AC Apr 2010

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$5.95 Canada $6.95
www.journal-plaza.net & www.freedowns.net www.journal-plaza.net & www.freedowns.net
M E M B E R P O R T R A I T
Walt Lloyd, ASC
W W W . T H E A S C . C O M
TO SUBSCRIBE BY PHONE:
Call (800) 448-0145 (U.S. only)
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was raised on U.S. Army
bases and didnt have much
exposure to films or television
as a child. In college, I took a job
at a movie theater, and films like
M*A*S*H, Catch-22, Walkabout,
Easy Rider and The French
Connection changed my life. My
future was set when I stumbled
across John Boorman and Vilmos
Zsigmond, ASC filming
Deliverance in the North Georgia
mountains. I vowed that someday,
somehow, I would work on films.
I moved to California,
started reading American
Cinematographer and got a job
at a commercial production house
in San Francisco. AC has been a
welcome arrival every month since
then. In these days of rapidly
changing technology, it is both
reassuring and informative to
observe how my colleagues are
making the creative and technical
choices all projects require. ASC
members are collaborative and
supportive, and AC is our outlet
for sharing experience and
knowledge.
Walt Lloyd, ASC
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The International Journal of Motion Imaging
32 Down the Rabbit Hole
Dariusz Wolski, ASC crafts whimsical images for
Alice in Wonderland
48 Weapons of Deception
Barry Ackroyd, BSC takes aim on Green Zone
60 The Final Frontier in 3 Dimensions
James Neihouse trains astronauts to shoot in
Imax for Hubble 3-D
72 Sundance 2010: Expanded Palettes
This years artful indies employed a variety of formats
DEPARTMENTS
FEATURES
VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM TO ENJOY THESE WEB EXCLUSIVES
DVD Playback: Boogie Nights GoodFellas Ran
Book Reviews: Federico Fellini: The Films Akira Kurosawa: Master of Cinema
On Our Cover: Alice (Mia Wasikowska) returns to the magical world of her childhood
adventure in Alice in Wonderland, shot by Dariusz Wolski, ASC. (Photo by Leah Gallo,
courtesy of Disney Enterprises, Inc.)
8 Editors Note
10 Presidents Desk
12 Letters
14 Short Takes: The History of Aviation
20 Production Slate: Lebanon Brooklyns Finest
88 Filmmakers Forum: Michael Goi, ASC and Jeff Okun, VES
92 New Products & Services
98 International Marketplace
100 Classified Ads
100 Ad Index
102 Clubhouse News
104 ASC Close-Up: Rene Ohashi
A P R I L 2 0 1 0 V O L . 9 1 N O . 4
60
72
48
A p r i l 2 0 1 0 V o l . 9 1 , N o . 4 T h e
I n t e r n a t i o n a l J o u r n a l o f M o t i o n I m a g i n g
Visit us online at
www.theasc.com

PUBLISHER Martha Winterhalter
EDITORIAL
EXECUTIVE EDITOR Stephen Pizzello
SENIOR EDITOR Rachael K. Bosley
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Jon D. Witmer
TECHNICAL EDITOR Christopher Probst
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Stephanie Argy, Benjamin B, Douglas Bankston, Robert S. Birchard,
John Calhoun, Bob Fisher, Simon Gray, Jim Hemphill, David Heuring,
Jay Holben, Mark Hope-Jones, Noah Kadner, Jean Oppenheimer,
John Pavlus, Chris Pizzello, Jon Silberg, Iain Stasukevich,
Kenneth Sweeney, Patricia Thomson
ART DEPARTMENT
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Marion Gore
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e-mail: sanja@ascmag.com
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CIRCULATION, BOOKS & PRODUCTS

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ASC EVENTS COORDINATOR Patricia Armacost
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American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 90th year of publication, is published
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American Society of Cine ma tog ra phers
The ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but
an educational, cultural and pro fes sion al
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di rec tors of photography and have
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2010 Sony Electronics Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Features and specications are subject to change without notice.
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See and be seen.
Hollywoods infatuation with 3-D continues to pick
up steam with the release of Alice in Wonderland, Tim
Burtons reimagining of Lewis Carrolls classic tale. Teaming
once again with Dariusz Wolski, ASC, Burton has put a
new twist on the story, making Alice a teenager (played by
Mia Wasikowska) who revisits the wondrous realm she first
stumbled upon as a child.
Various factors led the filmmakers to shoot the
picture in 2-D and then convert the images to 3-D at Sony
Pictures Imageworks. Through testing, they determined
that their schedule wouldnt allow them to set up the infra-
structure needed to shoot high-end native stereo. We studied examples of 2-D movies
that had been turned into 3-D and agreed the results looked amazing, Wolski tells
writer Michael Goldman (Down the Rabbit Hole, page 32). So, at the last minute,
we decided to achieve 3-D in post.
Native 3-D was employed on the Imax/Warner Bros. outer-space documentary
Hubble 3-D. Director of photography James Neihouse was tasked with training a group
of space-shuttle astronauts to capture spectacular images during NASAs final repair
mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. The productions technical and logistical chal-
lenges were immense. NASA gives us about 25 hours of face-to-face time with the
astronauts to train them in basic shot selection and exposure and advise them on what
to do if things go wrong, Neihouse tells longtime contributor Jay Holben (The Final
Frontier in 3 Dimensions, page 60). Fortunately, astronauts are incredibly smart
people and really quick studies.
Back in the 2-D world, Barry Ackroyd, BSC and director Paul Greengrass seek to
set pulses racing with Green Zone, a thriller about a U.S. Army officer (Matt Damon)
attempting to locate weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Ackroyd previously gave
audiences white-knuckle rides with The Hurt Locker and Greengrass United 93; on this
project, the filmmakers did quite a bit on the fly, using handheld cameras and dynamic
moves to immerse viewers in the tense situations depicted onscreen. In his chat with
London correspondent Mark Hope-Jones (Weapons of Deception, page 48), Ackroyd
concedes, Id love to be able to say that we sat down and planned a look for the film,
but thats not Pauls approach, and its not necessarily mine, either. If I said we talked
about it for more than two hours over the course of the whole shoot, then I might well
be exaggerating!
Our annual roundup of visually outstanding films from the Sundance Film Festi-
val (Sundance 2010: Expanded Palettes, page 72) offers insights from cinematogra-
phers Zak Mulligan (Obselidia), Laura Poitras and Kirsten Johnson (The Oath), Michael
Lavelle and Kate McCullough (His & Hers), Paul de Lumen (Southern District) and the
trio of Toby Oliver, ACS; Kathryn Milliss; and Paul Nichola, who shot the first Sundance
feature screened in 3-D (Cane Toads: The Conquest 3-D). Given the diversity of formats
covered in this issue, its safe to say that cinematographers at all levels are actively
exploring every available imaging option.
Stephen Pizzello
Executive Editor
Editors Note
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Which is probably why people are coming back to film. Film
has incredible exposure latitude, which makes it so easy to
light and work with on set. And it gives me an image thats
loaded with color information to start with which saves time
in post. The unmatched resolution makes everything from HD
transfers to spots on the web look amazing. Considering all
the surprises a production throws at you, why add an unproven
workflow into the mix? Film, man. Its just beautiful.
Stefan Sonnenfeld refuses to compromise. His award-winning work on commercials
and features such as Star Trek and Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen is a
testament to that. Hear his stories and others at kodak.com/go/motion
Stefan Sonnenfeld
Colorist. Entrepreneur. Fanatic.

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The release of Avatar has sparked a lot of discussion regarding cinematography and its relation-
ship to computer-generated images. With the advent of more sophisticated virtual-production capa-
bilities, where does the knowledge of how to evoke mood and tell stories in a visual manner take our
profession? I think the answer is in the elements that have comprised our job from the very beginning.
A visual story requires artists who are versed in the subtleties that affect human emotion. These artists
are not mere button pushers in fact, they may best leave the actual pushing of buttons to some-
one else but visionary minds who see the world differently. That they do so with impeccable taste
and an almost uncanny ability to do exactly the right thing at the right moment is what makes them
great.
A CGI artist recently told me about a large-scale production he worked on that used a great deal
of CG material and proportionally less live filmed footage. Eager to please his producers and make
an impact, this artist undertook in his previs conceptual footage to incorporate the look he thought
the movie should have, based on his interpretation of the script. He built in dazzling camera moves
and eye-popping color effects. He created whip-pans to emphasize the rapid-fire line delivery of the voice actors. And he used his arsenal of
computer effects to create incredible lighting that was more perfect than what could ever have been achieved in real life. He created all this
as a blueprint for the rest of production to follow; the cinematographer, the art director and the editor were to make their work match his.
As the prep went forward and personnel in the various crafts were brought onboard, the CGI artist was continually confronted with
opinions that differed considerably from his own. The cinematographer did not like the steely-blue patina of the overall look because he
intended to light the live-action sequences with a chocolate filter so the brown tones could serve as an extension of the characters past. The
dazzling camera moves were swept away in favor of a simple composition that kept the two lead characters in the same frame so the human
quality of their interaction would be retained. And the perfect lighting was altered to be less perfect; in that subtle alteration, it somehow
became more human.
All through this process, the CGI artist made updates to his work to reflect the opinions of the other experienced craftspeople the
production had brought aboard. And what he found was a revelation: that the collective input of artists who were the best at what they did
translated, through him, into the new medium in a way that made all the work better. He found his own contributions were better because
he was working with the best, and the other artists continually challenged his expectations with their own original artistic vision. The resul-
tant movie was the best culmination of all these disciplines.
Visual storytelling is a collaborative art. It always has been. Only the tools are changing. As cinematographers move forward through
this brave new world, it is our voice that a beleaguered and confused industry will need to hear. It is our knowledge of what these new tech-
nologies are capable of which producers will rely on for budgeting and scheduling. And it is our unflappable, unerring knack for doing what
is instinctively right for the material that will be needed. It is what we have always done since the beginning of motion pictures.
So I dont buy into all this panic about the death of traditional cinematography. The history of the art form is paved with technologi-
cal innovations that revolutionized the way we create images. If youve ever looked at the inner workings of a three-strip Technicolor camera,
you know what I mean its a marvel of engineering that necessitated more marvels of engineering to effectively harness its potential. Look
at the evolution of 3-D from the late 1800s to today. Think about when you first used a power window in a color-correction suite to isolate
a section of the picture.
My vision of what a scene looks and feels like exists in a form that is infinitely adaptable to any medium that might arise; it is the prod-
uct of my imagination coupled with my knowledge of the various technologies that could be used to realize it, whether it be a tungsten
lighting kit or a super-computer. I will continue to choose the right tools for the job because it is what I do.
Michael Goi, ASC
President
Presidents Desk
10 April 2010 American Cinematographer
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Christopher Probsts recent article
on the Red One (Working With the Red,
Feb. 10, page 56) generated a great deal
of reader response, both pro and con.
Because of space limitations, we are
publishing a representative sample of that
correspondence.
Wise Words on the Red
Thank you so much for Christopher
Probsts article Working With the Red. The
technical info was presented clearly and
concisely, and one doesnt need to be an
engineer to understand it. I hope some ad
agencies and indie-film producers will read it
and begin to get the drift of what many
cinematographers have known from the
time the Red was introduced: while the
camera is capable of making incredibly
good-looking images, it still has some
issues. As long as you understand how
the camera sees and can increase the time
allotted for post, it can be a wonderful tool.
Unfortunately, too many people, especially
in some of the mid-level markets, think of it
as a low-budget tool and dont allow
enough time or post money to use it to its
best advantage.
Lou Chanatry, SOC
Nashville, Tenn.
Red-Letter Day
Christopher Probsts article Working
with the Red was fantastic. The article was
well written and had great depth, wonderful
information and an honest artistic and tech-
nical point of view. I hope the editors will
publish more articles by Mr. Probst about
other digital cameras.
Bruce Block
Los Angeles, Calif.
A Dissenting View
I am a musician who has just started
directing live concert and music videos, and
when I saw your February issue, I thought,
Great. The ASC is finally going to give us
an article on how experienced cinematogra-
phers get the best out of the Red One.
Instead, I got Christopher Probst trashing
the Red with the usual film-snob red
herrings. If the camera is so bad, why has he
used it on more than 50 music videos? At
our best local film school, Sheridan College,
all of the final projects were shot with the
Red by choice. I really wish the ASC would
get their heads out of the sand and write
about the aesthetic, artistic and workflow
strengths of using the Red. Commentary
like Mr. Probsts just makes the magazine
and the ASC look like dinosaurs trundling
between two glaciers.
Colin Mendez Morris
Toronto, Canada
The Editor replies:
We asked Chris, our longtime techni-
cal editor, to write the article because we
were fielding numerous requests from read-
ers for a how to piece about the Red. The
goal was to provide useful information to
those with little or no experience with the
camera. As Chris noted, his assessment was
based on his own experiences with the Red
in the field. His observations do not repre-
sent the collective opinion of the ASC, nor
were they presented as such.
Letters must include your name,
mailing address and daytime telephone
number. Address correspondence to:
Editor, American Cinematographer, P.O.
Box 2230, Los Angeles, CA, 90078. AC
reserves the right to edit submissions
for length and clarity.
Letters
12
An Anamorphic History of Aviation
By Iain Stasukevich
At first, it seems as though The History of Aviation has nothing
to do with aeronautics. Shot by Mtys Erdly and directed by fellow
Hungarian Blint Kenyeres, the short film opens with a scene of men
in pressed knickers and women in fancy dresses spread out across
the grassy clifftops of Upper Normandy. Theyre searching for some-
thing. Beneath a gray sky, a frantic mother cries out for her lost
daughter over the sound of crashing waves. As other party guests
join in the search (or steal away to secluded coves for a little
romance), the girl becomes the sole witness to a tragic experiment.
The History of Aviation is the second collaboration between
Kenyeres and Erdly, following Before Dawn (AC April 06). As with
their first film, the goal on The History of Aviation was to aim for
the unimaginable, says Erdly. We wanted to shoot 35mm
anamorphic and get big cranes, costumes and locations. He and
Kenyeres wanted floating, dreamlike camera moves to tell the
story, letting it unfold in long, sweeping takes.
The film runs about 17 minutes and comprises 13 shots, all
filled with zooms, pans and tilts, and sweeping moves. Setting the
camera aloft required a tight camera crew and a solid game plan.
Erdly singles out Hungarian dolly grip Jnos Tth and 1st AC
Gergely Csepregi for their contributions: Jnos is very experienced
and can pull off super-complicated moves and long setups, and
Gergelys focus is always dead on. Because of the complicated
setups, Kenyeres and Erdly took the time to sit down with key
crew members, including French key grip Bertrand Val, to go over
storyboards in advance. The filmmakers broke down each long
take into smaller sections and, with Tths help, reassembled them
with the proper camera blocking. We already knew what was
possible given the limitations of our equipment, says Erdly.
Getting organized was an organic process and didnt involve too
much talking. Id just position myself where the lens was supposed
Short Takes
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Above: A mother
searches frantically
for her missing
daughter at the
beginning of the
short film The
History of Aviation.
Right: A picnicker
joins the search for
the missing girl.
I
to be, and wed go from there.
The movie was designed around the
use of one lens, a 48-550mm (T4.5) 11:1
Panavision Primo anamorphic zoom, but
securing the glass proved to be a difficult
task. After attempting a rental through
Sparks Lighting Ltd. in Hungary and Panav-
ision offices in Budapest, London and Paris,
Erdly turned to Phil Radin at Panavision in
Woodland Hills, Calif. (The two became
acquainted when Erdly attended the
American Film Institute in Los Angeles.)
Within hours of the request, a lens was
secured. We were just blown away,
Erdly recalls. If Phil hadnt helped us, we
couldnt have done the film. Weeks later,
his camera and his lens were sweeping
above the Upper Normandy coast. Erdly
spent the better part of the four days of
principal photography atop the platform of
a 23'-tall crane, operating a PanArri 435
with a Pan Bar fluid head while Csepregi
pulled focus remotely from the ground.
To achieve a naturalistic period look,
Erdly shot on Kodak Vision2 250D 5205
and kept a Tiffen Fog Filter on the lens
throughout the shoot. He and Kenyeres
also credit costume designer Gyrgyi
Szakcs for her immeasurable contributions
to the film. Without Gyrgyis vintage
early-20th-century collection of clothes and
accessories, we would never have achieved
these kinds of visuals, says Kenyeres.
One shot in particular required just as
much preparation and work to achieve as
the rest of the film put together. The girl,
wandering as bored youngsters sometimes
do, finds herself alone atop a hidden
promontory overlooking the ocean. The
shot starts with a wide shot framing the
water, the promontory and the girl, with
rocky cliffs looming in the distance. The
camera begins a slow push forward, over
the girls shoulder, zooming far into the
background to find the tiny speck of a prop
plane perched above the drop. An even
tinier speck, the pilot, scurries around the
aircraft, making final preparations. Over the
howling of the wind, the girl hears the
planes engine starting. The aircraft taxis
out of sight, then reappears a moment
later, speeding toward the empty space
beyond the cliffs edge. The camera follows
the plane as it drops, alights on a gust of
wind, banks, dips and then plunges into
Top to bottom: As the search progresses toward the shoreline, two lovers steal away for a bit of
romance; an empty rowboat is found offshore; fearing her daughter fell out of the boat and drowned,
the mother collapses; the missing girl, alive and well, wanders a secluded cliff.
made harness and flown to the location.
Another unique aspect of the shot is
the airplane, a CG element added by
visual-effects artists at Buf in France. Erdly
had to follow the planes movements while
there was nothing actually there. I didnt
know how I was going to work the timing
of the planes flight, he says, so I took an
old video mixer and ran the live feed from
the cameras video tap and the previs
animatics into a single monitor so that
Christophe Moreau, one of our effects
supervisors at Buf, could call out a verbal
description of the scene for me. To coun-
teract the heavy winds and smooth out the
cameras movement while shooting at the
long end of the lens, Erdly had the
camera mounted to a three-axis Stabilized
Scorpio head. But there were serious
issues with the gyro it wouldnt adjust
with the horizon, recalls Kenyeres. We
were losing time and light, so we decided
to split that one shot into two. We split it
right before the crash, while we were still
on the blue sky. Some additional stabiliza-
tion work was done in post at Buf.
The negative was processed at Scan-
lab in Paris, and the 4K digital intermediate
was carried out at Hungarian Film Lab.
We spent a lot of time in the DI, exploring
the negative, explains Erdly. There were
so many directions we could take it in that
I wasnt sure where to start. The more we
explored, the more we felt we should go
back to a very raw image, like when you
scan the image and its washed out and
milky. We wanted to create a look that was
natural and organic, and tried to stay away
from everything thats polished and trendy,
so we fine-tuned the raw image to make it
as pristine as possible but didnt add
anything to it.
He retained the full 2.40:1 frame in
the video master. He notes, When I do
photography, I believe in the Henri Cartier-
Bresson style: once you take a picture, thats
it. You dont crop it. I took that to the
extreme and used the entire negative.
the sea. The shot lingers on that frame for
a moment before slowly zooming out and
swinging back around, ending with a close-
up of the girl.
We spent months planning that
shot, and it was so stressful and scary that
we did it first to get it out of the way,
Erdly recalls. We previsualized 20
versions of it with our visual-effects super-
visor, Mt Birks, using our location-scout
photos and Google Earth to build a 3-D
model of the location, along with the lens
and crane. Its the most expensive shot Ive
ever done!
The location for the shot was only
accessible by a tiny, rocky path about 200
steps from the beach, making it extremely
difficult to transport equipment, particu-
larly the 650-pound Super Scorpio Tele-
scoping Crane. At first, some crewmem-
bers joked about needing a helicopter, but
as time went on, it became clear that they
would, in fact, need one. The crane was
disassembled, strapped into a custom-
Clockwise from
above: The girl
studies a distant cliff
where an aviator is
about to attempt a
doomed flight;
cinematographer
Mtys Erdly (on
crane) and 1st AC
Gergely Csepregi
prepare a crane shot;
(left to right) director
Blint Kenyeres, dolly
grip Jnos Tth,
Erdly and Csepregi
ready a dolly move
near the water.
Camerimages Golden Lebanon
By Benjamin B
Sitting in a hotel room in Lodz, Poland, cinematographer
Giora Bejach recalls how director Samuel Maoz prepared his actors
in Israel before starting production on Lebanon. He put them inside
a shipping container and closed the doors. Inside it was something
like 45C [113F]. They didnt know how long they would be in
there. It was dark; they couldnt see anything. They had no water,
nothing, for one hour. Then, in the last five minutes, Samuel started
to throw sticks and stones at the container. You know, that makes a
hell of a lot of noise! Bejach laughs. When he let them out, they
were ready for their close-ups! But it was amazing to see their
faces.
Lebanon, which takes place entirely inside a tank during the
Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, won the prestigious Golden Frog
at the 2009 Plus Camerimage International Film Festival of the Art of
Cinematography. The films main characters are the four young men
who make up the tank crew, none of whom has ever experienced
combat. The film is limited to their point of view; the outside world
is seen only through the binocular viewfinder operated by the
gunner, Shmulik (Yoav Donat). Over the course of their first 24 hours
in Lebanon, these callow recruits are transformed by the violence
they witness and partake in, and by their memorable encounters
with enemy combatants and innocent civilians.
Lebanon is a war film without any heroes. It depicts a conflict
full of confusion, punctuated by sudden acts of violence. To illustrate
the impact of combat, the tone of the film shifts from brutal realism
to a moment of surreal madness, and finally, when the young men
have lost all innocence, the film concludes with a simple act of
humanity.
Maoz, who met with AC in Paris after Camerimage, reveals
that the film is based on his own experiences as a tank gunner,
events that have haunted him for more than 20 years. He does not
mince words: I can say that the acts the war forced me to do
ruined my life. He says he had a need to tell his story, but that
it was a matter of how to tell it. The story in my film is not the plot.
The plot is something very basic. Lets say the events are the symp-
toms, not the issue. The issue is the bleeding soul, what happens
inside a soldier during a war. I couldnt tell this kind of story in a clas-
sic cinematic structure. How the hell can you tell a story about
whats happening inside a soul? Its an emotional understanding,
something you can understand through the stomach, through the
heart. To achieve such an understanding, you must create a very
strong experience.
Maozs goal was to confine viewers in the tank with the char-
acters, and make them partake in the confusion and cabin fever of
four young men experiencing the horror of war for the first time.
You see only what they see, he notes. You know only what they
know.
Bejach credits his director for taking the actors and the audi-
ence on an incredible journey. He recalls that Maoz gave him a
Production Slate
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A soldier peers
into a tank in
Lebanon, the
recipient of the
Golden Frog at
the 2009 Plus
Camerimage
International
Film Festival of
the Art of
Cinematography.
Directed by
Samuel Maoz
and shot by
Giora Bejach, the
film is set
entirely inside
the tank.
Sony Pictures
Classics will
release the film
in the U.S. later
this year.
I
visual direction with a few words at one of
their first meetings about the project: He
said, Please make it bleeding to black.
From there, everything was very easy.
For Bejach, the first step was to work
with production designer Ariel Roshko to
create a somber tank interior. The inside of
real tanks are white because you need light
in there, but we went with dark brown.
There are two scenes in the tank when you
see red blood, and you cant miss it. The
tank was built by combining eight modular
constructions on a soundstage, and it could
be split apart to arrange for different view-
points.
Maoz also told Bejach that he
wanted the tank interior to have a green
tinge. We could have achieved that in
post, but I preferred to do it with the light-
ing, so we did it with yellow and green
gels, says the cinematographer. We
changed them from time to time, only
because I wanted to give each lighting
setup a slightly different look. I didnt want
it all to look the same.
Bejach created variety in the dark
tank interior with a few small practicals and
gels, and by providing brief glimpses of the
world outside. Day and night inside the tank
are evoked by the presence or absence of
glowing bright light spilling in through small
openings. To light the interior, Bejach
wanted sources that fell off quickly, without
being too soft. I didnt want to use soft
lights because they dont describe the situa-
tion. Theyre gentle, and the situation is not
gentle. But I dont like hard lights, so I
decided to use an old light, the Zip light.
That was the main source inside the tank.
The Zip light is an old-fashioned
fixture with a 1K or 2K bulb aimed at a built-
in, curved, reflective surface. Inside the tank,
it gave us the right feeling, says Bejach.
If you move a bit too far from the lamp, it
starts to be hard, and if you come closer, it
gets softer. It falls off quickly, so it wont hit
the walls, which was very good, because we
had no way to cut the light in there.
Sometimes Bejach also bounced
650-watt Tweenies off reflectors with wrin-
kled silver foil to add a metallic feeling to
diffused light on the actors. He sometimes
used this bounce with a small source to
create fill for day interiors, and at other
times he used the silver foil by itself for fill
on dark interiors.
To create the sensation of daylight
outside, Bejach hung Nine-light Maxi-Brutes
with narrow-beam bulbs (through White
diffusion) and aimed them down at the
tank set. For a scene in which a corpse is
brought into the tank, Bejach pointed a 6K
HMI on the ground up at a mirror above the
tanks open hatch, creating a blinding
downward shaft of light, which he defined
with a smoke machine.
Smoke is also an important compo-
nent of battle scenes seen through the
tanks periscope; these were shot as day
exteriors. Bejach added burning tires and
smoke machines to generate a hell of a
lot of thick, dark smoke that helped to
lower the contrast of the strong Israeli
sunlight and create the feeling of a war
zone.
Clockwise from top left: Bejach used green and yellow gels
to give the tank interior a green tinge; built on a soundstage,
the tank interior comprised eight modular sections that could
be separated to accommodate camera placement; a 6K HMI
was bounced into a mirror to create a shaft of blinding
daylight through the tanks hatch.

