ICG MAGAZINE
A Quiet Place Part II MANIFEST
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pictured: Polly Morgan, BSC, ASC
contents NEW TECHNOLOGY April 2020 / Vol. 91 No. 03
DEPARTMENTS gear guide ................ 12 on the street ................ 20 master class ................ 24 replay ................ 28 exposure ................ 30 production credits ................ 82 stop motion .............. 98
SPECIAL Sundance 2020 ........ 64
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NOISES OFF Polly Morgan ASC, BSC, quiets everything down for A Quiet Place Part II.
FEARLESS Season two of NBC’s hit drama, Manifest, challenges viewers (and the production team) to soar outside their comfort zones.
SET TO ONE-SHEET 2 How do Local 600 Unit Still Photographers capture lightning in a bottle – that perfect frame that travels from set to key art and helps to drive an entire marketing campaign?
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46 54
M AT R I X
4AXIS GIMBAL U.S. WEST COAST: 1-888-80CRANE • U.S. EAST COAST: 1-888-CRANE52 • DIRECT: (941) 492-9175 • CINEMOVES.COM •EMAIL: INFO@CINEMOVES.COM NEW TECHNOLO GY
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Publisher Teresa Muñoz Executive Editor David Geffner Art Director Wes Driver EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Tyler Bourdeau
April 2020 vol. 91 no. 03
Local
600
International Cinematographers Guild
INTERNATIONAL CINEMATOGRAPHERS GUILD IATSE Local 600
STAFF WRITER Pauline Rogers
INTERIM NATIONAL PRESIDENT Dejan Georgevich, ASC
ACCOUNTING Glenn Berger Dominique Ibarra
1ST NATIONAL VICE PRESIDENT Christy Fiers
COPY EDITORS Peter Bonilla Maureen Kingsley CONTRIBUTORS
Michael Chambliss Jonny Cournoyer James Ferrara Debra Kaufman Kevin H. Martin Elle Schneider
2ND NATIONAL VICE PRESIDENT John Lindley, ASC NATIONAL SECRETARY-TREASURER Stephen Wong NATIONAL ASSISTANT SECRETARY-TREASURER Jamie Silverstein NATIONAL SERGEANT-AT-ARMS Deborah Lipman NATIONAL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Rebecca Rhine ASSOCIATE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Chaim Kantor
COMMUNICATIONS COMMITTEE Spooky Stevens, Chair
CIRCULATION OFFICE 7755 Sunset Boulevard Hollywood, CA 90046 Tel: (323) 876-0160 Fax: (323) 878-1180 Email: circulation@icgmagazine.com
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ADVERTISING POLICY: Readers should not assume that any products or services advertised in International Cinematographers Guild Magazine are endorsed by the International Cinematographers Guild. Although the Editorial staff adheres to standard industry practices in requiring advertisers to be “truthful and forthright,” there has been no extensive screening process by either International Cinematographers Guild Magazine or the International Cinematographers Guild. EDITORIAL POLICY: The International Cinematographers Guild neither implicitly nor explicitly endorses opinions or political statements expressed in International Cinematographers Guild Magazine. ICG Magazine considers unsolicited material via email only, provided all submissions are within current Contributor Guideline standards. All published material is subject to editing for length, style and content, with inclusion at the discretion of the Executive Editor and Art Director. Local 600, International Cinematographers Guild, retains all ancillary and expressed rights of content and photos published in ICG Magazine and icgmagazine.com, subject to any negotiated prior arrangement. ICG Magazine regrets that it cannot publish letters to the editor. ICG (ISSN 1527-6007) Ten issues published annually by The International Cinematographers Guild 7755 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, CA, 90046, U.S.A. Periodical postage paid at Los Angeles, California. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to ICG 7755 Sunset Boulevard Hollywood, California 90046 Copyright 2020, by Local 600, International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States and Canada. Entered as Periodical matter, September 30, 1930, at the Post Office at Los Angeles, California, under the act of March 3, 1879. Subscriptions: $88.00 of each International Cinematographers Guild member’s annual dues is allocated for an annual subscription to International Cinematographers Guild Magazine. Nonmembers may purchase an annual subscription for $48.00 (U.S.), $82.00 (Foreign and Canada) surface mail and $117.00 air mail per year. Single Copy: $4.95 The International Cinematographers Guild Magazine has been published monthly since 1929. International Cinematographers Guild Magazine is a registered trademark.
