06/10 ISSUE 9
VisionARRI
The Biannual International Magazine from the ARRI RENTAL & POSTPRODUCTION ENTERPRISES
THE EAGLE OF THE NINTH Anthony Dod Mantle BSC, DFF discusses his work on Kevin Macdonald’s latest film
The Pacific
Remi Adefarasin BSC on shooting HBO’s World War II miniseries
Veda Interview with Turkish writer and filmmaker Zülfü Livaneli
World on a Wire ARRI Film & TV restore Fassbinder’s science fiction masterpiece
ALEXA All the latest on ARRI’s highly anticipated digital camera
VISIONARRI
ARRI SERVICES GROUP NETWORK ARRI SUBSIDIARIES
ARRI PARTNERS
AUSTRALIA ARRI Australia, Sydney Cameras Stefan Sedlmeier T +61 2 9855 4300 ssedlmeier@arri.com.au
Schwarz Film Ludwigsburg Film Lab, DI, TV Postproduction Walter Brus T +49 89 3809 1772 wbrus@arri.de
AUSTRIA ARRI Rental Vienna Cameras Gerhard Giesser T +43 664 120 7257 rental@arri.at
HUNGARY ARRI Rental Budapest Cameras, Grip Clemens Danzer T +49 172 593 77 52 cdanzer@arri.de
CZECH REPUBLIC ARRI Rental Prague Cameras, Lighting, Grip Robert Keil T +42 025 101 3575 rkeil@arri.de
LUXEMBOURG ARRI Rental Luxembourg Cameras Steffen Ditter T +352 2670 1270 sditter@arri.de
GERMANY ARRI Rental Berlin Cameras, Lighting, Grip Ute Baron T +49 30 346 800 0 ubaron@arri.de ARRI Rental Cologne Cameras Stefan Martini T +49 221 170 6724 smartini@arri.de ARRI Rental Leipzig Cameras, Lighting, Grip Annerose Schulze T + 49 341 3500 3561 aschulze@arri.de ARRI Rental Munich Cameras, Lighting, Grip Thomas Loher T +49 89 3809 1440 tloher@arri.de ARRI Film & TV Services, Munich Film Lab, DI, TV Postproduction, VFX, Sound, Studio, Cinema International Sales: Angela Reedwisch T +49 89 3809 1574 areedwisch@arri.de National Sales: Walter Brus T +49 89 3809 1772 wbrus@arri.de New & Digital Markets: Harry Stahl T +49 89 3809 1339 hstahl@arri.de ARRI Film & TV Services Berlin Film Lab, DI, TV Postproduction, VFX, Sound Mandy Rahn T +49 30 408 17 8534 mrahn@arri.de ARRI Film & TV Services, Cologne DI, TV Postproduction, Sound Markus Klaff T +49 221 57165 120 mklaff@arri.de
AUSTRALIA Cameraquip, Melbourne, Brisbane Cameras Malcolm Richards T +61 3 9699 3922 T +61 7 3844 9577 rentals@cameraquip.com.au CYPRUS Seahorse Films, Nicosia, Paphos Cameras, Lighting, Grip, Studio Andros Achilleos T +357 9967 5013 andros@seahorsefilms.com
GERMANY Maddel’s Cameras, Hamburg UNITED KINGDOM Cameras, Grip ARRI Lighting Rental, London Matthias Neumann Lighting T +49 40 66 86 390 info@maddels.com Tommy Moran T +44 1895 457 200 HUNGARY tmoran@arrirental.com VisionTeam L.O., Budapest ARRI Focus, London Cameras, Lighting, Grip Short term lighting hire Gabor Rajna for commercials & promos T +36 1 433 3911 Martin Maund, George Martin info@visionteam-lo.hu T +44 1895 810 000 martin@arrifocus.com george@arrifocus.com
ARRI Media, London Cameras, Grip Philip Cooper T +44 1895 457 100 pcooper@arrimedia.com ARRI Crew, London Diary Service Kate Collier T +44 1895 457 180 arricrew@arrimedia.com USA ARRI CSC, New Jersey Cameras, Lighting, Grip Simon Broad, Hardwrick Johnson T +1 212 757 0906 sbroad@arricsc.com hjohnson@arricsc.com ARRI CSC, Florida Cameras, Lighting, Grip Ed Stamm T +1 954 322 4545 estamm@arricsc.com
ICELAND Pegasus Pictures, Reykjavik Cameras, Lighting, Grip Snorri Thorisson T +354 414 2000 snorri@pegasus.is INDIA Anand Cine Service, Chennai Cameras, Lighting, Grip, Film Lab, DI Tarun Kumar T: +91 44 2834 2811 contact@anandcine.com
ROMANIA Panalight Studio, Bucharest Cameras, Lighting, Grip Diana Apostol T +40 727 358 304 office@panalight.ro SOUTH AFRICA Media Film Service, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, Namibia Cameras, Lighting, Grip, Studio Jannie van Wyk T +27 21 511 3300 jannie@mediafilmservice.com UNITED ARAB EMIRATES Filmquip Media, Dubai Cameras, Lighting, Grip Anthony Smythe, Aaron Hughes T +971 4 347 4909 ant.smythe@filmquipmedia.com aaron@filmquipmedia.com USA & CANADA Clairmont Camera, Hollywood, Vancouver, Toronto ARRIFLEX D-21 Representative
4 LEGION OF THE LOST
Anthony Dod Mantle BSC, DFF reflects on his experiences shooting The Eagle of the Ninth
6 BLOOD, SWEAT AND SANDY GEAR Remi Adefarasin BSC discusses filming The Pacific
10 VEDA – BIDDING FAREWELL TO ATATÜRK Director Zülfü Livaneli talks about his portrayal of Atatürk, founder of the Republic of Turkey
Philipp Blaubach on shooting The Disappearance of Alice Creed with the D-21
17 REINVENTING CRIME DRAMA
The D-21 creates a new set of police heroes for UK TV screens in ITV’s Identity
18 HONOURING THE
ARRI Film & TV save Fassbinder’s 1973 TV production World on a Wire
20 BERLIN: CITY OF FILM
CONTENTS
30
4
A look at the work of ARRI Film & TV Services Berlin
22 2010 – THE YEAR OF ALEXA A round-up of the latest news on ALEXA
24 ALEXA TEST SHOOTS
Feedback from the field on working with ALEXA
28 BEAUTY AND THE BEASTS 6
Behind the scenes of a new 60-second spot for the Audi R8 Spyder
30 MAHLER AUF DER COUCH
ARRI Film & TV discuss the challenges of posting a feature shot with the Red One
32 UAE FEATURE FILM 10
JAPAN NAC Image Technology, Tokyo Cameras Tomofumi Masuda Hiromi Shindome T +81 3 5211 7960 masuda@camnac.co.jp
MAKES HISTORY
The making of City of Life, the first UAE feature to achieve a theatrical release
34 ARRI RENTAL GOES TO BUDAPEST ARRI Rental opens a new branch in Hungary
35 OLYMPIC AND WORLD CUP GLORY FOR HI-MOTION
More sporting success from ARRI Media’s digital high speed camera
NEW ZEALAND Camera Tech, Wellington Cameras Peter Fleming T +64 4562 8814 cameratech@xtra.co.nz
Illumination Dynamics, LA Lighting, Grip Carly Barber, Maria Carpenter T +1 818 686 6400 carly@illuminationdynamics.com maria@illuminationdynamics.com Xytech Technologies, Auckland Illumination Dynamics, Lighting North Carolina, Stephen Pryor Lighting, Grip T +64 9 377 99 85 Jeff Pentek stephenp@xytech.co.nz T +1 704 679 9400 jeff@illuminationdynamics.com
BRITISH THRILLER
ORIGINAL VISION
Irving Correa T +1 818 761 4440 irvingc@clairmont.com Fletcher Chicago, Chicago ARRIFLEX D-21 Representative Stan Glapa T +1 312 932 2700 stan@fletch.com
14 ARRIFLEX D-21 SHOOTS
36 PRODUCT UPDATE 37 NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD
VisionARRI would like to thank the following contributors: Susanne Bieger, Mark Hope-Jones, Ingo Klingspon, Judith Petty, Angela Reedwisch, Andrea Rosenwirth, Michelle Smith, Anthony Smythe, An Tran, Sabine Welte Front Cover Photo: Matt Nettheim © 2010 Focus Features. All Rights Reserved.
38 PRODUCTION UPDATE
Photos: Matt Nettheim © 2010 Focus Features. All Rights Reserved.
VISIONARRI
VA:
What kind of moments did you select for that?
It was towards the end of the film, when Marcus gets as far north as you can go and is taken prisoner by these weird people who live by the sea. I filmed through the back of the neg to get a strange, hallucinogenic look for scenes inside one of the huts with the chief. I did loads of cross processing tests as well, partly for flashbacks and also partly just to degrade the film and pull back the hues and saturations of these wonderful new stocks, to get a historic look. It’s the same sort of thing that Vilmos Zsigmond (ASC) was doing 30 years ago, though it’s still relevant today.
ADM:
Legion of the Lost Anthony Dod Mantle BSC, DFF discusses his work on The Eagle of the Ninth Based on the 1954 novel by Rosemary Sutcliff, The Eagle of the Ninth tells the story of Marcus Aquila, a young Roman centurion who sets out into the wilds of northern Britain in AD 140 to investigate the disappearance of his father and the entire Ninth Legion 20 years before. Directed by Kevin Macdonald (State of Play, 2009; The Last King of Scotland, 2006), the film was shot on location in Hungary and Scotland by Academy Award-winning cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle. The main camera package of ARRICAM Lite and ARRIFLEX 235 cameras was supplied by ARRI Media, with additional support provided in Hungary by VisionTeam, an ARRI Rental Group partner. Is the film structured with flashbacks that jump between the Marcus Aquila plot and the story of the Ninth?
VisionARRI:
Anthony Dod Mantle: There are flashbacks in it and a lot of interesting parallel cuts as well; basically the story will be structured with emotionally motivated cuts, across time. Kevin and I hadn’t done this kind of historical stuff before, but despite the limitations of our budget and schedule there’s an epic quality to it and there are some battles. It’s not like Gladiator (2000), with a neutral camera, massive, beautiful sets and high entertainment. Well, hopefully it’s entertaining, but it’s really a chamber piece about Marcus hunting out what happened to his father. VA: Were you using different techniques to visually differentiate the flashbacks? ADM:
I pushed and pulled film stocks quite a lot for the
flashbacks. Most of the film was shot on Kodak stocks – the Vision2 50D, Vision3 250D and Vision3 500T – all of which I underexposed by one-and-a-half stops in camera and a further stop in the lab. I did the same with some Fuji Reala stock as well. The general plan was to reduce the sharpness photochemically by inducing grain that I could soften in the DI to simulate the look of an older negative. I will be working very heavily with noise reduction, sharpening and de-sharpening in the grade with (colourist) Adam Glasman at Ascent 142. For some of the flashbacks I combined a Lensbaby with White Promist filters and a Canon 1D Mark IV (DSLR) to create a different look from the contemporary part of the story. In other flashbacks I double exposed the negative and also shot through the back of the neg – it wasn’t an accident; it was deliberate! That requires about five stops overexposure. I shot tests and Kevin agreed to use it for a few moments in the film.
VA: You had some horrendous weather while filming in Scotland. Were you expecting such difficult conditions?
I was to a certain extent because Scotland is famous for it and I spent my childhood there, but it really did just plummet down. I had a pretty hardy crew but it nearly killed my focus puller Telfer Barnes, who is used to really tough shoots. It’s so hard on the gear as well – the moisture; the condensation; the damp and the perpetual rain, which blows in sideways with the wind. You turn around and you can’t even shoot a scene because it’s raining horizontally and stinging your face.
ADM:
How important is reliable equipment in situations like that? VA:
Ah, that’s where Russell at ARRI Media comes in! He was fantastic and the guys – my crew – were fantastic, but it was tough. I remember going back to one particular location for a second day and there had been a storm; halfway up the hill I saw one of our Portaloos upside down, which someone had to go and pick up – well used of course! At the top of the hill was 30 yards of track that had tipped over and a Fisher dolly just hanging on the end. I’d never seen track blown over by the wind before.
ADM:
VA: You had ARRICAM Lites and also an ARRIFLEX 235. Is that because there’s a lot of handheld or Steadicam work in the film? ADM:
4
There’s a lot of handheld – a lot of physical stuff. Also a
certain amount of Steadicam, but mainly handheld – hence of course the Lites; I tried to get the gear as lightweight as I possibly could. I was operating myself and I had a lovely Steadicam in the form of Alastair Rae, who’s hilarious – a mad Scottish poet and great fun. He’s a very poetic Steadicam operator and he stood the course very well. VA: Were you often doing two-camera setups with Alastair and working around each other?
That’s always a bit of a laugh; I’ve done it on many films now, including Slumdog Millionaire (2008) and The Last King of Scotland (2006). It’s always hard if you’ve got Steadicam all day and you’re in there operating yourself, shooting over his shoulder or between his legs. I had expected to do more with Ali but sometimes the wind and the weather didn’t allow it, though he was there every day and is a very good operator in his own right. He was intuitive and very good at working his way around me. I hadn’t worked with him before but people like Seamus McGarvey (BSC, ASC) recommended him and he was quick to understand what kind of film I was trying to make with Kevin.
ADM:
VA:
Why did you opt for Cooke S4 lenses?