We changed the language [of film gram-
mar] completely a medium became a
long shot, a close-up became a medium
shot, and an extreme close-up became a
close-up, he says.
Although there is little traditional
camera movement in the film, the camera
was often on a Scorpio head. To simulate
the tanks movement, the entire set was
tilted and shaken by grips, and sometimes
the camera was also shaken for good
measure. Bejach laughs, This was a low-
tech movie! He explains that the shaking
motion and close-up framing help to create
an uncomfortable feeling. When you
show things in very tight shots, you lose
reference for where you are, and then
everything gets scary. You add the lighting
and the actors expressions, and it all comes
together it works.
Though many cinematographers
mix digital and film to create different looks,
Bejach used the Red to shoot missing
portions of scenes shot on 16mm, often
shooting digital close-ups designed to be
inserted seamlessly into scenes shot in film.
When going back to shoot a matching
scene with the Red, he says, he used the
same number of lights, but with less
contrast. For example, if he used a 650-
watt bounce fill in the film version of a
scene, he would use a 1K bounce fill with
the Red. He thus created an image with less
latitude when shooting with the Red, about
1
1
2 stops above and 4
1
2 stops below.
However, he would go as much 5 stops
above when he wanted white light, as in
the scene in which the soldiers look up as
they hear jets overhead. If you want to
burn something with the Red, if you want
a nice white, you should use a lot of light,
he remarks.
Bejach credits Geyer Cologne
colorist Andreas Frhlich for doing an
unbelievable job blending the film and
digital footage together in the digital inter-
mediate, which was carried out at 2K. I
sent just a few samples of how I wanted it
to look, says Bejach. Andreas degrained
the Super 16 a bit and added some grain to
the Red material. The color correction and
degraining were done with a Digital Vision
Nucoda Film Master.
Maoz is thoughtful as he considers
the self-imposed limitations of shooting a
film in a cramped space with just one open-
ing to the outside world. One of the
important things I learned is that limits are
a kind of blessing, he says. If you dont
have room to move right or left, you can
only dig deeper.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
Super 16mm and Digital Capture
Arri 16SR-3 Evolution; Red One
Zeiss Ultra Prime lenses
Kodak Vision2 200T 7217
Printed on Kodak Vision 2383
In a surreal nighttime moment, the
tank crew finds itself in a big, amorphous
space where they hear eerie accordion
music. For this scene, Bejach used a Dino to
create a soft moonlight, adding Blue,
1
8
Green and
1
8 White diffusion. He comple-
mented this with a handful of smaller lights
gelled in a similar fashion.
One of the main challenges for
Bejach was his mlange of film and digital
formats. The filmmakers shot two-thirds of
the movie on Super 16mm, using an Arri
16SR-3 Evolution. They then went on hiatus
for almost a year to raise more money, and
production resumed with a Red One digital
camera (Build 16). Bejach notes that the Red
was chosen mostly to avoid the delay
involved in getting film footage to and from
the lab, Geyer Cologne in Germany. It
could take two weeks! he recalls. Money
was not the issue; it was time. In the end,
digital costs about the same as film, but
what you save is time.
Bejach used the same lenses, Zeiss
Ultra Primes, often close to the actors, with
both the film and digital cameras. He most
often used the 24mm. The cramped tank
interior did not allow for true wide shots.
Near right, top
and bottom:
The world
outside the
tank is seen
only through
the tanks
periscope. Far
right: Bejach
finds his frame
as 1st AC Ido
Ben-Cnaan
keeps the
action in focus.
Police Under Pressure
By Jean Oppenheimer
Late one evening, a week before
production commenced on his first Ameri-
can feature, Mexican cinematographer
Patrick Murguia, AMC, and his gaffer, Jay
Fortune, showed up at the Van Dyke hous-
ing project in the Brownsville section of
Brooklyn, one of the citys toughest neigh-
borhoods. The site was to be a key location
in Brooklyns Finest, and Murguia wanted to
feel out the place at night and measure
how much available light was created by
the practical streetlamps. As he stepped out
of the van, an unmarked patrol car drove
up, and two police officers got out. They
approached slowly, their hands hovering
above their holsters, their eyes darting
uneasily between Murguias face and the
bulging leather case which contained his
spot meter at his side. It was very
tense, recalls Murguia. I couldnt really
[whip] out my light meter to show them
that it wasnt a gun. Fortunately, unlike the
cops in Brooklyns Finest, who shoot first
and ask questions later, these officers were
cautious but not impetuous. Murguia and
Fortune checked out the location and left.
Its amazing how [Kodak Vision3
500T] 5219 can see into the darkness,
marvels Murguia, who notes that more
than half of Brooklyns Finest takes place at
night or in dark interiors. He estimates that
just over half of the picture was shot with
the lens wide open.
Brooklyns Finest follows three police
officers, each facing a personal crisis, whose
paths cross late in the story. Sal (Ethan
Hawke) is a narcotics officer so desperate to
buy a house for his wife and kids that he
robs the drug dealers he kills. Tango (Don
Cheadle) is an undercover cop who is start-
ing to have divided loyalties. Eddie (Richard
Gere) is just marking time until he retires. As
the line between right and wrong blurs,
each struggles with his conscience.
One of the first things director Antoine
Fuqua and Murguia agreed on was that
they didnt want Brooklyns Finest to be a
handheld movie; they preferred a classical
approach, with the camera serving as an
observer. Furthermore, they wanted the city
to be a suffocating presence. When you
live in a city like New York, you dont see the
sky, notes Murguia, who recently moved
to Los Angeles from Mexico City. There are
walls everywhere. Buildings block the sky.
You almost feel that you cant breathe.
Fuqua was initially interested in shoot-
ing anamorphic, but he and Murguia even-
tually decided that spherical lenses would
suit the films themes better. With spheri-
cal lenses, the context surrounding the
characters is a little more present, says
Murguia. Anamorphic tends to isolate the
characters from the background, and that
definitely didnt suit this storyline because
we wanted to integrate the city as a char-
acter. We chose Super 35 because we felt
the very horizontal format would accentu-
ate the feeling of urban claustrophobia. In
the end, however, the filmmakers did
decide to use anamorphic for three specific
images: the final shots of each of the main
characters, shots that had to stand apart
visually from the rest of the picture.
The main cameras, provided by Arri
CSC, were Arricam Lites and an Arri 435,
and Murguia chose Arri Master Primes and
two Angenieux Optimo zoom lenses, a 24-
290mm and a 17-80mm. For the three
anamorphic shots, he used a Panaflex Plat-
inum and Panavision Primo anamorphic
prime lenses, supplied by Panavision New
York.
A graduate of Mexicos prestigious
Centro de Capacitacin Cinematogrfica,
Murguia frequently draws inspiration from
still photography. His main reference for
Brooklyns Finest was the early work of Nan
Goldin, but he also studied police crime
photos and selected some of the grittiest
work of Magnum photojournalists. The
intimacy Nan Goldin achieves is amazing,
Above: Troubled
cops Eddie (Richard
Gere, left) and Sal
(Ethan Hawke) study
a wall of suspects in
Brooklyns Finest,
shot by Patrick
Murguia, AMC.
Right: Undercover
officer Tango (Don
Cheadle, right)
infiltrates a
drug-dealing ring
headed by his
longtime friend Caz
(Wesley Snipes).
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he says. A lot of her photos were made
without a flash, so you see the real atmos-
phere of the places. On this film, I always
tried to lead with practical and available
light.
A good example of this approach is
the films opening scene. Its just past dusk,
and the camera (on a Technocrane) looks at
the Manhattan skyline in the distance. The
camera slowly booms right, across a ceme-
tery, and stops on a wide shot of a car
parked on a desolate road next to the
graveyard. The back of the car faces the
camera. Dialogue is audible, but we cant
see whos in the car. The only light comes
from a streetlamp located several hundred
yards in front of the car.
In keeping with his available-light
philosophy, Murguia wanted to create the
illusion that all of the light in the scene was
coming from this one source. In this case,
his crew removed the bulb in the practical
and hung a 2K open-faced Blonde behind
it. You tip it back just enough so that the
spill glows the glass and makes it look as if
the streetlamp is on, explains Fortune.
We put Lee 232 on the 2K to match the
sodium-vapor look of the original bulb. If
you put 232 on a tungsten source, it will
match sodium-vapor to a T without the
green.
Strings of bare household bulbs, all
wired to a dimmer, were placed behind the
car to create reflections on the vehicle and
keep it from disappearing in the dark. A
10K was hidden behind a Dumpster located
halfway between the car and the streetlight,
and Murguias crew moved a 12'x12' frame
of Ultra Bounce around the vehicle to
bounce light inside Murguia didnt want
lights in the car when the camera moved in
for coverage. Behind the car, farther down
the road, was a 10K that raked light across
the fence separating the road from the
cemetery. With the exception of the house-
hold bulbs, every fixture was gelled with Lee
232.
The camera moves in to reveal Sal in
the front seat with a small-time crook. Sal
shoots his companion, steals his money and
jumps out of the car. As he runs down the
road, he casts an enormous shadow on the
fence and cemetery. To achieve this expres-
sionistic effect, Fortune positioned a 10K
some 50' behind the car and took the lens
out so it would cast a hard shadow. It was
a very humid night, perfect for an atmos-
pheric, backlit scene.
When the three policemens paths
finally converge, in the last 45 minutes
of the film, they do so at the housing
project in a complex web of sequences. It
begins with Sal pulling up in his car late at
night. With a wide Steadicam shot, A-
camera/Steadicam operator Mike OShea
follows Sal as he climbs out of the car and
walks under the elevated train tracks.
(Astute viewers will notice Eddies car down
the street, following a van.) The Steadicam,
maintaining the wide shot, moves to Sals
side as he walks past Tango, who is exiting
his own car. (The two men dont know
each other.) As Sal heads towards one
building, the camera leaves him and starts
tracking backward in front of Tango, who is
heading toward a different building.
Murguia picks up the story: The camera
starts to pan with Tango, and as it does, we
see a young man sitting in front of the
building. We stay with the kid as Tango
walks into the building. We cut to the kids
POV as he watches Sal enter the other
building.
To light this long Steadicam move,
Murguia relied on the existing light cast by
the streetlamps and hid a 2K open-faced
Blonde behind one pole. The spill from the
Blonde covered a wide area and served as
the key light. According to Fortune, this
ambient light was boosted by several other
fixtures: a 5K on a 40' Condor beside the el
tracks provided sidelight and backlight; a
couple of 10Ks were positioned on the
ground six blocks away, underneath the el;
and a Dino and a 20K were positioned on
a 125' Condor hidden behind a nearby
high-rise. All of these fixtures were gelled
with Lee 232 for a sodium-vapor feel.
After Tango enters the building, we
cut back to Sal and follow him into an
apartment, where he murders two crimi-
nals. Upon entering the kitchen, he hears
something, turns around and shoots a third
man. Then the camera stops and observes
as Sal tears the place apart, looking for
money. He goes in and out of frame, but
the camera remains stationary, says
Above: Suffering
a crisis of
conscience after
his retirement,
Eddie attempts to
save a lost soul.
Right: To provide
for his family, Sal
begins stealing
money discovered
during drug raids.
Murguia. Its a completely different feeling
than following him.
When Sal finds the money and starts
stuffing it into his pockets, he is shot in the
back. The camera jumps to a frontal view,
and Sal looks down at his chest, where
blood is spreading on his shirt. As he falls,
we see the shooter in the doorway. At this
point, Murguia switched to anamorphic.
We wanted a shallow depth-of-field as we
look down at Sal on the floor, because we
wanted to focus only on his face, says the
cinematographer. As he dies, we slowly
boom down, and a practical lamp on the
other side of him creates this beautiful flare
in the anamorphic lens. Its as though he
has this moment of clarity as his life slips
away. The anamorphic lens helps put you
inside his head.
After Sal dies, the action cuts back to
Tango in the other building. He kills one
man and follows a wounded man, Red, out
and into the street. (This is the same area
where Tango and Sal crossed paths earlier.)
Once both men are in the middle of the
street, the film switches to two-camera
coverage, with both cameras on dollies; the
A camera, with a 27mm lens, gets the shot
of Tango standing over Red, while the B
camera, with a 75mm lens, is just behind
Tango, looking through his legs at Red. The
headlights of a car approach the scene from
behind Red.
Tango keeps pumping bullets into
Red, finally killing him. But then Tango is
shot from behind and falls to the ground.
The camera racks focus, and we see the
shooter in the background. Again, Murguia
switched to anamorphic for Tangos dying
moments. As he dies, the camera begins to
slowly rotate. Key grip George Patsos
explains: For the 360-degree camera roll,
we used a Panatate, which rotates the
camera around the lens axis.
Tango turns his head as the oncoming
headlights grow closer. This bathes Tango in
light and produces a lens flare, signifying
Tangos moment of clarity. Murguia
Tango
confronts a
gang member
on a fateful
night for all
three officers.
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notes, I was very happy with that shot. It
was important to do something dramatic to
reflect what Tango is going through.
The third anamorphic shot is also the
final shot in the film. Eddie has rescued
some kidnapped girls and is walking away
from the swarm of emergency vehicles that
have arrived at the site. This time the
camera and Libra head were on a 50' Tech-
nocrane. The crane dollies back as Eddie
walks towards it, but slowly enough so that
Eddie catches up to it. As he reaches the
camera, he looks into the lens, and the shot
freezes. He survives, but in a subtle way, he
has a moment of clarity, too, notes
Murguia.
Murguia emphasizes how lucky he
was to have such outstanding collaborators
on his first U.S. production. My first assis-
tant, Robert Mancuso, is not only a great
focus puller, but also an extraordinarily nice
person. No matter what happened, he was
always in a good mood. Given all the
Steadicam work, Mike OShea had a really
tough job, especially in the summer heat.
And Jay Fortune and George Patsos came
up with some great ideas; each of them had
a trailer full of things, and no matter what
we needed, they had it. Our production
designer, Thrse DePrez, always made sure
there was something interesting in front of
the camera. And, finally, colorists Stefan
Sonnenfeld and Stephen Nakamura did a
great job with the color correction [at
Company 3].
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31
Down the
Rabbit
Hole
Dariusz Wolski, ASC adds
dimension to Tim Burtons Alice in
Wonderland, a blend of live-action
cinematography, visual effects and
3-D post techniques.
By Michael Goldman
|
www.theasc.com April 2010 33
A
s Tim Burtons team plowed down
the home stretch while finishing
the 3-D fantasy Alice in
Wonderland, director of photogra-
phy Dariusz Wolski, ASC waxed philo-
sophical about having a somewhat
atypical role on a strange project that
some might consider a distant cousin of
Avatar. This is one of those modern
movies that makes it really hard to
define the role of the cinematographer,
he observes. Its a film that really
defined itself during preproduction.
When we started, we had no idea
exactly how we would make it.
The projects schedule, budget,
ambitious visual effects, unique design
and stereoscopic-exhibition require-
ments, when combined, were not
conducive to a traditional cinematogra-
phy process nor to adopting a native
stereo-capture method. Burton and his
collaborators decided that the imagery
they had in mind could best be
constructed through a continually
evolving, communal effort in which
boundaries between the camera and
visual-effects departments were often
blurred. Wolski and his crew captured
actor performances on a series of green-
screen stages at Culver Studios in
Culver City, and then senior visual-
effects supervisor Ken Ralston and a
team at Sony Pictures Imageworks set U
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Opposite: Years
after her original
adventure, 19-
year-old Alice
(Mia Wasikowska)
revisits
Wonderland and
its eccentric cast
of characters. This
page, top: The
sequence in
which Alice re-
enters the
magical realm
involved
extensive size
and perspective
shifts as the
character both
shrinks and
grows. Middle:
Cinematographer
Dariusz Wolski,
ASC (far left),
Wasikowska and
director Tim
Burton check out
the set. Bottom:
Although this
section of the film
also required
extensive digital
manipulation, it
was also one of
the few scenes in
Wonderland that
was partly shot
on traditional set
pieces, allowing
the growth
illusion to be
achieved in-
camera.
about blending that material with all-
CG environments and characters, in
some instances digitally altering the
actors faces and bodies in the process.
Key collaborators were the virtual art
department, led by production designer
Robert Stromberg; Sony Pictures
Imageworks stereographer Corey
Turner and visual-effects supervisors
Carey Villegas and Sean Phillips; and
the digital-intermediate team at
Company 3, led by colorist Stefan
Sonnenfeld.
Burton recalls that the approach
didnt bubble to the surface until late in
prep, and even then, he says, it often felt
like we were making it up as we went
along, which is not the best way to do it.
But because we were mixing technolo-
gies heavily and dealing with a short
shooting schedule [50 days of principal
photography], it was inevitable. It was
fun to experiment and try different
things, but it was a very strange process
almost the opposite of making a
traditional film, in the sense that we
didnt see what we had until the end.
Although Alice shares some
prominent similarities with Avatar,
Burtons film took a different track, not
only because his projects time and
finances were comparatively modest,
but also because he wanted to work
organically with a sizable cast, which
includes Johnny Depp (as the Mad
Hatter), Helena Bonham Carter (as the
Red Queen) and Mia Wasikowska (as
Alice). Burton rejected an all-motion-
capture approach but fell in love with
the notion of exotic, all-CG environ-
ments and extensive scale and perspec-
tive manipulations within the frame.
Thus, shooting the movie digitally on a
greenscreen stage eventually ripened
into the only feasible option.
However, Burton also wanted
what he calls a vast movie. He wanted
to honor some of Lewis Carrolls iconic
imagery and yet do [it] in a way that
has never been seen before. He elabo-
rates, We wanted to show that
Wonderland has fallen on hard times a
bit, and we also wanted to use color to
establish each character each has its
own kind of color scheme, in a way.
That informed our approach and gave
us something to hang onto while deal-
ing with greenscreen all day long.
Down the Rabbit Hole