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even years ago in this magazine, we ran a gallery article inspired by our Local 600 Unit Still Photographers. The premise, which we returned to this month (Set to One-Sheet 2, page 50), was how a single image captured on set becomes key art – aka the global face of an entertainment property. A lot has changed since that 2013 article – virtual marketing, à la social media feeds and web banners, has challenged traditional advertising for eyeballs; static single-image billboards have been transformed into giant video displays that enable looped multiple messaging 24/7; and complex, evolving software (such as Adobe’s Photoshop) allows for image manipulation unapproachable even a decade ago. What remains, however, is the power of a single photograph, shot on set or on location with filmmakers pulling the levers, to sell stories. The relationship a unit photographer can share with an actor or actress, nurtured over many years and projects, was made clear during my interview with David James, SMPSP. Every publicist and creative director in this industry knows David’s work, as do tens of millions of moviegoers, including his own daughter, Guild Unit Still Photographer Chiabella James, who along with her father shot the unit imagery that became the key art for Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) featured in this month’s article. When producers wanted the senior James to shoot from inside a helicopter, with star Tom Cruise dangling out over a mountainous valley on New Zealand’s South Island, the photographer knew safety would be an issue. (The helicopter’s weight limit could not even accommodate an extra battery for the stunt coordinator’s radio.) So James grabbed his longest lens and headed for the highest hilltop, being careful to frame-up an image that would also include the stunning New Zealand terrain (instead of a random blue sky shooting from inside the whirlybird). “You gain an instinct for what may end up as key art,” James said about his fifteenth collaboration with Cruise. “Chia’s been on film sets since she was four years old, and she was born [to that instinct]. I have a photo of her bouncing on Steven Spielberg’s knee during Schindler’s List.”
David James, who was awarded the 2006 ICG Publicists Guild Award for Excellence in Unit Stills Photography, as well as the 2011 SOC Lifetime Achievement Award for Still Photography, has authored more than a dozen books of his set photography, including Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: A Photographic Journal and Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol: Shooting Diary. His work is so essential to the history of filmmaking, it’s housed in the archives of the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library. Like his movie-loving daughter, he will do anything, and go anywhere, to get one (or multiple) images that may end up being the keystone of a massive (and massively costly) marketing campaign. Instinct, experience, and knowledge of his equipment all play into James’ success, as does the respect and creative partnership of the actors he works with. “The poster shot from Edge of Tomorrow,” he told me, “of Tom [Cruise] running toward camera and away from a fiery explosion, was from a scene that Tom paused right before shooting because he began asking: ‘Where’s David James? I don’t see him anywhere around.’ I was actually lying in the mud on my back, below his feet, to get a great low-angle shot. I said, ‘Down here, Tom. I’m ready.’” Being “ready” is a theme that runs throughout this issue. Readers will see it in our cover story on A Quiet Place Part II (page 34), as well as our annual Sundance section (page 64), where indie filmmakers are forever poised for challenge and change. I can’t imagine higher praise for the “readiness” of Guild members than what VFX Supervisor Scott Farrar said about working on-set with Director of Photography Polly Morgan, ASC, BSC, for A Quiet Place Part II. Farrar’s career with Industrial Light + Magic dates back to being an effects cameraman on Return of the Jedi. He’s earned two Oscar nominations from the five Transformers features he supervised (and won an Oscar for the original Cocoon). “Polly is a really good DP,” Farrar shares in his Exposure Q & A (page 30), “but more importantly, she is a great artist – very light- and color-conscious. She was very concerned about how we would sometimes have to do shots at times of day that were not optimal, but being professional, she just put her head down and went with it.” That sounds much like what David James described when asked what goes into making sure you’re in the right place at the right time, all the time: “I learned [set photography] when you only had 12 shots on a roll,” he said. Every frame mattered.