I love Cooke S4s and they just seemed right for the film; it’s a feeling more than anything else. I also had some Cooke Speed Panchros, which helped me degrade the strong contrast and brightness during the summer in Hungary. When we headed north to Scotland in the autumn, I worked more with the S4s because the light was much more subdued. In Hungary I worked with Black Promist filters, but less so in Scotland, and I always held detail in the skies whenever possible. I did have Optimo zooms, but it wasn’t a massive equipment list; we tried to keep it down because we were physically lugging all this stuff around. It was a combination of photochemical techniques and a carefully chosen equipment package working together to achieve the look I intended for the movie. I don’t like to leave all of that to the DI; I try to lay down a look while shooting because I think it helps the editor to get more of a feel for what we’re doing. I
ADM:
Mark Hope-Jones
5
VISIONARRI
BLOOD, SWEAT AND SANDY GEAR
Photos: David James and Andrew Cooper © 2010 HBO. All Rights Reserved.
Remi Adefarasin BSC on shooting The Pacific
6
The Pacific was shot on ARRICAM Lite and Studio cameras with ARRI Ultra Prime lenses. Equipment was supplied by ARRI Media in London and ARRI Australia in Sydney. Almost a decade on from the enduringly successful television drama Band of Brothers, executive producers Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, as well as many others from the original production team, have regrouped for another ten-part miniseries set against the backdrop of World War II. Chronicling the experiences of three US Marines during the hard-fought campaign against Japan, The Pacific takes place on hot and humid jungle-covered islands on the other side of the globe from the European theatre of conflict. For Remi Adefarasin BSC, who split cinematographic duties with Stephen Windon ACS, this presented a set of challenges entirely different from those he faced on Band of Brothers.
How long were you away for the shoot and how did it differ from Band of Brothers, which was filmed in England?
VisionARRI:
The shoot was eight months, but I was away for ten – choosing locations, sorting out logistical problems and doing basic prep. The places we were filming weren’t as tame as England; Australia has all sorts of horrible creatures and they seem to be more potent than anywhere else in the world. There were poisonous snakes; poisonous spiders; plants that stung you; plants that had hooks; Irukandji jellyfish and of course crocodiles. We were lucky that nobody got hurt.
Remi Adefarasin:
On Band of Brothers we were at Hatfield so if we had a problem we could easily replace whatever broke down, whereas our first week shooting The Pacific was in Far North Queensland. Our cameras came from Sydney, which is more than a two-day drive, so it wasn’t easy from a replacement point of view, but ARRI Australia very kindly gave us an engineer – Aaron George – who was an important part of the team. For instance in the first week we were shooting in open Higgins boats on a very bumpy sea, with effects guys spraying salt water and sand at us; however much you protect the camera, salt water gets in. Then when we were on the beach sand would rain down on the cameras every time there was an explosion – the shoot was often physically violent on the cameras. Aaron was able to clean equipment and repair leads, but we were very fortunate because we really didn’t have too many technical issues.
7
BLOOD, SWEAT AND SANDY GEAR
VA: How much coordination was there to achieve a uniform look for the series?
A few weeks after I started shooting episode one, Steve started doing episode three, so we were very much working in tandem. Before the production began we met for a long time in Sydney and continued communicating with each other from then on. Steve was watching my rushes and I saw his, so we could keep abreast of what we were each doing, but the biggest thing was that we had different directors and directors have different styles. The Pacific is a partner to Band of Brothers, so we knew the basic look we were going for and we both wanted to be very honest with the images; we didn’t want it to have an artificial, movie quality. It needed to look like a documentary without being deliberately jarring, so we weren’t going for a shaky-cam style – when we did go handheld we did so with the best possible handheld photography, so that you hardly noticed it. We were after a style that was more classical and that would have longevity rather than reflecting a very short period in filmmaking sensibilities.
RA:
REMI ADEFARASIN BSC lines up a shot, below him is operator Simon Finney SIMON FINNEY preparing for a scene that involved the camera being handed to three different operators
8
VA: Was there ever any doubt that this project should originate on film?
If there was, it was before I got on board, and if I’d been brought on board and they’d said we’re going to shoot this on Red, I wouldn’t have done it. I do recall hearing (postproduction coordinator) Todd London saying that there was some early discussion about shooting digitally, but everyone decided very quickly that it would be the wrong thing for this. We had quite a budget and I think any financial benefits of digital acquisition are only really apparent when you haven’t got money. Also, we knew that the contrast ratio was going to be enormous and we wanted to exploit that at times, without losing details.
RA:
VA: The difference in light levels between being on a sunny white beach and under the jungle canopy must have been huge.
That was actually the biggest problem for me. When we were in Far North Queensland everything was incredibly well protected by the conservationists; in the forest we couldn’t dig down more than eight inches and we couldn’t remove any foliage. I was promised that it would be sunny and in fact it was overcast for all the days we were there; we could only comfortably shoot between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. – after that it got very, very dark, even on fast film with the filter taken off. We had some very heavy days and the absence
RA:
of sun was a real killer because we wanted those little splashes of sunlight poking through. Making it look natural in such a dark forest was the hardest thing. VA: The Japanese often attacked at night – what challenges did you face in photographing nocturnal jungle warfare?
Flares help, but it’s always a problem when you have a lighting change over a long sequence, because what can happen is that we shoot it and we get the timing of the flares right, but then in the cutting room the editor uses a moment where the flare is on to go into a scene where the flare isn’t supposed to be on, and vice versa. If you have a lighting change, you need the editors to honour that. Lighting lush jungles was pretty much a chess game. We had to light in such a way that we could change direction at the flick of a switch; the foliage easily signals the sources and the result looks phoney. We often had cranes or towers in shot that were camouflaged to give a gentle soft light.
RA:
VA: Did advancements in DI grading tools since Band of Brothers make it easier to blend in any inconsistencies?
I was able to meet our colourist and we went though every episode that I did in terms of the look, so he knew my sensibilities. For example in episodes one and two there are night battles with flares. One of the things about moonlight is that the eye doesn’t see green, so I had told the colourist that the foliage
RA:
Photo: David Goldberg
“THERE WERE POISONOUS SNAKES; POISONOUS SPIDERS; PLANTS THAT STUNG YOU; PLANTS THAT HAD HOOKS; IRUKANDJI JELLYFISH AND OF COURSE CROCODILES.”
VISIONARRI
had to be desaturated to grey, but that when a flare or explosion went off, the green should be allowed to come through. Even when the cut changed after I did the grading, he could address that with subsequent edits because we had spoken about it. The neg was developed in Melbourne and Digital Pictures scanned it to make a work copy for the editors, who were in Australia with us. Rushes were graded according to JPEG images I supplied, because one constant problem is that if the colours are wrong in the rushes or in the edit, people can get used to them and don’t want to implement the look you always had in mind. The grade was done in America and I was actually able to spend some time with the colourist, but if I hadn’t, he would at least have had a good idea of what I was aiming for, based on the rushes. There is a sequence where you and the other operators handed the camera to each other for one long scene. How did that come about? VA:
That was inspired by a wonderful film called Soy Cuba (I am Cuba), which is a Russian political movie that was shot in Cuba in about 1964. They filmed it on a very wide angle lens and the camera did some incredible things; it was really the communist culture that allowed the idea of passing the camera from one person to another. That film could only have been done by the
RA:
operator not being possessive. I was trying to find scenes in The Pacific where my operators (Simon Finney and Ben Wilson) and I – who have worked together for years – could trust each other and hand the camera over in that way. We did a few shots, mainly in episode five, including a beach scene where the camera starts handheld and then is passed to somebody on a crane, and then handed off to someone else who runs with it. VA: Were you usually shooting with more than one camera?
We had to film with multiple cameras, which is always a hazard because you can end up being too far back on telephoto lenses. At certain times we had to demand that a main camera would get in close, so the audience experiences the full horror, and the other cameras just did their best to avoid it. There was one scene in Band of Brothers where the explosions took so long to rig that we felt we had to shoot it with three cameras on tighter lenses. We got fantastic coverage but it wasn’t experiential; you didn’t experience the moment with the character, so we reshot it with one camera running along right behind him and you really got a feeling for the hell of his experience, so we had learned that lesson. Nevertheless, you can’t shoot major explosive scenes with just one camera, so sometimes we had one camera being greedy and the other cameras shooting around the periphery.
RA:
VA: Why did you choose Ultra Primes and were you shooting across a wide range of apertures?
Mainly because of the weight. Master Primes are great but they’re so much heavier if you’re running around a battlefield. We wanted superb quality and resolution, and Zeiss really did make a good lens with the Ultras. I don’t like shooting wider than T2 because of the shallow depth of field; it’s OK for a wide angle lens on a static shot but if you’re following someone and their nose is sharp while their ear is massively soft, it can look annoying and you’re taken away from the piece. I tried to keep the maximum aperture to T8 or sometimes T11. I would love to have shot at those apertures in the jungle, but for some of those scenes I was at T2.8.
RA:
VA:
Were you using many filters?
We made a creative decision to shoot the whole series on tungsten stock, but without an 85 filter. What that does is to increase the exposure on the blue / green level of the foliage when you’re in the jungle, which helped a lot. It very slightly corrupts the colour and gives you a bit of an old fashioned look. We put the colour back in later of course, but something stays slightly altered that you can’t put your finger on and that doesn’t look fake. We used a lot of ND filters and if not NDs, then at least optical flats, because of the explosions and the flying sand, sweat and blood. I
RA:
Mark Hope-Jones
9
VISIONARRI
Veda
Bidding Farewell to Atatürk
In Veda, director Zülfü Livaneli examines the life of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey. Livaneli, a writer, musician, politician, filmmaker and himself a living legend in Turkey, uses the film to illustrate the misperceptions that are threatening to poison the political culture of his country. VisionARRI sat down with Livaneli during postproduction at ARRI Film & TV in Munich.
Zülfü Livaneli: Oh, I don’t even work that much. I’m constantly dreaming, conceiving new projects. Literature was always my primary passion but I first garnered attention as a musician. After the 1971 military take-over in Turkey I was sent to a military prison because of my liberal and leftist political views; afterwards I immigrated to Sweden, where I had the opportunity to score films.
The books and films came later. To me there isn’t much difference; they are simply techniques to express myself. In my music I talk about my feelings and in my novellas and films I tell stories and express my views. Something the composer Hanns Eisler said has influenced me a lot: “Who only understands music, doesn’t understand even that.” Specialisation is a disease that has befallen humankind in the 20th century.
10
VA:
How did you come to be a filmmaker?
centuries, the creation of graphic representations of people. By now, we of course have exceptional artists, painters and sculptors in Turkey, but this is a fairly new development. It started 80 years ago and was a result of the Turkish War of Independence. Germany’s figurative tradition is centuries old; to me that makes a difference.
VA: You have worked with German DoPs for the most part and in the case of Veda, as well. Is that coincidence or part of your approach?
VA: Your screenplay for Veda is based on a true story and provides a very personal glimpse at Atatürk. How delicate an undertaking is it to approach a historical figure of such magnitude?
I enjoy working with German DoPs and I also prefer to record my film scores with German orchestras (Berliner Philharmoniker, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester). In German culture two elements, both of which I greatly appreciate, come together: emotion and perfectionism. Internationally, that’s a rare combination. And by emotion I don’t mean sentimentalism. I recorded the score for this film in Berlin and was asked why I wasn’t doing it in Istanbul. My answer was that the musical sense is different here than it is in Turkey. To subtly convey emotions is much more difficult than to be emotional in an obvious way. The main musical theme in Veda is expressed solely by the piano (Henning Schmidt) and the cello (Ulrich Maiss). For that purpose Ulrich Maiss adapted the prelude of Bach’s Suite No. 1 to match my chords.
ZL:
As for the DoPs, some of the best cinematographers in the world are German. Jürgen Jürges is an artist in his own right. I wanted to collaborate with him on this film as well but he was otherwise committed. He recommended his friend Peter Steuger. He and I worked together just as well as I have with Jürgen in the past. But the main reason why I didn’t want to hire a Turkish DoP lies much deeper: there’s no figurative tradition in Islam as there is in Western cultures because Islamic law forbids, and has for
Indeed, it is still a difficult subject. For as long as I can remember there have been attempts to make a feature film about Atatürk. The problem is: there isn’t just one Atatürk. There’s the public figure; there’s the founder of the Republic; there’s the military leader and then there’s the man devoutly religious people hate so deeply because of his secular point of view. Each group created their own version of who Atatürk was: one that meshes with their convictions.
ZL:
Under the military regime, Atatürk wasn’t popular; people saw him only as the commander-in-chief. The political left, which I was a part of, couldn’t stand him for that reason. Today things are seen in a different light. We now have a pro-Islamic government; they don’t like Atatürk because to them he represents the secular state. As a result Atatürk has become a symbol for the opposition, especially for women who don’t want to disappear behind head scarves and veils when they are out in public. For millions of Turks he has become what Che Guevara is for South Americans. First the state tried to force Atatürk on the people and now the people confront the state with Atatürk, whom they have come to see as a role model. Obviously, all this has become extremely complex.
“THE POSSIBILITIES OF DI AT ARRI WERE BREATHTAKING TO ME. I MADE MY LAST FILM 17 YEARS AGO UNDER VERY DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES.”
Through scoring film, first for Swedish television productions and movies, and later for Turkish films such as Yol (Golden Palme, Cannes 1982). Since then I have composed the scores for about 40 films. From the beginning I was involved in the filmmaking process: writing, shooting, even editing. ZL:
I got off to a good start with my first film in 1987, Iron Earth – Copper Sky (Yer demir gök bakir). It was produced by Wim Wenders and the German public broadcaster WDR, and our DoP, Jürgen Jürges, won the German Camera Award, 1988, for his work on the film. On my next film, The Fog (Sis), I collaborated with Jürgen and my friend Elia Kazan, who played a part in the film – his last one. But soon I encountered difficulties. I wanted to make films that were on a par with international standards, a level that Turkish films at that time did not live up to. Quality wasn’t that important in Turkish cinema at that point, so I stopped directing after my third film, Şahmaran, in 1993.