Alice
approaches
the rabbit hole
that will send
her tumbling
back to
Wonderland.
This portion of
the film was
captured on
35mm film.
Throughout prep, the filmmakers
presumed they would shoot Alice in
native stereo. Thus, Wolski spent several
weeks testing the Fusion 3-D Camera
System developed by Vince Pace and
James Cameron and used on Avatar
(AC Jan. 10). Wolski says those tests
taught him and Burton a great deal
about composing imagery to achieve
the correct depth, camera moves and
perspective for a big-screen stereo
presentation, but, at the end of the day,
they concluded they wouldnt have the
time to set up the infrastructure neces-
sary to shoot high-end native stereo.
Because their live characters would be
composited into a wide range of CG
environments at Imageworks, the film-
makers decided to ask Imageworks to
also apply its dimensionalization
process to transform the 2-D images
into 3-D in post. We studied examples
of 2-D movies that had been turned
into 3-D and agreed the results looked
amazing, recalls Wolski. So, at the last
minute, we decided to achieve 3-D in
post. But the tests we shot with the
Fusion rig were helpful, because they
enabled us to understand the whole
concept of convergence, how to design
the space and so on. They helped us
The Cheshire Cat
(top) and the
Blue Caterpillar
(middle) are two
of the offbeat
creatures who
greet Alice.
Sony Pictures
Imageworks
contributed a
variety of
complex CG
creations.
Bottom: Alice
explores
Wonderlands
forest, one of
the settings
filled with
extremely
detailed CG
scenery conjured
by Burton
and production
designer Robert
Stromberg.
Taking
advantage of
previsualization
tools, Stromberg
was able to help
Burton visualize
Wasikowskas
movements
within the
shows virtual
environments.
keep a 3-D image in the back of our
minds while we were shooting.
After deciding on a 1.85:1 aspect
ratio, the filmmakers took a mixed-
format approach to acquisition,
mingling high-definition video with 4K
digital capture and 35mm. Panavisions
Genesis was the primary tool, and the
Dalsa Evolution 4K camera was used to
acquire plates for some visual-effects
work. The films opening and closing
bookends were shot on 35mm to
create a visual distinction between
Alices world above ground and the
scenes that occur after she falls down the
rabbit hole.
Wolski notes that at the time
late 2008 Sonys F35 was not yet
available, so the only Sony HD system
he considered was the F23. I think the
resolution of the F23 is better than that
of the Genesis, but it has a smaller chip,
and I found that wide shots were not as
sharp as they were with the Genesis, he
says. In the tests, I struggled with wide
shots, especially when characters wore
pale costumes and pale makeup in soft
light. Shooting against greenscreen, you
dont have all the sharpness and detail
that comes with shooting a real set.
Under those circumstances, I thought
the wide shots were sharper with the
Genesis.

Top: The Red Queen
(Helena Bonham
Carter) reigns
supreme in her
colorful realm.
Middle: The Queens
castle, realized as an
eye-popping digital
vista. Bottom:
Tweedledee,
Tweedledum and the
White Rabbit are
three all-CG
characters who
routinely interact
with real actors in
CG environments.
Tweedledee and
Tweedledum were
animated via motion-
capture data recorded
from sensors worn by
actor Matt Lucas and
his double, while the
White Rabbit was
hand-animated.

Using two Genesis bodies, the
filmmakers shot raw imagery at - Gain
on the Tungsten setting, recording
uncompressed to Codex Recorders. At
the end of each day, the master record-
ings on the exposed diskpacks, so to
speak, would go to the video-control
truck, where there was an LTO [data
tape] transfer station, explains Wayne
Tidwell, the productions data-capture
engineer. Masters were laid off to LTO
tape for archival and safety backup, and
the discpacks were recycled once the data
was verified. During production, Id
transfer takes from a scene onto an exter-
nal Firewire drive using DNX HD36
files. We had about 15 to 20 FireWire
drives cycling constantly to editorial.
Working with a large set of
Panavision Primo primes and two
encoded 4:1 Primo zoom lenses (along
with converted Leica lenses for the
Dalsa), Wolski applied what he had
learned from testing 3-D rigs. With
3-D, its best to shoot on the wider end,
he says. Our biggest close-ups were
75mm. I dont think we went longer than
that. For scenes depicting Alices adven-
tures in the rabbit hole which
comprise most of the picture the

Top: The Mad
Hatter (Johnny
Depp) is always
ready to pour
some tea.
Middle: The
White Rabbit
joins the party.
Burton notes
that in his film,
Wonderland has
fallen on hard
times, which is
reflected in the
pictures color
schemes. Certain
shots were
desaturated
during the DI
process, but
individual
palettes were
also designed for
specific
characters, so
environments
tend to brighten
up considerably
when Alice is
around. Bottom:
After sipping her
tea, Alice shrinks
once again and
eventually winds
up being stuffed
into a teapot.
camera was on a 30' Technocrane with a
Libra head.
One of the filmmakers trickiest
tasks was determining how to provide
plates for shots that showed size and scale
shifts within particular frames; certain
characters, and sometimes certain body
parts, were designed to be different sizes
from other elements in the frame. The
Red Queen, for instance, has a head far
too big for her body. Likewise, Alice is
more than 8' tall in some scenes and tiny
in others. Wrangling those scale changes
was a big challenge and part of a larger
paradigm for the movie virtually every
shot is, one way or another, a visual effect.
In fact, Ralston, whose credits include
such memorable technical achievements
as The Polar Express (AC Nov. 04) and
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (AC July 88),
calls Alice the biggest show Ive ever
done, adding, Its the most creatively
involved Ive ever been in this many areas
of a major show.
The team ruled out motion control
for plates involving shifts in scale because
that would have required shooting sepa-
rate passes, and Tim wanted to make
sure the actors could play scenes together,
says Villegas. We used a variety of meth-
ods to get eyelines correct on set, includ-
ing platforms and stilts. Dariusz had the
problem of not knowing how much head-
room to leave on various shots because
Tim didnt know, for example, exactly how
big the Red Queens head needed to be
until wed put it all together. So Dariusz
decided to just shoot it the way he saw it
and let us use our post solution.

The Red
Queens
distorted head
size was one of
the movies
most complex
visual effects.
The first step
was achieved
by shooting
Carter on a
greenscreen
stage. Dalsas
4K Evolution
camera system
was used to
create plates at
high resolution;
this allowed
the filmmakers
to enlarge
portions of the
frame in post
and then
seamlessly
stitch those
elements
together with
images shot at
lower
resolutions.

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That solution involved capturing
those plates in 4K with the Dalsa
Evolution, which was in the prototype
stage at that time. (Ed. Note: Dalsa has
since departed the motion-picture busi-
ness.) With the Evolution, the team
could capture the Red Queen or Alice
together with other live characters in a
single 4K frame and then scale portions
of the frame up or down while main-
taining a high-quality image.
In order to blend Dalsa footage
with Genesis footage, the Imageworks
team had to create software to amelio-
rate resolution differences between the
two: the Evolutions 4K images were
4096x2048, whereas the Genesis HD
images are 1920x1080. Still, according
to Villegas, the Dalsa was a helpful
choice in the long run. You cant blow
up footage from an HD camera by 50 to
100 percent and maintain the quality we
needed, says Villegas. We needed a
high-resolution camera like the Dalsa,
but it had to co-exist with the Genesis
in post we knew we couldnt have
two different pipelines for them.
We wanted to maintain the
Dalsas 2:1 aspect ratio in order to make
sure we could use the full raster of the
images Dariusz shot on set, continues
Villegas. So we developed a process to

Almost every
scene staged in
Wonderland
with real actors
was shot on
greenscreen
stages.
Environments
were added
later by
Imageworks,
which also
handled the
shows
stereoscopic
conversion
process.
resize the Dalsa images down to
2160x1080, approximating the pixel
space of the Genesis. The Dalsa resolu-
tion had about 120
extra pixels on each
side of the frame, and
that became the basis
of those images. So if
we kept Alice at the
native resolution of
the 4K camera and
comped her back
into a scene of the
downsized Dalsa
material, we were
effectively getting an
89-percent blowup
without doing any
resizing. Imageworks
achieved this with
proprietary software
called Recompose,
which enabled the team to scale pieces
of Wolskis photography up or down
and establish a seamless relationship
between enlarged portions of the frame
and the rest of the frame.
In order for that work to be done,
however, Wolskis crew had to record
live-action plates to exacting standards
on the greenscreen stages. Central
among their challenges was how to light
greenscreen delicately and mitigate the
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pervasive green spill. The solution, says
Wolski, lay in the shadows, and was
something we kind of invented as we
went along.
On a 360-degree
greenscreen stage, the
spill goes every-
where, he continues.
If you want big
shadows to fall on
some of your subjects,
those shadows often
become green because
there is so much green
spill. So we used
different shades of
high-quality gray
fabrics to create
shadows. When we
wanted to go real
moody, we used a
shade that was almost
black. If it was a dusky day, we used a
dark gray, and if it was day, we used light
gray.
Above each greenscreen stage,
gaffer Rafael Sanchez and his crew
installed huge lightboxes to provide soft
light. Each source comprised three soft
boxes containing 32 6K space lights
each, and all three were rigged with
chain motors to facilitate extensive
manipulation. This approach gave
We studied
examples of 2-D
movies that had
been turned into
3-D and agreed
the results looked
amazing.
Tweedledee and Tweedledum give Alice conflicting directions to her next destination.
Wolski great flexibility in shaping the
light, says Sanchez. We even had
control of each circuit in every space
light. Outside the softboxes, the crew
placed 80 Kino Flos for direct green-
screen light, and they also used 20K
Fresnels on scissorlifts and on the
ground to build various sun sources that
would eventually shine in through CG
windows and doors.
We put silks that had been dyed
various shades of blue underneath the
huge lightboxes, says Wolski. I found
that digital cameras dont like red or
warm colors very much, and they tend
to go a little pinkish or reddish, so I
cooled the whole thing off a bit for a
cloudy-day look. The silks we used
most of the time were Blue, and we
had one for night scenes that was Full
Blue. With the scissorlifts, we could
bring in the 20Ks if we wanted a soft
sun, a soft glow or a hard sun.
The nature of the production
meant that there was no chance for the
filmmakers to view the characters fully
integrated with their environments on
set during the shoot, nor could they take
advantage of dailies in any useful way.
They did, however, utilize a couple of
on-set previsualization systems, accord-
ing to Villegas. We did real-time

Burtons desire
to lend the
movie epic
scope is
exemplified by
scenes in the
Red Queens
throne room
and during
battlefield
action that pits
the Red
Queens forces
against those
of her rival, the
White Queen
(Anne
Hathaway).
keying of the greenscreen into the envi-
ronments on set so Tim could view a
character walking inside the environ-
ment she would eventually be in, says
Villegas. It was a crude representation,
but it did show him how the character
would move and interact inside a set. Of
course, to do a real-
time composite of the
greenscreens into the
CG environments we
built on set, we had to
capture the camera
move and replicate it in
the computer.
This was accom-
plished in a couple of
ways. First, the team
used General Lifts
Encodacam system to
encode dollies and
cranes so that on-set
camera moves could be
recorded for virtual-
camera data. They also
used InterSense optical
motion-tracking sensor technology,
incorporated into Lightcraft Tech-
nologies Previzion system, to track
movement of wild cameras. That data,
along with zoom and pan-and-tilt data
from the Libra head, and other signals
criss-crossing the set, were interfaced
through a Panavision Panahub.
To give everyone a consistent
visual reference as production moved
along, Wolski pulled frames from the
Codex Recorder each day for key scenes
and color corrected them with
Photoshop. Dariusz also set a look-up
table in the Codex for each scene to
help with the color timing, says 1st
AC Trevor Loomis.
Wolski notes, Using
my LUT [in the
Codex], I created a
book of prints that
showed the looks we
wanted for all the
crucial scenes, so when
the effects team went
to do comps, they had
something to match
to. I went off for about
a week and just
printed simple photos,
adding contrast or
changing color here
and there, to provide
simple guidelines for
everyone.
As elements were captured
onstage or created in Imageworks
computers and then stitched together,
Imageworks stereo department set
about adding the third dimension.
Turner credits the recent feature G-
Force, also done at Imageworks, for
supplying a toolset and methodology
for massaging 2-D footage of live-
45
Stayne (Crispin Glover) leads the Red Queens minions into battle.
It was fun
to experiment
and try different
things, but it
was a very
strange
process.
action characters and environments
combined with CG characters into 3-D
imagery. G-Force gave us the experience
of transforming 2-D[live-action] plates
into 3-D, so we had a nice backbone to
start the process on Alice, says Turner.
But Alice posed a different challenge, in
that the primary task was to dimension-
alize people. On G-Force, the team was
dimensionalizing mostly objects.
Both rotomotion and match-
move techniques were used during the
dimensionalization process for Alice.
The chief tools used were customized
animation and compositing software,
particularly Imageworks customized
version of Maya 2009, which includes a
custom stereo viewer; Imageworks
proprietary compositing software,
Katana3-D; Nuke compositing soft-
ware (v. 5.1); and Imageworks in-house
3-D viewing tool, Itview.
Ralston and Turner emphasize
that this effort involved a great deal of
finely detailed manual work so much
so that at press time, as the DI process
was beginning, they were still making
revisions and tweaks. After the final
grading session, Turner was slated to do
a final convergence pass on the imagery
to fine-tune screen depth one last time.
Ill be looking for depth jumps or last-
minute tweaks, Turner explains. At
that late stage, you cant add more depth
to the shot, but you can adjust screen
placement and screen depth. Its a
manual process, and I view it the way
the cinematographer views his role: he
has to frame shots the way the director

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The White Queen promotes a kinder, gentler agenda from her part of the realm.
wants and fluidly hit those points. I do
the same thing, only with depth.
As the process wound down,
Burton conceded it had been a grueling
adventure. He notes there are some
things I would do differently, but some-
times you decide to try something and
get momentum going, and you just
need to go for it. Its fun to experiment
thats the joy of filmmaking. Dariusz
was willing to go for it, and so was
everyone else, and we made this movie
in that spirit. Somehow, we got it done.
24mm 290mm 28mm 76mm 17mm 80mm

35mm lenses. Thats a lot less to purchase, rent and carry. Yet
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TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
Digital Capture and 35mm
Panavision Genesis; Dalsa
Evolution; Panaflex Platinum
Panavision Primo, Leica lenses
Kodak Vision3 500T 5219,
Vision2 50D 5201
Printed on Kodak Vision
Premier 2393
Wolski , Burton and senior visual-effects supervisor Ken Ralston (right) stayed in very close
contact throughout production.
L
oosely based on Rajiv Chandrasekarans nonfiction book
Imperial Life in the Emerald City, the new thriller Green
Zone centers on the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. U.S.
Army Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon)
is in Baghdad, trying to locate the weapons of mass destruc-
tion that were a critical element of the United States justifica-
tion for war. Frustrated by poor intelligence, Miller digs
deeper and deeper, and he soon finds himself embroiled in a
conspiracy that threatens to make him an enemy of his own
country.
Green Zone reunited director Paul Greengrass with
Barry Ackroyd, BSC, with whom he collaborated on United
93 (AC June 06). Both men hail from a background in docu-
mentary filmmaking, and their work together is marked by a
natural convergence of outlook and approach. It feels like Ive
worked with Barry for many, many years, even though weve
only done two films together, says Greengrass. In a sense,
were rather an implausible couple to be making a big
Hollywood movie, but the interesting thing for us is that were
making a film on a subject about which we both have a power-
ful point of view; were making it at scale, with all the big
movie resources youd expect; and yet were approaching it
with the same aesthetic we would have applied to a small
movie 10 years ago.
At the heart of the working relationship, notes Ackroyd,
is an absolute trust born more of instinct than exhaustive
preproduction. Id love to be able to say that we sat down and
planned a look for the film, but thats not Pauls approach, and
its not necessarily mine, either, says the cinematographer. If
I said we talked about it for more than two hours over the
course of the whole shoot, then I might well be exaggerating!
When AC visited the London set early in the produc-
tion, the filmmakers were at work in Freemasons Hall, which
was doubling for Baghdads Republican Palace in the early
days of its requisition by American personnel. Inside, the crew
stood about on a lit set of a makeshift CIA office, waiting,
Weapons
of
Deception
Barry Ackroyd, BSC
reteams with Paul
Greengrass on the
political thriller
Green Zone, which
follows a U.S. Army
officer on assignment
in Iraq.
By Mark Hope-Jones
|
while Greengrass and Damon sat
together in a corner, deep in conversa-
tion. The director and actor had been
writing the scene set to be filmed that
day for almost two hours. Eventually,
they emerged and circulated sheets of
paper still warm from the printer. It
seemed a bit like chaos, but it wasnt; the
strategy was the product of Greengrass
determination not to make assumptions
about how a scene might work until all
the elements are in place. Sometimes
we shoot pretty much whats on the
page and we know where its going, but
other times it may change and develop
as we shoot, explains Ackroyd. On a
daily basis, Paul is making fine cuts with
the script, the look, the sound and the
edit. As an ex-journalist, he feels his
ideas work best when hes under pres-
sure.
For the cinematographer, Green-
grass work methods required constant
technical flexibility, and the day of ACs
visit was no exception. Ill tend to light
360 degrees if I can, continues
Ackroyd. Its kind of irrespective of
where the actors end up on the set, so
you dont really have to block it, other
than [make] little tweaks to make it look
good. For the lighting on the set today,
we discussed certain practicals in
advance with the art department to
create a military-office look: fluorescent
tubes and angle-poise lamps. Then we
figured out where light would come
through the windows and what direc-
tion it should have. When Paul and the
actors have decided what theyre doing,
we can just enhance the look with
smaller lights hidden in the set. Often
after the first take, we might realize that
a certain area is too dark or that theres
too much light on something, and well
adjust it. Theres a lot of communication
between takes thats where a lot of
the hard work goes. Outside, even just
before we turn over, therell be people
running around dropping flags and nets,
refining the look for each take.
The lights coming through the
windows in that scene were 6Ks on one
side and VistaBeams on the other,
explains gaffer Harry Wiggins. The U
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Opposite: U.S.
Army officer
Roy Miller (Matt
Damon) defends
himself in Green
Zone. This page,
top: Miller is
grilled by CIA
station chief
Martin Brown
(Brendan
Gleeson). Left:
Barry Ackroyd,
BSC (left) and
director Paul
Greengrass
eyeball a setup.
fluorescents were 950s, or what I would
call a 9-series tube: anything with a
CRI of 98. The art department bolted
5-foot horizontal twin fluorescent
fittings with plastic diffusers straight to
the temporary wall of the office to light
the various maps and monitors that
were mounted on it. That, combined
with more plastic-diffused fluorescent
fittings on T-bars above the center of
the desks, gave us bright horizontal
lines in the frame, which on a long lens
starts to add a bit of magic. We needed
6-foot tubes in the background, and
you cant get those in a good 9-series, so
they were an 865; they might have
metered a little bit of green, but youd
never see it in the rushes.
Among the smaller fixtures
hidden around the set for last-minute
finessing of the lighting were Tubos,
purpose-built units that Ackroyd
devised for 360-degree and 180-degree
lighting situations. The Tubos were
our workhorse throughout the bulk of
Green Zone, says Wiggins. The instru-
ment is a single Kino Flo tube in a
black plastic pipe painted white on the
inside, with a slot cut out of it. You can
stand them on end, lay them flat on the
floor or hang them from a line at the
top, says Wiggins. We did anything
we could do to make them work

