We initially
thought of doing some handheld or
Steadicam shots leading into the club,
but the rig’s weight made that too chal-
lenging,” says Miranda. Instead,
Miranda and key grip Kim Olson
employed the overhead Graphlite rig,
programming it with automated moves
to create a Steadicam-style feel.
Operated by the extravagant
Castor (Michael Sheen), the End of
Line club features interlocking LED
panels laid directly into the walls and
ceiling. The club’s floor, measuring
approximately 20'x20', was fitted with
Barco panels, and the media the film-
makers ran was clouds. “We also used
the Barcos to simulate elevator effects,”
notes Miranda. “We used two 4-by-20-
foot Barco panels placed to the actors’
left and right, and on those panels we
ran media to simulate the elevator trav-
eling up or down. This was a lighting
effect only and not in shot.”
Miranda and Kosinski monitored
their work in 3-D while shooting with
specially calibrated 50" Hyundai
HDTV monitors that offered a half-
resolution representation of their work.
They also watched full-resolution 3-D
dailies each day in Pace’s 3-D mobile-
projection trailer, which was parked just
outside the stage. “The on-set monitors

62
allowed us to see what was working in
2-D vs. 3-D in real time,” says Kosinski,
“but the projected dailies we watched at
lunchtime were where we’d really get a
feeling for what we were getting in
terms of depth and detail.”
AC was invited into the Pace
trailer to review an assembly of dailies in
3-D, as well as special-unit still photog-
raphy also shot in 3-D. Miranda and
Kosinski pointed out that because the
Pace trailer uses two optically inter-
linked projectors, they could actually
alter the convergence of footage after
filming to determine where shots might
work better with a different level of
depth.
During prep, Miranda developed
a look-up table that the filmmakers
could toggle on and off on their moni-
tors during production to get a sense of
the intended look. “It added a bit of
contrast to the raw footage and served
as a one-light correction for our dailies,”
he says. To emphasize the cool feel
within the Grid, Miranda typically lit on down. This was truly one of the best
for a 5,500°K color temperature and teams I’ve worked with, and it feels like
kept the camera balanced for 3,200°K. there’s a lot of excitement for this movie
“I wouldn’t recommend that strategy for out there.” ●
other digital cameras,” he cautions, “but
the F35 is really soft in that transition.
I’d also occasionally take a piece of
footage and grade it myself in Apple’s TECHNICAL SPECS
Color as a reference.” The final digital
2.40:1
grade was completed at Laser Pacific
with colorist David Cole. “I was able to 3-D and 2-D Digital Capture
sit in on a few of the sessions and gave
some notes,” says Miranda. “I did not Sony F35; Vision Research
spend as much time there as I would Phantom HD
have liked, however, because I was Arri Master Prime lenses
committed to another project.”
After working on Legacy for Digital Intermediate
nearly four years, Kosinski enthuses,
“I’m really impressed with the work the
entire team has done; their level of
commitment exceeded my expectations.
It’s been a tremendous, fun challenge,
and I’m very happy with how things
worked out.” Miranda adds, “There was
a unified camaraderie from the studio
63

Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC receives
the Society’s Lifetime Achievement
Award for a body of work that
reflects vision, purpose and a
personal perspective.
By Patricia Thomson
•|•
64 January 2011
A League
of
His
Own
A
fter four decades behind the camera, Roger Deakins,
ASC, BSC, is at the top of his game. “I think I’m doing
work now that’s as good as I’ve ever done,” he says. His
peers in the ASC clearly agree, as they will honor him
next month with the Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
The ASC honor is the latest in an incredible run that has
included double ASC Award nominations for two consecu-
tive years, 2008 (for Revolutionary Road and The Reader) and
2007 (for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert
Ford and No Country for Old Men). Indeed, Deakins’ presence
looms so large at these ceremonies that when Robert Elswit,
ASC accepted the 2007 ASC Award for There Will Be Blood,
he suggested that the Society establish a special category for
“films shot by Roger Deakins.”
The four films that earned Deakins his double nomina-
tions reflect his special niche as a shape-shifting cinematogra-
American Cinematographer
 pher for auteur directors with substan- Opposite:
tive, character-driven scripts. “That’s a Surrounded by
some of his
very small niche right now,” he says with signature soft light,
a laugh. But it’s one that many cine- Roger Deakins,
AC file photos by François Duhamel, SMPSP; Melinda Sue Gordon, SMPSP; Frank Masi, SMPSP; Mario Tursi; Merie

matographers would envy, as it has led ASC, BSC awaits

the next shot on
him to collaborate with filmmakers such the set of
as Joel and Ethan Coen, Sam Mendes, Revolutionary Road
John Sayles, Martin Scorsese, Bob (2008). This page,
top left: In the mid-
Rafelson and Norman Jewison. Of 1970s, Deakins
course, he is most closely identified with takes the helm
the Coens, America’s most idiosyncratic
Wallace; Bruce Birmelin, and Michael Weinstein. Additional photos courtesy of Roger Deakins.

while working on
one of his first
auteurs; he has shot 11 films for them documentaries for
since Barton Fink (1991), including the British TV, about a
current release True Grit. yacht race that
circumnavigated
None of this was in the crystal ball the globe. Top
when Deakins was a young lad in right: As a student
Torquay, a fishing town on England’s at England’s
National Film
southwest coast. Once a Victorian School, Deakins (at
resort, the town didn’t offer many career far left) works on
options for a youth with artistic inclina- The Penal Colony
(1972/1973),
tions. Deakins’ father ran a construction directed by Neil
company, and his grandfather was a fish- Levenson (at
erman. “My dad wanted me to take over camera). Middle: In
another Penal
his business,” Deakins recalls. “For many Colony still,
years,when I was working in London in Deakins preps a
the film industry, my father still thought dolly shot. Bottom:
During filming of
I’d come back and take over!” Alex Cox’s Sid and
Instead, Deakins took after his Nancy (1986),
artistically inclined mother, an actress Deakins practices
his punk-rock sneer
and amateur painter. He also took up the while surrounded
brush, painting realistic renderings of by actors (from left)
people and landscapes. “They were Tony London, Gary
Oldman and
pretty depressing, actually,” he says. But Graham Fletcher-
they led him to still photography. “I Cook.
suppose I took up still photography

ww.theasc.com
w January 2011 65
◗ A League of His Own
Top: Director
John Sayles
works out a shot
with Deakins on
location for
Passion Fish
(1992). Right: The
cinematographer
at work on
Michael Apted’s
Thunderheart
(1992).
because I always had an interest in
[seeing] people within their environ-
ments.” Deakins had the opportunity to
soak up art-house movies through the
Torquay film society. He and his brother
trudged miles to watch everything from
Italian neorealist films to Peter Watkins’
faux vérité documentaries. Seeing a
woman faint during TheWar Game ,
Watkins’ vivid scenario about a nuclear
explosion in London, deeply impressed
Deakins, but the idea of making a career
out of film hadn’t yet coalesced in his
mind.
Intending to become a painter, he
enrolled in the Bath Academy of Art,
but found himself assigned to the
graphic-design department. “I guess
they didn’t like my naturalistic paint-
ings,” he says. “Abstract was in, and I
didn’t do much of that.” But there was a
small film department. “I wanted to get
involved in that, but only two or three
students were allowed to play with film
cameras, and I didn’t get the chance.”
Instead, he discovered still photography
— in a big way. “I used to spend nights
in a darkroom printing, then days out,
just wandering around towns and
seaside communities taking pictures.”
He even pinched the school’s darkroom
key to make a copy for himself.
Curiously, photography itself was not
part of Bath’s curriculum. “It was just a
way of recording images to be used in
graphic design— if you were designing
book covers, for instance,” says Deakins.
When the academy brought in
professional photographers as guest
teachers, Deakins soaked up the lessons,
particularly those imparted by Roger
Mayne. “He was one of the first
photographers to go out in the street
and photograph the lives of people in
London,” says Deakins. “He was quite a
big influence on the way I started to see
things.”
After college, Deakins wasn’t sure
what to do. A friend told him about a
new school opening up in London
called the National Film School. “I
thought that really made sense, because
my photography was tending towards
documentary, so I applied along with
my friend,” he says. Neither of them got
in. Deakins made an appointment with
the school’s headmaster, Colin Young,
to find out why. He recalls, “On the wall
behind Colin’s deskwas this photo-
graph of a horse and car. It was blurred
because it was a time exposure. Colin
said, ‘Well,your photographs are not
really very filmic.’ He pointed to the
photo behind him and said, ‘ That’s
filmic.’ I said, ‘No, that’s a blurred
photograph.’” Deakins laughs at his
youthful chutzpah. “I disputed his idea
of what was filmic and what wasn’t.”
Because it was the school’s first
year, it was seeking an entry class of 25
students who already had some film-
making experience and could self-start
in an unstructured educational environ-
ment. So, with the implicit promise that
he would be admitted the next year if he
acquired some practical experience,
Deakins looked for a job. The Bath
Academy principal told him about an
arts center that wanted to create a
photographic record of rural life in
North Devon. For the next year,
Deakins wandered around the country-