Photos: © Kamerafilm
You are a man of many talents: songwriter, composer, internationally recognised writer and filmmaker, not to mention your countless political and social activities. Where do you get the energy?
VisionARRI:
Even Veda, for which I had written the screenplay, was supposed to be directed by someone else, but the producer begged me to direct it myself. That’s how I suddenly ended up back in the film business. And now I’m glad I did because the working conditions, thanks to better communication and production technology, have changed dramatically for the better.
11
VEDA
VISIONARRI
Atatürk’s death, the state became fascist. As early as 1934 there was a backlash against the non-Muslim population and the idea of “Turkishness” was born, which has destroyed the cosmopolitan soul of the country. This is a real tragedy, because we were a true multicultural society. In the trenches of Gallipoli Turks, Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, Muslims, Christians, and Jews fought side by side, but we repress that knowledge today. In the five years I served as a member of the parliament in Ankara I repeatedly spoke up against these nationalistic ideas. VA: In the West, especially after the incidents involving Hrant Dink and Orhan Pamuk, we believe it is difficult for artists to live and work in Turkey.
I wanted to portray a different Atatürk when I wrote the script, the way I now see him. Officially, Atatürk is viewed as “the great hero,” “the unattainable one.” He has an almost godlike status. I wanted to show him as a human being, which he also was, with wives and a private life. I gained access to that side of him through an emotionally rather disconcerting, but also very intense and powerful true event: a story that made it possible to talk about these turbulent times during the Turkish War of Independence from a third-person perspective. I’m referring to Salih Bozok, a childhood friend of Atatürk’s from his days in Thessaloniki. Until Atatürk’s death in 1938, Bozok was his right-hand man. A few hours before Atatürk passed away, Bozok wrote a letter to his son, informing him that he would commit suicide right after Atatürk’s death. And this really happened. Those last two hours prior to his suicide, while he’s writing this letter, are the frame in which Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s story is told in flashback from Bozok’s memory. VA: How do you think the Turkish public will respond to such an intimate portrayal of Atatürk?
Some will like the film, others won’t. Turkey is by now an extremely polarised country. There are three major and hostile groups: Islamists, Nationalists and Kurds. My intention with this film is to show that, regardless of where we come from and
ZL:
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I’ve spent eleven years in exile in Stockholm, Paris and Athens. In 1984 I decided to return to my country, fully aware of the risks. As an UNESCO Ambassador – I was appointed in 1996 – I could live anywhere in the world, but I prefer to remain in Turkey. A couple of weeks ago during a conversation with my wife, we began to count the friends of ours who’ve been murdered. When we reached 50 we stopped counting – journalists, writers, artists. I’m no stranger to receiving death threats either. I even lived under police protection for a whole year. The danger is ever present, but one just hopes that nothing happens.
ZL:
where we stand on the issues, this country, which Atatürk and his followers founded as the Ottoman Empire crumbled, was a symbol for multicultural openness. It was the humanist side of Atatürk that I wanted to show. He was against the military’s interference in politics and he cared about women’s rights because he was convinced that our culture couldn’t prosper when the potential of half of its population remained unutilised. My hope is that Veda will show people, especially young people, that Greeks, Jews, Armenians, Kurds and Turks were all once part of this nation. Reading the screenplay I got the impression that below the surface of this historical film is a subtext that speaks to the current cultural and political situation in Turkey. VA:
You are quite right about that. The hidden message is: if we continue on like this the increasing polarisation will again destroy our unity, which was achieved only 86 years ago by people who flocked back to Anatolia from the outer edges of the crumbling Ottoman Empire. My wife, for example, is from Macedonia. My family came from the Caucasus – today’s Georgia. In the beginning the Turkish state was made up of many different elements. It was a new beginning: secular and with a Western orientation. Initially, all went well, but after
ZL:
VA:
What was it like shooting in Turkey?
Veda is the largest production that has been shot in Turkey to this day, with a team of 100 people, 29 trucks, 2,000 extras, 4,500 costumes, horses, weapons and more. There was the German camera crew and the Italian make-up team that brought material weighing more than a ton. It’s important to point out that Veda is an independent movie; we had no support from outside sources and therefore no interference either. I didn’t want to do anything that was against my convictions and now I’m fully responsible for what’s on the screen. We shot mostly in Izmir and Antalya on ARRI cameras. We started shooting in November 2009 and finished in only 38 days, even though it was an involved production. The negative was sent regularly to the ARRI Lab for developing and
ZL:
SEPTEMBER 9 1922: Turkish soldiers marching into Izmir
KEMAL ATATÜRK as a child (above left) and as a young man (below)
THE VEDA TEAM: Birol Akbaba, Michael Siebert, Özkan Ipek, Manfred Turek, Peter Steuger, Zülfü Livaneli and Sevda Kaygisiz (left to right)
HD scanning. Everything went very smoothly; everyone gave their best and I wasn’t nervous, not even for a moment. Then followed the fast and incredibly professional postproduction at ARRI Film & TV in Munich, organised by Christopher Berg, our project coordinator. The possibilities of DI at ARRI were breathtaking to me. I made my last film 17 years ago under very different circumstances. VA: Which specific look did you intend to create for Veda?
Of course I had a certain idea in my head in terms of the aesthetic of the images. I wanted to work with different story levels and I wanted to distinguish them visually as well: 1938, the two hours prior to Bozok’s suicide are the first level, the colourful and joyful flashbacks to the childhood in Thessaloniki are the second, and the third: the War of Independence. All that was supposed to come across in the colour pallet. And everything turned out just the way I imagined it. I largely owe that to Manfred Turek, our colour grader, a true artist. I
ZL:
Ingo Klingspon Veda premiered in Istanbul on February 23, 2010, in front of 3,000 invited guests. The film opened theatrically on February 26 in Turkey and attracted about one million viewers.
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VISIONARRI
ARRIFLEX D-21 Shoots British Thriller ARRI Media and ARRI Lighting Rental supply The Disappearance of Alice Creed
With such a tight budget, the shooting schedule was limited to four weeks and Blaubach had little time to prepare. “Fortunately it wasn’t a massively complicated film to prep because it’s so contained,” he says. “In some ways of course that was also a concern, because on paper it reads as very theatrical; I came on board thinking: ‘How do we make this a cinematic experience?’ I was glad to hear that J had a lot of ideas and had prepared a scrapbook of visual references; it’s always exciting when you have a director who doesn’t neglect that aspect of filmmaking – it is a visual medium after all.” Having already made three features with first-time directors, Blaubach embraced Blakeson’s unfamiliarity with the territory: “I enjoy the dynamic and the energy you get from people who are willing to try new ideas,” he continues. “Often a lack of experience brings with it a readiness to do things differently.”
Inevitably, acquisition format was another aspect of the production that was influenced by its meagre budget. “As a new director, J was open to digital,” says Blaubach. “I love the look of film and I did propose Super 16 because I felt we could make it work in four weeks with a very mobile camera. 16 mm is a fantastic format because you can move so quickly, but J wanted this film to look very clean and slick. He didn’t want a gritty, realistic look, he preferred the idea of a stylised edge to it and that led to digital. Also, the 2.35:1 aspect ratio would have meant cropping 16 mm to a very small negative and if you’re not embracing the grain then it’s probably not the right choice.” Once the conversation turned to digital options, Blaubach had little doubt about the camera he wanted to use. “I had previously used the D-21 on a lot of commercials and I liked the camera very much; it’s very well made and has a great look,” he says. “I hadn’t used it on a film but I had seen tests and I knew that, as digital goes, it’s pretty much one of the highest end options. So I suggested it and thankfully ARRI Media were able to make it happen. Of course the D-21 isn’t fast and lightweight like 16 mm, but we felt that because for the majority of this film we were on a dolly, it wouldn’t matter too much, and for the sake of superior image quality I felt we should use it.”
For the first three weeks of the shoot Blaubach had a single camera body and chose to operate the D-21 himself. “It worked well being next to the camera with the director and talking about each shot,” he says “I think it’s a very important part of cinematography – to compose the shot and see how the lighting works as part of the composition. Apart from that I get a kick out of seeing the actors in front of me and seeing the performance through the viewfinder, which is again why I like to use the D-21; it’s such a nice camera to operate.” A key sequence in the film takes place deep in a forest, where the two kidnappers arrange to collect their ransom and where they end up having a violent confrontation. “Everything in that forest had to be shot in one day, and in February you don’t get many hours of sunlight in a forest,” says Blaubach. “It was ambitious on every level and unfortunately we couldn’t get any FlashMags, so we ended up using the SRW-1 [HDCAM SR] decks, even for Steadicam and handheld work. The camera assistant made some backpacks and put the SRW-1s inside them; that way we could be mobile and walk around everywhere. We didn’t want any Magliners or monitor stands in the forest to slow us down. It was a challenge, but we got the whole day done.”
Photos: © CinemaNX Films Two Limited
The fourth movie from production company CinemaNX, The Disappearance of Alice Creed was effectively bankrolled by the government of the Isle of Man, where much of the film was shot. Directed by J Blakeson, it stars Gemma Arterton as the titular Alice, who is abducted by two men in the opening sequence and held to ransom in a heavily fortified apartment. The insular and claustrophobic kidnap plot evolved out of Blakeson’s idea of writing a feature film that could be made so economically that he might talk backers into directing it himself. The tactic paid off and Blakeson was handed the reins, taking on cinematographer Philipp Blaubach to help him find an effective visual approach to his tense, twist-riddled script.
“The whole project happened really quickly,” says Blaubach. “J wrote the screenplay in April 2008 and by November they were financed and in preproduction. CinemaNX hired Adrian Sturges to produce it and Adrian and I had known each other for about 10 years, mainly making short films through our student days and also a feature film called The Escapist two years ago. So Adrian introduced me to J; we had a good meeting and decided it would be nice to work together.”
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ARRIFLEX D-21 SHOOTS BRITISH THRILLER
VISIONARRI
Photos: © ITV
Although the bulk of the film was shot with Cooke S4 lenses, Blaubach deliberately requested a set of Master Primes from ARRI Media for the forest scenes. He explains: “We were shooting right up to the very last light of the day and the Master Primes meant we could go to T1.3. We shot in Log C and we had two LUTs – one for 200 ASA and one for 400 ASA. Even at T1.3 on the 400 ASA LUT we were still at the bottom end of exposure by about 3 p.m. in the forest, when the light was going. I was concerned about the exposure, but actually those shots turned out to be some of the most beautiful in the film; they had a wonderful texture in the skin tones and a lovely soft look.”
Reinventing Crime Drama
This wasn’t the only occasion on the shoot when Blaubach took a risk with exposure and was rewarded with stunning images. During a scene that takes place in a dank, dark cellar to which Alice is moved in the lead-up to her planned exchange for ransom money, the cinematographer recalls that Arterton “stood up out of the key light and was facing away from the only window, so there was nothing on her face at all. It was a big close-up on a 100 mm and when I saw that shot in the final cut I was worried, but after the DI grade it turned out to be one of the most beautiful shots.”
Many of the apartment scenes were shot with very shallow depth of field to heighten the dramatic tension and sense of claustrophobia. “We were often at T2.4 or T2,” says Blaubach. “You’re always told that big close-ups are for
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A similar situation arose when Blaubach decided to frame a rancorous dialogue scene between the two kidnappers against a bright window in their fortified apartment, with no fill light. “In such a small space it gets harder to reinvent yourself in terms of blocking action,” he continues. “It’s a dramatic moment so we blocked that conversation against the window and didn’t use the same shot again. I looked at the waveform monitor and the window was clipped; you’re always told to protect your highlights so you can get detail back later, but I liked what I was seeing on the HD monitor – with the hot window and the dark faces – so I went with it.”
A new set of police heroes hits the small screen in ITV’s Identity
PHILIPP BLAUBACH on location with the D-21
television not cinema, but on a couple of occasions we did shots on a 100 mm lens only a few feet from the actor so their face would fill the entire screen and it had a great impact; I thought it was actually very cinematic.” Blaubach opted for the Cooke S4s because “they have a softness to them and I think it’s very important with digital cameras not to let the image get too sharp. The other thing is that the Cookes don’t flare very much and we had a lot of practical lights in shot, so they worked very well with our sets.” The DI grade was carried out at Ascent 142 in London, where the two LUTs had been developed during preproduction. Blaubach notes that “LUTs were a learning process for me because the
commercials I had done with the D-21 were shot in 4:2:2 Linear mode, whereas Alice Creed was 4:4:4 Log C. It took a bit of time for me to get my head around what a lookup table actually is. In many ways I liken it now to a film negative because the chip captures a certain amount of information, which is your Log image, and it’s almost like shooting a low contrast stock; you don’t necessarily want such low contrast, but that’s what is exposed. There’s no doubt that working with digital is a very different process though. My next feature is on film, so it will be nice not to be looking at monitors so much, but trusting myself a bit more instead!” I
As identity theft becomes an increasing problem of modern day society, a new six-part ITV drama series is set to follow an elite police unit formed to combat the explosion of identityrelated crime. Taking in stories about murder, witness protection and dodgy business deals, Identity combines gripping drama with fascinating questions about individual freedoms and civil liberties. It examines the darker side of reinvention as the team attempts to hunt down hi-tech criminals and unmask deadly imposters. Filmed in and around London, Identity was produced by ITV Studios and shot by cinematographer Jan Jonaeus with two D-21 camera packages supplied by ARRI Media.