Weapons of Deception
Top and
middle:
Journalist
Lawrie Dayne
(Amy Ryan)
and
intelligence
agent Clark
Poundstone
(Greg Kinnear)
become
players in the
drama
surrounding
Miller. Below:
Greengrass
preps a scene
with Damon
and Kinnear.
quickly. I had some made with built-in
dimmers, and they had an in-and-out
power connector so we could daisy-
chain them really quickly. The beautiful
thing is that you can literally kick them
about. We were working in dirty
marketplaces in Morocco [which
doubled for Iraq], and wed just bury
them in the ground, dig them all up at
the end of the night, put them back on
the truck and bring them out again the
next morning. They were pretty much
invulnerable. They were practically
invisible, and we could pull them out or
run them in at the drop of a hat because
they didnt need any grip equipment.
Lighting for 360 degrees was vital
not only for last-minute decisions about
what the actors would do, but also for
maintaining a free-flowing approach to
camerawork. The filmmakers used
Arricam Lite and Arri 235 cameras, and
at least two were running on every
setup. Klemens Becker, a regular on
Greengrass crews, was the A-camera
operator, while Ackroyd handled the B
camera. For scenes that required more
coverage, 2nd-unit cinematographer
Florian Emmerich and operator John
Conroy would step in. There was a

Top to bottom:
Lt. Col. Briggs
(Jason Isaacs)
disrupts Millers
mission; Briggs
and Miller in
the field;
Ackroyd and
1st AC Oliver
Driscoll man
the B camera.
kind of telepathy in how we covered
scenes, once we had the look right, says
Ackroyd. We did a lot of handheld, but
we were using lightweight zooms so we
could move around and change frame
sizes. Klemens has his own technique;
he tends to do wider shots that are
handheld, so that would become a little
block about 10 or 15 feet wide, with
Klemens, the grip, the focus puller and
a boom operator. Then I would sneak
my camera in alongside theirs and do
the opposite; Id put on a long zoom and
pick off tighter shots. We created almost
every scene using a few variations of
that strategy.
However the cameras were
configured, the priority was to sustain a
continuous sense of motion. We always
kept that handheld feel and the ability
to move, says Ackroyd. Sometimes I
used little sliders, variable lengths of
steel rods that let me cushion the
camera on a base but still keep it quite
loose. Having a 4-foot or 6-foot slider
means that if you get blocked, you can
always create a bit of movement, or if
you want to create blocking, you can do
that, too.
Ackroyd and Beckers different
operating styles naturally positioned
them at different ends of the focal-
length range used to cover each scene.
Ackroyd notes, When I operate, I find
myself wrapped around the camera,
very close to it, so its more connected to
my body motion. I was using a long
[Angenieux] Optimo zoom [24-
290mm], which needs support, so Id
use a Manfrotto monopod to keep that
handheld feel. Klemens would strip the
camera down to its lightest possible
configuration and use it more like a
video camera, with an onboard moni-
tor. That allowed him to throw the
camera around a bit more and worked
with his use of a fairly wide lens.
In addition to the 24-290mm
Optimo, Ackroyd often used a 28-
76mm Optimo, but the lenses that were
on the cameras most frequently were
80-200mm Nikon stills-format zoom
lenses that were rehoused by Arri.
Ackroyd also carried a set of Zeiss Ultra
Primes, but the team only used them
for a few night shots where it was so
dark that we needed the extra stop, he
says. If we did use a prime, it was
usually the 135mm so we could keep
that compressed, long-lens look.
Becker had a habit of naming
various lenses after films he liked, and
Ackroyd enjoyed winding him up by
encouraging the crew to use completely
different movie titles for the same
lenses. That was just part of our
strange English humor, says the cine-
matographer. If Klemens called the
28-76mm Ipcress, wed call it O Lucky
Man! or Kes or This Sporting Life
basically going back to English Free
Cinema. We saw British social-realist
films as more of an influence on us than
anything else.
Another reference for the visual
approach especially for tense combat
scenes came from an entirely differ-
ent source. YouTube was a massive
influence, reveals Ackroyd. If you
want to know how soldiers move, then
you get military advisers, but if you
want to see what it actually looks like
when they burst into someones house,
then you look at YouTube. We were
trying to get the rawness and energy
and truth of what you see in those
shots. The soldier with the video
camera is usually following the others
and actually participating in the action,
and thats what we tried to do with our
camera. We want the viewer to feel like
an observer whos inevitably caught up
in whats happening. Our role was to
allow the reality to happen in front of
the camera and give the actors and Paul
the freedom to do what they wanted. I

Greengrass and Damon work out the details of an upcoming scene. Sometimes we shoot pretty much
whats on the page, but other times [the scene] may develop as we shoot, says Ackroyd. Paul feels his
ideas work best when hes under pressure.
Our role was to
allow the reality to
happen in front of
the camera and give
the actors and Paul
the freedom to do
what they wanted.
didnt have to talk to Paul too much
because our method was just to avoid
doing anything that would interfere
with the process. Wed never invade
someones scenario or get into the
middle of a group. We always shot
outside the circle; that was a basic
tenet.
Being a political thriller, Green
Zone involves a lot of corridors and a
good many walk-and-talks. That meant
that large and long areas had to be lit,
and Greengrass penchant for long takes
made this even more important. I
always try to make whatever Im shoot-
ing as taut and compact as I can, but
then play it out in its longest possible
form, says Greengrass. Ackroyd recalls,
We did a shot in the Republican
Palace where we walked all the way
through four scenes in about seven
locations, so we had to light a staircase,
a corridor, an entrance hall, a big recep-
tion area, a press conference, another
corridor and then a meeting room. We
spent most of a day lighting the whole
thing and then two-and-a-half hours
shooting it, using three cameras and
handing the scene over from one
camera to the next. Of course, it will be
cut to pieces in the final film, but thats
the kind of freedom Paul wants.
Faced with such protracted takes,
Ackroyds crew tried to light from
outside windows wherever possible,
usually with 12K Pars or banks of 4K
Pars. The great thing about working
with Barry is that hes always happy to
work with the best you can give him,
says Wiggins. He fully understands the
limitations that come with trying to
make something very versatile. Id try to
maintain a good level where we could
give it to him, but I wasnt struggling to
bring everything up to the same level
because I knew wed be cutting quickly
and the camera would never be static.
The set-dressing departments aesthetic
was all about functionality, so we could
get away with murder. If a corridor was
dark, we were free to dot it with work
lights, small tungsten floods on stands
or little fluorescents that were standing
on the floor or up on T-bars. We also
used 1.2K HMI Gaffair balloons,
which we put up on a wire overhead or
on a stand that could pass for a piece of
military equipment. They gave us 360
degrees of soft illumination, and that
was useful in places like the Republican
Palace. We could inflate them very
quickly, and because theyre air balloons,
we could change our minds about them
without incurring huge helium costs.
Well into the shoot, the final act
of the film still hadnt been worked out,
though the crew knew it would involve
a chase across Baghdad. Ackroyd
recalls, I clearly remember Paul
A-camera
operator
Klemens Becker,
a regular on
Greengrass
projects, stays
close to Damon.
Klemens tends
to do wider
shots that are
handheld hed
strip the camera
down to its
lightest possible
configuration
and use it more
like a video
camera, notes
Ackroyd.

We want
the viewer to feel
like an observer
whos inevitably
caught up in whats
happening.
www.clairmont.com
Film And Digital Get Along!
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Michael Condon, SOC
VP Digital Division
Andree Martin
VP Technical Services
Some rental houses are film and others are digital. We
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These are coupled with the industrys widest selection of
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the ability to maximize their creativity. Much attention has
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mentioning casually that we were going
to start this chase sequence in a week or
two, and he said, Wouldnt it be good if
it took place at night? Then he walked
off to get a cup of tea! So the script
pages, which were being written at the
time, all suddenly changed, and the
final movement was suddenly taking
place at night, outside the Green Zone,
during a curfew, in a place with no elec-
tricity!
Wiggins describes the scale of the
challenge: We had to find a lighting
setup that would create a very dark
atmosphere, with no apparent sources,
while somehow enabling us to see
whats going on in a fast-moving chase
sequence over an area of about 16 acres.
Obviously, we had to go backlit, but we
were on streets, so we couldnt do soft
moonlight. Also, we needed to see 360
degrees in all these shots. It was pretty
tricky! Most of the time, we were work-
ing on the rooftops of houses and access
was generally by staircases only, so we
were limited to 5Ks and 10Ks. Ackroyd
adds, It became very difficult to keep
lights out of the frame, especially
because one of Pauls favorite shots is the
low-angle tracking shot, usually behind
the action. The light had to come from
somewhere, so inevitably, sources some-
times appeared in shot, and the visual-
effects team had to remove them in
post.
In order to visually differentiate
the Green Zone, the safe haven estab-
lished by U.S. forces, from the rest of
Baghdad, Ackroyd used Fuji Eterna
Vivid 500 8547 for scenes in the Green
Zone and other Eterna stocks for the

Cast and crew
prepare for a
high-octane
action sequence
involving an
ambush.
rest of the picture. With light spread so
thin for the chase sequence, the 500-
ASA Vivid was pushed to its limit. Paul
wanted those scenes to feel like death, so
we used a heavy green gel [219, with 251
diffusion] that took 2 stops out of the
light, says Ackroyd. We were underex-
posing to get what I call a night feel, but
using a T2.8 zoom lens in such dark
conditions, when youre already 2 or 3
stops underexposed, can get scary. We
were doing all the things youre not
meant to do with film stock in order to
tell the audience that this is a place of
death. The grain became part of the
story.
Throughout the shoot, the
productions footage was processed by
Soho Film Lab and transferred at
Ascent 142 on an HD Spirit DataCine.
Ascent 142 also handled the digital-
intermediate scanning, color correction
and filmout. AC caught up with
Greengrass and Ackroyd again partway
through the grade, which they were
carrying out with colorist Rob Pizzey.
The filmmakers mulled over their
rather unusual approach to such a big
production. The trick is not being
afraid of the scale, says Ackroyd. Its
just film moving through a camera. As
long as its good in front of you, you can
capture it. Greengrass notes, We tried
to stay true to a look for the film that
unfolded as we made it, a look that was
extremely direct and straightforward.
Barry never wants to photograph some-
thing without it having a simple, direct
humanity; thats a great eye to have. If
Im doing a scene with him and I sense
something that doesnt feel right that I
cant put my finger on, Ill know for sure
that Barry has sensed it, too. In the end,
that is, I think, the most defining bond
that has to exist between a director and
a cinematographer.
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
3-perf Super 35mm
Arricam Lite, Arri 235
Nikon, Angenieux Optimo, Zeiss
Ultra Prime lenses
Fuji Eterna Vivid 500 8547;
Eterna 250D 8563, 500T 8573
59
C
inematography is an alchemic blend of art and science
that is often pushed to its limits in the pursuit of modern
filmmaking. Nothing, however, can complicate the job
more than extreme conditions, and few situations are
more extreme than shooting in outer space. Add to that the
complications of large-format 3-D cinematography, and you
can comprehend the technological complexity of Hubble 3-D.
Cinematographer James Neihouse is a veteran in the
extreme rigors of extraterrestrial photography. Since he
worked as a camera assistant on the Imax film Hail Columbia!
(1982), he has become an integral player on the companys
outer-space team. He was the cinematographer on The Dream
Is Alive (1985), the first film to send an Imax camera into
space, and he became the go-to space cinematographer on the
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Director of photography
James Neihouse trains a
crew of astronauts for the
Imax film Hubble 3-D.
By Jay Holben
|
The Final Frontier in
3 Dimensions
Imax productions Blue Planet, Destiny in
Space, Mission to Mir and Space Station
3-D(AC May 02).
Hubble documents NASAs final
repair mission to the famous space tele-
scope. In addition to his traditional
duties as cinematographer, it was
Neihouses responsibility to train the
shuttles astronauts to be de facto cine-
matographers for the 3-D Imax camera
in space. NASA gives us about 25
hours of face-to-face time with the
astronauts to train them in basic shot
selection and exposure and advise them
on what to do if things go wrong, says
Neihouse. Fortunately, astronauts are
incredibly smart people and really quick
studies.
Most of Hubbles terrestrial
sequences the majority of the movie
were shot with Imaxs two-strip
Solido 3-D camera, which exposes left
and right eyes on separate pieces of
65mm film. To capture scenes in space,
the filmmakers used the Imax Cargo
Bay Camera 3-D, which MSM
Designs Martin Mueller designed and
built for Imax for Space Station 3-D.
The ICBC was purpose-built to fly on
the space shuttle, says Neihouse. The
camera reduces size and mass by using a
single strip of 65mm film to capture
both left- and right-eye stereo images,
yielding 30-perf 3-D. Standard Imax
film passes horizontally through the
camera, with each successive frame
alongside the previous one. To photo-
graph stereo images onto one strip, the
two lenses are mounted side-by-side,
and the camera features two aperture
gates, thus the 30 perfs. Each opening of
the cameras shutter exposes two frames,
left and right, and then the film
advances two frames before the next
exposure. The two side-by-side images
are separated digitally in post and then T
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Opposite: A composite
image of the Helix
Nebula taken with the
Hubble Space
Telescopes Advanced
Camera for Surveys and
the Mosaic II Camera on
the 4-meter telescope at
Cerro Tololo Inter-
American Observatory
in Chile. This page, top:
An image of a stellar jet
in the Carina Nebula
observed in light,
captured by Hubbles
new Wide Field Camera
3 installed by NASA
astronauts during the
final servicing mission.
Bottom: Astronaut
John Grunsfeld (on the
shuttle arm) passes a
new cover to Andrew
Feustel (to the left) in a
shot filmed with the
Imax Cargo Bay Camera
during the fifth and
final space walk of the
STS-125 mission.
combined onscreen to create the single
stereoscopic image.
Classic 3-D Imax was done by
taking the left eye on one roll of film
and the right eye on another, and then
projecting them to create the stereo
image, says Neihouse. With the
ICBC, we do it digitally; because left-
eye and right-eye images are side-by-
side on the same film roll, we scan all
the left-eye, then all the right-eye, at
5.6K to separate them to individual
left/right rolls. Digital tools have made
that whole process a lot easier, but Id
rather go back to direct photochemical
printing because we lose resolution
through scanning. An Imax frame is
probably close to 12K resolution, and
we can only scan it at 5.6K. Its just the
nature of the beast.
To expose left and right eye on
one strip of film, the film is running
through the camera at 12' per second,
twice the normal speed (effectively 48
fps). In order to get a full eight-minute
load, Neihouse and his team had to
manually splice together two 2,700' rolls
of unexposed 65mm film to get a total
of 5,400'. Only a single load could be
sent into space because the cameras
position and enclosure not to
mention the astronauts main mission
priorities prohibited reloads. We
had to be very choosey about what we
did with those eight minutes of
footage, notes Neihouse. (See sidebar
on page 68.)
Neihouse and Toni Myers, the
films director, spent 18 months working
with the crew at the Johnson Space
Center to carefully plan out the footage
they would gather in space. We learned
exactly what they would be doing at
each stage of the mission and picked
what we felt would be the most inter-
esting moments, and then we created a
shot list for the team, keeping in mind
that the camera would be locked off,
recalls the cinematographer.
The Imax team also worked in
the Virtual Reality lab at NASA, where
scientists would re-create the proposed
space walk from any vantage point,
giving the filmmakers a previsualization
with which to work. The astronauts
train tirelessly for life in zero gravity by
utilizing NASAs Neutral Buoyancy
Laboratory, a 6.2-million-gallon pool,
and the filmmakers joined the astro-
nauts in the pool to both help plan their
shot list and document the training.
Underwater cinematographer Howard
Hall shot the pool sequences with the
Solido in an underwater housing. Out
of the water, the camera and housing
weighed 1,500 pounds, and a crane was
required to get it into the water, but
once in the pool, the camera and hous-
ing became so light that Hall could
handhold the rig to cover the action.
Although the filmmakers used
Kodak Vision3 500T 5219 stock at the
pool, they still needed a good deal of
light to maintain a small aperture for 3-
D. It took a lot of persuading, but we
managed to talk NASA into letting us
light the pool, says Neihouse. We had
about half a dozen Hydroflex HMI
Pars in the pool and an 18K and 6K
HMI topside. Everybody was worried
about the lights distracting or blinding
the astronauts, but after we shot, they
begged us to keep it. They said, We can
finally see down there!
We had a lot of tools to help us
pick those eight minutes of outer-space
footage, continues Neihouse. But our
shot list was more than double what we
wanted, because you never know what
will happen up there. The first day of
shooting on the mission ended up
completely behind schedule because of
a single bolt that didnt want to come
out. Suddenly, we were in the dark.
The telescope resides in a Low
Earth Orbit of 347 miles above the
surface of the planet. At that distance,
the Hubble must travel at 17,045 mph
The Final Frontier in 3 Dimensions

Gas released by a
dying star races
across space at
more than
600,000 mph,
forming the
delicate shape of
a celestial
butterfly. This
image (popularly
referred to as the
Butterfly Nebula)
was one of the
first images
captured by the
Hubbles newly
installed Wide
Field Camera 3.
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to maintain its orbit and not come
crashing to Earth; it takes the telescope
about 97 minutes to circle the Earth.
That means were seeing a sunrise or
sunset just about every 45 minutes,
says Neihouse. This happens because
the Hubble travels around the dark
side of the planet, where the Earth is
between the telescope and the sun. As
the Hubble comes back around the
Earth into view of the sun, it experi-
ences the equivalent of a sunrise; its a
mere 45 minutes before it starts to travel
toward the backside again and experi-
ences a sunset. The five space walks
done during the mission averaged 7
hours and 12 minutes each, and during
those periods, Hubble saw 4 periods
of sunlight and 4 periods of dark.
We were fortunate in that due to
the nature of orbital mechanics, and
because we were shooting in the middle
of May, we had a bit more daylight on
each rotation than we did darkness,
observes Neihouse. We were also
fortunate that the astronauts had to
orient Hubble so that direct sunlight
wouldnt enter the telescope when they
had it open they call that the sun-
protect attitude. So while they were
working on it, they were in constant
open shade, lit solely by sunlight bounc-
ing off the Earth, the biggest bounce
card you can ever imagine!
The space footage was shot on
Kodak Vision2 50D 5201 at a typical
aperture of about f8. We ended up
balancing between f5.6 and f8 most of
the time, says Neihouse. Sometimes
wed get as much as an 11, but that
didnt happen often. I wanted to shoot
as deep as possible to keep the depth-
of-field, which is crucial to 3-D shoot-
ing.
Part of the astronauts cine-
matography training was instruction
about how to use a spot meter and
make exposure calculations. Neihouse
notes, It can be crazy, even for a
seasoned cinematographer, to evaluate
exposure when the light is constantly
changing. Back at Mission Control, we
Top: In a moment
captured by the 3-
D Cargo Bay
Camera, Feustel
transfers the
Corrective Optics
Space Telescope
Axial Replacement
unit from the
Hubble to its
temporary
stowage position
in the space
shuttle Atlantis
cargo bay. Bottom:
Astronauts
Michael Good (on
the Shuttles
remote
manipulator arm)
and Michael
Massimino (inside
the Hubble)
replace the
telescopes Rate
Sensor Units
during the
missions second
space walk.
could hear the astronauts debating
what the exposure should be!
Determining exposures in orbit
is probably the most challenging aspect
of these projects, he continues. Over
the years of shooting these space films,
Ive developed a good database of expo-
sures in various situations, and I give the
astronauts a spreadsheet that suggests
which stop to use in which attitude. We
always push for the smallest stop possi-
ble without getting too thin of a nega-
tive. My biggest nightmare is that the
camera returns from space with a super-
thin negative and nothing in focus!
Although the astronauts had no
ability to interact directly with the
ICBC camera, they had an IBM laptop
with proprietary software that allowed
them to remotely control lens selection,
iris, focus and start/stop functions, and
also view video feed from the camera.
Locked in the shuttles cargo bay, the
camera had no ability to pan or tilt, and
its position had to be set long before the
craft was launched. We had to fix the
camera in position a year before the
scheduled launch, recalls Neihouse.
NASA has to specially certify anything
and everything that goes into space, and
the parameters are extraordinary. Every
last screw and washer has to be
approved and thoroughly tested.
The final position ended up 10'
from the base of the telescope. The
camera was fitted with a remote-oper-
ated turret lens mount that gave the
astronauts a selection of a pair of 30mm,
40mm or 60mm Imax lenses, all
mounted at a fixed interocular distance
of 68mm. On the space cameras, we
have fixed interocular, with no conver-
gence the images are parallel,
explains Neihouse. We figured that
would minimize the screw-up factor
and make the camera easier for the crew
to operate.
The film stock used in the ICBC
was made specifically for the production
Right: Hubble
repair maneuvers
were rehearsed
by the astronauts
in NASAs Neutral
Buoyancy Lab at
Johnson Space
Center in
Houston. Below:
Cinematographer
Howard Hall
moves the Imax
Solido 3-D
camera in its
waterproof
housing to film
astronauts
Massimino (left)
and Good in
the NBL.

on Kodak Estar polyester print-stock
base, which is thinner and stronger than
standard acetate in order to withstand
the 12'-per-second speed through the
camera. The Estar stock also doesnt
have a memory the way acetate does,
which is a big issue for us, asserts
Neihouse. When you load acetate film
into a camera, it tends to set and take a
memory around the sprocket wheels
and rollers. That can cause a jam if its
set in too firmly when you start up the
camera. This wouldnt be an issue if the
camera is loaded right before shooting,
but in this case, we had to load the
camera a month before the launch, and
then it just sat there. Acetate film sitting
in that position for that long would
likely jam and break, and that would be
a major disaster.
Because the shuttle is docked in a
climate-controlled hangar, there is little
concern about unexposed film sitting in
the camera for a month. They have the
humidity set to around 50 percent, and
they maintain a temperature of about
68F, says Neihouse. The conditions
are pretty optimal.
Getting the film to the lab,
Technicolor in Los Angeles, proved to
be another challenge. Before the 2001
terrorist attacks, Id show up at the
airport in Orlando with four cans of
film under my arm and a letter from
NASA, and it was all good. Its a lot
harder to get the film through security
today. Of course, the footage wasnt
exactly under Neihouses arm the
undeveloped negative is held in
custom-made cans and weighs more
than 50 pounds per roll. It took nearly
four months of discussions with various
authorities to get everyone to approve
my hand-carrying the film onto a
commercial flight without them X-
raying it, continues Neihouse.