66 January 2011 American Cinematographer

side,photographing farmers, woods-
men, county fair-goers and other rural
folk in their element. (Some of these
black-and-white images are posted on
his website, www.rogerdeakins.com.)
He had no supervisor. “It was very much
make-it-up-as-you-go,”he recalls.
At the NFS, which Deakins
entered in 1972 as part of its second
class, practical instruction was not part
of the deal. “I’ve had no formal training,
even though I went to film school and
art college!” he says with a laugh. “Both
were places of anarchy, really. They just
gave you an opportunity to find your
own way of doing things, which I think
is the best training.” As one of the few
students who wanted to shoot, Deakins
kept quite busy. “I shot something like
15 films in three years,” he says. “One
was a 90-minute gangster movie! Most
were on 16mm, but one or two were on
35mm.”
Deakins’ own first film was a
documentary about stag hunting in
Devon. “In the rural community there,
stag hunting used to be a very big focal
point of social life, so the film wasn’t just
about stag hunting,” he notes. “In the
Above: First-
end, I took the film to North Devon, time director
and they showed it in village halls for Frank Darabont
quite awhile.” poses with
Deakins on
Director Michael Radford location for the
remembers his NFS schoolmate vividly: period drama
“Roger was clearly one of the most The Shawshank
Redemption
talented guys, a cut above everybody (1994), which
else. It became very apparent very brought the
quickly, not so much in what he did but cinematographer
his first ASC
just in his approach to things, that he Award. Left:
was a very, very serious guy.” Deakins checks
Deakins graduated with the idea the camera as
the crew readies
of making documentaries, long-form a dolly/crane
observational films in the vein of shot in
Frederick Wiseman and Richard Shawshank’s
main set.
Leacock. “For many months, I looked
for work as a camera assistant, and I
didn’t get any. So I started looking for
work as a cameraman.” The jobs gradu-
ally came: industrial films, music videos,
and then, in his first big break, a docu-
mentary about the war in Rhodesia. For
the next seven years, Deakins shot and
sometimes directed documentaries for
British television. He spent nine

ww.theasc.com
w January 2011 67
◗ A League of His Own
Deakins prepares to
take to the skies to
capture a shot for
Courage Under Fire
(1996), his first
collaboration with
director Ed Zwick.
They reteamed two
years later for The
Siege (1998).
months on a yacht during an around-
the-world race. He came under mortar
fire in Ethiopia during its guerrilla war.
He filmed anthropological documen-
taries in India and Sudan. Working with
16mm and an Éclair NPR, he became
increasingly adept as a camera operator.
Radford was among his early
collaborators. One of their documen-
taries followed Van Morrison on tour
through Ireland( Van Morrison in
Ireland). “Roger’s camerawork was
amazing,” the director says. “For the first
concert in Belfast, we’d hired six
cameramen, and they all missed the
plane, so Roger literally shot the first
half of the concert on his own, and every
single foot of it was useful!‘How to
shoot a concert with one camera’ was
what that lesson was about.”
For Deakins, a turning point
came on a documentary about schizo-
phrenia that followed eight patients
after their release from a London hospi-
tal. When one suffered a horrendous
breakdown in her apartment, his part-
ner wanted to keep filming, but Deakins
instead put the camera down to assist
the woman. After that, he stopped
shooting documentaries. “I began to feel
68 January 2011
that what I was doing was very
voyeuristic,” he recalls. “I questioned
how much effect I was having, or
whether it was just me trying to further
“I’ve had no formal
training, even though I
went to film school
and art college. Both
were places of
anarchy, really.”
my own career. I was quite conflicted.
So when I got the chance to shoot
dramas, I decided that was more me.”
His first dramatic project was a
TV miniseries called Wolcott, which
came through a friend of a friend. Soon
thereafter, Radford called. He was plan-
American Cinematographer
ning to direct his first theatrical feature,
Another Time, Another Place, a love trian-
gle set in Scotland during World War II,
and he’d been impressed by Deakins’
work on the miniseries. “It was also an
instinct that he was going to deliver,”
says Radford, who adds with a laugh,
“Then I had terrible second thoughts!
I thought, ‘What am I doing? I know
the guy, I’ve seen this TV series, but it
doesn’t tell me anything,really,about
what we’re going to do now.’But in the
end, the decision paid off in spades. The
film worked very well, and not at all
solely because of my direction, but
because of Roger’s stunning photogra-
phy— in Super 16mm! At that time,
Super 16 was very marginal. You had
about half a stop of variation on it, so
Roger had to light very precisely, with a
forest of little lights in these very tiny
spaces. The film was a real success in
Europe; it got a 10-minute standing
ovation at Cannes. It was really a big
break for both of us.”
“I never looked back after that,”
says Deakins. He reteamed with
Radford on 1984, an adaptation of
George Orwell’s novel. “That was a big
movie,” says Radford.“I remember
driving with Roger to the set of the rally
with 2,000 extras, six camera units, 25
assistants. It was just huge, and it was at
night. As we drove onto the set, we
looked at each other and said, ‘Yep, this
is it.’ It was the big time, where we were
going to show whether we’d got it or
not.”
Deakins was subsequently admit-
ted to the British Society of
Cinematographers, and 1984 won
numerous awards for special effects, “but
there were absolutely no special effects
whatsoever,” Radford notes with amuse-
ment. “Everything was shot in-camera,”
including the ubiquitous front-projec-
tion newsreels (“horrendously compli-
cated”) and the menacing helicopters.
Deakins achieved the film’s bold,
unusual palette photochemically with
the bleach-bypass process, the first time
a cinematographer had used the tech-
nique.
Radford and Deakins made one
more film together, White Mischief. The
director says he was always impressed by
Deakins’ investment in the content of
the film and his close observation of the
actors. “Roger was a great foil,” says
Radford. “You could always go to him
and ask, ‘What did you think of that
take?’ and his answer would address
more than mechanics. You’d have a
proper discussion.”
Deakins worked steadily in
England, including features with Alex
Cox ( Sid and Nancy ), Terry Jones
(Personal Services ),Mike Figgis ( Stormy
Monday), James Deardon ( Pascali’s
Island) and Bob Rafelson ( Mountains of
the Moon).One film that helped Deakins
clarify what he didn’t want to do was Air
America, directed by Roger
Spottiswoode and starring Mel Gibson
and Robert Downey Jr. The story was
about a pilot recruited into a corrupt
CIA airlift operation in Laos. “I thought
we were going to make some sort of
subversive, M.A.S.H.-style comedy, but
it didn’t turn out that way,” says Deakins.
Rather, it wound up as a buddy film. These photos show Deakins at work on Martin Scorsese’s Kundun (1998), a highly unusual telling of the
“That film was a great opportunity,but it story of Tibet’s Dalai Lama. Deakins has likened the film to a poem, and he told AC, “The story is really
was a bit too big for its own good, really,” about the child, and it’s seen primarily from his point of view .” He earned an ASC Award nomination for
his work on the film.
says the cinematographer. “At one point