CONTRIBUTORS
Jonny Cournoyer Noises Off, Stop Motion Working on the A Quiet Place films has been a dreamy experience full of lasting crew friendships and endless candy for the camera to capture. Navigating on an extra “quiet” set was no problem as I am naturally a very quiet (almost mute) person – a trait that helps as a set photographer. I stay in the shadows as much as possible, and it’s always a validating moment when fellow crew members compliment my “stealth” approach.
Photo by Justin Lubin, SMPSP
Photo by Sara Terry
wide angle
James Ferrera Set to One-Sheet 2 Unit Publicists are storytellers charged with gathering all the BTS elements and anecdotes that go into the making of a movie or TV series. We distill and anticipate the needs of studio publicity and marketing teams and enjoy a particularly distinguished on-set camaraderie with Local 600 Still Photographers. Justin Lubin and I have worked on three films, so helping him pull together the unit stills for Annabelle Comes Home, which became such wonderful key art, was a career highlight. CORRECTION: In our Briarpatch article last month (Southern Discomfort, page 61) the photo of B-Camera operator Matt Harshbarger, SOC, was incorrectly labeled as Series Director of Photography Zachary Galler. We apologize for the error.
ICG MAGAZINE
David Geffner
Executive Editor
Twitter: @DGeffner Email: david@icgmagazine.com
A Quiet Place Part II MANIFEST
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Cover photo by Jonny Cournoyer
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What’s New In LightField and Volumetric Cinematography? BY DEBRA KAUFMAN PHOTOS COURTESY OF RADIANT IMAGES
On the Sony Pictures Entertainment lot in Culver City, CA, a project testing out volumetric capture has brought together a mix of industry stalwarts: Sony Electronics, the Los Angeles-based Radiant Images, and Local 600 cinematographers, including David Stump, ASC, and Alejandro Lalinde. The group has collaborated to find ways to make this new camera technology practical and seamless. In the last year-and-a-half, the creative team has hosted major brands (working under NDA) and others interested in using the company’s multi-camera rig – showcasing Sony’s RX0 cameras – to test out volumetric capture and the bullet-time effect first featured in The Matrix. Stump, who has been closely following lightfield (also known as plenoptic) cinematography, via the research coming out of Stanford University, noted that he shot light-field cinematography for the first time in 2016 on Life, a Robert Stromberg-
directed short film captured with cameras from Lytro, a pioneering light-field camera company. Stump and Radiant Images vice president Michael Mansouri began talking years ago about the topic. “Michael quickly intuited that 6DOF [degrees of freedom] was going to be achievable in our near future photographically,” Stump recalls. “He and I began talking several years ago, and I’ve followed Radiant Images’ numerous iterations in light-field cinematography.” At Sony Electronics, El Deane Naude, digital division senior product information manager, says the company is excited about the potential of its new RX0 ultra-compact waterproof, shockproof camera that shoots 4K video and offers superslow motion and up to 16 fps continuous. (The unit is now in its II version.) “We’re making veryhigh-resolution cinema cameras like the Venice,” Naude relates. “But the RX0 made it more
attainable and affordable to put many of them in an array. I contacted Michael [Mansouri] to say let’s join forces to work on volumetric and other applications that require multi-cameras.” Radiant Images’ first step after Naude contacted Mansouri (in 2018) was to build a portable light-field capture system with more than 100 RX0 cameras, dubbed Meridian Light Field System. They also relied on holographic software from Visby. “Sony came back very interested in a solution for a volumetric studio that could scale without having to constantly recalibrate their system,” Mansouri recalls. “Once we proved it was possible to use these small, inexpensive cameras, the next step was to scale it up by creating our cameraand software-agnostic AXA system, for volumetric and light-field capture.” Radiant Images’ AXA stage, housed on the (cont'd on page 22)
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ON THE STREET