Top: The space
shuttle Atlantis
moves away
from the
Hubble just
after release at
the conclusion
of the final
servicing
mission.
Bottom:
Astronaut
Megan
McArthur
works the
controls of the
remote
manipulator
system on the
aft flight deck
of the Atlantis.
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Basically, NASA had to deem the
footage a national treasure that was
irreplaceable. In the end, it was the easi-
est passage Ive ever had through TSA
security because everyone knew I was
coming way in advance.
Because of bad weather, the space
shuttle didnt land in Florida as
expected; it was diverted to Edwards
Air Force base in California. Although
California was the negatives ultimate
destination, Edwards didnt have the
appropriate equipment to offload the
shuttles cargo bay, so the Imax team
couldnt retrieve the film until the shut-
tle was transported back to Florida.
Even though the ICBCcamera is
significantly smaller than the Solido,
the camera and container loaded into
the shuttles cargo bay weighed over
700 pounds. The container had to be
semi-sealed and have its own slight
atmosphere so that we could draw a
vacuum and keep the film flat, explains
Neihouse. Because of the Imax
negatives extremely large size
(2.772"x2.072"), even with registration
pins, the film naturally wants to curl.
Attempts to tighten the pressure plate
against the aperture in early Imax
cameras resulted in scratches to the film,
so the original engineers of the Imax
system drilled channels in the pressure
plate and incorporated a light vacuum
into the housing to gently suck the film
against the pressure plate during expo-
sure. That keeps the film from curling
or wobbling and keeps the focus incred-
ibly sharp, but there has to be some
atmosphere inside the camera in order
for the vacuum system to work, says
Neihouse. We have to maintain a slight
pressure, 4 or 4 pounds per square
inch, to allow the vacuum to do its
thing. We also had to incorporate
special valves so the container would
pressurize itself, release pressure in
space, and increase pressure on re-entry
to equalize the atmosphere in the
container.
As spectacular as a 3-D Imax
view of outer space might be, in this
case it was defined by the cameras
physical position in the cargo bay.
Because the camera was positioned
below the telescope, we got a lot of feet
and buns and backpacks, says
Neihouse. Its impossible to see the
details the astronauts are working on,
especially when theyre inside the tele-
scope, so we incorporated footage from
their helmet cams. The spacesuits
each astronaut wore contained a single-
chip Sony XC-999 cigar camera,
which sends standard-definition video
to the shuttle and Mission Control.
The filmmakers were able to capture
this signal to see what the astronauts
saw, including details of what they
were doing inside the telescope. We
incorporated that footage and up-
rezzed it, and it looks pretty good, says
Neihouse. In 3-D, your brain gets
tricked into thinking its seeing twice
as much information, so its not as bad
as you might imagine. It is, however,
video captured from space and trans-
T
he only filmmakers aboard the
space shuttle Atlantis capturing
footage for Hubble 3-D were the astro-
nauts themselves. Capt. Gregory Carl
Johnson was the pilot of Atlantis, and
the man primarily responsible for the
control of the CB3D Imax camera
while in orbit. It was a lot more pres-
sure than I thought it would be! says
Johnson, a NASA test pilot and
former Naval Aviation officer. We
receive photography instruction as
part of the basic astronaut training,
and we all [carry] digital cameras, but
working with the Imax camera really
changed things. The problem was that
you couldnt predict when a scene
would start and stop; if a task on the
shot list got delayed by 10 minutes, it
could suddenly slip into night.
Although theres a mile of film in the
camera, its only eight minutes worth,
and it was up to us to get what the
filmmakers needed in 20-30 second
bursts.
[Director] Toni Myers sug-
gested specific lens choices for specific
moments, but it was really up to us to
decide what to do at any moment, he
continues. If the ground was in view,
then Toni wanted us to use the 30mm
lens and set the focus at infinity, but
we had to make sure that whatever
was closest to the camera was also in
focus. Judging focus using the laptop
computer that controlled the camera
was very difficult, so we relied on
diagrams in the cockpit to estimate
distances and set our focus that way.
Wed say, If the space walker is over
there, hes 10.2 feet away, and thats
where we set the focus.
There was room for only one
Imax camera, so the crew also worked
with Canon XH G1 HDV cameras.
One of the main in-shuttle videogra-
phers was astronaut Mike Massimino.
I did a lot of crew interviews I was
interested in bringing out the person-
alities of the crew and telling the story
of the mission, he says. Toni had
special instructions for us to follow
when we shot video. They were differ-
ent settings than what we shot for
NASA, and some of it was pretty
complicated, so I had to have a cheat
sheet: install wide conversion lens, use
headphones to monitor sound, filter
| Filmmakers in Orbit |
off, focus manual, AGC off, auto white
balance on. We had to use a separate
microphone and attach that to the
XLR. We had to switch to 24p instead
of 60i and set the shutter to 1/48. Toni
always wanted us to do manual focus
and manual exposure. Exposures were
the most complicated part, especially
on the Imax camera. Rocket equations
I can handle, but exposures are
complicated!
There was an incredible
amount of pressure to get it right,
recalls Johnson. I think Id rather be in
head-to-head air combat going 100
knots in an F18 than have to be
responsible for those eight minutes of
footage again!
But the results were worth it.
Being out there on a space walk is
truly incredible, and when I saw some
of the 3-D footage of that on the Imax
screen, it came as close to real as it
gets, says Massimino. I got the same
chills watching the footage as I did
when I was up there. It really got my
heart going again.
Jay Holben
Above: STS-125 astronauts and Hubble 3-D filmmakers gather around the Imax Cargo Bay
Camera at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Astronaut as Filmmaker event
on July 14, 2009. From left: Commander Scott D. Altman, producer/director Toni Myers, mission
specialist Michael T. Good, mission specialist Michael J. Massimino, mission specialist Andrew J.
Feustel, pilot Gregory C. Johnson, mission specialist John M. Grunsfeld and director of
photography/astronaut trainer James Neihouse. (Megan McArthur was unable to attend.) Right:
The Cargo Bay camera, which holds 5,400' of film, is prepared for installation on the Orbital
Replacement Unit Carrier at the Goddard Spaceflight Center in Maryland.
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mitted down to Earth, so there was
always interference.
The shuttle crew also carried a
Canon XH G1 HDV camera to docu-
ment their activities inside the shuttle.
That camera was certified for the
International Space Station, so NASA
allowed it to fly on this mission, says
Neihouse. Although we had more than
a year of prep, we didnt really have the
time or the budget to certify a
different camera. The NASA space-
certification program is grueling and
incredibly intense; it would have taken
about six months of rigorous testing and
about $250,000 to get another camera
certified. On this project, we really
pushed the camera beyond its intended
use, and we got some great, intimate
footage of the crew that just wouldnt
have been possible otherwise. Astronaut
Mike Massimino did most of the oper-
ating, and hed go off the cuff and inter-
view the crewmembers almost every
day. Its amazing material, and we would
never have gotten it if not for that little
G1.
The filmmakers used a mix of
3-D and 2-D Imax cameras (and
Kodak Vision2 250D 5205) to shoot
the shuttle launch, including a 30-perf
3-D camera that is similar to the ICBC
but designed for earthbound production
scenarios. The lineup looked like this: A
Solido in a blast housing was positioned
less than 100 yards from the main
rocket engines; a 30-perf 3-D Camera
(also in a blast housing) was on the
launch tower, looking down with a

70
Atop the launch
tower at the
Kennedy Space
Center, looking
down at the
space shuttle
Atlantis,
Neihouse (far
right) and
crewmembers
place the Imax
3-D camera in
its fireproof
housing to film
the launch of
STS-125.
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30mm Elcan fisheye lens; another 30-
perf 3-D Camera was on a Technocrane
near the press area; an Imax MKII 2-D
camera was placed on another launch
pad to the south; and a Solido was put
on a Chapman Olympian crane on the
VIP side of the launch area. As
controlled as those launches are, you
never really know whats going to
happen, notes Neihouse. You never
know if the cameras close to the launch
will still be there after the launch.
NASA has had cameras as far away as
200 yards be completely obliterated. You
also never know where the smoke is
going to go; your camera position can be
wasted by a cloud of smoke. We were
lucky that all of our gear made it
through the launch unharmed. Also,
since the Columbia accident, NASA has
put a lot more cameras on the outside of
the craft to monitor whats going on
during the launch, and we were able
to incorporate some of that footage into
the film. Its not anywhere near the
quality of the Imax cameras, but the
shots are so dynamic that it really
doesnt matter.
DKP 70mm Inc., Imaxs post
subsidiary, handled the productions
scanning, digital grading, filmout and
photochemical timing. All of the 30-
perf material, 2-D/3-D conversions,
and material captured in space went
through the digital realm, but most of
the Solido material was finished photo-
chemically, notes Neihouse. We only
go digital on the images that require it.
Working with the Imax space
program is a lot of fun and a very unique
job, and it has definitely made me a
better cinematographer, he concludes.
When youre shooting in space, you
dont get two takes.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.43:1
15-perf/30-perf 65mm and
Digital Capture
Imax Cargo Bay Camera 3-D,
Solido, 30-perf 3-D, MKII;
Canon XH G1; Sony XC-999
Hasselblad and Elcan lenses
Kodak Vision2 50D 5201,
250D 5205; Vision3 500T 5219
Specialized Digital Intermediate
71
O
ur Sundance reportage this year covers three cinematog-
raphy prizewinners, a visually distinctive feature from
Bolivia, and the festivals first 3-D feature.
Director of photography Zak Mulligan used the Red
One to capture Obselidia, for which he won the cinematogra-
phy prize in the U.S. Dramatic Competition. That contest
was judged by a jury comprising ASC member Robert
Yeoman, actress Parker Posey, author Russell Banks and film-
makers Karyn Kusama and Jason Kliot.
Laura Poitras and Kirsten Johnson used a mix of
digital formats to capture The Oath, for which they shared
the cinematography prize in the U.S. Documentary
Competition, judged by filmmakers Greg Barker, Dayna
Goldfine, Morgan Spurlock and Ondi Timoner and journal-
ist Nancy Miller.
Michael Lavelle and Kate McCullough chose to shoot
Super 16mm for His & Hers, for which they shared the cine-
matography prize in the World Cinema Documentary
Competition. That jury comprised filmmaker Jennifer
Baichwal, PBS News Hour correspondent Jeffrey Brown and
film-festival director Asako Fujioka.
Obselidia
Cinematographer: Zak Mulligan
Director: Diane Bell
Rebel was the official theme at Sundance this year,
and the Dramatic Competition entry Obselidia fit the bill
perfectly. Shot in 18 days by a novice director for less than
$500,000, the film came away with the festivals Alfred P.
Sloan Prize for its scientific topicality and an Excellence in
Cinematography Award for its director of photography, Zak
Mulligan. We felt that not only was the film extraordinarily
beautiful, but its images perfectly captured and conveyed the
essence of the story, says Dramatic Competition juror Robert
Yeoman, ASC.
Obselidia is about obsolescence not just of objects and
technologies, but also of whole species. George (Michael
Piccirilli), a loner librarian, is writing an encyclopedia of obso-
lete things. He interviews Sophie (Gaynor Howe), a silent-
movie projectionist, and the vibrant young woman offers to
drive him to Death Valley to interview a reclusive scientist
(Frank Hoyt Taylor) about his dire forecast for the planet and
its inhabitants.
Visually, I wanted a feel that was rather nostalgic, says
Sundance 2010:
Expanded Palettes
Sundance 2010:
Expanded Palettes
Some of the most
memorable images at
this years festival were
captured with a wide
range of formats.
By
Simon Gray, Patricia Thomson
and Jon D. Witmer
|
director/writer Diane Bell. A voracious
cineaste with particular affection for the
French New Wave, Bell eschewed a
contemporary approach to coverage,
relying instead on wide shots and long
takes a style that paired well with the
short shooting schedule. Mulligan
offers, I had [Jean-Pierre] Melville in
my head because of his long takes and
limited coverage.
Bell and Mulligan considered
various formats, including Super 16mm
and 2-perf 35mm, before settling on
digital capture and choosing the Red
One. Shooting Super 16 would have
been doable, but it would have meant
less coverage, notes the cinematogra-
pher. Diane was a first-time director,
and we thought shooting film would
give us less room for error.
Mulligan brought his own Red
camera (Build 17) to California, along
with a small set of Zeiss ZF prime
lenses. Framing for a final aspect ratio of
1.85:1, the 28mm and 50mm were his
workhorses, while the 21mm was used
for high-speed work. He had a
1
/8
Tiffen Black Pro-Mist on the lens
throughout the shoot. Noting that he
uses that filtration with every digital
camera, he observes, That touch [of
diffusion] rounds out the highlights just
enough and rolls off that sharp [video]
focus, making it look more filmic.
Despite being a small, character-
driven film, Obselidia put the Red
through its paces, offering an obstacle
course of extreme heat, low light and
vibrations on set. The factor that
concerned Mulligan the most was heat:
almost half of the movie was shot in
Death Valley, where temperatures
soared to 115F even in April.
Furthermore, the tight schedule necessi-
tated shooting throughout the day.
Mulligan considered various ways to
keep the camera cool, including ice
packs and putting the camera in a
cooler. My first assistant, Jeff Nolde,
was concerned that ice-packing would
create condensation, so we nixed that
idea, he recalls. They decided to simply
forge ahead. We just did very basic,
common-sense stuff, says Mulligan.
We always made sure we had a flag
covering the camera, and sometimes
wed put a whole tent over it. During
two days of testing and eight days of
photography in Death Valley, it never
gave me problems, he says.
The Red didnt fare quite as well
with another Death Valley challenge:
bumpy roads. With budget in mind,
Mulligan decided to record to the Red
Drive rather than the costlier, solid-state
RedRAM drive. He brought three
320GB Red Drives, some Compact
Flash cards, and 4x LaCie external hard
drives that were rotated with the editor.
(2x LaCie drives were always on set for
redundant backup.) Its critical to have
good, professional hard drives like
LaCies or G-Techs, notes the cine-
matographer. Ive used some brand-
new drives that were $100 less
expensive, and they crapped out after an
hour of use.
Obselidias driving scenes were
mostly on paved roads, but one Death
Valley dirt road proved to be the Reds
undoing. I wanted all the dust kicking
up behind the car, says Mulligan. The
crew put the camera on a shock-absorb-
ing hood mount and crossed their
fingers. It barely recorded, it dropped so
many frames, says Mulligan. They
subsequently switched to CF cards,
which required them to return to home
base every four minutes to switch out
cards.
Desert exteriors created fewer
blown-out whites than Mulligan antici-
pated. Without a budget for big units to
control the fierce sunlight, the produc-
tion relied on 12'x12' and 20'x20' frames
of silver lam. But the desert provided
additional assistance. Because there
arent a lot of plants to soak up the light, O
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Opposite and
this page: A
librarians
encounter with
a comely film
projectionist
leads to Death
Valley in
Obselidia.
Below: Director
of photography
Zak Mulligan
lines up a
shot with the
Red One.
the desert gives you this big, earthy-
brown bounce light that fills in every-
thing, says Mulligan. Its actually not
as contrasty as you might think.
Obselidias nostalgic tone comes
through most beautifully in the slow-
motion bicycling scenes, which were
inspired by Truffauts Jules & Jim. These
were shot at 60 fps in 2K. Mulligan
cycled through the Zeiss 21mm, 28mm
and 50mm lenses, but his secret weapon
for the dreamy visuals was a Sears
Roebuck 80-200mm zoom from the
1970s that he found in his fathers dusty
camera bag. It was built like a tank, but
it wasnt precision at all, and there was
no lens coating, he says. Its patina
matched the films mood. The minute
the lens had any light to it, it would flare
out. It would get soft and milky and
look super warm, with lots of oranges
and golden tones, says Mulligan.
Diane fell in love with it.
In low-light and nighttime situa-
tions, Mulligan exposed and lit just as
he would a film camera, but refrained
from pushing the Reds ASA, which
can create noise. In tungsten-lit scenes,
he opted for an 80D Blue filter to
correct the cameras native 5000
K
balance. Its only a
1
/3-stop loss of
light, he says, and cleans it up enough
that you can bring it the rest of the way
in color correction without getting
noise.
Throughout filming, Mulligan
toggled between Raw and Look views
to assess exposure, always checking the
False Color Meter, which provides a
color-coded reading of IRE values. You
push a button, and the whole image
comes up with crazy colors, and each
one means something. A face may be all
pink, and pink is your 70 IRE range, he
says. Its like having a spot meter on
every pixel.
Mulligan notes that the most
complicated aspect of using the Red
comes in postproduction, when its
proprietary Redcode files are transposed
to another format. The minute you
change color space, whatever your look
was on set is totally negated, and you
end up starting over, says the cine-
matographer, who did the final color
correction at Numb Robot in Burbank,
Calif. Currently, the Red look and
metadata live in this world of Red-only
standards. They need more partners
with color-correction suites and more
standardization. You need to be able to
take that metadata and apply it all the
way through the color-correction. The
key, he concludes, is knowing the tool
youre working with and planning
ahead.
Obselidia was screened on
HDCam at the festival.
Patricia Thomson
The Oath
Cinematographers:
Laura Poitras and
Kirsten Johnson
Director: Laura Poitras
This years cinematography
award in the U.S. Documentary
Competition went to The Oath, a film
with two stories, two styles and two
cinematographers. Co-shot by director
Laura Poitras and Kirsten Johnson, the
film interweaves the sagas of Abu Jandal
and Salim Hamdam, brothers-in-law
who were associated with Al Qaeda in
the late 1990s. The bodyguard and
driver for Osama bin Laden, respec-
tively, the men subsequently took diver-
gent paths. Abu Jandal (the name is an
alias), once an Al Qaeda recruiter,
became a cab driver in Yemen after
renouncing terrorism, while Hamdam
wound up in isolation at Guantnamo