ww.theasc.com
w January 2011 69
 •|•
O n the face of it, True Grit appears to
be one of the simpler stories that
Joel and Ethan Coen have tackled, but
“it’s probably the most difficult film
we’ve ever done together,” says Roger
Deakins, ASC, BSC. Adapted from
Charles Portis’ novel of the same name,
the film is narrated by 14-year-old
Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), who
tries to track down her father’s killer,
Chaney (Josh Brolin), with the help of a
one-eyed marshal, Rooster Cogburn
(Jeff Bridges). The two are joined by a
Texas Ranger (Matt Damon) who has
his own reasons for hunting Chaney,
who is hiding in Indian Territory with
his gang.
Deakins found Portis’ book
“meditative and melancholy, gritty and
real,” and the Coens’ script called for a
bleak, wintry look. Shooting on location
in the Southwest, the filmmakers got
what they wished for, but impetuous
weather, far-flung locations and harsh
terrain created a challenging 55-day
shoot.“People were saying, ‘It’s three
people and their horses. What could be
so difficult?’” Deakins recalls with some
amusement.
The pattern was set on day one,
when the filmmakers woke up to
discover that a nighttime blizzard had
dumped 2' of snow on them. “I looked
around and thought, ‘What the hell can
we shoot today?’” recalls Deakins. Only
70 January 2011
Displaying True Grit
one scene called for snow, and that loca-
tion was 150 miles away. Deakins
figured he could capture the scene with
a Libra head and an electric cart, so the
team loaded the equipment onto a stake
bed and plowed through the snow. “We
managed to make it there just by after-
noon,and we got the scene,” he says.
Deakins stayed nimble with the
help of his core collaborators, 1stAC
Andy Harris, key grip Mitch Lillian,
dolly grip Bruce Hamme and gaffer
Chris Napolitano. “They were bril-
liant,” he says. “Under those conditions,
you really had to float with it.”
True Grit required extremes of
lighting: minimal (flame-lit cabins) and
maximal (nighttime gunfights and
other action). “Imagine you’re on an
electric cart with a stabilizing head
tracking with a galloping horse at night,
some of it through forest and some of it
on an open, empty plain — and you’ve
got to light it!” Deakins says, wincing.
“The only way to do that is to get as big
a light as you can afford and put it as far
away as you can.”
That was his approach to a major
sequence in which Mattie and her
compatriots seek refuge from a snow-
storm in a mountain cabin. When they
discover that the dwelling is occupied by
two members of Chaney’s gang, they set
up a stakeout on the surrounding hills.
When the rest of the gang arrives, a
American Cinematographer
•|•
shootout erupts. The Coens set this
sequence entirely at night, requiring
Deakins to light a half-mile swath of
valley. “I didn’t want a hard, single-
source moonlight effect, but something
softer because of the oncoming snow,”
he says.
Because the sequence comprised
three parts, each with a different eyeline,
he had to design three separate lighting
setups, all without benefit of cranes
because of the rocky location. “Rumor
went around that I was using 55big
HMIs, and it was partly true, but I
True Grit photos by Lorey Sebastian and Wilson Webb, courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
wasn’t using them all at once!” says the
cinematographer. Rather, they were
divided among three hillside platforms,
each stretching 120'-150'and holding
more than 20 12Ks and 18Ks. The crew
then leapfrogged the lights. “We had
the first and second sequence ready to
go, and then,while we were shooting
the second sequence, our rigging crew
was moving lights from the first position
to the third,” says Deakins.
“It’s hard to move around at
night, especially on the side of a rocky
hill. That’s when preparation really
counts.”
— Patricia Thomson
we had three crews working. Things get
away from you, and you pile money into
shooting stuff that’s never used. It made
me decide that smaller, more contained
movies were for me.”
He put his London apartment on
the market and bought a flat in Devon.
“I just thought I’d get out of London and
do things that I really wanted to do,” he
says. Then his agent received the script
for Barton Fink, the Coens’ fourth film,
about a pretentious New York play-
wright (John Turturro) who moves to
Hollywood in 1941 to take a screenwrit-
ing job, winds up suffering writer’s
block, and unknowingly befriends a
serial killer (John Goodman), his
gregarious next-door neighbor. Deakins’
agent recommended he turn the film
down. “She said it was very strange, and
that it seemed to be two different
movies,” recalls Deakins. “But I’d heard
of the Coen brothers by then, so I said,
‘Wait a minute!’”
The Coens recall that they had
been tracking Deakins for awhile by the
time their first cinematographer, Barry
Sonnenfeld, decided to move on to
directing. Because Barton Fink would be
a low-budget, nonunion production,
they narrowed the field to foreign cine-
matographers. “We wanted someone
with experience whose work we could
look at,” says Joel Coen. “Of the people
we were talking to, Roger had done the
most by far and had the most impressive
All of these photos were taken on location in Mississippi during filming of the period comedy O Brother,
work.”Deakins had just come off Air Where Art Thou? (2000), which brought Deakins another ASC nomination. Clockwise from top left: Ethan
America, so they called that film’s Coen (left) and Joel Coen join Deakins at the camera; Deakins and Andy Harris, his longtime first
producers to inquire about him. The assistant, during a break in filming; the cinematographer stoops to capture some action with a chicken;
the filmmakers dolly down a row of prisoners.
response was not enthusiastic. As

ww.theasc.com
w January 2011 71
◗ A League of His Own
Top: Deakins and
Harris capture a
close-up of Frances
McDormand’s legs
for a scene in the
Coens’ period noir
comedy The Man
Who Wasn’t There
(2001), which
brought Deakins
his second ASC
Award. Bottom:
Deakins lines up a
shot of Jennifer
Connelly for Vadim
Perelman’s House
of Sand and Fog
(2003), which
required the
creation of some
convincing
exteriors onstage
at Culver Studios.

Deakins in that process early on, usually

Deakins relates, “They said, ‘He doesn’t
like working with multiple cameras, he
doesn’t like using a zoom lens, and he
likes to operate,’ as though these were
criticisms.” But this assessment was
music to the Coens’ ears. And from
their very first encounter, the match felt
right. “We just seemed to be on the
same wavelength,” says Deakins.
“They’re very straightforward, unpre-
tentious people.”
Barton Fink established a work
pattern that continues to this day. As
screenwriters, the Coens use very visual it. They work very economically.”
language, so the film’s look is established
in the script. The film is then story-
boarded in its entirety with longtime
storyboard artist J. Todd Anderson, a
habit that originally sprang from the
brothers’ budget-consciousness. “They
still like to storyboard,” Deakins says. “It Joel. “Even when he’s shooting inserts,
helps them focus on what’s really
important in the scene, and it’s a good
way of working.” The brothers involve
as soon as they’ve drafted the first set of
storyboards. “We use Roger as a sound-
ing board for the movie in its entirety —
he’s the third collaborator,” says Joel.
Ethan adds, “After we do a draft [of the
storyboards] ourselves, we’ll do another
draft with Roger so we can talk about
each scene and incorporate his ideas.”
Typically,five weeks are allotted
to preproduction, during which the
storyboards continue to evolve as the
filmmakers secure locations and discuss
ideas. By the time the Coens and
Deakins are on set, there’s little need for
them to talk. “Their sets are very quiet,”
says the cinematographer. “They don’t
do a lot of takes. They know what they
want, and they know when they’ve got
Deakins’ input continues during
production. “From shot design, to light-
ing, to how and when you move the
camera, Roger is brilliant at bringing
some extra dimension that changes the
entire feeling of what you’re doing,” says
he’s always looking for a more effective
or idiosyncratic way to shoot. For exam-
ple, in No Country for Old Men [AC Oct.

72 January 2011 American Cinematographer

◗ A League of His Own

’07], we were shooting just an insert of a

watch — it’s when Llewelyn [Josh
Brolin] is waiting for that wounded guy
to die under the tree — and Roger
framed it in such a way that it was as
much about the landscape as it was
about the watch.” Ethan notes, “We cut
our own movies, and as an editor, you
think, ‘Oh, it’s an insert of a watch,’or
you think about the information that
has to be relayed: it’s an hour’s passage.
You think [the shot] is about the watch
face. But instead of framing it against
the ground, which is how we both
thought of it, Roger put it against a big
landscape with the trees.” Joel adds,
“And in a movie all about landscapes,
that’s kind of interesting and impor-
tant.”
In addition to marking the start
of his collaboration with the Coens, the
Top left: Deakins, 1990s were significant for Deakins for
Harris and other crew other professional reasons. He moved to
members chase Bryce
Dallas Howard for a
the United States in 1992, settling in
shot on M. Night Santa Monica, Calif.; he became an
Shyamalan’s The ASC member in 1994, after being
Village (2004). Top
right: Deakins and
proposed for membership by John
Shyamalan plot their Bailey, Allen Daviau and Steven Poster;
approach. Middle: The and he earned his first Academy Award
cinematographer
stands beneath a grid
nomination and won his first ASC
of space lights onstage Award for 1994’s The Shawshank
at Universal Studios Redemption (AC June ’95) . He shot
for Sam Mendes’
Jarhead (2005).
another dozen films that decade,
Bottom: At ease in the including the Coens’ Fargo (AC March
muck, Deakins waits to ’96), which showed the brothers’ more
capture a shot for
Jarhead.
naturalistic, observational side, and
Martin Scorsese’s Kundun (AC Feb.