Although Jonaeus found that the D-21 required a lot of lighting, he was impressed with the performance of the camera at the brighter end: “It does handle the highlights very well,” says the cinematographer. “The D-21’s curve is very gentle, unlike some digital cameras. It’s more or less like film; the highlights tail off very nicely. We did one scene where a guy is lying in bed in a large room – basically he is being nursed in his private home. There were windows all around his bed, and we shot a lot of light straight into that room – it was really, really bright in there. Even in this scene the D-21 held the highlights; it handled the windows very well.”
The series will hit screens with a bold look that makes use of bright colours. “Brendan (the director of the first block) wanted quite a colourful show,” explains Jonaeus. “Not like regular cop shows, which have a tendency to be quite bleached – quite saturated. However, the show also has a dark side, so we talked a lot about introducing darker elements. Where possible we made use of contrast and silhouettes, and tried to avoid using too much fill on faces. We didn’t want to push London in a grey, flat way – we wanted it to be dark, but colourful at the same.”
While Jonaeus is very familiar with working on high definition video, Identity was his first outing with the D-21. He has since gone on to shoot a second production with the D-21: the feature Albatross, for which he used the camera in Log mode – having used it in Linear mode on Identity. “I found a massive difference in what I could bring home in terms of information – it was fantastic,” he says. “I really enjoyed the whole process of applying LUTs and previewing what we were getting on the monitor; that reference was not just good for me, but for everybody on the floor. Ultimately I think it was so enjoyable because I was used to the camera, having learnt so much from my experience on Identity. I knew where I could go with it.” I
The D-21’s shallow depth of field proved a great advantage to Jonaeus, who used the camera with Zeiss Ultra Primes. “I think you gain so much with film lenses,” he explains. “To be able to be selective with your depth of focus and decide, as a filmmaker, where the audience looks.”
Michelle Smith
Working mainly on location, Jonaeus used two cameras whenever space would allow, cross-shooting to capture as much material as possible. “If I did a frontal, we tended to get a profile with the second camera,” he recalls. “Occasionally we tried to get something different, a more abstract image, but generally we read the shot from scene to scene due to the sheer pace of the schedule – it was quite an organic process, particularly on location.”
Mark Hope-Jones
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VISIONARRI
Honouring the Original Vision
by the fact that the material was edited 16 mm reversal film (Kodak/Eastman Ektachrome), which can’t be worked on easily. Looking back, these restoration efforts were quite extensive, in some regards more so than on Berlin Alexanderplatz.
Restoration & archiving at ARRI Film & TV After the sensational restoration of Berlin Alexanderplatz in 2006, Juliane Lorenz, president of the Rainer-Werner Fassbinder Foundation in Berlin, approached ARRI Film & TV again in 2009 to save yet another groundbreaking yet nearly forgotten masterpiece: Fassbinder’s 1973 TV production World on a Wire. Festival-goers at the 60th Berlinale were the first to rediscover Fassbinder’s only science fiction project, which, 26 years prior to The Matrix, dealt with the idea of ‘virtual worlds’. Markus Kirsch, head of TV Postproduction at ARRI Film & TV and the person responsible for the restoration of World on a Wire, talks about current archive techniques, the importance of understanding traditional, analogue film formats and the inherent dangers of film restoration. What were the most interesting aspects of the World on a Wire restoration?
Markus Kirsch: The circumstances and the scope of the project, spearheaded by Juliane Lorenz from the Fassbinder Foundation with the creative support of Michael Ballhaus (ASC): the DoP of World on a Wire and therefore the perfect consultant at all stages of this restoration. It must have been quite an experience for him as well, working on his own project 37 years later.
Previously, ARRI restored Berlin Alexanderplatz in its entirety. What were the challenges this time?
VA:
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MK: After the initial evaluation of the footage’s condition we did some routine work repairing defective splices and perforation damage. Then the footage was cleaned using ultrasound and digitised on the ARRISCAN, creating a digital ICE in 2K. We made sure that none of the density of the original material was lost in the transfer to the Cineon format. Using an infrared channel, we created a defect map – detailing the dirt and scratch marks on the film – as the basis for any additional manual work; then followed extensive digital 2K retouching and restoration efforts. Jerky images were stabilised and dirt and scratch marks were removed using various retouching techniques. Some of this was done semi-automatically but some frames had to be retouched individually.
Simultaneous to repairing the damaged footage we were colour grading on the Autodesk Lustre System using a 2K projection. Our lead colourist, Traudl Nicholson, supported by Andreas Lautil, was in charge, but Michael Ballhaus played a crucial role at this stage of the process because only he could say what the original really looked like. The colour grading took place mostly in Munich but, on some occasions, also in Berlin. We owe this flexibility to our ability to easily exchange data with ARRI Schwarzfilm. We took advantage of this because Michael Ballhaus had to be in Berlin several times between July and October of 2009 and because the Fassbinder Foundation is located in Berlin. It was a tremendous logistical advantage to be able to use the Lustre Suite in Berlin for approval screenings as well as to view the current restoration results and to discuss what still had to be done.
VisionARRI:
MK: World on a Wire was a two-part television production of the German public broadcaster, WDR. That’s also where the footage had been stored for several decades. It was, when it arrived at ARRI Film & TV, in a rather critical condition. Matters were additionally complicated
How did you proceed?
(above) MARGIT CARSTENSEN (centre) BARBARA VALENTIN (below) ON SET: Ulrich Prinz, Adrian Hoven, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Michael Ballhaus
Then we corrected transfer mistakes on the reversal positive, addressing damaged images and technical flaws with Revival, PF Clean and Shake. Occasionally, we found lint and pressure marks on the frame, which we removed
VA: In what format was World on a Wire screened at the Berlinale?
A DCP (Digital Cinema Package) had been created and was used to screen the film at the Berlinale. The restored film premiered in front of a full house and was as fascinating to watch as it was back in 1973. It’s still relevant and the quality of the new version received high praise. Everyone was convinced that it was the right approach and that the best possible result using today’s technology had been created. MK:
VA: Is the work being made available on other formats?
We also created an HD master from the 2K data which will be used for TV broadcasting and DVD releases. Kinowelt, the German distributor, released World on a Wire accompanied by Juliane Lorenz’s making-of segment, in their ARTHAUS Premium Series. For that purpose the HD master was converted down to PAL. In the meantime a subtitled version has been turned over to the Museum of Modern Art in New York – one of the contributors who made this restoration possible, along with the Fassbinder Foundation and governmental support from the Kulturstiftung des Bundes. MK:
VA: Is ARRI likely to be involved in further similar restoration projects? MK: Many broadcasters still have countless undiscovered gems stored away in their archives that are all in desperate need of restoration and refinishing. This issue has become all the more relevant in light of the conversion of television broadcasting standards to HDTV. Here at ARRI we have the technology and personnel to handle all
MICHAEL BALLHAUS ASC
Photos: © RWFF
VA:
for the most part, but only after consulting Michael Ballhaus and Juliane Lorenz. The colour corrected and retouched final result was a 2K master, which was used to render a 35 mm IN (Intermediate Negative). We also generated a 35 mm OSN (Optical Soundtrack Negative) from the restored mix. In addition the 2K data was stored on LTO 4 tapes. The IN as well as the OSN were created for long-term archiving purposes and as masters for additional release prints. The LTO 4 tape and the final colour corrected and restored 2K DPX files are the digital backup.
LEAD COLOURIST TRAUDL NICHOLSON, Michael Ballhaus, Juliane Lorenz (RWF Foundation)
film materials. The ARRISCAN Wetgate will be very useful on future projects where the footage is highly damaged or scratched. We also have the entire range of software retouching tools and all the peripherals of colour grading, from the Lustre to the Nicoda and the ARRI Relativity software, which allows us to manipulate the grain in the footage as desired; even old 16 mm footage can be turned into broadcast quality material. VA: What, in your personal opinion, are the limitations and the pitfalls of restoration? MK: Not so much on the technological side of things. A constantly growing number of available tools continue to increase restoration possibilities. The limitations are more of a budgetary and creative nature. Extensive and complicated retouching takes a lot of time and as a result it is quite expensive. On top of that it’s debatable whether or not one should actually use all these available technological possibilities in order to make the original material look ‘new’. It comes down to the issue of how faithful one wants to be to the original. There is the potential danger of destroying the original vision in the restoration process – an issue we face even with old broadcast material which we’re transferring with ‘pan and scan’ to 16:9 format. This process affects the framing and that’s why we at ARRI believe that in these instances the DoPs, the directors and, of course, the producers of the original need to be consulted. I Ingo Klingspon
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ON LOCATION in the Atlas Mountains shooting Hanna
VISIONARRI
SAOIRSE RONAN stars as the teenaged title character in Joe Wright’s adventure thriller Hanna
“A job without challenges quickly becomes boring...” Mandy Rahn, Branch Manager, ARRI Film & TV Services Berlin
ARRI Film & TV Services Berlin
ARRI Film & TV Services Berlin got off to a good start in the first quarter of 2010, servicing four large international co-productions in collaboration with Babelsberg Studios: The Apparition, Unknown White Male, Hanna and Anonymous – Roland Emmerich’s provocative take on Shakespeare’s true identity and the first major outing for ALEXA, ARRI’s newest digital camera. “Lately, servicing a number of concurrent projects, we’ve gained valuable experience and as a result we’ve adjusted our range of services and optimised our workflows,” explains Branch Manager Mandy Rahn. “It made a lot of sense to establish an ARRI facility here in Berlin because Babelsberg, which is only a 30-minute drive away, can now drop off the material for processing – a great advantage in terms of timing and logistics.” In The Apparition, dark forces have returned to the very place where Nosferatu – F.W. Murnau’s seminal horror masterpiece -– was filmed in 1921. Said to be based on true events, it tells the story of a young couple haunted by supernatural powers after a college experiment goes awry. First-time director Todd Lincoln, who also wrote and produced the project, assembled a cast of experienced young actors, including Ashley Greene from the Twilight Saga and Tom Felton from the Harry Potter franchise. The film was shot by cinematographer Daniel Pearl ASC
(The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Aliens vs Predator 2). The next production is just as unsettling. In Unknown White Male, Dr. Martin Harris, played by Liam Neeson, wakes up from a coma after a car accident only to find that his wife (January Jones) no longer recognises him and lives with another man who has taken on his identity. Based on Didier Van Cauwelaert’s novel Out of My Head, the film was directed by Jaume Collet-Serra and shot in 3-perforation 35mm with ARRICAM and ARRIFLEX 235 cameras by cinematographer Flavio Martínez Labiano AEC. The third project, Hanna, was also shot in the 3-perforation format with ARRICAM and ARRIFLEX cameras. Cinematographer Alwin Kuchler BSC (Sunshine) was working for the first time with rising British director Joe Wright (Pride & Prejudice). Saoirse Ronan plays the youthful, eponymous hero, who’s sent on a dangerous mission across Europe by her father, an ex-CIA agent (Eric Bana) who has trained her to become
the perfect assassin. Soon the deadly teen, pursued by a reckless secret agent (Cate Blanchett), discovers the story behind her unconventional upbringing. “What’s exciting about all of these productions is that we conducted many interesting tests with different materials and recording formats during prep,” says Rahn. “It’s not that we simply switched to digital and forgot all about analogue. On the contrary, there seems to be a trend toward using different formats as storytelling tools, which we see as a positive creative development. Our inviting grading theatre, of course, is a wonderful place to evaluate the quality of the outcome of these tests under the best possible conditions.” Each of the productions was supplied by ARRI Rental Berlin and those that shot on film followed similar workflows at ARRI Film & TV Services Berlin, supervised by seasoned project coordinators Clemens Schmid and Chris Berg. Footage was developed and then scanned in HD resolution on the STUDIO BABELSBERG is the oldest large-scale studio complex in the world and one of Europe’s leading service providers for feature films and TV productions. It offers a wide range of services, including the biggest water tank in Germany for underwater and action shoots.
Photo: Alex Bailey © 2010 Focus Features
Berlin: City of Film
A background in production serves Mandy Rahn well in her current postproduction role. She is used to keeping an eye on costs and is intimately familiar with the technical processes of DI, sound and VFX. Working on large-scale international productions has taught her to view a situation from multiple vantage points while providing customers and service providers with effective, broad-based solutions.