Sundance 2010: Expanded Palettes
Director/
co-cinematographer
Laura Poitras stays
close to Yemeni cab
driver Abu Jandal in
The Oath, which
brought Poitras and
co-cinematographer
Kirsten Johnson one
of the festivals
cinematography
awards.
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Bay, and then at the center of Hamdam
v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court case
that struck down President George W.
Bushs plan for military commissions.
It was The Oaths intimacy and
access that won the jury over. We
thought it was an incredibly beautiful
portrait of people in places we rarely get
to see, says juror Morgan Spurlock. It
was very intimate. We were also
impressed by the situations these two
female cinematographers put them-
selves in. They were in a place that isnt
normally friendly to Western men, let
alone Western women filming a movie.
That was brave and impressive.
Poitras says she started out with a
different story in mind. She originally
went to Yemen, in 2007, hoping to find
a recently released Guantnamo
detainee to track. A lawyer introduced
her to potential subjects, and through
Hamdams family she met the charis-
matic, articulate Abu Jandal. In 30
seconds, everything was doing somer-
saults in my head, Poitras says. Heres
this guy who was Osamas bodyguard,
and he was driving a taxi. The storyteller
in me knew that was compelling.
Poitras asked Abu Jandal for
permission to put a camera inside his
taxi, and for the next two years, she
bounced between New York and
Yemen, slowly building a rapport with
Poitras (left) and Johnson accept their award.
her subject that enabled her to capture
intimate moments, including him with
his young son, and him reflecting on the
evolution of his beliefs since 9/11.
But Poitras also managed to hang
onto the Guantnamo storyline, weav-
ing in the trial of Hamdam, even
though he never appears onscreen.
There was always this idea of there
being ghosts in the film people
detained who are missing, she says.
Once I had Abu Jandal as the main
thread, I felt Hamdams character would
be a ghost.
Poitras had shot her last docu-
mentary, My Country, My Country
(2006), herself, but she knew she would
need a second cinematographer for
Guantnamo. In 2008, she brought in
Johnson, a director and cinematogra-
pher who has shot for Michael Moore,
Barbara Kopple, Kirby Dick and other
nonfiction stalwarts.
Poitras envisioned two distinct
visual styles for Yemen and
Guantnamo. She explains, I always
wanted to film Yemen in a very inti-
mate, kinetic way, entering a world we
havent had access to. By contrast,
Guantnamo was austere and still.
[Kirsten] was on sticks, doing locked-
off shots, says Poitras. There was a
sense of trying to be outside this world,
of stepping back and saying, What is
this bizarre universe? Kirstens eye was
in charge of evoking the sense that its
almost like a crime scene. You dont
really know what happened in
Guantnamo, but it has some strong
subtext.
Both cinematographers shot with
a standard-definition Panasonic AG-
DVX100A, using its 4.5-45mm Leica
Dicomar zoom. They recorded at 24p
Advanced in 16x9. I began this project
thinking Id change over to high-defini-
tion video midway through, says
Poitras. Ive always been one to
embrace new technology. But they
wound up sticking with MiniDV. Its
like a really trusted paintbrush theres
a beautiful palette to it, says Poitras.
Johnson adds, I own one and still
havent found an HD camera that
matches what that camera can do.
Inside the taxicab, they used a
smaller Canon Vixia HV20, shooting to
tape at 24p. Mounted on the dashboard
or in the rear of the cab, the camera
rolled untended for an hour at a time,
capturing Jandal with his passengers.
(For screenings at Sundance and the
Berlinale, the movie was screened on
HDCam 1080i.)
Poitras shot on and off in Yemen
for two years, while Johnson made two
trips to Guantnamo, first for five days,
and then for four weeks. The filmmak-
ers were there on an assignment for
Chicago Public Radios This American
Life, for which they were producing a
story. Johnson subsequently went to
Yemen for two weeks after Hamdam
was released, capturing vistas, street
scenes and views from the taxi.
Altogether, they shot 125 hours
of footage, a very small amount, says
Johnson. We were both limited in all
kinds of ways in both places. In
Guantnamo, journalists were prohib-
ited from filming the trial and could
record only the daily press briefings.
Johnson could shoot landscapes on the
base, but only under military escort, and
she was not allowed to film military
installations or even the complete
shoreline. They were very concerned
about security, even though there are
Google maps of the entire area,
Johnson notes.
The militarys constraints made
me frame differently, she continues. It
would get my shot off-kilter. Id say,
Well, thats kind of interesting. Let me
make it a little more off-kilter. I was
constantly going toward more asym-
metrical framing.
Poitras encouraged that. Johnson
recalls, When I start shooting, there are
always a few shots I take just for me
alone, and I know theyll never make the
film because theyre so unconventional.
Laura saw a couple of those and said,
Thats what Im looking for. I said,
Really? I can do that? She encouraged
me to follow the impulse to film things
in the most disconcerting way. Poitras
also told Johnson to attend the trial
despite the prohibition against cameras.
Few directors would have said, Spend
eight hours of your shooting day in the
courtroom, listening, and then take that
experience out into the landscape and
interpret it, Johnson says. Ive rarely
worked with a director that trusting.
This also meant that Johnson spent the
hottest, brightest daylight hours inside,
absorbing the mood, she says. Then
Id go out in the world at the perfect
hours pre-dawn or magic hour.
Meanwhile, in Yemen, Poitras
practiced patience. On every trip, she
brought a wish list of shots. I might
have 20 things, and Id come back with
two crossed off, she recalls. I knew it
was going to take time, and it was prob-
ably six months before I felt I was start-
ing to get what I needed. She gradually
managed to capture such personal
scenes as Abu Jandals pre-dawn prayers
with his son. What I find amazing
about Lauras vrit footage is that she
really goes with her eye where you want
to go as a viewer, Johnson observes.
When Abu Jandal is praying and pulls
his sons foot closer, you dont quite get
it. Laura has the same thought and gets
the shot. Then you can see it and under-
stand. She questions with the camera.
For both cinematographers, the
hardest part of filming was the psycho-
logical pressure, says Poitras. We were
so close to so many nerves: 9/11, Al
Qaeda and Guantnamo. Neither
Guantnamo nor Yemen were easy
locations. It was kind of shocking when

She encouraged
me to follow the
impulse to film
things in the most
disconcerting way.
Kirsten came back, says Poitras. Shes
shot in Darfur and lots of hot spots, but
she said Guantnamo was the toughest
psychologically. Johnson explains, It
was the constant sense of being
watched. We had to travel in groups,
and there was no physical freedom at all.
Id never experienced that before.
Patricia Thomson
His & Hers
Cinematographers:
Michael Lavelle and
Kate McCullough
Director: Ken Wardrop
When you think of a love story,
you usually think its between a boy
and a girl, and its as simple as that,
muses Michael Lavelle, who shared
the World Cinema Documentary
Cinematography Award with Kate
McCullough for the Irish film His &
Hers, directed by Ken Wardrop. This
film, he continues, uses a series of
small love stories to create a sense of the
love story of life, in a way.
Composed of interviews with 70
females ranging in age from a few
years old to the 90s (and edited to
progress from young to old) His &
Hers presents a unified narrative of love
as it is experienced at each stage of life.
However, McCullough admits, We
were a bit concerned about having so
many stories and making them fit side
by side. It was crucial to lay down a feel-
ing of familiarity [throughout the inter-
views] so it feels like its all one story.
That led us to frame simply and not
complicate the visuals.
Rather than have a cinma vrit
feel, where youre right on top of the
character using a raw style of filmmak-
ing, we wanted to settle the camera and
let [the women] do the moving,
McCullough continues. The static
camera and wide framing apply to the
actual interviews as well as the cutaways,
which show the women performing
such mundane tasks as making the bed
or peeling potatoes. The effect, Lavelle
notes, gives you time to absorb the
space they live in. You see how they
literally move through their world.
Thematically, His & Hers feels
like a continuation of Wardrops short
film Undressing My Mother (2004), on
which Lavelle served as director of
photography and McCullough oper-
ated the camera. Both films were shot
with a four-person crew rounded out by
producer Andrew Freedman, who
pulled double duty as the sound
recordist. Lavelle also shot the shorts
Scoring and Farewell Packets of Ten for
Wardrop, and in 2008, he wrote and
directed the short film Out of the Blue,
for which McCullough won a Best
Cinematography award from the
Rhode Island International Film
Festival.
One of the first decisions the
filmmakers made was to shoot His &
Hers on Super 16mm. To shoot a
documentary on film was an incredible
privilege, says Lavelle. It was very
tricky for Ken, because we usually had
only about a can of film for each inter-
view and its cutaways. It was really
tight.
His & Hers was shot over three
months, during which the four
crewmembers stayed in a house in the
Irish Midlands, central to the intervie-
wees, whom Wardrop found with the
assistance of researchers Hannah
Smolenska and Sheena OByrne. The
average shooting day began at 7 a.m.,
with one of the filmmakers preparing
breakfast while another made the days
lunch and the other two packed the gear
into the van. By 8 a.m., the crew was on
the road to the first of the days two
interviews; each interview, plus its corre-
sponding cutaway shots, had to be
completed within four hours.
Although Wardrop met with all
of the interviewees in advance, the cine-
matographers didnt meet them until
the day of shooting. McCullough
recalls, We sometimes had photos of
the persons house, so we could get ideas
about which spots might be good for
shooting. The main concern was where
we placed the person; that dictated
everything else.
We wanted the light to have a
natural feel, adds Lavelle. Anything
that looked lit was something we just
had to rethink. To take advantage of
natural light, the cinematographers shot
on Kodak Vision3 500T 7219 with a set
of Zeiss Super Speed lenses, favoring
the 12mm, 16mm and 25mm focal
lengths and frequently maintaining a T-
stop of 1.4. (They framed for 1.85:1.)
Filtration was kept to a minimum, with
only an occasional ND or polarizer
placed in front of the lens. When condi-
tions required additional lighting, they
turned to a 1.2K HMI or a 4' four-bank
Kino Flo; they also frequently bounced
light into a silver cake tray. The
company had a very small van, and that
was our physical limitation: What lights
could we put in there that our budget
could afford? says Lavelle.
The key to the interviews,
Lavelle stresses, was to be as low-key
and friendly as possible so we wouldnt
disturb whatever was naturally going on
in the house. It was really important to

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His & Hers tells
a unified
narrative of love
made up of
interviews with
70 females,
ranging in age
from young
to old.
Top right: Co-
cinematographers
Michael Lavelle
and Kate
McCullough flank
director Ken
Wardrop.
have the feel that we were just popping
in for a cup of tea with an old friend.
Actually, the producer sent around a
letter to all the ladies that said,
Whatever you do, please dont offer us
tea, because it could have been 10 hours
before wed get out! Getting out past the
cups of tea was the hardest thing, but
that shows the warmth of the women
we interviewed they took us into
their hearts. I think thats evidenced in
the footage as well.
His & Hers marked the first time
Lavelle and McCullough shared cine-
matography duties, and to help delin-
eate their roles, the two traded camera
and lighting responsibilities each week.
However, McCullough says, there was
ultimately more work to do in the
camera department, so it wasnt really
that clear-cut. Mike might be operating,
but then I might need to pull focus on
certain shots. It was an odd mix of jobs.
Lavelle agrees, noting, The boundaries
between the two jobs were quite blurred
because we knew we were tight for staff.
We watched each others backs and
double-checked each other. The main
thing was that we all felt like we were
pushing in the same direction and
working as a team.
During interviews, Wardrop sat
with a remote start-and-stop control for
the camera an Arri 16SR-3
Advanced tucked under his arm.
When he sensed a usable moment, he
started the camera rolling, but, Lavelle
recalls, because the space was often so
quiet and intimate, youd hear the
camera. We had pillows and my leather
jacket tied around the camera just to
keep the volume down. It was fine,
though, because the pillow and leather
jacket also made us look pretty low-key.
Instead of some big, fancy technical
thing in their house, it was just a group
of friends with a little camera that made
a bit of noise.
Returning to their rented abode
at the end of the shooting day, the film-
makers set about making dinner and
unloading the van. While the cine-
matographers unloaded the film,
cleaned the gear and filled out the days
notes, Wardrop would edit ultra-low-
resolution copies of the days footage,
shot off of a clamshell monitor on set by
a Sony HVR-Z1U camcorder, which
Freedman used to record the audio. The
crew would watch the edited footage
each night after dinner and discuss their
plans for the next day.
As the filmmakers watched the
edited footage, Lavelle recalls, We
found our choices of shots were becom-
ing more limited, because we were
trying to build a flow and create a sense
of unity over the film. Serendipitously,
the homes the filmmakers shot in
offered a naturally unifying color palette.
McCullough explains, The women had
their walls painted in such a way that
you would think someone had done
production design. Pastels were a motif,
and what the women wore was often
matched to their environment.
Throughout His & Hers, the
camera remains indoors; if an intervie-
wee steps outside, the camera watches
through a window. These ladies were
welcoming us into their homes, and it
felt like we should stay in their homes
for the whole film, says Lavelle. That
visual motif became very strong in the
film.
At the very end, we take the
camera outside and see a woman inside,
he continues. As the nonagenarian sits
alone in a nursing home, Lavelle says,
the audience is left with a sense of
inevitability, which says enough, I think.
We thought about putting in moments
like marriage, birth and death, but in
the end, those are just hinted at. We
dont show a wedding, but we do show
a girl whos just getting her wedding
dress washed. After a screening of the
film, a woman commented that we
think our lives are made up of really
momentous events, but its actually
these small moments that define our
lives. It was Kens vision to come up
with that type of stuff.
The productions negative was
processed at Film Lab North in Leeds.
Later, the digital grade was done with
colorist Angela McLellan at Screen
Scene in Dublin, and a 35mm festival
print was made on Kodak Vision
Premier 2393 at LipSync Post in
London.
Thrilled with the success of their
collaborations to date, Lavelle and
McCullough are currently preparing to
tackle a narrative feature as director and
cinematographer, respectively. Its good
fun to work together, says Lavelle.
Long may it continue!
Jon D. Witmer
Southern District (Zona Sur)
Cinematographer:
Paul de Lumen
Director: Juan Carlos Valdivia
One of the riskiest entries in the
World Cinema Dramatic Competition
was Southern District (Zona Sur), a
Bolivian film about a wealthy family in
suburban La Paz and their indigenous
Aymaran servants. Politically loaded and
stylistically unique, the film went out on
a limb, and the risk paid off: direc-
tor/writer Juan Carlos Valdivia won the
festivals directing and screenwriting
awards in the World Cinema category.
Additionally, Bolivia submitted the film
for Academy Awards consideration.
Bolivia is undergoing cultural
realignments as wealth slips from the
upper class and indigenous people gain
power. This became clear with the elec-
tion of President Evo Morales, the first
Aymaran to hold the office. Valdivia put
his finger squarely in the wound during
a heated election year, addressing race
and class in a polarized culture, but
choosing a style that withholds judg-
ment.
In the film, a matriarch lords over
her three children in a beautifully
appointed home, where a loyal indige-
nous butler and gardener take care of the
childrens needs and whims. However,
money is running out because of the
parents divorce. When the butler learns
of his sons death, he leaves to attend the
funeral against the matriarchs wishes.
This is followed by other turns of
fortune that disrupt established power
dynamics.
Valdivia describes the plot as
minimal, noting that the storyline is
subverted for other elements, like
atmosphere. In fact, during the first
two-thirds of the movie, you could put
the scenes in different order and it
wouldnt matter.
Whats most striking is the design
Valdivia worked out with the films cine-
matographer, Paul de Lumen: Each
scene is a single shot lasting two to five
minutes, and each shot utilizes a slowly
rotating camera that makes up to four

The camera remains indoors throughout His & Hers, often catching glimpses of
interviewees through windows.
360-degree turns per scene. The moves
are independent of the actors, who walk
in and out of frame. Because the charac-
ters are onscreen only 60 percent of the
time, viewers wind up observing the
house, which becomes a character as the
camera reveals its luxurious dcor and
layers of family history.
This radical approach was moti-
vated by several ideas. One was German
philosopher Peter Sloterdijks theory of
human individualism, which utilizes the
metaphor of spheres. We create
spheres, or bubbles of existence, says
Valdivia. These bubbles can be like
foam, a conglomeration of individual
spheres, but they are also individual
bubbles. The family embodies this
social dynamic, while the circular
camerawork suggests the spheres they
each construct and are trapped within.
The moves also express an
Andean view of cyclical time. Juan
Carlos wanted the feel of a clock, and he
wanted it to be unforgiving, like time,
says de Lumen. Using a remote head
facilitated that feel.
De Lumen shot Southern District
with a Red One (Build 16), the first in
South America, according to Valdivia,
who acquired it in June 2008. He and de
Lumen, who is based in Los Angeles,
spent a year shooting commercials with
the camera before Southern District
came together. Valdivia wanted to shoot
his feature with the Red mainly because
he wanted to prove you could make a
very well-made movie with digital
capture. It was a personal mission.
For Southern District, they
captured at 4K Redcode Raw, the maxi-
mum resolution possible. Because some
scenes ran nearly five minutes, the
Compact Flash cards didnt offer suffi-
cient storage space, so de Lumen
recorded to the 320GB Red Drive.
(The production carried two.) We were
able to shoot all the coverage of one
scene on that, says de Lumen. It was
about a half-days worth of shooting.
Camera movement was per-
formed in two basic ways: rotating on its
axis, or circling around a scene. Valdivia
used the architectural program
SketchUp, which even enabled lens
choices, to plan shots. He had an
architect render a 3-D model of the
practical location, then moved a
camera eye through it. These decisions
became a springboard for what de
Lumen calls a jam session on set.
Choreographing actors and camera
and finding the right speed for both
were time-consuming challenges.
They averaged 15 takes, sometimes
going up to 30. In effect, says de
Lumen, that was our coverage: the
speed of the camera, size of the lens
and the blocking of actors. Those were
the ways we provided options for the
editor.
De Lumen shot most of the
movie on a 24mm Arri Ultra Prime,
which was wide enough to capture the
room without distorting the actors
when they got close to it. It was the
perfect lens for multiple coverage within
one shot.
Key grip Rosendo Ticona created
a couple of rigs to achieve the clock-like
camera motion Valdivia wanted.
Rosendos custom rigs enabled us to
take an ABC Products Pel Remote-
Head XL35 off the 10-meter jib and
apply it to other supports, says de
Lumen. One rig was a special hi-hat, so
we could mount the remote head onto a
dolly or baby legs. This allowed us to not
only rotate 360 degrees on its axis, but
also slide on dolly track to accommo-
date blocking and framing in tight situ-
ations. Dolly grip Walter Achu was
often lying on the floor, inches out of
range of the cameras view.
Another custom rig was a jib arm
attached to the ceiling, continues the
cinematographer. We were able to
mount the remote head onto it to get a
circular floating feel that I could control
remotely. The dolly grip would gently
coast the camera around, and I would
control the pan and tilt. It created a
really unique feel thats unlike
Steadicam, dolly or crane. This was
utilized for the films sex scenes and the
penultimate godmother scene, in
which the mother is offered cash for the
house.
Gaffer Raul Hernandez worked
closely with Ticona to create special
rigging for the lights. Theres not an
abundance of normal rigging material
[in Bolivia] like C-clamps, gobo-heads,
C-stands or spreaders, notes de
Lumen. This was important because
we were shooting in a practical location
where there was very little room to hide
lights.
De Lumen and Valdivia super-
vised the 2K digital intermediate at
Filmosonido in Santiago, Chile. (The
goal was a 35mm print at 1.85:1.) In the

Clockwise from above:
A frame from
Southern District;
cinematographer Paul
de Lumen (second
from left) checks the
rig, a Pel Remote
Head underslung on a
custom hi-hat, which
was then mounted on
skateboard wheels;
director Juan Carlos
Valdivia (second from
left) and the cast
prepare for a shot at
the dinner table. The
dinner-table rig
includes a Kino Kamio
Ring-Light, which
helped with faces as
the rig revolved.
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color-correction, de Lumen smoothed
out uneven lamp temperatures, finessed
varying skin tones, and fine-tuned white
walls, which predominate in the house.
The festival print was struck on Fuji
Eterna-CP 3513DI.
As significant as Southern
Districts technical challenges were, the
projects biggest challenge was devising
a whole new visual language and trust-
ing that the audience would get it, says
de Lumen. Id been shooting commer-
cials, where you need to get something
across in 30 seconds. You tell viewers
what they want to feel. Southern District
does the opposite. He acknowledges
that there were moments when he
feared the movies style might seem
pretentious, boring or even dizzying. It
wasnt until several scenes were cut
together that he and Valdivia were
completely convinced of the rightness of
their approach. The more I watch the
film, the more I respect Juan Carlos for
having the guts to stick with it, says de
Lumen.
Patricia Thomson
Cane Toads: The Conquest 3-D
Cinematographers:
Toby Oliver, ACS;
Kathryn Milliss; and
Paul Nichola
Director: Mark Lewis
1935 marks Year Zero for one of
Australias biggest environmental disas-
ters: 102 cane toads were introduced
into the country as the solution to the
Greyback Cane Beetle, which was deci-
mating the Queensland sugar-cane
industry. Despite their reputation as
voracious devourers of living and dead
matter, the toads had other ideas.
Instead of eliminating the beetle, they
utilized their other voracious appetite
breeding and today, an estimated
1.5 billion toads have migrated across
Northern Australia, with no end in sight
to their continental conquest.
Mark Lewis Cane Toads: The
Conquest was the first 3-D feature to
screen at Sundance, and the first
Australian feature to shoot in 3-D.
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Lewis initially began shooting in 2-D
when the production company,
Participant Media, nixed his 3-D pitch,
but 3-D eventually ended up back on
the table, and Lewis and his cinematog-
raphers Toby Oliver, ACS; Kathryn
Milliss; and Paul Nichola (who was also
the stereo and visual-effects supervisor)
had only a short time to put the
logistics into place.
Framing for an aspect ratio of
1.85:1, the filmmakers used Silicon
Imaging SI-2K Mini cameras mounted
on 3-D mirror rigs. A proprietary P+S
Technik 3-D rig was used for inter-
views, while Nichola used a fair amount
of unconventional methodology to
construct rigs for shooting underwater,
from vehicles, off a crane, with deep
focus and in macro shots, and, most
importantly, to capture the toads POV,
he says.
Each rig was designed to estab-
lish the required interocular, continues
Nichola. We could also converge
slightly, but there was never an intention
to fully converge because we knew we
would finish with a 1920x1080 image
size. The additional pixels provided by
the SI-2K allowed a modest amount of
room for shifting without enlarging. It
wasnt feasible or necessary to have
precision alignment. The left eye was
used as the master simply because we
had to pick one, and we were going to
put the right eye through a transform
pass.
The key aesthetic for the docu-
mentary was that the lenses were almost
always at the toads eyeline or lower
we often crane from a toad to reveal a
new background vista, he continues. To
achieve these shots, Nichola constructed
the Mini-Rig, which Digital
Solutions Ben McNiell describes as
the best example of how we custom-
built rigs to be smaller than what was
commercially available. We used SI-2Ks
with a set of 1-inch machine-vision
lenses from a U.S. company called
Kowa; they cover a bigger image area
than the CMOS chips, which allowed
Paul the option of optically converging
the lenses. That meant he could shoot
parallel, which was another plus. The
toad was typically about 300mm from
the lens. The Kowas were also used for
macro shots, which Nichola achieved by
installing an extension barrel to pull the
lenses away from the body.
Another key rig was a rigid side-
by-side rig where the cameras could be
set up and the pitch corrected. That rig
spent a lot of time on the crane for