74 January 2011 American Cinematographer

’98), which told the story of the Dalai
Lama. For the latter film, Deakins’
documentary background was key. He
recalls, “There weren’t any professional
actors in the movie, just Tibetans [re-
enacting] their own heritage, so Marty
was concerned about the relationship
between the cameraman and subject,” he
says.
The following decade was equally
busy. Deakins completed 19 features,
including two technically pioneering
films for the Coens, O Brother, Where Art
Thou? (AC Oct. ’00) and The Man Who
Wasn’t There (AC Oct. ’01). O Brother
quickly gained fame for being the first
U.S. studio feature to be digitally color-
corrected in its entirety, and Deakins
spent almost two months on the process,
using the technology to drain every trace
of green from the lush Mississippi land-
scape.For The Man Who Wasn’t There ,
the goal was luminescent black-and-
white imagery, but the filmmakers were
contractually obligated to create a color
master for foreign markets. In a novel
solution,Deakins shot on color stock
and printed on Kodak 5269, a black-
and-white stock designed for film titles.
He won his second ASC Award for The
Man Who Wasn’t There.
In addition to his ongoing collab-
oration with the Coens, Deakins’ recent
credits include several features with new
creative partners, including Ron
Howard ( A Beautiful Mind ), Vadim
Perelman ( House of Sand and Fog ; AC
Jan. ’04), M. Night Shyamalan ( The
Village; AC Aug. ’04) and Paul Haggis
(In the Valley of Elah ), as well as forays
into animation as a technical consultant
on Wall-E (AC July ’08) and How to
Train Your Dragon.
It’s diverse work, to be sure, but
his résuméhas some underlying consis-
tencies that can be traced back to his
roots in documentary filmmaking. First
and foremost is the fact that he always
operates the camera. (To satisfy union
requirements, he hires an operator, but
he often picks a new member of the
local, essentially providing an appren-
ticeship.) He has repeatedly stated that
composition is the most critical part of
 ◗ A League of His Own
Deakins has also maintained his
Well known for interest in “people within their environ-
carrying an array of
his own gag lights,
ments,” and that documentary leitmotif
Deakins is also quick carries over into his dramatic work in
to improvise a subtle ways. Heprefers Super 35mm
camera solution or
two. Here, seated on
over anamorphic for widescreen movies
an ATV for a shot because “I like being close to people, and
tracking through the I like to feel somebody’s presence in a
woods on
Revolutionary Road,
space. I don’t like the distortion of
he has stabilized the anamorphic or the depth-of-field. I
camera with a beach don’t like backgrounds being out of
ball — “a poorman’s
Wescam, if you like.”
focus.”
He earned an ASC Because he operates, Deakins
nomination for his tries to pre-rig lighting as much as
work on the film, his
second collaboration
possible. “I don’t want the lighting to get
with Mendes. in the way of operating,” he says. “I want
to be able to say, ‘Okay, I’m lit,’ so I can
then concentrate on the framing and
the cinematographer’s job. “It’s much documentaries no doubt honed what the actor is doing. By the time we
more important than lighting,” he told Deakins’ skills, but,as Joel Coen says, come to shoot, I’ve got a whole file on
AC. “The balance of the frame— the “Composition in movies is often an on- every location, and scene breakdowns
way an actor is relating to the space in the-fly, instinctual thing. You either and lighting diagrams for everything.
the frame— is the most important have it or you don’t. We’ve worked with Not that I necessarily stick to those
factor in helping the audience feel what a lot of operators, and Roger is by far the plans, but they’re a good place to start.
the character is thinking.” Shooting best.” I’m one of those people who believe that

76
the more organized you are at the
beginning, the more freedom it gives
you to play around when you’re on set.”
Gaffer Christopher Napolitano recalls
that on House of Sand and Fog , “Roger
handed me a stack of notes, I rigged On location in
everything to his notes, and nothing New Mexico for
the Coens’ True
ever changed, which seemed really Grit (2010),
unique. He had everything down to Deakins
exactly how many lights he wanted captures some
river action,
somewhere, and he used every one of assisted by
them.” Harris.
That kind of precision is possible
on a single-camera production, another
common thread in Deakins’ work, along
with his preference for prime lenses.
“[Shooting with primes] forces you to
move the camera and think about where
the camera needs to be,” he says. rules,’” he says. “Every shot and every from somebody else. It’s not just tech-
Filming only with zooms, he contends, movie is different. There’s no right and nique. In fact, it’s less about technique
is “a sloppy way of shooting.” wrong. Cinematography is personal; it’s and more about a way of seeing.” ●
Since 2005, Deakins has freely something you have to develop yourself,
shared his opinions and advice in a and there’s no easy way to do that. It’s
forum on his website. “Most of my just a matter of spending time on your
comments end with, ‘There are no ownand finding it. You can’t learn it

77
 Post Focus
EFilm recently
opened a DI
suite within
Universal
Studios’ post
facility, allowing
filmmakers to
digitally grade
their projects
under the same
roof as
Universal’s full
sound services.
I EFilm Opens DI Suite at Universal
By Simon Wakelin
Digital lab EFilm has opened a digital-intermediate suite at
Universal Studios’ postproduction facility. Thanks to the new suite,
clients can now access uncompressed 2K 4:4:4 scans, dailies or trail-
ers, and do digital grading while situated next to Universal’s sound-
mixing stages, sound editorial, picture-editing suites and other sound
services. (Film scanning and filmouts will still be done at EFilm’s Holly-
wood facility.) “This will be far more efficient,” explains Kevin Dillon,
executive vice president and general manager of EFilm. “With so
many post services in one location, it will be easier for clients to finish
products in a timely manner. It’s also a great opportunity for us to
build our business model for remote services.”
Universal also benefits from the new on-lot service, as direc-
tors and cinematographers alike have often lamented the time they
spend traveling back and forth between DI facilities and Universal’s
sound department. “Directors used to have to run around Los Ange-
les to perform their DIs,” says Chris Jenkins, senior vice president of
Universal Studios Sound. “They often said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to
simply walk out the door here and go into a DI suite?’ It’s just prac-
tical. It’s important for Universal to expand its capabilities this
way.”
Recent projects that were finished at EFilm’s Universal suite
include Paul Weitz’s comedy Little Fockers, shot by Remi Adefarasin,
BSC. Before the suite officially opened, the director of another
feature popped into the grading suite to oversee the finessing of a
visual-effects shot. “It was the kind of tweak that only takes five
minutes to perform, and having the suite on the lot meant he didn’t
78 January 2011 American Cinematographer
have to drive across town to sign
off on a simple task,” says Josh
Haynie, EFilm’s vice president of
operations.
Interactive sessions with EFilm
and Deluxe Laboratories’ other
locations in New York and London
are also possible, allowing real-time
access to scans and media over a
secure, private, dedicated fiber-
optic connection that is fully
encrypted. “We can transmit
anywhere we need to go,” says
Haynie. “We just had a session
where we piped information over
to a cinematographer in London.
EFilm photo by Gary Krueger, courtesy of Deluxe and Universal. HPA photos by Ryan Miller, courtesy of Capture Imaging.
He worked on images, all with
absolute accuracy, while we were
watching at EFilm in Hollywood.”
Interchangeable film-projection and digital-projection
systems are in place at Universal’s Alfred Hitchcock Theatre. The DI
suite offers white and silver screens available to accommodate both
2-D and 3-D XpanD and RealD systems.
Haynie notes that involving EFilm early in production through
the CinemaScan process in Hollywood always leads to the best
results. “For Ron Howard’s movie The Dilemma, shot by Salvatore
Totino, ASC, we understood what was going on very early in
the production because we were providing CinemaScan dailies,” he
says. “It’s only going to help the DI process if we come in early and
are involved in camera tests and hair and makeup tests as well.”
Although digitally captured features are becoming increas-
ingly common, EFilm is still seeing many productions originate on
film, says Haynie. “We’re seeing a lot of 3-perf and 4-perf coming
through CinemaScan dailies,” he says. “Film has such a wonderful
dynamic range. Plus, once it becomes a file, it’s as easy to work with
in the digital domain as any digital-capture format.”
As for the future, EFilm is considering 4K dailies, but not until
scanning technology advances far enough to make for a quick turn-
around. “Right now, turning around 4K scans at a fast enough rate
for dailies deliverables isn’t possible,” says Haynie. “Of course, every-
one’s goal is 4K dailies. From a data standpoint, we can do it, but
we’re waiting for the scanning technology to catch up.”
EFilm’s parent company, Deluxe Entertainment Services
Group, Inc., recently entered into an exclusive multi-year film-
processing and printing agreement with Universal. The print deal will
see the studio utilizing Deluxe facilities in Hollywood, Toronto,
London, Rome, Barcelona and Sydney.
 HPA Honors Outstanding
Achievements in Post
By Jon D. Witmer

The Hollywood Post Alliance recently

presented its fifth annual HPA Awards,
which honor outstanding achievements in
post processes for features, television and
commercials. The judges for the awards
included ASC members Stephen Lighthill,
Yuri Neyman and Daryn Okada.
HPA President Leon Silverman, the
general manager of Walt Disney Studios
and an ASC associate member, served as
the master of ceremonies at Skirball Cultural
Center’s Cotsen Auditorium. He noted how
the awards have grown since their inception
— the Awards Committee received more
submissions this year than ever before —
and, after musing about the unsung impor-
tance of post professionals, he passed the
baton to the evening’s presenters with the
proclamation, “Get ready to be proud to be
in post!”
Echoing Silverman’s review of the
past five years, Richard Crudo, ASC reflected
on the technological evolution that has
marked color correction’s recent history,
marveling at the rapid changeover from the
predominance of photochemical finishing
to the now ubiquitous digital-intermediate
process. Crudo then presented awards for
Outstanding Color Grading to ASC associ-
ate Stefan Sonnenfeld of Company 3 for
Alice in Wonderland (AC April ’10), Steve
Porter of Riot for “Episode Five” from the
miniseries The Pacific (AC March ’10), and
Siggy Ferstl of Company 3 for the AT&T
commercial “Legends.” Ferstl was also
nominated for his work on ESPN’s Robben
Island. Also nominated were Maxine Gervais
of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging
(The Book of Eli ); ASC associate Steven J.
Scott of EFilm ( Percy Jackson & The
Olympians: The Lightning Thief ); Natasha
Leonnet of EFilm ( Get Low; AC Aug. ’10);
Skip Kimball of Modern VideoFilm ( Avatar;
AC Jan. ’10); Scott Klein of Technicolor (True
Blood, “Bad Blood”); Kevin O’Connor of
Deluxe Digital Media (Temple Grandin); Tim
Vincent of LaserPacific ( Mad Men ,
“Souvenir”; AC Oct. ’09); Tom Poole of
Company 3 NY (Dos Equis, “Ice Fishing”;
Dos Equis, “Cliff Diver”); Dave Hussey of
Company 3 (Chevy, “We Can Carry”); and