Spirit using DaVinci grading. Afterwards the HD dailies were digitised on the Adrenaline and the sound was laid down. For editing purposes, media files were created and made available on an FTP server for downloading. Finally, AVC HD DVDs were created for the producers, directors and cinematographers, incorporating ‘watermarks’ and all other important inserts. Particularly exciting for ARRI Film & TV Services Berlin is the work currently underway on the set of Anonymous. Roland Emmerich and cinematographer Anna Foerster are shooting on ARRI’s newest digital camera, the ALEXA, with workflow support from the ARRI team. Mandy Rahn notes: “The colour grader plays a significant role from the beginning. If you’re recording digitally you have lots of opportunities to view the material: on set, in the cutting room, during quality control and at screenings. There are numerous points in the process when material is being displayed. Coming as close as possible to the creative vision of the production is one of the goals of our on-set support efforts, as are quality control and data backup.” A more detailed report about the making of Anonymous will follow in the next edition of VisionARRI. I Ingo Klingspon
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Photos: © Studio Babelsberg
After studying at the Freie Universtität in Berlin, Rahn was admitted to film school in Potsdam-Babelsberg and graduated in 1994 with a degree in Film & Television Production. She went on to gain practical industry experience as a production manager and unit production manager for numerous film and television productions. Her first foray into postproduction, with a primary focus on sound, came during her tenure as managing partner of Studio Mitte Filmproduktion in 1999. Three years later Studio Babelsberg took notice of her talents and quickly brought her on board. She was entrusted with sole postproduction responsibilities, first as sales manager and later as head of postproduction. In 2004 ARRI Film & TV Munich made Rahn an offer she couldn’t refuse, luring her to Bavaria. She explains: “The possibilities ARRI had to offer were far superior and the technology was much more advanced because they develop their own cameras and postproduction tools. I had to take advantage of the opportunity.” As an in-house producer she was responsible for the coordination and supervision of DI projects. Through ‘learningby-doing’ she obtained her current knowhow in the still fairly new field of digital postproduction. She has fond memories of working on Kevin Reynolds’ Tristan und Isolde (2006), which was ARRI Film & TV’s first 2K DI graded on Lustre. Her profound understanding of production processes combined with her newly acquired postproduction experience made Mandy Rahn the perfect liaison, capable of “explaining technical processes and the constantly changing postproduction landscape to film production teams who
don’t have to deal with these matters as extensively on a daily basis as I do.” Constantin Film Produktion took advantage of her expertise and hired her in 2006 as the postproduction supervisor on Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. A year later she took on the same role for The International. “Supervising projects of such scope as Perfume and The International allowed me to gain a great deal of additional production experience,” says Rahn. “It’s a learning process that I’m very grateful for and that allowed me to bring something to the table here at ARRI. After all, a job without challenges quickly becomes boring; I like challenges.” A Berliner at heart, Mandy Rahn gladly took advantage of the opportunity to join ARRI Schwarzfilm in 2007 as a Berlinbased representative. In 2009 she was named branch manager, taking over from Angela Reedwisch, who had served in this capacity on an interim basis for nearly a year. Rahn notes: “Having worked in Munich is definitely an advantage because I know my colleagues and the departments there, which helps me optimise the collaboration between Munich and Berlin.” She does acknowledge the difficulties service providers in the film business face in Berlin: “The city has a unique energy and is in constant flux, but this dynamic has a downside: the lack of a solid financial basis. Munich, unlike Berlin, isn’t subject to constant changes and enjoys the advantages of a robust production landscape.” Yet she is convinced that Berlin will become a significant growth factor for the German film business. Rahn’s goal for 2010 is to make ARRI Film & TV Services Berlin increasingly self-sufficient in terms of its workflows and range of services. “To properly represent ARRI one must be able to provide the same level of services as the parent company in Munich and offer the quality that ARRI stands for,” she says. Achieving this goal will involve expanding the sound recording and mixing capabilities as well as the VFX department to offer additional creative services in Berlin – developments that are already underway. I
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VISIONARRI
2010 – The Year of
Lift off in Las Vegas Following an initial announcement about ALEXA at IBC 2009, further news concerning the camera’s recording options and workflows was released at the 2010 NAB show in Las Vegas, where thousands of visitors flocked to the ARRI stand and hundreds of ALEXA orders were taken in a matter of days. By the end of this year, ALEXA will be well established and available through the ARRI rental network, as well as dozens of other rental facilities all over the world. Based on extensive customer feedback and innovative technologies, ALEXA is a 35 format film-style digital motion picture camera. It marks a turning point in digital acquisition for feature film and television productions, delivering tremendous production value and sumptuous images that have previously only been achievable with 35 mm film. ALEXA is simple to operate, reliable in even the most extreme environments and versatile enough to cover a wide range of workflow and budget requirements. Incredible image quality ALEXA’s unequalled base sensitivity of 800 EI, spectacularly wide exposure latitude of over 13 stops and low noise means greater flexibility and efficiency for the cinematographer on the set. Furthermore, the exposure latitude and low noise remain constant from 200 to 800 EI. ARRI Imaging Technology (AIT) ensures the most organic, film-like image quality of any digital camera, with natural colour rendition and pleasing skin tones. The 35 format sensor exhibits cinematic, shallow depth of field and creates sharp, natural images for HD and 2K DI. In addition, ALEXA images 22
show very clean colour separation, which is particularly important for greenscreen and other VFX work.
Intuitive controls
3D optimised
With features and accessories inspired by generations of ARRI film cameras that have set industry standards the world over, ALEXA will be instantly familiar to professional crews. Setting up the camera is incredibly straightforward and can be achieved quickly through simple, intuitive controls. Portable and well balanced, ALEXA can be comfortably operated handheld or on a Steadicam rig for extended periods. Dedicated hardware buttons, flexible soft buttons and a userfriendly jog wheel make setting parameters such as frame rate, shutter angle and white balance easy enough to learn in minutes. A specially developed ARRI Electronic Viewfinder (EVF-1) offers high resolution, accurate colour reproduction, great ergonomics and extremely minimal image delay.
Various features of ALEXA make it the perfect choice for 3D rigs. Each camera will show the same exact timing as all the others for reliable synchronization between left and right eye cameras, while a simple master/slave mode makes setting parameters a snap. The camera’s unmatched sensitivity helps compensate for the light loss in mirror rigs, and its compact size reduces the rig’s size and weight. Last but not least, high dynamic range has been identified as one of the contributing factors to a better stereoscopic impression for the audience.
‘Direct to Edit’ workflows No other motion picture camera bridges the gap between production and postproduction as simply and elegantly as ALEXA, which takes the revolutionary step of recording Apple QuickTime files containing Apple ProRes encoded images onto on-board SxS memory cards. These files can then be edited immediately, greatly speeding up the production process. Sophisticated high speed electronics enable ALEXA to record 15 minutes of ProRes 4444 or 20 minutes of ProRes 422 (HQ) onto a 32GB SxS card that slots directly into both the camera and computers such as Apple’s 17” MacBook Pro. Recording HD images in such an internationally widespread format is at the core of the Direct to Edit (DTE) concept. To begin editing, the memory card simply needs to be removed from the camera and plugged into a laptop. It couldn’t be easier.
ALURA Zooms ARRI and Fujinon have joined forces to create a completely new family of modern cine zooms that perfectly complements ALEXA. Using the latest in optical design technology and innovative manufacturing techniques, the ARRI/Fujinon Alura Zooms combine the highest optical performance with an amazingly small size, weight and price. Experience has shown that for most productions, two types of complementary zooms are needed: a wide and a long zoom. The wide Alura Zoom 18-80 and the long Alura Zoom 45-250 form a set of matched PL mount cine zooms for digital and film cameras. Both lenses share a maximum open aperture of T2.6
and great care has been taken to ensure that the T-stop remains truly consistent over the whole zoom range; this is especially useful in digital cinematography, where a drop in light levels becomes noticeable very quickly. The Alura Zooms are compatible with ARRI digital and film cameras as well as ARRI accessories, and are optically matched to existing prime lenses in ARRI’s outstanding repertoire. Like all other ARRI products, these zooms have been constructed to stringent environmental requirements for the rough conditions of professional production. Equally important is fast and easy operation: large, easy-to-read, precision focus scales on both sides of the lens make focus pulling a snap. I
Whichever of the ALEXA output options you decide is best for your production, the Direct to Edit concept will greatly simplify and speed up your workflow. If you choose the highest possible image quality by recording uncompressed HD or ARRIRAW, the Apple QuickTime/ProRes proxy that is simultaneously recorded to onboard SxS cards will give you instant access to rushes and the freedom to start an off-line edit immediately. If you choose an HD workflow, then the Apple ProRes codecs will allow you to transfer final quality images from the camera into post without even leaving the set. 23
VISIONARRI
TEST SHOOTS Tom Faehrmann shoots low light and fashion tests with ALEXA I recently had the chance to shoot a number of tests with an ALEXA prototype. We shot various subjects in order to see how the camera would behave in different situations. First, we filmed a violin maker at work in a small town close to Neuschwanstein. We arrived with a truck full of lighting equipment, but ended up shooting with only what we found in his workshop: two 100 W desk lamps. Since ALEXA has a true and completely noise free ISO of 800, the light we captured looks natural and
authentic. ALEXA is the first digital camera with a dynamic range that is equivalent to film, while it is far better than analog systems in terms of ‘fine grain’ – all this in a camera body that is the size of a 16 mm camera. For the second test shoot we visited a friend of mine – cinematographer and photographer Oliver Maier – at the Goldberg Studios during a fashion shoot. I was curious about how ALEXA would handle skin tones. In the past I have not
been very happy with the way that digital cameras handle this, but the ALEXA maintained even the finest details while producing absolutely convincing skin tones. I am very enthusiastic about the images from ALEXA: finally a digital image that is capable of reproducing organic structures in an adequate fashion! This is a significant step for the use of digital cameras in high end feature film productions.
ALEXA shoots promotional short film: World Cup World Cup is a short film that was commissioned for an event at the Directors Guild of America in Hollywood, where full details of ALEXA’s recording and workflow options were first revealed. Director Sam Nicholson ASC was tasked with pushing ALEXA to the limits of digital cinematography in the short, which was produced by Stargate Studios and shot by Dana Christiaansen. SAM NICHOLSON ASC Director
DANA CHRISTIAANSEN Cinematographer
TOM VICE VP Operations, FotoKem
The idea was to try everything from very dark situations all the way to off-the-chart clipped. We were really interested in the dynamic range of this camera, and it’s amazing – better than anything I’ve seen on the market yet.
The ALEXA is wonderful handheld; it sits right on your shoulder. The eyepiece in its prototype form is comfortable and seems incredibly high quality to me. It has a beautiful, sharp image; it snaps right into focus and seems to have little to no frame lag. We were chasing a soccer ball around and I felt it was really working well.
We brought in the un-corrected footage in Log C space, applied the Log to Linear LUT and timed all the images. ALEXA is pretty impressive; we see these digital cameras all the time and we’re constantly looking at how they live in the film space – how they resolve on film. From what we’ve seen with ALEXA just in this short period of time, it’s a game changer.
We mixed the light throughout; we had every colour temperature in the book, just to see it in the same frame. The colourimetry of the ALEXA chip holds everything; the colour balance is enormous to be able to get detail out of the shadows and hold the highlights. This camera clearly sees beyond what you can see with your eyes.
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BRAD STONESIFER Camera operator
Stijn Van der Veken SBC out and about in Berlin with ALEXA
We were lighting with some really small lights and getting stunning images from the camera. When you have a tool like that, it helps the production on so many levels. I’m also a DoP and can’t wait to work with ALEXA in that capacity, but in terms of operating, I think ARRI has made a camera that operators are going to be very happy to work with.
I am used to shooting on film and on digital, and recently flew from Brussels to Berlin, at ARRI’s invitation, to shoot some test footage with an ALEXA prototype.
the shoulder with great ergonomics and a typical ARRI user interface. There is no delay on the viewfinder and the viewfinder image is superb.
I fully expected it to be a wonderful camera, knowing ARRI wouldn’t settle for anything less. However, after a few hours shooting, I was absolutely amazed by the incredible exposure latitude, both in the highlights and the shadows. This is a fantastically small and lightweight camera that works extremely well on
On the Saturday morning we went to ARRI Schwarzfilm, an ARRI postproduction house in Berlin, and ingested the pictures into the Lustre suite. The highlight exposure was excellent; I was very impressed. We had shot some material at night and in the street lights you could actually see the light bulbs and
ARI ROBBINS Steadicam operator For a Steadicam operator, the ALEXA is a dream come true: comfortable; precise; well balanced; very well thought out in every aspect of our daily work flow. It’s perfectly set on my sled; you couldn’t ask for a better camera.
STIJN VAN DER VEKEN SBC
the structure of the lamp housing. With other digital cameras that whole area would have been blown out. Out of focus, blurry middle-grey parts of the image are always a challenge for digital cameras, but the ALEXA renders them perfectly. High contrast contours are also very difficult for digital cameras and they usually show some sort of artifact. With the ALEXA, there are no artifacts at all, even in these difficult areas.
For greenscreen, ALEXA will hold smoke, water and reflections; extremely delicate keys are possible because the blue channel is so quiet. And with DTE you can drop images right into your laptop and start cutting right away, which is really important. The size, the dynamics, the design and of course, the quality of ALEXA is better than anything I’ve seen; I can’t wait to shoot more projects with it.
TOM FAEHRMANN
SAM NICHOLSON ASC discusses a scene with Dana Christiaansen (left) and Dana Christiaansen gets a shot with the ALEXA (right)
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ALEXA TEST SHOOTS
VISIONARRI
Volker Langhoff BVK goes clubbing with ALEXA ALEXA looks a bit different from other ARRI cameras, but offers all the traditional ARRI features, so gear and accessories from any rental facility can be used. The body is surprisingly small, with the cooling system taking up the whole of the rear, so the camera does not get hot at all. There is a large but quiet fan that runs permanently – on location I was never able to hear it. The fan’s 20 db noise level is less than that of most film cameras. Our battery consumption seemed to be moderate for a digital system.