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Australias cane-toad population takes center stage in the
3-D feature Cane Toads: The Conquest.
84
grand vistas, recalls Nichola.
The SI-2Ks were rigged with a
PL mount in the first block [of filming],
but there were questions raised about
the back-focus, so we changed to B4
mounts for the second block, he
continues. There was also a lot of test-
ing of zoom lenses. In the second block
of the shoot, we changed to primes,
which were more manageable. The
primes did shift laterally as focus was
pulled, but to my mind, that didnt
matter, because with Marks predilection
for proscenium compositions with
locked-off shots, focus pulls were rare.
Cane Toads: The Conquest uses a
highly structured visual approach.
Mark was looking for a sophisticated
visual style based on his trademark
offbeat humor toad POVs, intervie-
wees looking straight at the viewer, and
centered compositions that put the
viewer face-to-face with the human
characters and the toads, says Oliver.
Nichola adds, We set up the 3-D depth
range the same as one would establish
the area of focus, and the toads worked
within those parameters. We carried our
own toads everywhere. The only
mystery in the equation was what the
toads would do in front of the camera;
Toby Oliver, ACS checks the 300mm side-by-side
rig used to capture some shots.
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they arent readily trainable animals, and
mostly they just sit in one spot.
Principal photography lasted 22
weeks and was divided into three
blocks. Oliver covered the first shoot, in
the Northern Territory; Milliss handled
the second, in Queensland; and Nichola
took the reins for the third, in New
South Wales.
Block 1 was a two-month shoot
in Australias Top End, extending from
tropical Northern Territory to the far
north of Western Australia. Mid-
November in the Territory is near the
end of the dry season and is the hottest
time of the year, with temperatures
approaching 113F in near 100-percent
humidity. The toads congregated in vast
numbers around remote waterholes,
waiting for the onset of the wet. Oliver
shot a memorable sequence at dusk at a
remote location named Croc Tank
Lagoon. We set up the P+S Technik 3-
D rig alongside a 30-meter-wide stretch
of mud at one end of the waterhole at
dusk, firing up a couple of small but
punchy lights. Only a few of the noctur-
nal toads appeared at first, creeping out of
low bushes and holes in the mud, but
after an hour, thousands of them were
swarming towards the muddy water, their
eyes glowing like stars in the night sky.
Block 2 of the shoot covered the
toads early history in Australia and
features interviews with contemporary
toad experts and a great collection of
Australian characters. We shot in toad
season, which happened that year to take
us into some of the worst flooding in

Stereographer/co-cinematographer Paul Nichola at work on the set.
86
Queenslands history, recalls Milliss.
For interviews, she used the P+S
Technik rig with two SI-2Ks and
Fujinon E-series lenses. Marks inter-
view aesthetics are wide-frame frontal
compositions of the subject in their
environment, she notes. We talked
about Peter Greenaways early work,
particularly Act of God for the boldness
and humor of its interviews. An inter-
view is not traditional 3-D fare, but the
third dimension helps to create the most
wonderfully intimate portrait. The
audience feels theyre right in the
subjects home that they could lean
over and peer into the next room. Its
important to consider the effect of the
interaxial on the subject; for instance, an
IA that is pleasingly slimming for one
person might be unkind to someone
elses nose.
A Block 3 sequence titled
Creatures of Love details the toads
breeding cycle. Nichola combined exte-
rior location footage with intricate
macro tabletop work. Filmed on loca-
tion in Mullumbimby, New South
Wales, the scene was established with a
crane shot revealing a male toad
sunning itself on a lily pad, then swim-
ming through the water, all the while
bathed in strong sunlight provided by
gold reflectors and mirrors. A female
toad, meanwhile, lies in wait on a bed of
water-flowers. Glittering reflections
from the water provided highlights
appropriate to the romance of the scene.
The tadpoles, which are only
10mm long, were shot on a 4'-square
tabletop stage in the studio, with a
blue backlight cyc replicating the loca-
tions clear blue sky. Sunlight was recre-
ated with a Par 575, while LEDs
provided the fill. In the studio, I
increased the lighting levels to keep the
depth-of-field looking consistent,
notes Nichola. On a wider shot, the
depth would take care of itself, and
when I went in on longer lenses, Id
build the stop up.
Using Silicons DVR software,
the footage from the SI-2Ks was fed
into two Dell laptops one for the
right eye and one for the left and
recorded onto 1-terabyte USB drives.
HDMI splitters provided monitoring
back to the cameras. We constructed
our own 1280x720 OLED screens to
accurately determine focus, explains
Nichola. I also built a 3-D monitor,
which we called the shoebox monitor.
It was a very simple system using two
high-resolution LCD screens reflecting
into mirrors placed at 45 degrees. The
images became overlaid, providing a 3-
D effect without glasses.
The picture was graded by
Adrian Hauser at Cutting Edge Post in
Sydney. Adrian did an extraordinary
job, especially considering that we never
tested the post path all the way
through, says Lewis.
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87
Strengthening Crucial Ties With Collaborators
Interview by Stephanie Argy
The Visual Effects Society recently presented its first Production
Summit, an event designed to give people from all areas of the
motion-picture industry the opportunity to interact and discuss the
problems that challenge all the crafts. As a follow-up to that event,
AC asked ASC President Michael Goi to sit down with VES Chairman
Jeffrey Okun (The Day the Earth Stood Still, Blood Diamond, The Last
Samurai) to discuss some of their organizations shared concerns.
What follows are excerpts from their conversation.
Jeffrey Okun: The point of the Production Summit was to
start conversations, to get all the verticals within the entertainment
business in the same room and say, Where are we going? Whats it
going to look like? And how are we going to get there as a cohesive
whole? Were collaborating to tell a story. We can make it so much
more fun and so much more artistically satisfying by learning how to
work with each other.
Michael Goi, ASC: Over the last few
years, cinematographers have certainly become
more involved in the postproduction end than
we were previously, back in the days when we
just did color timing straight to print and then
tweaked the video transfer. I find myself being
involved much more heavily on the preproduc-
tion end as well. So it is necessary to have a
better understanding of what each of the crafts
does. Its a popular concept among cinematogra-
phers to think of the cinematographer as the
author of the image, but when you look back
through the history of the industry, you see that
the greatest images have always come through a spirit of collabora-
tion. If you look at a great shot and say the cinematographer was the
author of the image, where was the costume designer? Where was
the makeup person? Where was the production designer? All those
elements helped to create that great shot. Thats what we need to
recognize: that personal stamp is the personal stamp of everybody
working toward the same goal.
Okun: It should be that way, but instead its fractionating, and
I lay the blame squarely on how visual effects are perceived. I trace
all our problems back to 1978, when Star Wars came out on VHS,
and it had the very first this-is-how-we-did-it [featurette] that anyone
paid attention to. Lets say you were 10 years old in 1978. Youre 42
today, and youve been raised on a diet of these added-value things
that are not quite true. And we visual-effects people are the ones
who propagated the mistruths because we were so excited to be
invited to share a table with the above-the-line group. We said,
These computers are awesome, and my guy hasnt been home in
three days but hes happy as a clam we just get him pizzas and
Diet Cokes. Its not the computer; its the artist. If I sit there with the
elements, youre going to get a piece of crap, but if [compositor]
Ken Stranahan sits there with the same elements, youre going to
get a piece of artwork. Weve sold the technology, not the art, and
now were all shocked that people say, Well, my son has a Mac. He
can do that.
Goi: The drive of a lot of the prosumer market is to convince
people that anybody can make movies, and you can do it all your-
self. You can shoot it, direct it, write it, edit it, do the visual effects
and do all the sound work. That is damaging to the concept that
collaboration produces great results. There has to be a change, and
it has to start with the young people, because theyre the ones who
adopt all these tools the fastest and figure out new ways to use
them. They have to learn how to recognize that artistic collaboration
is the key to getting what they want. Ive always prided myself on
hiring crew people who know how to do their jobs better than I
know how to do their jobs. I never want to do a
second-rate job; Id rather hire the person who
does a first-rate job and then capitalize on his or
her experience and knowledge.
Okun: Ive found that by sacrificing my
own ego, I get more accolades. I present the
elements and a temp version of a shot to my
team and tell them the intention of the shot, and
I give them the bottom line that they have to
move up to for it to be acceptable. Then I say, If
you have a better idea, Id love to hear it or see
it. And nine times out of 10, I go back to the
director and say, Heres what you asked for, and
heres what the team came up with. Its a change
of a concept, but what do you think? The director doesnt say,
Youre fired. He says, Great. Get this guy more work down the
road. We need more of those people. So it only helps.
Goi: I recently did a series of Webisodes for Breyers for which
we inserted an actress into footage from Gone With the Wind and
King Kong, so we had to duplicate exactly those shots lighting style,
in addition to the dress and makeup. Working with the visual-effects
team was a tremendous amount of fun, because I filled in the holes
in their education as far as what it took to get those images, and
they filled in holes in my knowledge about what they could do with
it. So it was a really great collaboration.
Okun: Its great when that happens. Theres nothing more
exhilarating and satisfying.
Goi: I was speaking at a conference in Florida recently, and a
young guy stood up and said, Dont you think your job is obsolete?
I said, What do you mean by that? He said, Well, anybody who
picks up a digital camera today is a cinematographer. I responded,
Filmmakers Forum
I
Weve sold
the technology, not
the art.
Well, if I gave you an electric guitar, would
you instantly become Eric Clapton? He
didnt know who Eric Clapton was, so the
point was lost.
Okun: Its the auteur theory gone
berserk. There werent auteurs before the
1960s; they were egomaniacs, which is
different from an auteur. Then auteurs hit
big in the 60s and 70s, and we had an
explosion of creative people and product.
But for an auteur to work, people who
know what theyre doing have to support
the auteur quietly. None of these auteurs
acted, wrote, directed, lit, shot, edited,
created visual effects, answer-printed and
did the marketing. Theyre auteurs in that
they have final say, not because theyre
doing it all. And one of the reasons we
called the Production Summit was to try to
address this auteurism, which is isolation-
ism. What were breeding by working this
way is insecurity. Theres no time for learn-
ing or growth; youve got to hit a home run
right out of the gate. Whats the path for
directors these days? They do their
commercials and music videos, then they
get their feature film, and then they disap-
pear. Nobody hears from them again.
Goi: Ive seen some very sophisti-
cated work by a lot of young filmmakers,
and what gives me hope is that many of
them recognize the value of what came
before them. They recognize the value of
great cinematography of the past while
also recognizing that they have access to a
wonderful technical toolbox today.
Okun: There are a number of visual-
effects schools that teach all the tools, and
the successful schools are teaching two
other things. One is how to see, which is
really vital, because nobody seems to under-
stand how to see anything any more. On
one film, I had to take the entire visual-
effects crew out to lunch in a park once a
week and point out things like how the
shadows fell; theyd never paid attention to
that stuff. The other thing the successful
schools are teaching is the study of art. This
is where my industry is really suffering. So
many people dont understand that you can
tell a story with a stationary image. Look at
any great painting, and theres a story. Your
eye goes somewhere, and something is
transmitted.
Goi: One of my favorite short films is
Chris Markers La Jete, which almost
entirely comprises still images. I bought a
book with every still image from the film in
it, and I found it was very unsatisfying. What
makes the movie satisfying is that the
progression of those images is edited to a
certain pace and combined with music and
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The greatest images
have always come
through a spirit of
collaboration.
narration to create the feel of the film, and
the book just cannot capture that because
it isolates one element. It was an interesting
lesson that I havent forgotten. Those
images are very compelling, but they are
more compelling within the context of the
film.
Okun: If you isolate what everybody
does, it doesnt have the same power and
impact it has when its all brought together.
Theres a real power to the synergy of deliv-
ering something far and above what
anybody can do individually. And it seems
that today, we are being encouraged to
isolate ourselves rather than come together.
Thats why we called our event the Produc-
tion Summit instead of the VES Summit.
Were not an island, and were trying to
take a very open and broad stab at saying,
We love what we do, and wed really love
to do it with you.
Goi: The Hard Days Night DVD has
an interview with the man who was the
head of the studio that greenlit the movie
when nobody understood exactly what a
Beatles movie was going to be. He was
asked what role he played in the films
success, and he said, I hired fiscally respon-
sible, incredibly creative people, and I didnt
do a damn thing. I let them do their job and
didnt interfere.
Okun: Where are those guys
today?! Experience isnt valued very much
anymore. When I do lectures at film
schools, I always bring a roll of film with me
and pass it around. It used to be funny, but
now people really say, Wow, what are the
little holes on the side for? I have to explain
how we got to where we are today. Its sad.
Were losing the heritage; were losing the
experience pool.
Goi: All of this is a process. Certainly
the industry is shaking itself down, and
while thats going on, theres a certain
strength that can be found amongst the
below-the-line people all of us who have
been laboring in the business all of our lives
to make our end of it better. Despite the
chaos happening on the upper end, we can
make sure that our end of it, our crafts,
dont succumb to this kind of chipping
away.
Okun: My work at the VES has been
a yearlong examination of why the Society
exists and whether it should continue.
Weve decided that were in business to
form a trusted community to ensure that
the artists and the business thrive. Now
were in a position to start reaching out to
all the crafts and try to create joint events.
Its all about communication. In June, well
publish The VES Handbook of Visual
Effects, our equivalent of the American
Cinematographer Manual, and were also
going to do another Production Summit
this year. It wont be a repeat of last years,
either. Every year it will be radically differ-
ent, but it will always involve all of the verti-
cals. And the goal will always be to look
forward and get conversations going.
Arri Unveils
Alexa Prototype
By Benjamin B
Arri recently unveiled a
working prototype of its Alexa
digital camera at the Micro Salon
show of the AFC (French Association of Cinematographers) in Paris
and the Hollywood Post Alliance Tech Retreat in Rancho Mirage,
Calif.
We are delighted with the response we have had around the
world so far regarding the concept of Alexa and, now, the working
prototype, says Stephan Schenk, general manager of Arris Camera
& DIS Business Unit, who presented the camera with cinematogra-
pher Frank van Vught in Paris. At Arri we endeavor to give creative
professionals the tools to tell their stories, and we are confident that
Alexas cutting-edge technology will do this perfectly.
The Alexa is Arris first model in its new generation of digital
cameras. Compact, lightweight and robust, the Alexa is also the first
camera from Arri that will feature an electronic viewfinder; based on
auto-calibrating LED technology, it is designed for accurate color
rendition and minimal image delay.
Schenk says the Alexa offers a base sensitivity of 800 ASA, low
noise and latitude that exceeds 13 stops. The 16:9 imaging area is
similar to that of Super 35 and can be used with 35mm lenses, offer-
ing the same field of view and depth of field as 35mm film. A provi-
sion for 10-percent overscan allows the operator to see outside the
frame lines in the electronic viewfinder.
The Alexa offers a generous number of output signals and
methods including onboard recording options and multiple live HD
and ArriRaw outputs. It has dedicated buttons for record, playback,
ramping and image grabs. Van Vught notes that the menu is
designed for simplicity, like an iPod. The home screen features
controls for frame rate, shutter angle, EI, LUTs and color temperature.
The Alexa sensor is a single CMOS with a Bayer mask and a
3.5K pixel count. The camera electronics apply dual gain pathways,
with separate amplification for the highlights and lowlights, a strat-
egy designed to stretch the latitude and minimize noise. In a given
image area, fewer, bigger pixels will yield more sensitivity and latitude
than more numerous, smaller pixels, says ASC associate member
Stephan Ukas-Bradley from Arris product-management team, who
presented the Alexa with Arri CTO Glenn Kennel at Rancho Mirage.
Alexas 3.5K pixel count is determined to give the best sensitivity
and latitude, while still insuring image quality at 2K projection for the
finished project.
Some major announcements are still to come. Probably the
most frequently asked question refers to our storage solution, says
Kennel. We are really excited to unveil the workflow solutions and
recording options at NAB in Las Vegas, and we invite the whole
feature film and TV industry to come to our booth.
For more information, visit www.arridigital.com.
Hot Rod Cameras Customizes Canon DSLRs
At the urging of profes-
sional cinematographers, Hot
Rod Cameras, LLC has introduced
a custom modification service for
the Canon 7D, 5D and 1D Mk 4
DSLR cameras. The streamlined
process modifies the cameras
standard lens mount, allowing
the use of 35mm PL-mount
cinema lenses.
Working with lenses designed for still photography is
perhaps the biggest impediment to using HDSLR cameras on a
professional set, says cinematographer Daniel Kanes. With the
Hot Rod 7D-PL, I am able to seamlessly integrate lightweight HDSLR
technology on a professional motion-picture set with several other
camera systems. Its an amazing breakthrough using pro cinema
lenses on a camera of this size and capability.
For full details, including a list of compatible lenses and
warranty service information, visit www.hotrodcameras.com.
Panasonic Offers Full HD 3-D Camcorder
Panasonic Broadcast has begun taking orders for the AG-
3DA1, a professional-quality, fully integrated Full HD 3-D camcorder
with SD media-card recording.
The AG-3DA1 will democra-
tize 3-D production by giving profes-
sional videographers a more afford-
able and simple solution for capturing
immersive content, as well as provide
a training tool for educators, says
John Baisley, president, Panasonic Broadcast. As
the product is positioned in a more mainstream budget
category, Panasonic camcorder owners will help to
accelerate the amount of 3-D content being created for
distribution on new Blu-ray discs and recently announced 3-D chan-
nels like those of DirecTV.
At less than 6.6 pounds, the AG-3DA1 is equipped with dual
lenses and two full 1920x1080 2.07 megapixel 3-MOS imagers to
record 1080/60i, 50i, 30p, 25p and 24p (native) and 720/60p and
50p in AVCHD. It can record for up to 180 minutes on dual 32GB
SD cards in Panasonics professional AVCHD PH mode, and offers
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professional interfaces including dual HD-SDI
out, HDMI (version 1.4), two XLR connec-
tors, built-in stereo microphone and twin-
lens camera remotes.
Unlike current 3-D systems, the AG-
3DA1 integrates the lenses, camera head
and dual Memory Card recorder into a
single, lightweight body. The camcorder also
incorporates stereoscopic adjustment
controls making it easier to use and operate:
The twin-lens system allows adjustment of
the convergence point, and functions for
automatically correcting horizontal and verti-
cal displacement are also provided.
Right and Left Full HD video streams
of the twin-lens camcorder can be recorded
and distributed as files on SDHC/SD Memory
Cards, ensuring higher reliability than tape,
optical disc, HDD or other mechanical-based
recording systems. This solid-state, no-
moving-parts design will help significantly
reduce maintenance costs, and the light-
weight build provides the flexibility of hand-
held shooting. Setup and transportation are
also simplified, making the camcorder ideal
for sports, documentary and filmmaking
projects.
In addition to the camcorder, Pana-
sonic announced the BT-3DL2550, a 25"
professional-quality 3-D LCD monitor for
field use, and the AG-HMX100, a profes-
sional HD digital AV mixer for live 3-D event
production. Panasonic is committed to offer-
ing professional production equipment for
efficiently creating 3-D content so
consumers can enjoy 3-D video using Pana-
sonic 3-D home-theater systems.
The AG-3DA1 has a suggested retail
price of $21,000. For more information, visit
http://pro-av.panasonic.net/en/3d.
Band Pro Announces
Mystery Primes
During its annual One World on HD
event, Band Pro Film and Digital introduced
a new brand of ultra-high performance PL-
mount prime lenses designed to deliver opti-
cal performance for true 4K imaging and
beyond.
Called Mystery Primes, the T1.4 lenses
will eventually total 15 different focal
lengths; the core set of lenses, scheduled to
begin delivery in June, will comprise 16, 18,
21, 25, 35, 40, 50, 65, 75 and 100mm focal
lengths. The entire set features unified
distance focus scales, common size and
location of focus and iris rings, and a 95mm
threaded lens front, all of which allow for
quick interchange of lenses in a busy
production environment. Additionally, the
rear of the PL mount features an integrated
threaded net ring.
A unique use of aspheric technol-
ogy and cutting-edge mechanical cine-lens
design provides the Mystery Primes with
unmatched evenness of illumination across
the entire 35mm frame and into the corners
with no discernible
breathing, says ASC
associate member
Michael Bravin, Band
Pros chief technolo-
gist. Suppression of
color fringing into
the farthest corners
of the frame is superior to any lenses I have
ever seen.
Designed to be lightweight yet
rugged on the set, the mount and lens
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Behind the Screen
Camera Technology
Camera Support
Grip
Film stock
Lighting
Sound
Set Decoration
Accessories
Postproduction
Archiving
Data Management
Stereoscopic
Cinematography
Services
Organizations
cinecAward
Prize for Outstanding
Achievements
cinecForum: 3D
The Future of
Cinematography
Organizer
Albrecht GmbH
Fon +49-(0)89-272948-20
Fax +49-(0)89-272948-22
info@cinec.de
www.cinec.de
barrel are manufactured using lightweight
high-strength titanium materials; a typical
Mystery Prime weighs just 3 pounds.
The first 25 sets of lenses will be deliv-
ered to Otto Nemenz International, whose
experienced team provided invaluable user
input from the beginning of the design
process.
For additional information, visit
www.bandpro.com.
Manfrotto Intros 504HD
Fluid Head
Manfrotto has unveiled the 504HD
fluid head, which boasts an increased load
capacity resulting from the companys
patented Bridging Technology.
Thanks to the 504HDs bridge design,
the pan friction control is intuitive, easy to set
and protected against knocks. Movement
around the pan and tilt axes is smoothed by
ball-bearing units, which remove all
unwanted vibration regardless of operating
temperature. Furthermore, friction control
combines with a step counterbalance system
that covers the full weight range to allow the
504HD to be fine-tuned with extreme preci-
sion for the exact in-shot movement needed.
The heads Fluid Drag System (FDS) is variable
and directly controls action and resistance on
both axes; the ergonomic controls have been
noticeably improved to make using the FDS
even easier.
The 504HD supports kits weighing up
to 16.5 pounds, and two
3
8" threads on the
top plate allow accessories such as moni-
tors and arms to be fitted directly to the
head, eliminating the need for extra clamps,
saving setup time and freeing the video
cameras hot shoe.
www.manfrotto.com.
OConnor Debuts Accessory Line
Fluid head innovator OConnor, a Vitec
Group brand, has announced a line of
professional camera accessories engineered
to fulfill the needs of todays high-end cine-
matography.
For 60 years, OConnor fluid heads
and tripods have been valued tools for the
art of movie making, says Bob Carr, presi-
dent of the Vitec Group business unit
Camera Dynamics Inc. The new accessory
line continues the OConnor tradition of
New
www.technocrane.com
starting from 78.000
longer: 8,26 m / 22 ft
lighter: 79 kg / 174 lbs
faster: 1,5 m/s / 5 ft/s
camera max.: 13 kg / 30lbs
buy at:
supporting the cinematographers art with
industry-leading engineering and crafts-
manship, tailored to the rapidly changing
landscape of new cameras.
To ensure these new tools meet
OConnors high standards, the company
has chosen Jim Elias to head the design
team; Elias brings extensive experience as a
camera assistant to the engineering process.
Another film-industry veteran, Eric J. John-
ston, has been appointed product specialist;
Eric is already interfacing with working
camera people to get on-the-set feedback
and integrate their needs into the product
designs.
The first OConnor camera accessory
is a completely modular cine-style follow-
focus system. The compact and low-profile
unit enables quick, tool-free mounting on
standard rod systems. The follow focus is
compatible with all standard follow-focus
accessories and driver gears, and it inte-
grates elegantly with all camera and lens
systems in use. Further products in the
range will be announced as they are
released.
As with the entire OConnor family,
the camera accessories are backed by the
companys expert customer support and
service departments. According to Carr,
Because the new follow focus is designed
for modular versatility and compatibility
with other systems, the smartly priced
system should be extremely popular with
rental houses and users who own a number
of different camera and lens combinations.
The OConnor cine-style follow focus
is scheduled to begin delivery this month.
For more information, visit www.ocon.com.
Gekko Highlights Kezia LEDs
Gekko Technology has introduced
two major additions to its range of LED light-
ing systems. The Kezia 50 and Kezia 200 are
hard-sourced LED luminaires based on
Gekkos kleer-color light engine, with vari-
ants for film, television and entertainment.
The Kezia 50 and 200 offer film and
television lighting directors and cameramen
precise, tuneable whites and dimming under
local or DMX control, explains David
Amphlett, managing director of Gekko Tech-
nology. As well as tuneable whites in the
2900 to 6500K range, the entertainment
version can also produce millions of other
colors. The capacity of the lamp to generate
high quality whites reduces the need for
multiple sources with different capabilities.
The Kezia 50 is comparable in output
brightness to a 250-watt tungsten Fresnel
lamp head, yet it consumes only 50 watts of
electrical power. The Kezia 200 boasts a
brightness similar to a 1K tungsten source
while consuming only 190 watts of power.
The fixtures also generate far less heat than
traditional fixtures, and both use unique
color-feedback technology to ensure consis-
tent color-temperature quality as ambient
conditions change or the unit ages. Color
temperature accuracy also remains constant
as the fixtures are dimmed.
www.gekkotechnology.com.
Tangohead Enables
3-D Production
Tangohead, a supplier of camera
support equipment for the film and video
industry, has introduced the 3D Stereo
Tango universal beam-splitter rig for 3-D
productions.
Made of custom-molded carbon
fiber, the 3D Stereo Tango provides precise
control over the alignment of left- and right-
eye cameras being used to record stereo-
scopic images. Each camera is adjustable on
its optical axis and at the intersection point
of the optical axes on the beam splitter. Inte-
rocular adjustments (from 0 to 90mm) are
motorized and interface with standard wire-
less lens-control systems such as Arri,
Cmotion, Scorpio and Preston. Conver-
gence adjustments can be motorized or
made manually.
The 50/50 beam splitter is fixed at 45
degrees, and the left- and right-eye cameras
are independently adjustable over six axes:
tilt, roll, convergence, side-to-side, up-and-
down and front-to-back. Assisted by a digi-
tal protractor and custom PL-mounted twin-
laser boresights, camera alignments are fast,
smooth, precise and repeatable. Each align-
ment is individually locked, preventing drift-
ing during production, and each is refer-
enced with graduations and indexes. A large
and fully adjustable carbon fiber light shield
is also provided to control stray light on set.
96
Offset Mitchell Levelers
from GFM
Grip Factory Munich has introduced a
standard Mitchell 3-Way Leveler as well as a
range of Offset Euro-to-Mitchell Arms,
which are available with 3- or 4-Way Level-
ers. The strong, long-lasting, surface-hard-
ened camera mounts are machined from
high-grade aluminum, and they can be used
with most standard dollies or as standalone
units. Additionally, GFMs Offset Euro-to-
Euro Brackets and Extension Tubes allow
users to add height and angle adjustability,
further increasing the possibilities.
www.g-f-m.net.
The camera-agnostic 3D Stereo
Tango can accept any film or video camera
weighing up to 66 pounds
(for a maximum total load
weight of 132 pounds).
The rig is also compatible
with standard Arri acces-
sories, including filter
frames, filter retainers,
rubber bellows, sliding
bridge plates and iris rods,
and the rigs design grants
ready access to both
cameras at all times. Addi-
tionally, multiple mount-
ing points make it easy to attach on-board
monitors, transmitters and other acces-
sories.
The 3D Stereo Tango can be
mounted on a fluid head, geared head or
remote head. The rig is delivered in a
custom, sturdy, welded-aluminum travel
case with wheels.
www.tangohead.com.
Kaczek Visuals Launches
Reflect Lighting System
Following a long period of develop-
ment, evaluation and use on such features
as The White Ribbon (shot by Christian
Berger, AAC), La Bohme (Walter Kindler,
BVK, AAC) and Revanche (Martin
Gschlacht, AAC), Kaczek Visuals Reflect
Lighting System is now on the market.
The RLS is an innovative lighting
system for film, television, still photography,
stage productions and event presentations.
The system is based on reflection; specially
designed RLS spotlights are directed onto
RLS reflectors, which shape the light and
transmit it with minimal loss. The wide selec-
tion of reflective surfaces each available
in four different sizes allow targeted light
distribution and offer plenty of leeway when
designing the form and structure of the
light. A great variety of lighting ambiences
or effects can be achieved using the differ-
ent structures and coatings of the RLS reflec-
tors. The extremely efficient reflective quality
(between 85 and 98 percent) enables
combined and multiple light redirections.
97
The best results are
achieved with spotlights,
such as Kaczek Visuals
Fred-Beam 70/1200
(1.2K HMI) and the
Fred-Beam 40/800
(800-watt HMI), which
can be positioned
further away from the set, mitigating both
noise and temperature. In comparison with
conventional lighting equipment, the RLS
power consumption is considerably lower
and leaves the set almost free of equipment
and cables; this also minimizes storage
space and transportation requirements.
Cinematographer Frdric-Grard
Kaczek, AAC has also developed carrying
bags and a set of lightweight magnetic
holders (the MagNeck and the MagBall),
which allow fast changing and accurate
positioning of the reflectors while providing
the required rigidity.
www.kaczekvisuals.com.
International Marketplace
Optimo Carry Handles
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310-453-4866 www.InnovisionOptics.com
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Advertisers Index
16x9, Inc. 98
Abel Cine Tech 5
AC 1, 4, 89
Aja Video Systems, Inc. 11
Alan Gordon Enterprises
99
Arri 41
AZGrip 98
Backstage Equipment, Inc.
94
Barger-Lite 94
Bron Imaging Group/Kobold
90
Burrell Enterprises 99
Cavision Enterprises 53
Chapman/Leonard Studio
Equipment Inc. 55
Chimera 39
Chrosziel Filmtechnik 67
Cinec/Albrecht 93
Cinematography
Electronics 6
Cinekinetic 98
Cinerover 98
Cinevate 29
Clairmont Film & Digital
57
Convergent Design 91
Cooke Optics 27
Deluxe 13
Eastman Kodak 9, C4
EFD USA, Inc. 21
Film Gear 75
Filmotechnic 6
Filmtools 77
Filter Gallery, The 99
Five Towns College 79
Flying Cam 86
FTC West 98
Fuji Motion Picture 37
Gekko Technology 87
Glidecam Industries 15
Grip Factory Munich/GFM 6
Ikan Corporation C2
Innoventive Software 81
Innovision 98
J.L. Fisher 17
JEM Studio Lighting 84
K 5600, Inc. 19
Kino Flo 70
Koerner Camera 85
Laffoux Solutions, Inc. 98
Lee Filters 30
Lights! Action! Co. 98
Litegear 79
Lite Panels 2
London Film School 83
Maine Media Workshops 95
Matthews Studio Equipment
99
Mole-Richardson 71, 98, 99
Movcam 51
Movie Tech AG 99
MP&E Mayo Productions 99
Nalpak 99
New York Film Academy 25
Oppenheimer Camera Prod.
85, 98
Panther Gmbh 59
PED Denz 43, 99
Photon Beard 100
Pille Film Gmbh 99
Pro8mm 98
PROA 101
Production Resource Group
69
Professional Sound Services
95
Rag Place, The 83
Rosco Laboratories, Inc. 97
Samys Camera 31
Service Vision 96
Shelton Communications 99
Sim Video 23
Sony Electronics, Inc. 7
Stanton Video Services 81
S.Two 65
Super16 Inc. 98
Technocrane 95
Telescopic 99
Thales Angenieux 46-47
Tiffen 77, C3
Transvideo International 58
VF Gadgets, Inc. 99
Viking 98
Visual Products 75
Welch Integrated 103
Willys Widgets 98
www.theasc.com 12, 84,
89, 94
Zacuto Films 99
Zipcam Systems 45
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Classifieds
Parker Named Honorary Member
During the 24th annual ASC
Awards, ASC President Michael Goi took
to the stage alongside Ralph Woolsey,
ASC to deliver a surprise announcement:
Larry Parker, executive vice president of
Mole-Richardson Co., has been names an
honorary member of the Society.
The grandson of Mole-Richardson
co-founder Peter Mole, Parker followed in
the family business and tradition of manu-
facturing lighting equipment designed to
satisfy the creative needs of filmmakers.
Parkers collaborative spirit and appreciation
for cinematographers art and craft earned
him associate membership in the ASC in
1977. He has also taught countless lighting
workshops out of Mole-Richardsons Holly-
wood facility, offering emerging filmmakers
an opportunity to learn fundamentals in an
interactive, hands-on environment.
Larry Parker may very well be one
of the most influential individuals in the
industry, says Goi. He has personally
helped educate a large number of young
filmmakers as to the nuts and bolts of their
craft through the resources of Mole-
Richardson, and he holds the torch of
respect high for the men and women who
choose cinematography as their life work.
Larrys influence and generosity will be felt
in this business for decades to come, every
time one of his students steps onto a set or
follows his example and teaches another
young filmmaker respect for the tools and
the craft. His selfless devotion to the people
who create moving images makes him a
Clubhouse News
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ASC honorary member Larry Parker (left).
true friend and ally. This honorary member-
ship is the most definitive way we have of
expressing the profound respect we have
for him.
Ive always wanted to be a director
of photography, and I have the utmost
respect for their immeasurable talent, so
receiving this honor means the world to
me, says Parker. The ASC has always
supported me in helping with the educa-
tion of young filmmakers, and thats what I
intend to keep doing.
I love the ASC; I love what it stands
for; I love the people in it, and to be recog-
nized by them is unbelievable, Parker
continues. I am so grateful and will
remember this evening for the rest of my
life. Im still floating!
Leighton Becomes Associate
After earning a Bachelor of Arts
degree in radio, television and film from
San Francisco State University, new associ-
ate member Doug Leighton built a
substantial foundation of practical experi-
ence over 12 years as a freelancer. He then
founded RTS Systems, where he served for
16 years as vice president of marketing.
After RTS successful sale, he worked for
360 Systems, ASC Audio Video Corp.,
Preferred Video Products and Scitex Digital
Video.
In 2000, Leighton joined Panasonic
Broadcast and Television Systems Co. as a
product marketing manager. In 2001, he
was made district sales account manager,
his current title. Leighton has also distin-
guished himself as a regular contributor to
the Societys Technology Committee and
Camera Subcommittee.
Filmtools Hosts ASC Seminars
The last week of February marked
Filmtools Manfrotto Distribution Sale and
Filter Trade-In Event, which the equipment
and expendables retailer enlivened with a
day of seminars presented by ASC
members. Rexford Metz, ASC kicked off
the series with a focus on optical filtration
for HD shooting; Henner Hoffman, ASC,
AMC then discussed new ways of expres-
sion for emerging filmmakers; and a semi-
nar by Dean Semler, ASC, ACS capped
the days events.
Art of Light Celebrates
Deschanel, Menges
In the week leading up to the ASC
Awards, the UCLA Film & Television
Archives screening series The Art of Light
honored the work of International Award
and Lifetime Achievement Award recipients
Chris Menges, ASC, BSC and Caleb
Deschanel, ASC, respectively. Menges
attended a screening of The Three Burials
of Melquiades Estrada, which he
photographed for director Tommy Lee
Jones; following the screening, the cine-
matographer participated in a conversation
with ASC publicist Bob Fisher. Deschanels
work was celebrated with a screening of
The Natural, which he shot for director
Barry Levinson.
Bailey on Silverado
John Bailey, ASC recently joined
director Lawrence Kasdan and editor Carol
Littleton for a 70mm screening of their
1985 film Silverado at the American Cine-
matheques Aero Theatre. Following the
screening, the filmmakers took to the stage
for an audience Q&A.
Pros Judge DSLR Contests
Shane Hurlbut, ASC is joining
photographer Alexx Henry and Frank
Rohmer of Rohmer Video Productions on a
panel of judges for a DSLR-shot short-film
contest sponsored by Samys Camera. Hurl-
but is also joining Russell Carpenter, ASC
and Rodney Charters, ASC on a panel of
judges for the Canon U.S.A.-sponsored
Story Beyond the Still contest, supported
by Grey New York and hosted by Vimeo.
Joining the ASC members on the judges
bench are filmmakers Stu Maschwitz, Rick
McCallum and Philip Bloom, photographer
Vincent Laforet, Vimeos Blake Whitman
and Grey New Yorks Nick Childs.
Get Exposure, Find Crew, or Join a Production
using the Filmmakers Social Networking Site
at http://networking.studentfilmmakers.com
Post Your Questions and Find Answers
in the Interactive Forums Moderated by Experts
at www.studentfilmmakers.com/bb/
Attend Motion Picture Production Workshops
at http://www.studentfilmmakers.com/workshops/