Richard Crudo, ASC (center) presented HPA Awards for Outstanding Color Grading to Stefan
Sonnenfeld (left), Siggy Ferstl (right) and Steve Porter (not pictured).
Tim Masick of Company 3 NY (ESPN,
“Robben Island Promo”).
Avid Technology sponsored the
Outstanding Editing awards, which were
presented to Lee Smith, ACE, for Inception;
Mark J. Goldman and ACE members
Christopher Nelson, Stephen Semel and
Henk van Eeghen of Touchstone Tele-
80
vision for Lost, “The End”; and Chris
Franklin of Big Sky Editorial for American
Express, “Geoffrey Canada.” Outstanding
Compositing awards went to Erik Winquist,
Robin Hollander, Erich Eder and Giuseppe
Tagliavini of Weta Digital for Avatar; and
Diramid Harrison Murray, Russell Dodgson,
Tim Osborne and Adam Rowland of Frame-
store for Kia Soul, “This or That.”
Outstanding Sound awards were
presented to Michael Hedges, Gilbert Lake,
Brent Burge and Chris Ward of Park Road
Post Production for District 9; Brad North,
Joe DeAngelis, Luis Galdames and Jackie
Oster of Universal Sound for House, M.D.,
“Help Me”; and David Brolin of Universal
Studios and Phil Daccord of Giaronomo for
Devil, “Theatrical Trailer #1.”
The NAB Show sponsored the Engi-
neering Excellence Awards, which were
presented to three companies. Arri earned
an award for its Alexa digital-cinema
camera, which supports the recording of
Apple ProRes 4444, 422 (HQ), LT or Proxy
encoded images onto onboard SxS
memory cards for direct editorial delivery.
Cine-tal earned an award for its Davio
Signal Processor, which boasts a flexible
architecture supported by a library of soft-
ware packages that enable a wide range of
tasks, including color-management
processing, display calibration and 3-D
stereo workflows. Digital Vision earned an
award for its Open EXR color workflow,
which utilizes 16-bit “Half Float” OpenEXRs
to support true, real-time high-dynamic-
range content grading. Additionally, Texas
Instruments earned a special recognition for
its DLP Cinema Technology, which is used
for color management and mastering in
post facilities around the globe.
Four HPA Judges Awards for
Creativity and Innovation in Postproduction
were also handed out during the ceremony.
FotoKem picked up an award for its Next-
Lab Mobile proprietary software and
commodity hardware system, which
presents an advanced toolset for file-based
post. Reliance MediaWorks earned an
award for its Custom Image Processing
software applications for film, video and
digital sources. Gradient Effects earned an
award for its Gradient Location-Optimized
Workflow (GLOW) previsualization and
nonlinear production system for 2-D and
stereoscopic 3-D. Additionally, LightIron
Digital picked up an award for its Outpost
and Lightstream systems; Outpost allows
operators to verify, backup, render one
lights of and transcode footage simultane-
ously on set, while Lightstream distributes
those files.
Capping the evening’s festivities, Ted
Gagliano, 20th Century Fox’s president of
feature post, was presented with the Life-
time Achievement Award. Since joining Fox
in 1991, Gagliano has shepherded more
than 600 features through post, including
Titanic, the X-Men series, the special
editions of the original Star Wars trilogy,
and Avatar. Deluxe President and CEO Cyril
Drabinsky, an ASC associate member,
shared the stage with producer Jon Landau
and composer Patrick Doyle to introduce
Gagliano by way of personal anecdotes
from years of collaboration and friendship.
“Movies are still light and sound [in combi-
HPA President Leon Silverman reprised his
nation with] great stories — science inter- role as the awards’ master of ceremonies.
twined with art,” Gagliano enthused as he
accepted the award. Pledging to return to
the office the next morning to begin “the
second half” of his career, Gagliano also
noted, “Movies are harder to make now
than ever; the stakes are higher, yet the
rewards have never been so great.” ●
 Filmmakers’ Forum

Left: Writer/director Lena Dunham (holding cage) and cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes (at camera) line up a shot for the the feat ure film Tiny Furniture, which was
shot with the Canon EOS 7D. Right: Dunham also stars in the film as Aura, who develops a crush on her co-worker Keith (David Ca ll).

I
The Challenges of Shooting a Feature With mostly the latter.
the Canon 7D I often tried to use the architecture of the location to give
By Jody Lee Lipes shots more visual interest. One example is the scene in which Aura
(played by Lena) and Jed, the Nietzschean Cowboy (Alex Karpovsky),
One of the reasons I was interested in working on Tiny Furni- visit her apartment. They enter through Aura’s mother’s studio, and
ture is that it’s a very traditional story in a lot of ways, and I respond it’s a wide shot that shows them coming in and turning on the lights
to films that are plotted in a conventional way but use unconven- in this big, white space. To us, the wide shot tells the story best
tional methods of visualizing the story. Most of the features I’ve because it forces the audience to think about the characters in their
worked on, nonfiction and fiction, have been more abstract, and with environment, and it also enhances the comedic moment with the
an abstract screenplay, most of the time you’re working against the dead hamster; you can’t see it but want to, and hearing them
story to help it make more sense to the audience. describe it in detail makes that moment funnier.
Writer/director Lena Dunham’s script was dialogue heavy, with For the scene between Aura and her sister (played by Lena’s
very little action, so we asked ourselves how we could turn that into sister, Grace), I set up the camera in such a way that the wall between
a visual experience. We both like Woody Allen’s films,so we decided their rooms splits the shot down the middle. That’s where the camera
that talking about Manhattan was a good place to start. On that film, had to be to convey that their two bedrooms are basically the same
Gordon Willis, ASC and Woody Allen did a great job of making bold room, but divided. There was no other way to illustrate the proxim-
visual choices that make the audience forget they’re essentially ity of their rooms, which says a lot about their relationship.
watching people have conversations. One great example is the epic We wanted to give Tiny Furniture a clean, high-key look. We
Photos by Joe Anderson, courtesy of IFC Films.

shot of the Queensboro Bridge right before the sun rises. It’s a shot day interiors at 200 ASA and used fast Canon EF lenses, all
dialogue scene between two people sitting, but we only see their primes, which got us into a bit of trouble because we didn’t have a
backs in a single extreme-wide shot. It becomes more about the envi- chance to test them, and they ended up distorting the image around
ronment and the tone than the specific words and facial expressions the edges when we opened them up. Joe Anderson, my friend, first
that are often emphasized in this kind of scene. assistant and operator, did an amazing job pulling focus with a very
For Tiny Furniture, we decided we should also strive to keep difficult camera system.
things wide and do a lot of one-shot scenes. We chose to shoot on We used a lot of natural light or added to what was there
the Canon EOS 7D two weeks after it was released. When we with a couple of Kino Flos, paper lanterns or very small tungsten
watched our tests projected off HDCam-SR at Technicolor New York, lamps. We shot night interiors at 400 ASA. Most of the action takes
the camera’s CMOS rolling shutter was very apparent, so we were place in Aura’s all-white apartment, and it looks kind of like an art
hesitant to move the camera. We also couldn’t afford a Steadicam or gallery. We generally wanted soft light, so we bounced lamps or
dolly of any kind, so the shots were either handheld or locked off, pushed through 8-by rags and used a lot of practicals to light deep