BILL BENNETT ASC shoots with an ARRIFLEX 435 while Kees Van Oostrum ASC shoots with the ALEXA KEES VAN OOSTRUM ASC with the ALEXA
Bill Bennett ASC tests ALEXA on Honda commercial
The ventilation slot in the back of the camera is not protected against rain and dust; it made me a bit nervous out in the open. Marc Shipman-Mueller, the ARRI product manager who accompanied us on the shoot, assured me there wouldn't be any problem. Since he knows what he’s talking about and ARRI
put its name on it, I went ahead, still with a strange feeling when the rain hit us. After nothing bad happened, I had no more hesitation and used the camera like any other ARRI. An electronic viewfinder was nothing new to me, since I do a lot of TV work. However, a colour viewfinder that is actually usable was new to me. We shot impressions of downtown Berlin in a more-or-less documentary style and moved around quite a lot. Not only did we shoot with an ALEXA prototype, but we also had the new 18-80 mm Alura Zoom, which was very nice. We shot all kinds of different situations, looking for difficult lighting setups and object patterns; I could not find an environment the ALEXA was unable to handle. There was a marathon that day so large parts of the city where closed to traffic, and that night a voluntary power cut
to highlight environmental issues made us lose further locations. The everchanging April weather also took its toll on the crew and equipment. Just to give it a try we went to a techno night club. At two in the morning it was just filling up; there was plenty of smoke and it was pitch black. I said to myself there is no light, so let’s not shoot: I wanted to leave right away. None of our point-and-shoot still cameras could get an image, but looking through the ALEXA viewfinder I was stunned, and decided to give it a go. In the end things turned out very well and we captured some usable footage. I was pleased and so was the crew; we ended that day tired but happy and with a beer in our hands. I haven’t seen my images on a large screen yet, but I am absolutely convinced ARRI has set a new standard in digital cinematography. I
Bill Bennett ASC recently shot a Honda commercial in Los Angeles on film with the ARRIFLEX 435 and took along an ALEXA for a side-by-side comparison. Cinematographer Kees Van Oostrum ASC shot the scenes with ALEXA alongside Bill’s film camera, on what was the first shoot in the United States with the ALEXA prototype. BILL BENNETT ASC Cinematographer The film was scanned at 2K and brought into Baselight; the ALEXA material was brought into Baselight as well and it was rather astonishing. This is the first time that I’ve seen film images corrected to precisely where we wanted them and then brought in digital images that looked exactly the same. To my mind it’s an epiphany – a turning point in the development of motion picture imaging equipment. How was ALEXA to work with in terms of speed of camera setup; use of the accessories; use of the lenses, etc? In reality it was just as fast as the film camera. We were trading lenses back and forth between the two cameras and the ALEXA didn’t slow us down at all. As far as how the images looked once we
applied the LUT to convert them from Log to Linear, the colourist said that – unlike a lot of other electronic cameras where he has to spend time solving image problems such as discoloured areas – he could just start colour correcting immediately. He didn’t need to solve any image problems because there weren’t any; it just colour corrected like the film scans did. The other thing we thought was really terrific was that you could easily intercut the film and digital images, although the film had a little patina to the grain, which you could maybe replicate in the digital images with ARRI’s Relativity software. We rated the camera at 800 ASA, but two different and very skilled colourists – one at FotoKem and one at New Hat – have now both told us: “You’re actually
underrating the camera; you’re overexposing a little and we’d prefer that you stop down a bit next time.” That means the camera is natively around 1000 or 1250 ASA with virtually no noise, which is wonderful. Right now I feel like there are no limitations. I feel completely comfortable bringing ALEXA into any kind of environment. You ought to understand, we were shooting silver cars in bright sunlight, which for an electronic camera would typically be an extremely difficult challenge, but it handled the highlights running across the top of the car very beautifully. The other area where the camera did extremely well was night exteriors without any additional lighting, just using the available light from street lights and shooting with Master Primes, wide open. It was absolutely gorgeous.
“WE SHOT ALL KINDS OF DIFFERENT SITUATIONS, LOOKING FOR DIFFICULT LIGHTING SETUPS AND OBJECT PATTERNS; I COULD NOT FIND AN ENVIRONMENT THE ALEXA WAS UNABLE TO HANDLE.” Volker Langhoff BVK
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VOLKER LANGHOFF BVK looks through the ALEXA’s viewfinder
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VISIONARRI
Beauty
His solution was to open up the large side doors of the warehouse and position 12K Pars behind diffusion frames that had to be specially built to perfectly fit the space. “Originally we had lights coming through the big doors on both sides,” continues Morisot. “But ExCeL told us we couldn’t use one of the sides because it opens to the public and we were generating too many fumes, so we dressed those closed doors with some fluorescents, just to create a look.”
remote heads. Morisot tested a number of emulsions and decided in the end to opt for a Fuji stock. “It’s a 500 ASA stock and we weren’t pushing too much because we wanted to keep a low contrast and the grain in darker areas at 500 ASA is already quite active,” he says. “We also made some tests with the ARRI Relativity degraining software, which is starting to be used in London, so it was good to know that we had that option if we needed it.”
Three ARRIFLEX 435ES Xtreme cameras were used on the shoot; their light weight and compact, sturdy design allowed them to be operated handheld as well on the various car rigs and
The cinematographer notes that “at the beginning the floor was almost completely white, which brought the whole space up by about a stop, but after three days of shooting it became quite dark with all the tyre tracks, so we lost a stop between the first day and the last, which is a huge difference.” Given the difficult lighting conditions, Morisot found the high speed T1.3 Master Primes invaluable. “At 100 fps we were shooting wide open,” he continues. “For a long lens we used the Hawk 150-450 mm with a 0.7x reducer, which is supposed to save one stop, so it gave us a 100-300 mm long lens at T2 and that really helped.”
and the Beasts
The production made extensive use of a ‘Stealth’ Russian Arm tracking vehicle mounted with a Flight Head Classic Mk5, supplied jointly by ARRI Media and Bickers Action. The Stealth is based on a Mercedes ML55 AMG and is powered by a 342 bhp V8 engine that allowed it to keep up with the R8 for dramatic tracking shots. In fact, the Russian Arm captured many of the most breathtaking images in the commercial, with the gyro-stabilised camera floating ephemerally around the R8 as it ducks and dives between the marauding hot rods.
Legendary British advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty recently commissioned Rogue Films – one of the UK’s most respected commercials production companies – to produce a 60-second spot promoting the new Audi R8 Spyder. The German car manufacturer has long been a client of Bartle Bogle Hegarty, indeed it was BBH that coined the legend ‘Vorsprung durch Technik' for Audi. The creative team was tasked with dreaming up a suitably aweinspiring concept for a supercar that retails at well in excess of 150,000 euros. In order to make that concept a reality, Rogue turned to trusted supplier ARRI Media for its camera and grip equipment needs, and ARRI Lighting Rental for its lighting package. A radical decision was made to emphasise the R8’s supreme gracefulness and handling by filming the car not in the isolated natural landscapes typical of auto commercials, but amidst a hellish cacophony of other vehicles. The scene is set in a vast warehouse, where more than 20 hot rods – menacing, stripped down, oil-spitting, race-ready conversions of classic American cars – circle each other with what appears to be reckless abandon. A soundtrack of heavy rock mixes with the guttural roars of exposed engines and the angry squeal of tyres burning rubber onto the warehouse floor. Into this pandemonium glides the Audi, and the mood, as well as the music, changes. With a mid-mounted V10 producing 518 bhp and a top speed of 313 km/h, the gleaming white R8 moves effortlessly between the stampeding hot rods, swerving and accelerating with calm disdain.
“The idea was to create a sense of chaos and then suddenly the Audi comes into that and introduces some balletic movement,” says cinematographer Damien Morisot. ”We wanted to convey a sense of danger with the other cars, but also demonstrate how the Audi is able to stick to the ground and avoid all these mad beasts charging around.”
Production manager Tom Farley explains: “The Russian Arm allowed us to do the top shots and follow our hero car more closely than we could have done any other way. It was key, because we really wanted to track and move around the car without interfering with it too much. The image was extremely stable, which was vital because the whole point is that the other cars are out of control, whereas the R8 is very smooth. It worked very well; I’ve seen the final edit and it looks fantastic.” I
Working with director Sam Brown, Morisot was faced with the challenge of lighting the 150 m by 80 m industrial warehouse at ExCeL – an exhibition and convention centre situated in the heart of London’s Royal Docks. “The space is covered by about 300 bulbs,” says Morisot. “All the Audi stuff was shot at 100 fps, but if you wanted one more stop you would basically need 300 different lights, which wasn’t an option, so we had to think of something else.” DAMIEN MORISOT
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Mark Hope-Jones
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VISIONARRI
VA:
How was the data prepared for the DI?
Speaking specifically about the Red, the manufacturers don’t provide any really concrete information about how to develop anything. If you’re filming in raw data, you first have to treat that like a negative, and develop a sort of “digital file”. The manufacturer provides a few software tools for this, which can produce the desired results with certain settings – but you need to run a lot of tests first, in order to get that far. Here at ARRI we’ve now gained the necessary experience, so we know which settings produce the best results for a given workflow. For the colour grading, we can either generate DPX files (Digital Picture Exchange) from the raw data, which can then be further processed, or we can work directly on the raw data using various other software tools.
HS:
The software suites that we use here at ARRI, Clipster, Nucoda, or as in this case Lustre, are all able to work directly with raw data, so that they can also read in Red data in its native raw form. The parametric pre-correction or conversion for Lustre that is used to fine-tune the raw data is not made individually frame by frame; instead we first try to find a general basis that will work for the whole of the material and then we only go back to the detailed level where there are problems with this generalised solution. We also discuss it with the DoP and look for an initial consensus, then make individual adjustments in the grading process to avoid having to do all the work in the raw data conversion. Incidentally, this is very similar to working with film – if you make a scan from a negative, this doesn’t come properly corrected from the scanner either.
FM:
Coinciding with Gustav Mahler’s jubilee year, director and screenwriter duo Percy and Felix Adlon have created a celluloid hommage to the composer. The production that the father and son partnership will bring to cinema screens on 7th July 2010, the 150th anniversary of the birth of the musical genius, will tell the tragi-comic tale of the terminally ill composer, driven to despair by his wife Alma’s affair with a younger man, Walter Gropius. In 1910, virtually incapacitated, Mahler went to visit Sigmund Freud at his summer holiday resort in Leiden, Holland for a session of marriage and crisis counselling on the psychiatrist’s “couch”. Converting the radically modernist screenplay of Mahler on the Couch into images was the task of cameraman Benedict Neuenfels (Die Fälscher [The Forger], Anonyma – Eine Frau in Berlin [Anonyma – A Woman in Berlin]), who has given this apparently historical subject a surprisingly vivid and colourful look. VisionARRI talked with Harald Schernthaner, ARRI’s Head of Digital Filmworks, and with Lead Digital Colourist Florian ‘Utsi’ Martin, about some of the interesting technical and creative aspects of the project’s postproduction at ARRI. VisionARRI: The Mahlers’ marital drama was not shot in 35 mm film but using a Red One in 4K digital. Did that pose a special challenge? Harald Schernthaner: No, not really. At ARRI Film & TV we can provide workflows for all digital formats, not just for our own ARRI D-21 or the new ARRI ALEXA. In addition to Red, we also support a whole range of other major digicam formats, for Sony, Canon and so on. It’s often quite wrongly supposed that our range of services only covers material created with ARRI cameras, but that is in no way the case!
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We have such a wide range of hardware here at ARRI, that we can handle all types of output material in the DI suites. Mahler on the Couch was graded, just like any 35 mm film would be, and for the client it makes no difference – what’s important is that the data has to be prepared in the right way prior to grading.
Florian ‘Utsi’ Martin:
What does that mean in terms of the sequence of working steps, when the material coming from the camera is already in digital form? VA:
HS: The material is taken direct from the camera, either from hard disks or memory cards, and is first copied including a bit-level check-sum procedure. The difference comes in the data handling, particularly of the raw data: how is the data obtained during filming, how is it backed up? We have a good system at ARRI with a tape library and a database, in which everything is meticulously recorded. When all the material shot is in our tape library, we can send an XML, based on an EDL (Edit Decision List), to the tape library in the same way that we would do for scanning a film. Only the data
Above all, we’re careful to ensure that the full range of density in the data or in the negative is transferred into the grading process. In that way, we keep all our options open. If we then find that there’s one shot or another in which we don’t get a satisfactory result, with too little detail in the image, we can always go back to the raw data and try to optimise the result with a different setting.
HS:
ALMA MAHLER (Barbara Romaner) and her mother Anna Moll (Eva Mattes) ADVERSARIES Alma Mahler (Barbara Romaner) and Mahler‘s ex-girlfriend, Anna von Mildenburg (Nina Berten)
VA: So, from the colourist’s point of view, does this mean that there’s no longer any difference between film and video material?
Well of course, for a colourist, working with digital material shot on Red is never 100% the same as film, there are other limits that have to be taken into account. Skin tones can be tricky, and also external shots, and it sometimes takes you longer in DI to find the optimum. However, in this particular case we were amazingly quick; we only needed about 10 days in total. We carried out the first tests in December 2009 and did the actual colour grading at the beginning of January. The high quality of the material shows above all how well Benedict Neuenfels understands this camera and what he is able to get out of it in terms of images.
FM:
VA:
What was the secret of his camerawork?
Mahler on the Couch is really unusual in its use of the camera. Benedict Neuenfels has succeeded here in speaking a whole new language with the Red One. He has played around a lot with colours, and sometimes used extreme colour settings. The film also makes use of different visual levels, because quasi-documentary elements alternate with the acting. So the challenge for me was to maintain the specific look and feel throughout, and to preserve it in the film when it went on release.
FM:
VA: Do you see positive aspects to the multiplicity of formats of present-day filmmaking?
Using DI has made it possible to mix all kinds of different output formats, no matter whether 35 mm, 16 mm or video. And the good thing about that is nowadays it can all be done to a high standard, generating a homogeneity in the quality of the output that was previously unachievable. We now have many tools available to us to improve the appearance of problematic material, so that it can be matched to high-end material. We can generate a consistent look, which is particularly important when you’re changing from one format to another. It’s good that, for this specific film, a format was chosen for artistic reasons in order to achieve a specific look rather than just to work to a specific production budget. The fact that Benedict Neuenfels has now come back to ARRI with his next project makes us feel that our collaboration in Mahler on the Couch was a success. I
HS:
Ingo Klingspon Mahler on the Couch was created between August and October 2009 in Austria, Bavaria and the Netherlands. The producers are Eleonore Adlon, Burkhard Ernst (Cult Film) and Konstantin Seitz (Pelemele Film & Stage).