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When you were a child, what film made the strongest impression
on you?
In the late 1960s, I saw Stanley Kubricks brilliant film Dr. Strangelove
(1964), which impressed me more than any film Id ever seen. It was
satirical, fantastic, comedic, serious, suspenseful and realistic.
Which cinematographers, past or present, do you most admire,
and why?
Gordon Willis, ASC created an outstanding array of
innovative work in films such as The Godfather, whose
use of color, light and shadow became the model for
how future period films would be shot; Manhattan,
with its perfection of formal tableau; and Zelig, which
took the archival-film look to a new level. Vittorio
Storaro, ASC, AIC taught me about style with The
Conformist and theatricality with Apocalypse Now.
With Seven, Darius Khondji, ASC, AFC taught me
about darkness and mood. Other cinematographers I
admire include ASC members Jordan Cronenweth,
Conrad Hall, Roger Deakins and Emmanuel Lubezki,
who have all made memorable contributions to the art.
What sparked your interest in photography?
Ive always had an inherent disposition toward visual imagery. Drawing
and painting were my early passions. Stills photography became another
means of expression and exploration. I discovered the power of the
image through great masters of photography like Ansel Adams, Paul
Strand, Edward Weston, Eugene Smith and Andr Kertsz.
Where did you train and/or study?
I completed a four-year film-studies program at York University in
Toronto while working part-time as a camera assistant on documentary
films.
Who were your early teachers or mentors?
I studied with teachers at film school and worked with documentary
filmmakers too numerous to name. I am grateful for the knowledge they
all passed on to me. My work is an accumulation and evolution of ideas,
inspiration, concepts from movies I studied and technical books I read,
and Ive gleaned techniques from the cinematographers whose aesthetic
I most admired. American Cinematographer has played a key role in
providing me with insight about cinematographers and their artistry.
What are some of your key artistic influences?
I have always been inspired by the clarity of vision of Ansel Adams land-
scapes and have incorporated his Zone System to achieve technical preci-
sion in my own images. I admire the sensitive treatment of light and dark
and the meticulous composition in paintings by Vermeer. In addition,
there are many cinematographers whose mastery and innovation have
influenced me.
How did you get your first break in the business?
I had a neighbor who worked as a documentary cameraman. I asked
him to teach me everything he knew about filmmaking. I was 16, and
I became his assistant.
What has been your most satisfying moment on a project?
When I sit down and watch the completed film for the first time; its my
creative vision expressed as a unified entity.
Have you made any memorable blunders?
Because I had worked independently in stills and docu-
mentaries, when I first started shooting dramas, I
forgot to delegate, trust and interface with all the
departments. I had to learn to work with everyone on
the crew. You cannot make a movie by yourself.
What is the best professional advice youve ever
received?
Have a clear vision, design and objective for every
scene. Then, by lighting with your instincts along with
your intention and setting your own level of excellence,
you will find satisfaction.
What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you?
I recently saw a memorable exhibition of Edward Steichen photographs
and Alexander Calder sculptures in the Frank Gehry-designed Art
Gallery of Ontario. They all inspire diverse ways of seeing.
Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like
to try?
I am open to all genres. My interest is in what opportunities any script
will present for visual exploration and creativity.
If you werent a cinematographer, what might you be doing
instead?
I would be an architect.
Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for
membership?
Steven Poster.
How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?
To me, ASC membership represents excellence and high standards in
the field of cinematography. I have aspired to have those same stan-
dards. There are so many ASC members whose professional achieve-
ments I highly respect, and they have been my mentors throughout my
career. To be invited to become a member is the greatest honor thats
been bestowed on me.
Rene Ohashi, ASC, CSC Close-up
MAT T HE W WE I NE R
ONFILM
Writers were idolized in my home. My parents
had a big poster picture of Ernest Hemingway
on a wall in a hallway in our house. I thought
I was going to be a poet and that I would nd
some other profession, teaching or something,
to support me. After I graduated from lm
school at the University of Southern California,
it was about 10 years before I got a paying
job in the industry, but I never gave myself a
time limit. I wrote the pilot episode for Mad
Men in 1999 at night while I already had a
job, and nally got it produced in 2006. After
that wait, it seemed silly to compromise, and
luckily AMC made it clear they wanted it on
35 mm lm because it would be programmed
between classic movies. To me, Mad Men is
a series of lms. When I write a script, I am
telling a story that comes from my heart.
Matthew Weiner is a writer-producer-director
whose television credits range from comedies
to dramas. He has earned multiple Emmy
Awards and nominations for The Sopranos and
Mad Men, and Television Producer of the Year
Awards from the Producers Guild of America.
[All these shows were shot on Kodak motion picture lm.]
For an extended interview with Matthew Weiner,
visit www.kodak.com/go/onlm.
To order Kodak motion picture lm,
call (800) 621-lm.
www.motion.kodak.com
Eastman Kodak Company, 2010.
Photography: 2009 Douglas Kirkland

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