82 January 2011 American Cinematographer

into the background. It was simple, straight-
forward stuff, and my gaffer, Jeff Peixoto, a
true artist, did most of the lighting by himself
because we couldn’t afford a larger crew.
Even though we had a tiny crew and
no equipment, it was important that the
night exteriors look natural, and not like we
had a single source just blasting the subject
so we could see. That kind of stylization
would have been very distracting with this
kind of story. We had a 2K, a couple of 1Ks
and rope lights, which wasn’t enough to
light on the scale that the complex night
work demanded.
So instead we worked largely with
natural light, setting the 7D to 800 ASA and
sometimes going as high as 2,000 ASA. It
made sense to ramp up the exposure. It
looks noisy and grainy but real. I think the
light quality would have been more of a
distraction if I’d tried to force a clean image
without the appropriate equipment or
personnel.
The 7D can be a helpful tool in low-
light situations, and I was very impressed by
the latitude in the highlights when using the
highlight-protection function. However, I
would never choose to work with this
camera again for a theatrical presentation.
The image is very compressed, there are
significant moiré problems, clean camera
moves are nearly impossible, and it’s very
uncomfortable to operate. (When we shot
handheld, I used a Zacuto shoulder mount
with handlebars, a matte box, follow focus,
a lot of NDs and no diffusion filters. The
camera’s look settings were all at zero.)
Editor Lance Edmands and Sam
Daley, my longtime colorist, came up with
the workflow for posting Tiny Furniture .
After converting the native 1080 24p H.264
files to ProRes for a Final Cut editorial, Lance
delivered a ProRes locked picture to Techni-
color New York. Technicolor up-rezzed to
10-bit uncompressed 4:2:2 QuickTime files
and recorded those out to HDCam-SR. From
there we did a tape-to-tape color correct
from HDCam-SR to HDCam-SR on a DaVinci
2K Plus. HDCam cassettes and a QuickTime
were dubbed for exhibition. Going up to 10-
bit was important for color correction
because it gave us the bit depth necessary to
create windows and secondary isolations.
Sam and I were both surprised by how
malleable the image was in post. ●
New Products & Services
Colorfront Optimizes On-Set Dailies
Colorfront has announced a partnership with Arri for Color-
front On-Set Dailies, a state-of-the-art digital-dailies tool optimized
for use with Arri’s Alexa and D-21 digital cameras and their corre-
sponding workflows.
The On-Set Dailies system incorporates production-proven
tools for dailies work —
including playback and
sync, QC, color grading,
audio and metadata
management, and simul-
taneous faster-than-real-
time deliverables in
common file formats —
combined with Arri’s
color and image science.
In addition to benefiting productions working with Arri digital
cameras, Colorfront’s system can be integrated into any digital-dailies
workflow.
On-Set Dailies has an easy-to-use, node-based operator inter-
face, and can load media files from film scans, tape capture, disk and
solid-state recorders. The system also synchronizes sound files with
picture using automated and manual techniques. Its image-process-
ing capabilities include primary and selective color correction, the
application of 3-D LUTs, printer light and ASC CDL compatibility,
image resizing tools, and a range of burn-in options. The system also
works with stereoscopic media, allowing stereo adjustments of color
and position, and it assembles takes into rolls and tapes for deliver-
ables, screeners and archiving.
Input media formats include DPX, ArriRAW, ProRes 422 and
444, Avid DNxHD, QuickTime (with various codecs) and broadcast
WAV audio files. Deliverables formats include MPG4 H.264 for Web
delivery, iPhone and iPad; MPG2 for authored DVDs and chaptered
Blu-rays; Avid DNxHD MXF and QuickTime files; QuickTime files with
various codecs, including ProRes 422 and 444 for Final Cut Pro edito-
rial; and TIFF and JPEG stills and WAV audio.
For additional information, visit www.colorfront.com and
www.arri.com.
DSC Labs Adds Red CamBook
DSC Labs has added the Red CamBook to its popular
CamBook series of charts. The Red CamBook includes three pages of
charts designed specifically for the Red One and Red Epic. The
CamBook includes unique Red framing formats, including one chart
with the industry-standard 18-percent gray background and a
second with DSC’s CamWhite background; both have Red camera
framings for up to 5K. The Red CamBook also contains the Chro-
84 January 2011 American Cinematographer
• 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.
maDuMonde 28 chart, which
features an 18-percent gray
background, 24 colors, four
skin tones and an 11-step
crossed grayscale; the
grayscale displays the expo-
sure setting and determines
exactly how gamma curves
are affecting the image.
“The neutral white and 18-percent gray backgrounds are
great for achieving an accurate white balance,” says Graeme
Nattress, problem solver for Red. “The Red CamBook allows you to
achieve better exposure [and] a more accurate white balance, and it
produces a record of the actual lighting on set, which helps keep
you consistent in terms of colorimetry throughout postproduction.”
The Red CamBook costs $480 and can be purchased directly
from DSC Labs or Red, or from DSC’s worldwide reseller channels.
For more information, visit http://dsclabs.com.
Cinedeck Gets
Extreme
Cinedeck LLC has
released version 2.0 of its
Cinedeck Extreme camera-
mountable recorder, moni-
tor and playback device.
Cinedeck Extreme v2.0
offers full support for all
versions of Apple’s ProRes
codecs, including 4444, 422 HQ, 422 (LT) and 422 (Proxy), stream-
lining the camera-to-edit workflow for Final Cut Pro users.
Cinedeck Extreme v2.0 enables any camera with an HDSDI or
HDMI output to bypass onboard compression codecs and record to
any of a number of loss-less compression standards, including all
varieties of Avid DNxHD and CineForm Digital Intermediate. A Full-
Stream Uncompressed option adds even more flexibility for uncom-
pressed 444 and 422 recording.
Cinedeck Extreme v2.0 is available for $9,995. The Full-
Stream Uncompressed option, which includes a 256GB RAID SSD, is
available for $3,495.
For additional information, visit www.cinedeck.com.
Panasonic Introduces P2 Storage Unit
Panasonic Solutions Co. has introduced the AG-MSU10 P2
Media Storage Unit, a lightweight, mobile-workflow tool that
simplifies the process of backing up P2 content. Delivering fast,
stable transfer of data, the compact P2 Media Storage Unit elimi-
 nates the need for
larger, more expen-
sive appliances in
the field and quickly
frees up P2 cards for addi-
tional shooting.
The MSU10 boasts a
small form factor with two slots,
one for a P2 card and one for the AG-
MBX10 tray, which supports a 2.5" solid-
state or hard drive for MSU10 backup. The
MSU10 offers the flexibility of AC or battery
operation, and includes USB 2.0 and eSATA
interfaces for easy connection to NLEs. The
MBX10 removable drive tray also includes
USB 2.0 and eSATA interfaces.
The bus-powered MSU10 can be
easily transported from the field and
connected to NLE systems, including PCs
and Macs, to expedite the editing process.
Content is transferred from a P2 card to the
drive at four times real time. In addition to
backup from the P2 card to the removable
MBX10 tray drive, the MSU10 also offers
Host and Device functions, allowing the unit
to be a P2 card reader (when connected to
a computer) or to host an external drive for
copying.
The MSU10 features a 3.2" LCD
screen and simple one-touch operation. It
provides P2 thumbnail display for confi-
dence and metadata review and supports
master-quality 10-bit AVC-Intra (100/50)
and DVCPro HD, DVCPro50, DVCPro and
DV recording formats. Clip-by-clip copying
is also supported.
Users can choose to purchase the
storage unit without a drive (MSU10) or
preconfigured with a 256GB 2.5" enter-
prise-class solid-state drive (MSU10-SSD) or
a 500GB 2.5" enterprise-class hard-disk
drive (MSU10-HDD). The AG-MBX10
removable disk tray can be purchased sepa-
rately, and Panasonic also offers the
MBX10-SSD and MBX10-HDD for further
flexibility.
For additional information, visit
www.panasonic.com/broadcast.
Photon Beard Offers
Wireless Control
Photon Beard has introduced the
low-cost, easy-to-install, wireless Wi-Light
system for studio lighting control. Designed
primarily as an add-on to the company’s
86 January 2011
DMX-controlled series of Highlight fluores-
cents, the Wi-Light system can also control
a mixture of fluorescent and incandescent
lighting systems.
The Wi-Light system can reduce or
even eliminate the need for traditional
wired DMX-controlled systems. The Wi-
Light system consists of one master trans-
mitter/receiver module and individual
receiver modules that are added to each
light source or dimmer; the master unit can
be configured as a receiver for point-to-
point links or as a repeater to cover wider
areas. The transmitter range can vary, but
generally works up to 300' and can be
extended using repeaters.
The small receiver modules fit to the
base panel of Photon Beard’s Highlight, on
the outside of the casing, and can be easily
installed using only a small screwdriver. All
further setup instructions are either auto-
matic or transmitted wirelessly from the
master module. The master unit provides
the entry port for the system and takes a
conventional DMX512 data stream from a
standard control desk. An assignable block
of channels are selected from the input
stream and wirelessly transmitted. The orig-
inal address positions of each channel in the
block are preserved, so the user can easily
set the receiver address on each light
source.
Unlike the basic DMX512 standard,
which sends data continuously even when
nothing has changed, the Wi-Light system
utilizes a special protocol to transmit only
the data that has changed. All parts of the
Wi-Light system are bi-directional, and each
Wi-Light unit contains a unique identity that
is added to all transmissions. To close the
network and eliminate interference, each
receiver can be remotely set to respond to
only one transmitter. The robust Wi-Light
system also includes built-in error checking.
All Photon Beard products are hand-
built to the highest standards. For more
information, visit www.photonbeard.com.
Pond5 Stocks After
Effects Templates
Pond5, an online marketplace for
stock media, has added Adobe After Effects
project templates to its collection, which
includes royalty-free stock video footage
and a full range of sound effects and
American Cinematographer
production music. After Effects users can
now save precious production time by
tapping into Pond5’s cache of high-quality
motion graphics templates and easily
customizing them for a unique, profes-
sional end product.
The Pond5 After Effects collection
currently includes more than 140 dynamic
templates to choose from, with prices start-
ing at $10. The project files cover a wide
range of motion-graphics needs, including
advertisements, bumpers, show intros,
credit sequences, video overlays and more.
The Pond5 collection allows users to search
for, preview, purchase and download AE
templates instantly and directly from the
website.
“Our goal is to provide content
creators with a palette of stock media that
expands their creative options, increases
their productivity and saves them time and
money,” says Tom Bennett, Pond5 co-
founder and CEO. “After Effects templates
do exactly that, and are a great comple-
ment to our selection of stock video and
audio.”
Pond5 is also accepting submissions
of professional-quality After Effects
templates. As with video and audio on
Pond5, the model is straightforward and
artist-friendly: Contributing artists upload
their content at no cost, set the prices
themselves and earn 50 percent of the
license fee each time their content is
purchased. Pond5 reviews all submitted
work to check quality and technical specifi-
cations.
For additional information, visit
www.pond5.com. ●
International Marketplace