Photos: © Kinowelt
MAHLER (Johannes Silberschneider) on Freud’s couch (Karl Markovics)
that we need online is selected, so we don’t have to restore all the raw material – which would be a massive amount of data. The selected material is just the data that we really want in the final cut, and then prepare it for grading. And before doing that, we had defined the corresponding settings and developed the workflow with the editor of Mahler on the Couch (Jochen Künstler).
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VISIONARRI
UAE Feature Film Makes History
AT THE CAMERA is Michael Brierley SASC, with 2nd AC Mustafa Tyebkhan (left) and key grip Andy Gribble (right)
City of Life reached number two at the box office in the UAE over its opening weekend in April, holding its own against major Hollywood releases. Written, produced and directed entirely in the United Arab Emirates, this multi-lingual feature film captures the old and new Dubai as they are being made – and destroyed – and offers a glimpse into the multicultural milieu that characterises the city today. But that’s not why this film will make history. This film is a milestone in the development of the UAE film industry because it is the first to attain a theatrical release. Produced by Tim Smythe of Filmworks, City of Life was written and directed by award-winning Emirati filmmaker Ali F. Mostafa and shot by cinematographer Michael Brierley SASC. The story follows the lives and fortunes of three central characters – a privileged young Emirati man, a disillusioned Indian taxi driver and a European woman – all of whom live and work in Dubai. Their destinies are interwoven in a tale of greed, ambition and betrayal – a drama that unfolds artfully, providing a glimpse of the very different cultures and lifestyles that exist side by side in this complex, many cultured city. The making of the film – 36 days of filming across 42 locations – was arduous and required the most robust and reliable equipment. An ARRICAM Studio and Lite made up the main package, while an ARRIFLEX 435 and 235 were used for action sequences. Camera and lighting equipment was supplied by Dubai-based Filmquip Media, an ARRI Rental Group partner. Filmed entirely on location, City of Life was made during the early part of 2009 when the heat and humidity of Dubai were at their most tolerable. With two-thirds of the movie shot at night, Brierley scouted for locations that didn’t need much light. “I took hundreds of photos to show Ali,” recalls the cinematographer, who has nothing but admiration and praise for his director. “We shared the same creative ideas about 32
how the film should look and where it was going,” he continues. “He’s a very educated, intelligent man; Ali knew what he wanted and how to get it.”
A very specific visual style was used for each of the three main characters. Explains Brierley: “The Indian character’s storyline had a warm tobacco-coloured look; the colour and ‘feel’ associated with the older part of Dubai. The European storyline had a slightly blue, cooler tone, and the Emirati storyline was slightly greenish.” Brierley then took the decision to use two styles of camerawork. “We shot the first part – up to the collision of cultures – handheld to make it a bit shaky, as everything is uneasy and the characters are searching for something,” he says. “After the midpoint, the look then becomes a lot more controlled, as we put the camera on a tripod. A still camera lulls the audience into a sense of calm, whereas handheld is a bit more immediate.” The desert city provided many delights for the cinematographer. He notes: “The movie should have been called city of light! There is an incredible amount of light around, especially at night. Down in the old part of town there is a blaze of neon and colour.” Brierley found places away from the tourist spots that were equally beautiful to shoot: “Downtown Dubai is really amazingly photogenic,” he affirms.
”We wanted to capture the old city and contrast it against the newer parts.”
A big logistical challenge presented by the script was the amount of locations that needed to be secured. “Time constraints were the main difficulty,” says Mostafa. ”We filmed the entire project in 36 days, which entailed mobilising over 80 cast and 140 crew around 42 locations.” Support from the local authorities proved invaluable. “Something like this has never been done in Dubai before, so people weren’t used to it,” continues the director. “We had phenomenal backing from the police; we wouldn’t have been able to do it without them.” Even though the city’s skyline has undergone a massive transformation, there are still neighbourhoods that have as yet been untouched by the development and give a taste of the old Dubai. Mostafa felt it was important to film in these areas for the Emirati and Indian storylines. “I wanted to try and show areas that tourists haven’t seen, such as a place called Satwa,” he says. “One of my best friends grew up there and it was knocked down recently to make way for skyscrapers. I wanted to capture these things so that they will be with us forever.” In one particular scene, City of Life captures the city in all its glory. “There is one huge landscape shot, where we pull back from a guy in a dusty little place downtown”, describes Brierley. “It just
goes up and up, and then you see the city in the background – this glittering jewel. That was the real postcard shot.” Tim Smythe explains: “We had the camera on a 40-metre construction crane; there’s no film crane in the world that can create a shot like that.” It was sheer luck that the production was granted access to a six-lane highway, smoothing the way for another key scene in the film. “It was a highway that hadn’t opened yet,” says Smythe. “Normally you’re not going to find a highway in the heart of a city that you can use for any period of time.” As well as shooting within the city itself, City of Life went out to the newly created shoreline. Dubai’s showpiece development The World, a collection of 300 man-made islands, was used as the backdrop to a romantic scene. It involved a boat trip, during which the camera pulls back to reveal the islands. The production had a narrow window of time to get all the shots they wanted, both on the boat and aerially. “It was tough as we only had one boat and a single morning to shoot it,” says Smythe. Reaching number two at the box office in the UAE was a real triumph for the team. “The performance of the film has been extremely encouraging,” says Mostafa. “It reflects the fact that an interest in quality, locally-made feature films exists, and that such productions are commercially as well as culturally viable.” I 33
ARRI Rental goes to…
Olympic and World Cup Glory for Hi-Motion Following on from its success at the Beijing 2008 Olympics, the Hi-Motion digital high speed camera system was invited to enhance the excitement and spectacle of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, Canada.
Budapest In May, ARRI Rental Deutschland GmbH opened its doors in Hungary with its newest branch, ARRI Rental Budapest. Camera and grip equipment, as well as the trusted and highly professional ARRI service, are all available from cutting edge, newly reopened facilities on the Raleigh Studios lot, located only about 20 minutes from the heart of Budapest. The studio’s new 42-acre premises feature soundstages suitable for O-tone recording, including a 45,210 square-foot studio and a 14-acre outdoor area ideal for exterior sets. All other necessary production related services, in addition to ARRI Rental, are, of course, also available on the lot.
“Hi-Motion is perfectly placed for major sporting events such as the Winter Olympics because it is a true HD camera and has a proven ability to integrate with OB infrastructures,” notes ARRI Media’s Digital High Speed Manager, Andy Hayford. “It provides high speed replays instantly for the main event coverage, as well as supplying beautiful shots that can be crafted into stunning sequences later.”
Branch manager Clemens Danzer explains: “The conditions were too good; we had to go to Budapest. The parameters we encountered in Raleigh Studios are excellent, allowing us to offer our customers access to not only state-ofthe-art equipment, but also the best possible service. In short: we are very happy that ARRI Rental is present in Budapest with its own local branch.” The strong Hungarian film market and the increasing number of films shot there supported the idea of establishing a branch in Budapest. In 2009, for example, a large scale television adaptation of Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth and a major film adaptation of Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth – both starring Donald Sutherland – were filmed there, to name but a couple of projects. Each year about 20 local and 5 to 10 international productions, as well as 5 co-productions, are shot in Hungary, which is eager to become Central Europe’s most attractive and competitive filming location. 34
As with Beijing 2008, all international video signals for Vancouver 2010 were produced, distributed and broadcast completely in HD, making the Vancouver games the first HD Winter Olympic Games.
The government has done its share to accomplish this goal, passing legislation in 2004 supporting the film industry. Now it promises foreign producers a refund of up to 20% of the production expenditures spent in Hungary. Other advantages are that the wages of local professionals are lower than in other comparable locations and, last but not least, that Hungary features historical buildings and pristine locations that can easily pass for cities such as Buenos Aires, London, Paris or Berlin. Currently, three international projects for Fox, Warner and Showtime are in
preproduction in Budapest. Thomas Loher, Managing Director of ARRI Rental Deutschland, says: “We have high hopes for the Hungarian market and anticipate the number of productions increasing over the coming years. We are very well prepared with our new branch in Budapest and the current range of equipment we offer, including the renowned ARRICAM series, the new ARRI ALEXA digital camera and a wide range of camera support, including remote heads, cranes, motion control technology and 3D rigs.” I Andrea Rosenwirth
As market leader in the field of high speed digital cinematography at live broadcast events, the Hi-Motion has been used for a wide range of sports. This, combined with the experience gained at Beijing 2008, proved invaluable for the varied challenges of the Winter Olympics. A total of eight Hi-Motion cameras covered five different sports at six venues, including Alpine Skiing and Cross Country events held in Whistler, and the Speed Skating, Ice Hockey and Curling competitions in Vancouver. Representatives from ARRI Media travelled to Vancouver to ensure that the integration of the Hi-Motions into the live coverage of each event was as seamless as possible. They also provided training for the operators and technicians who had not used the system before. Capable of capturing full HD slow motion images at 600 fps, Hi-Motion cameras continuously record a 22-second loop to an integrated RAM recorder while simultaneously providing a live feed. As soon as that live feed is cut by an operator, the preceding 22 seconds of material are available for instant
replay. Footage from the Hi-Motion cameras was integrated by host broadcaster Olympic Broadcasting Services Vancouver (OBSV) into its coverage and supplied to all of the rightsholding broadcasters around the world. Each of these broadcasters, such as the BBC and ARD/ZDF, could also locate Hi-Motion clips on the OBSV server and edit them into their own postproduced programmes and highlight montages. Hi-Motion cameras will continue to participate in major sporting events throughout the summer and at the time of going to press are hard at work at the 2010 FIFA World Cup™. The Hi-Motion made one of its first appearances at the 2006 FIFA World Cup™ in Germany, where it was responsible for delivering the dramatic detail of key moments such as Zinedine Zidane’s penalty goal in the opening minutes of the final to viewers around the world. Due to the camera’s success at Germany 2006, Hi-Motion was invited back by Host Broadcasting Services (HBS), the host broadcaster of the tournament tasked with delivering the live production of all 64 matches. This year’s event in South Africa has been billed as the most extensive and most technologically advanced broadcast in World Cup history and will make use of four HiMotion cameras, supplied by ARRI Media and French partner Digital Video Sud (DVS). The difference at South Africa 2010, compared to Germany, is the use of the latest XT[2] Multicam Software from EVS, which dramatically improves workflow by permitting full control of the Hi-Motion cameras without any need for a dedicated control panel. This means that HBS can incorporate stunning slow motion images recorded by the cameras into its coverage with much greater ease than was possible in Germany. I Michelle Smith
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VISIONARRI
News from around the world
PRODUCT
UPDATE
New Sound Department at ARRI Film & TV Services Berlin
Canon EOS 7D PL Now you can use all 35 mm PL mount motion picture prime or zoom lenses with the Canon EOS 7D, thanks to a clever modification.
ideal for 1:1.78 projects. The sensor is 22.3 x 12.53 mm, while the Super 35, 3-perforation ANSI 1.78 format is 23.11 x 12.98 mm.
The original housing for the mirror and sensor has been redesigned, and a rigid mount added to the base plate. The new 7D PL is designed to be rock-solid, even with large, heavy zoom lenses.
The mirror, autofocus unit, ground glass and prism viewfinder have been removed during the PL conversion, so for viewing and focus the Live-View function has to be used. Although the camera has a good LCD display and decent magnification, many people may prefer a separate HD monitor for critical framing and focus. For external Start/Stop with a lens control system or a simple remote switch a 3-pin Fischer connector is fitted.
Providing full HD capture with fully manual exposure control and selectable cinematic frame rates for both NTSC and PAL standards, the camera records 1920 x 1080 pixels at frame rates of 24p (23.976), 25p, or 30p (29.97), as well as 1280 x 720 HD or SD video at 50p or 60p (59.94). The active sensor size of the 7D PL is very close to the standard 3-perforation 35 mm film format, making it
The PL-converted Canon EOS 7D makes an excellent grab camera and is ideal for POV shots, rigs, handheld work, action and multiple camera setups. It also makes the perfect director’s/cinematographer’s finder and is great for recces.
Production companies and creative artists can now benefit from the additional services of sound dubbing and mixing at ARRI’s postproduction facility in Berlin, which changed its name from ARRI Schwarzfilm Berlin to ARRI Film & TV Services Berlin GmbH at the beginning of July. ARRI Film & TV Services Berlin, together with FFS Film-& Fernseh-Synchron GmbH, has acquired parts of the technical infrastructure and facilities of the former Elektrofilm Postproduction Facilities GmbH at Hohenzollerndam 150.
Moviecam EasyFocus The Moviecam EasyFocus is the first distance measurement tool to combine an extremely precise gauging reader with a video target allocation display. Although primarily dedicated to focus pullers, its readings are also helpful for set designers and CGI creators. In order to measure the distance between the camera focus plane (Super 35 film or sensor) and an object visible on the monitor, the object is selected by means of a mouse or a fingertip on the touchscreen. Focus shifts are made in real time and measurements (m or ft) are
saved in a data memory that can be used to build topographic maps of a set, facilitating postproduction work. The effective measuring range is between 1.8 m (6 ft) and 60 m (197 ft).
Phone: +49 30 408 17 8534 Email: mrahn@arri.de
The system must be calibrated with the camera and lenses being used. A set of mounting accessories allows the EasyFocus to be paired with the most popular Super 35 and digital cameras. Furthermore, almost all renowned Super 35 lenses have been saved in the EasyFocus database, and various lens control devices from ARRI and cmotion have also been integrated into the system.
Auto Mode: Ramp Mode: Tracking Mode: Mapping Mode:
The measured distance to a target selected with a left click of the mouse is displayed on the monitor next to that target. The lens motor automatically shifts focus to the measured distance selected on the monitor image. The lens motor shifts from one selected focal distance to another over a time period that can be set between 0.5 & 9.9 seconds. The lens motor maintains focus on any moving object that is tracked with the cursor on the monitor image. Aids post applications by recording camera/lens metadata and a topographic map of the set, showing distances to multiple targets.
New Film Restoration and Archiving Department at ARRI Film & TV Services Established at the beginning of the year under Thilo Gottschling, the new restoration and archiving department is targeting the emerging market of moving image preservation using both photochemical and digital techniques.
THILO
GOTTSCHLING
The goal is to establish ARRI as a reliable, quality-conscious and competent partner for high-end digitalisation and digital postproduction of historical film material, not only in Germany but in Europe as well. Based on the entire range of ARRISCAN archive options and market-leading software tools, ARRI Film & TV Services has been handling digital restoration projects for years, but increased demand has led to the setting up of a dedicated department.
Recently, wet gate scanning and digital restoration of 70 minutes of 100 year-old footage for a documentary started. The newly launched film restoration & archiving department is headed by Thilo Gottschling. With his photo engineering background and experience as a product specialist for the ARRILASER and ARRISCAN, he has been one of the driving forces behind the evolution of ARRISCAN archive technologies over recent years.
Thilo Gottschling, Head of Restoration & Archiving ARRI Film & TV Services GmbH Phone: +49 89 3809 2252 Email: tgottschling@arri.de
Both products featured are available through the ARRI Rental Group, from ARRI CSC, ARRI Media and ARRI Rental.
By substantially expanding the range of creative services available in Berlin, ARRI recognises the significance of the city as an important growth factor for the German film industry. This, together with the company’s long term strategy to strengthen its presence in German film centres and offer additional high class services to customers on location, is key in developing market potential for the future.
Mandy Rahn, Branch Manager ARRI Film & TV Services Berlin GmbH
Operation Modes Reading Mode:
“Our goal for 2010 is to make ARRI Film & TV Services Berlin more self-sufficient in terms of the services we offer,” explains Mandy Rahn, Branch Manager of ARRI Film & TV Services Berlin. “Providing sound editing capabilities right here within our own facilities allows us to be much more flexible and responsive to our customers’ needs, saving them time and money.”
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37
PRODUCTION UPDATE
VISIONARRI
ARRI RENTAL
ARRI FILM & TV - POST PRODUCTION SERVICES - FEATURES
Title
Production Company
Director
DoP
Equipment
Title
The Solitude of Numbers Bloodrayne 3
Bavaria Pictures
Saverio Costanzo
Fabio Cianchetti
Boll AG
Uwe Boll
Mathias Neumann
ARRICAM Studio & Lite, ARRIFLEX 235 2-perforation ARRICAM Lite 3-perforation, Master Primes, Lighting ARRICAM Lite 3-perforation, Master Primes, Lighting, Grip ARRIFLEX D-21 Lighting, Grip ARRIFLEX 416, Ultra Primes
A Dangerous Method RPC Production Services Almanya Roxy Film Anonymous Sechzehnte Babelsberg Film Das Blaue vom Himmel d.i.e. film Dreamer Joint Venture The Green Wave Dschungelkind UFA Cinema Hanna Sechzehnte Babelsberg Film In der Welt habt Geißendörfer FilmIhr Angst und Fernsehproduktion Mahler auf der Couch Pelemele Film Mitten in uns Toccata Film (aka: Cloudcluster) The Apparition Fünfzehnte Babelsberg Film Unknown White Male Zwölfte Babelsberg Film
David Cronenberg Jasmin Samdoroli Roland Emmerich Hans Steinbichler Ali Samadi Ahadi Roland Suso Richter Joe Wright Hans W. Geißendörfer
Wir sind die Nacht Zimmer 205
Dennis Gansel Jan Fehse
Das Blaue vom Himmel Wie man leben soll The Apparition Die Liebe kommt mit dem Christkind (AT) Chalet Girl (AT)
d.i.e. film
Hans Steinbichler
Bella Halben
DOR Film Fünfzehnte Babelsberg Film Mona Film
David Schalko Todd Lincoln Peter Sämann
Neue Bioskop Film
Phil Traill
Marcus Kanter Daniel Pearl Claus Peter Hildenbrand Ed Wild
Zimmer 205
Neue Schönhauser Film
Rainer Matsutani
Jan Fehse
Emilie Richards Hanna
Polyphon International Michael Keusch Sechzehnte Babelsberg Film Joe Wright
Stefan Spreer Alwin Kuchler
Anonymous
Vierzehnte Babelsberg Film
Roland Emmerich
Anna Foerster
Jaume Collet-Serra
Flavio Martinez Labiano
BSC
ARRICAM Lite & ARRIFLEX 235 3-perforation, Ultra Primes, Lighting, Grip ARRICAM Studio & Lite 2-perforation, Master Primes, Lighting, Grip ARRIFLEX 416, Ultra Primes ARRICAM Studio & Lite, ARRIFLEX 435 & 235 3-perforation, Master Primes, Lighting, Grip ALEXA, Master Primes, Ultra Prime 8R, Lightweight Zoom, Lighting, Grip
Production Company
Rat Pack Filmproduktion Neue Schönhauser Filmproduktion
Director
DoP
Services
Peter Suschitzky BSC Ngo Tho Chau Anne Foerster Bella Halben diverse Holly Fink Alwin Kuchler BSC Alexander Fischerkoesen Percy Adlon, Felix Adlon Benedict Neuenfels Pia Strietmann Stephan Vorbrugg
Lab Lab, DI, VFX, HD-Mastering, DCP Digital Rushes, DI, HD-Mastering, Lab Lab, DI, HD-Mastering DI, HD-Mastering, Lab Lab, DI, HD-Mastering, Sound Lab Lab, DI, HD-Mastering, Sound
Todd Lincoln Jaume Collet-Serra
Lab Lab
Daniel Pearl Flavio Martinez Labiano Torsten Breuer
DI, HD-Mastering, DCP, Lab Lab, DI, HD-Mastering, Sound
Lab, DI, HD-Mastering, Sound Lab, DI, HD-Mastering
ALEXA prototypes provided by ARRI Cine Technik
Unknown White Male Zwölfte Babelsberg Film
ARRICAM Studio & Lite, ARRIFLEX 235 3-perforation, Lighting, Grip
ARRI LIGHTING RENTAL Title
Production Company
Bel Ami
Bel Ami Productions
Director
Declan Donnellan, Nick Omerod Jane Eyre Ruby Films Cary Fukunaga The King’s Speech Speaking Films Productions Tom Hooper Attack the Block Big Talk Productions Joe Cornish Will Stangeglove Films Ellen Perry I Am Slave Nuban Productions Gabriel Range Luther BBC Brian Kirk, Sam Miller, Stefan Schwartz Whitechapel (Series 2) Carnval Film & Television David Evans Spooks (Series 9) Spooks Julian Holmes Downtown Abbey Carnival Film & Television Ben Bolt, Brian Kelly, Brian Percival Silent Witness (Series 14) BBC Anthony Byrne, Sue Tully Waking The Dead BBC Andy Hay, Marc Jobst (Series 9) Any Human Heart Carnival Film & Televsion Michael Samuels Scaredycat Scaredycat Ben Ross Episodes Hatrick Productions James Griffiths Sleepyhead The Sleepyhead Film Stephen Hopkins
Director
DoP
DDB, Heye & Partner Patrician
Michael Gracey
Alex Barber
Piccolinis & Steinofen Pizza Tagging Steffi Graf Diesel MGM Design TVC
Heye & Partner Hager Moss Commercial Berger Baader Hermes made in munich Y&R e+p commercial InterOne Germany PI_group
Martin Haerlin Mark von Seydlitz Christian Riebe Jacques Steyn Dorian Agu
Jean Poisson Cico Nicolaisen Björn Haneld Jacques Steyn
Stefano Falivene
John Colley
Adriano Goldman Danny Cohen BSC Thomas Townend Oliver Stapleton BSC Robbie Ryan BSC Julian Court, Tim Fleming David Odd BSC Jan Jonaeus David Katznelson
Andy Long Paul McGeachan Julian White Larry Prinz Andy Cole Brandon Evans
Andy Cole, Vince Madden Mark Hanlon Will Kendal Matt Wilson Mark Thornton Chris Tann Colin Powton
Alex Scott Chris Bird Otto Stenov
Rob Osbourne Toby Flesher Aaron Walters
Microsoft
HTC
Ehrmann AG
Stephan Pehrsson, John Conroy Mike Spragg
Tom Gates
Phil Hurst
Wrigley GmbH
Almighurt Fantasie und Sorte des Jahres Orbit – Pina Colada
Joe Burke
Rob Osbourne
Wojciech Szepel Pierre Jodoin Rob Kitzmann Joel Ransom
Mark Clayton Stuart King Fritz Henry Stuart King
Benny Harper Steve Anthony Chris Polden Steve Anthony
Equipment
Serviced by
ARRICAM Studio 3-perforation
ARRI CSC FL
Anthony B. Richmond
Nascar Truck
Anthony Newman
575, 1.2K & 4K Compact HMI’s
ARRI CSC FL
Allan Warhaftig
8-200W Pocket Pars
ARRI CSC FL
ASC
Gramercy Production LLC Andrij Parekh
Win Win
Pretty Good Productions Oliver Bokelberg
The Big C
Sony Pictures Television
John Thomas
William Newell ARRICAM Studio & Lite, Master Primes
ARRI CSC NJ
ARRICAM Studio & Lite, Ultra Primes
ARRI CSC NJ
Michael Marzovilla
Lighting & Grip
ARRI CSC NJ
Lighting & Grip
ARRI CSC NJ
Something Borrowed Duplicity Productions
Charles Minsky ASC
Gene Engel
Revenge of the Bridesmaids
Paul Schiff Productions
Neil Roach
Renaldo Jackson Conventional Lighting
Illumination Dynamics NC
Bacherlorette 6
AND Syndicated
Oscar Dominguez
Dennis Weiler
Conventional Lighting
Illumination Dynamics LA
MacGruber
Relativity Media
Brandon Trost
Justin Duval
Conventional Lighting
Illumination Dynamics LA
Production
TBWA Amsterdam Worldwide Hello AG
e+p commercial lucie_p e+p commercial
Heye & Partner
filmbar Filmproduktion
Heye & Partner
Hager Moss Commercial Deborah Schamoni Deborah Schamoni
Ben & Joe Dempsey Ben Davis Peter Jacoby, Pascal Rémond Paul Kneer
Pascal Rèmond Sven Siegrist
ARRI MEDIA Title
Production Company
Bel Ami
Bel Ami Productions
Director
Declan Donnellan, Nick Ormerod Jane Eyre Ruby Films Cary Fukunaga Outcasts Kudos Film and Television Bharat Nalluri Attack the Block Big Talk Productions Joe Cornish Bouquet of Barbed Wire Mammoth Screen Ashley Pearce I Am Slave Nuban Productions Gabriel Range Luther
It’s kind of a funny story
38
Agency
Tokyo Dancing Hotel
Best Boy
Big Mommas: Friendly Films Like Father, Like Son 2010 FIFA World Cup Univision
Title
Lipton Ice Tea – Packshot Wagner Pizza Autoscout24 Actimel Bosch SKY Medion Opel Meriva
Gaffer
Production Company DoP/Lighting Director Gaffer
Turner Studios
Client DoP
ARRI CSC Title
ARRI FILM & TV - POST PRODUCTION SERVICES - COMMERCIALS
BBC
Brian Kirk, Sam Miller, Stefan Schwartz Whitechapel (Series 2) Carnival Film & Television David Evans Law & Order: UK Kudos Film and Television Andy Goddard, (Series 2) Julian Holmes Downton Abbey Carnival Film & Television Ben Bolt, Brian Kelly, Brian Percival Silent Witness (Series 14) BBC Anthony Byrne, Sue Tully Africa United Film Africa Debs Gardner-Paterson Tamara Drewe Ruby Films Stephen Frears
DoP
Equipment
Stefano Falivene
ARRICAM Studio & Lite 3-perforation
Adriano Goldman Adam Suschitzky Thomas Townend Mike Spragg Robbie Ryan BSC
2x ARRICAM Lite 3-perforation, Master Primes 2x ARRIFLEX D-21 Mscope 2x ARRICAM Lite 3-perforation 2x ARRIFLEX D-21 ARRICAM Studio & Lite, ARRIFLEX 235 2-perforation 2x ARRIFLEX D-21
Julian Court, Tim Fleming David Odd BSC David Luther
ARRIFLEX D-21 2x ARRIFLEX D-21, Ultra Primes
David Katznelson
2x ARRIFLEX D-21, Grip
Stephan Pehrsson, John Conroy Sean Bobbitt BSC Ben Davis BSC
2x ARRIFLEX D-21, Ultra Primes ARRICAM Lite 2-perforation ARRICAM Studio & Lite 3-perforation, Grip
Published by the ARRI Rental Group Marketing Department. 3 Highbridge, Oxford Road, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UB8 1LX United Kingdom The opinions expressed by individuals quoted in articles in VisionARRI do not necessarily represent those of the ARRI Rental Group or the Editors. Due to our constant endeavour to improve quality and design, modifications may be made to products from time to time. Details of availability and specifications given in this publication are subject to change without notice.
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A N E W S TA R I S B O R N ‌a glittering headliner set to dazzle the world of film and television production. Coming soon to the ARRI Rental Group, ALEXA is the most advanced digital camera system with the highest dynamic range and sensitivity on the market. Combine ALEXA with the unrivalled knowledge and experience the ARRI Rental Group has in supplying high-end cameras to productions around the world, and you’ve got the perfect partnership.
For more on how ALEXA redefines the limits of digital motion picture capture visit www.arridigital.com
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