Optimo Carry Handles

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www.theasc.com January 2011 89

 Advertiser’s Index
16x9, Inc. 88
AC 92
AFI 93
Aja Video Systems, Inc. 23
Alan Gordon Enterprises 88
Arri 37
ASC 1
AZGrip 88
Backstage Equipment, Inc.
79
Barger-Lite 89
Bron Imaging Group - US 29
Camera Essentials 89
CameraImage 87
Cavision Enterprises 57
Chapman/Leonard Studio
Equipment Inc. 59
Chemical Wedding 95
Cinegear Expo 91
Cinematography
Electronics 6
Cinekinetic 88
Cinerover 89
Clairmont Film & Digital 25
Codex Digital Ltd., 21
Cooke Optics 28
Creative Industry Handbook
81
Deluxe C2 Panther Gmbh 62
Digitalvision 40 Paramount Studios
Eastman Kodak C4 5, 9, 13
PED Denz 49, 89
Film Gear 75 Pelican Products, Inc 63
Filmtools 6
Photon Beard 88
Fox Searchlight 7, 11 Pille Film Gmbh 89
FTC West 89
Pro8mm 88
Fujji Motion Picture Professional Sound Services
32a-d, 47 83
Glidecam Industries 27
Rosco Laboratories, Inc. 41
Interlochen Center for Shelton Communications
the Arts 75 88
John Wells Productions 17 Sony Electronics 19
Sony Pictures Classics 39
Kino Flo 51 Sony Pictures Entertainment
Kobold 29
15
Konrad Wolf 39 Stanton Video Services 6
Laffoux Solutions, Inc. 88 Super16 Inc. 89
Lee Filters 50 SXSW 76
Lite Panels 2 Technocrane 79
MAT-Berlin 4 Tiffen C3
Matthews 89 VF Gadgets, Inc. 88
M. M. Mukhi and Sons 88
Willy’s Widgets 88
NAB 85 www.theasc.com 79, 80,
New York Film Academy 77 83, 88, 89, 90
O’Connor 49 Zacuto Films 89
Oppenheimer Camera Prod.
88
Otto Nemenz 73

90
 In Memoriam
Michel Hugo, ASC, 1930-2010
Emmy-nominated cinematographer
Michel Hugo, ASC, an affiliate assistant
professor in the film department at the
University of Nevada-Las Vegas, died Oct. 12
after a brief battle with
cancer. He was 80
years old.
Hugo was born
on Jan. 13, 1930,in
Paris, France. As a
teenager, he aided the
French Resistance
during World War II.
After the war, he
attended the Vaugirard
film school in Paris,
where he focused on
cinematography,
following in his father’s
footsteps behind the
camera. Hugo gradu-
ated in 1951 and quickly found steady work
as a camera assistant on numerous French
productions. Before long, he climbed the
ranks and began notching professional cred-
its as a director of photography.
In 1956, Hugo moved to Los Angeles,
Calif., and essentially began again at the
bottom of the ladder. “I don’t regret it,” he
told AC in January 1990. “I just pushed
ahead. I never looked behind.
“I always had great admiration for
the technology of American movies,” he
added. “I was overwhelmed by the abun-
dance of equipment, the size of the stages.
Taking a golf cart to move from stage to
stage in a big studio — this was paradise!”
In 1960, Hugo became a U.S. citizen
and was admitted into the camera union,
then known as IATSE Local 659. By 1967, he
was once again ranked as a director of
photography, and he was working on the hit
television series Mission: Impossible.
Following Mission: Impossible, Hugo
transitioned to features, where he worked
with such directors as Bob Rafelson ( Head),
Jacques Demy ( Model Shop), Stuart Rosen-
berg (April Fools) and Stanley Kramer (R.P.M.
and Bless the Beasts & Children ). “Lighting
for television is no different from lighting a
92
feature,” he told AC. “Good lighting, in my
opinion, is pure logic, pure common
sense.” He also shot more than 30 telefilms
over the course of his career, including The
Forgotten Man , A
Tattered Web , Thief,
The Night Stalker and
Climb an Angry
Mountain.
Hugo joined the
ASC in 1972, after
being recommended
by Society fellow Ted
Voigtlander. Through
that decade, Hugo
continued to juggle
theatrical features
and MOWs, and he
also returned to
episodic TV on the
series The Streets of
San Francisco and Tales of the Unexpected.
He was nominated for an Emmy Award for
his work on the 1978 miniseries The Awak-
ening Land. In the 1980s, Hugo enjoyed a
long run as cinematographer on the popu-
lar series Dynasty, and he repeated the feat
in the following decade on Melrose Place.
Hugo was also a member of the
Directors Guild of America, the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the
Society of Motion Picture and Television
Engineers. He retired from filmmaking after
Melrose Place came to an end, but in 2000,
he began a new career as a teacher at
UNLV. He frequented his students’ sets and
was often heard to say, “Always check the
camera lens to make sure no one has left a
Dagwood sandwich in there,” his own,
unique way of encouraging students to
Photo courtesy of Francisco Menendez.
take care of the tools of their craft.
Hugo is survived by his wife, Gloria;
a daughter; two sons; and two grandchil-
dren.
— Jon D. Witmer
●
Luke Lynch (E ‘09) Editor
Georgia Archer (P ‘98) Producer/Director/
Writer
Anthony Dominici (D ‘99) Executive
Producer
Matt Kregor (E ‘99) Co-Producer/Editor
Jose Pulido (E ‘99) Editor
Sam Harowitz (C ‘09) Production Manager
Darren Aronofsky (D ‘92) Director
Jon Avnet (D ’72) Executive Producer
Matthew Libatique (C ‘92) Director of
Photography
David Lynch (D ‘70) Producer/Director/
Writer/Editor/Production Designer
Frederick Elmes (D ’72) Cinematographer
Miguel Bunster (C ’06) Cinematographer
Ed Zwick (D ‘75) Producer/Director/
Co-Writer
Marshall Herskovitz (D ‘75) Producer/
Co-Writer
Pieter Jan Brugge (P ‘79) Producer
Steven Fierberg (D ‘95) Cinematographer
Steven Rosenblum (C ‘76) Editor
For more information about AFI Fest, AFI Conservatory and other
AFI programs, go to AFI.com.
Nick Simon (D ‘08) Director/Writer
Thomas Mahoney (P ‘08) Producer
Chady Eli Mattar (P ‘08) Producer
Hayden Roush (P ‘08) Producer
Scott C. Silver (E ’08) Producer/
Additional Editor
Robert Konowalow (P ’10) Line Producer
Daniel Meersand (S ’08) Writer
Kevin Duggin (C ’08) Cinematographer
Katy Skjerping (E ‘ 08) Editor
Noah Rosenthal (C ’08) Second Unit
Director
Andrew J. Spieler (D ‘09) Director/Writer
Marina Stabile (P ‘09) Producer/Writer
Samuel Harowitz (C ‘09) Cinematographer
Vegard H. Sorby (E ‘09) Editor
Harrison Yurkiw (PD ‘09) Production
Designer
Josef Lieck (D ’01)
Associate Producer/Line Producer
Lisa Wiegand (C ’95) Cinematographer
Maggie Kiley (DWW ‘09) Director/Writer
Christopher Jones (E ’03) Editor
 Clubhouse News
Right: Eagle
Egilsson, ASC.
Below: George
Mooradian, ASC.
Society Welcomes
Egilsson, Mooradian
Eagle Egilsson and George Moora-
dian have joined the Society as active
members.
Eagle Egilsson, ASC was born in
Reykjavik, Iceland. From his father, he
acquired a deep interest in still photography
that evolved into a love for motion pictures.
Determined to work behind the camera, he
attended Columbia College Hollywood and
focused on cinematography. His credits
include the telefilms Sweet Temptation , A
Face to Die For , Business for Pleasure and
Sirens, as well as the series Red Shoe Diaries,
The Wire, Eleventh Hour and Miami Medical.
He was twice nominated by the ASC for his
work on the series CSI: Miami, and he won
an ASC award in 2009 for the “Venice
Kings” episode of Dark Blue.
Born in Atlanta, Ga., George Moora-
dian, ASC briefly studied economics at the
University of Georgia before changing tacks
to focus on film studies at Ohio University.
Following graduation, he spent two years
filming his travels across the globe and
94 January 2011
honing his eye for light and composition
before returning to the United States and
attending the Maine Photographic Work-
shop. Mooradian notched his first credit as a
director of photography on the feature Pris-
oner of Rio, and has since photographed such
features as Retroactive, Crazy as Hell and The
Circle. He has earned Emmy nominations four
years in a row for his work on the series
According to Jim.
Manaki Brothers
Honor Zsigmond
Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC received the
Golden Camera 300 Lifetime Achievement
Award at the 31st Manaki Brothers Interna-
tional Cinematographers’ Film Festival in
Bitola, Republic of Macedonia. During the
festival, Zsigmond led a cinematography
master class and also headed the festival’s
awards jury, which presented the Golden
Camera 300 award to Martin Gschlacht for
the film Women Without Men. Awards were
also presented to Benoît Debie, AFC, forEnter
the Void (AC Oct. ’10); Giora Bejach, for
Lebanon (AC April ’10); Thierry Godefroy, for
Winter’s Beginning ; Christoph Beaucarne,
AFC, for Mr. Nobody; Ádám Fillenz, for Pál
Adrienn; and Daniël Bouquet, for Nothing
Personal.
ASC Busy at Createasphere
Createasphere recently held an Enter-
tainment Technology Exposition in Burbank,
Calif., featuring two days of panels and
events in addition to an exhibitors’ hall and
gear alley. ASC members Daniel Pearl and
Steven Poster joined camera operators
Robert Reed Altman, Paul Babin, Alexander
Calzatti, Mitch Dubin, Stan McClain, Jack
Messitt, Chris Tufty and Dave Frederick for the
panel “How Did They Get That Shot?” Curtis
Clark, ASC joined Sony’s Peter Crithary and
Dhanendra Patel for a Sony-intensive discus-
sion, “The Evolution of the HDCam-SR
Format.” Additionally, Stephen Lighthill,
ASC sat down with American Film Institute
graduates Uta Briesewitz, Darren Genet, Petra
Korner and Tommy Maddox-Upshaw for
American Cinematographer
“The Cinematography Program at AFI.”
ASC associate Kristin Petrovich
Kennedy, president of Createasphere,
noted, “We have the privilege of working
and mingling with some of the smartest,
most interesting people in any business,
anywhere. Our show grows because the
expos shine a spotlight on the broad spec-
trum of content creators and the companies
working with them as they push the enve-
lope of technology and creativity, every
single day.”
Following the exhibition, Createas-
phere also hosted a two-day Postproduction
Master Class. ASC associate Joshua Pines
participated in the class’ keynote kickoff, and
David Stump, ASC added insight to the
“Camera to Post” roundtable.
Wexler Rides Wild River
Haskell Wexler, ASCrecently joined
Michael Pogorzelski, director of the Acad-
emy Film Archive; Schawn Belston, senior
vice president of library and technical services
for Fox Filmed Entertainment; and actor
Bruce Dern for a panel discussion about Elia
Kazan’s Wild River (1960) at the Academy’s
Samuel Goldwyn Theater. Wexler served as
an additional photographer on the 20th
Century Fox film, which was recently
Photo of Clubhouse by Isidore Mankofsky, ASC; lighting by Donald M. Morgan, ASC.
restored by the Academy Film Archive. The
screening was part of “A 20th Anniversary
Tribute to The Film Foundation,” a multi-
venue series organized by the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art Film Department.
AC Editors Notch
Folio Nominations
All three AC editors have earned
nominations for Folio Eddie Awards for Best
Single Article. Executive editor Stephen
Pizzello is nominated for his Oct. ’09 article
about Bronson; senior editor Rachael K.
Bosley is nominated for her Oct. ’09 article
about Mad Men; and associate editor Jon D.
Witmer is nominated for his May ’10 article
about Iron Man 2 . Gold, silver and bronze
prizes will be awarded Jan. 13 in New York.
●
 Close-up Jack Couffer, ASC
When you were a child, what film made the strongest impres-
sion on you?
Wow! I’m 85 years old and you’re asking for childhood memories? I
don’t recall any film experiences from my early years.
Which cinematographers, past or present,
do you most admire, and why?
It’s almost cliché to say Conrad Hall, ASC and
Haskell Wexler, ASC because they are so often
mentioned as inspirational, but they hardly qual-
ify as gurus in my case because we were good
friends and grew up together in the business.
Both of them were truly fine influences on my life
both personally and creatively. We know all the
famous names, but there are a lot of folks out
there with equal talent who just haven’t
garnered the praise. I’ve admired the work of so
many excellent cameramen that it’s a bit unset-
tling to single out any individual.
What sparked your interest in photography?
I have a built-in fascination with animals. I was given my first still camera
at the age of 11, and I stalked birds, squirrels and rabbits in the hills and
felt great if I got close enough with my wide-angle lens to see that I’d
captured a recognizable creature. I’ve felt the same urge ever since.
Thank God for the Arriflex.
Where did you train and/or study?
I went to the University of Southern California on the GI Bill intending a
serious study of biology. I found myself next to a student named Conrad
Hall in a make-up English class. The idea of a career in the movie busi-
ness wasn’t even a spark in my head, nor in Conrad’s. He hoped to walk
in the footsteps of his father, a well-known writer. Just for kicks, Con
suggested that we audit a class in the new Department of Cinema Arts.
We sat in on one lecture by Slavko Vorkapich and were seriously hooked.
Who were your early teachers or mentors?
Aside from Vorkapich, for mentors I’ve got to go way back in time to
Floyd Crosby, ASC. He was the next most important person in the work
that would become my lifetime world. And I was an assistant for Karl
Freund, ASC, a great gentleman from whom I learned a lot. How
couldn’t I?
What are some of your key artistic influences?
I looked to the representational painters of the so-called California
School, watercolorists of the 1930s and early 1950s — Rex Brandt, Tom
Craig, Vernon Nye and Emil Kosa. I loved their use of color and compo-
sition. In those days, when mist-shrouded scenes, focused subjects seen
through fuzzy foregrounds, and sun flares all went automatically into
the trash, I learned from New York cameraman Larry Madison about the
inherent value of these often stunning ‘mistakes.’
96 January 2011 American Cinematographer
How did you get your first break in the business?
I was living aboard my boat while attending USC, and Conrad Hall and
another student and I decided we’d put the ideas we’d learned in class
into a film. We bought a used Bolex and some outdated film from Bob
Gottschalk, who ran a hole-in-the-wall camera
store, and then we set sail for Catalina during
the summer break to make a film we’d call Sea
Theme — no dialogue or color, just a beautiful
schooner, sails and seas and a score of classical
music. It won an American Cinematographer
Award (in 1951) and was sold to TV, and the
buyer financed a series. We thought we had
the world by the tail, formed a company,
Canyon Films, and became entrepreneurs
while still in film school.
What has been your most satisfying
moment on a project?
Falling in love with the actress. You can read all about it in my new
memoir, The Lion and the Giraffe.
Have you made any memorable blunders?
Too many, too embarrassing and too costly to mention.
What is the best professional advice you’ve ever received?
From editor Irving Lerner: ‘Cut out all the comin’s and goin’s.’
What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you?
Winged Migration made me jealous — all the new technology I’ve
missed out on!
Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like to
try?
The niche I have happily occupied has been predominantly films with
humans interacting with animals. Well-trained animals are very good
at hitting their marks.
If you weren’t a cinematographer, what might you be doing
instead?
I would have been a stuffy biology teacher in some second-rate high
school in an out-of-the-way place. Thank you, Slavko Vorkapich.
Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for member-
ship?
Conrad Hall and Haskell Wexler.
Photo by Mike Couffer.
How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?
I am proud to be a member of such a respected group, and at the
same time sad not to have contributed more. My only excuse is that
I’ve been based outside the country, hiding under a mossy stone, for
most of my career. ●
©Kodak. 2010. Kodak and Vision are trademarks.