Sony lot, is constructed of lightweight, rigid carbon fiber, which, Mansouri says, creates an “extremely low coefficient” of thermal expansion and vibration absorption. “The improvement with AXA is that the stage allows us to have a known space and perfect geometry,” he adds. “We know exactly where the camera and lenses are in space. This also allows us to get rid of occlusion issues. “We designed the AXA stage to be highly adaptive and simple to transport and install,” Mansouri continues, reporting that the initial installation took “under four hours” for the Radiant team and four studio grips to unpack and fully assemble. One of the first projects shot there, under NDA, was for a location-based entertainment company. Mansouri says Radiant shot several tests to validate the feasibility and use cases for light-field cinematography versus other technologies and methods, testing “hard lighting, shiny objects, and hair movements.” Lalinde, who met Mansouri ten years ago on a Common music video shot with RED ONE, was the director of photography for that volumetric test for the location-based entertainment company. “It was an array of 124 Sony RX0 cameras,” he recalls. “I knew in post they would have almost 180 degrees of capture, so to facilitate this, I gave our talent a soft key wrap that encompassed 135 degrees from frontal to side light. Michael and I wanted to see how speculars reacted with the system for latitude, so I placed harder kick sources from Source4 Lekos and Dedolights to kick off shiny objects and backlight hair. “We wanted to completely give separation since we were on a green screen stage – but also see how the system dealt with hotter sources,” Lalinde explains. “The soft key was created by wrapping Kino Flos and LED tubes from the left and right of camera. As a director of photography, along with the director, we can manipulate frame rates, shutter speed, exposure and also focus, perspective, and even camera movements. My job was to work with Michael and the FX supervisor to capture some amazing images.” One of the bigger challenges of volumetric capture is a lengthy calibration process involved in coordinating more than 100 cameras. Mansouri says they created a “very sturdy rig” that doesn’t
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move and doesn’t need to be re-calibrated but is also portable and scalable. “We also automated the entire process of downloading hundreds of cameras seamlessly,” he adds, “so we don’t need to log and download hundreds of camera cards.” Stump says the creative benefits of volumetric capture are more than the 7DOF. (He includes time as the seventh degree.) “Instead of pixels, it gives us voxels – pixels in volume,” he describes. “That’s the Holy Grail. The metaphor I always use is the walkie-talkie. Before them, AD’s used semaphores, smoke signals, and megaphones – that’s how you communicated. And now that we have walkie talkies, we can’t imagine making movies without them.” Sony Computer Entertainment is also doing tests on the Sony lot. Naude says, “we can create volumetric stages and capture performance with actors or a sports celebrity and then export those movements to a computer game. We can capture them in a completely volumetric environment and get all the angles. Once it’s rendered, the user can pick any angle from any viewpoint. It’s virtual reality for the gamer.” Naude observes that his group’s work with volumetric capture “doesn’t replace a director of photography or the traditional way of making movies. “It’s not for every single shot. But you can use it to create an environment separately and place the actors in it or drop an actor into a scene. It’s just a tool for different options.” Although Naude can’t reveal details of how the technology is being developed, they are still looking at different use cases in terms of adoption. “We see volumetric already used quite extensively in the gaming industry,” he relates. “But there are multiple use cases, including ad campaigns and cinema use.” Mansouri notes that Radiant’s AXA stage offers “friction-free” shoots for volumetric and light-field capture. “You hear more about volumetric capture because it’s more easily compressed and streamed, even via a mobile phone,” says Mansouri, distinguishing between volumetric and light-field cinematography. “Light field is the Holy Grail in that it is how we see the world.” Volumetric capture, he explains, is a scan that creates a 3D point cloud with all the depth
properties. “With light-field, you’re seeing the vantage points with the exact fidelity and all the nuances of how light reflects,” Mansouri offers. “You have a lot more resolution and it’s more realistic.” (The AXA stage is capable of both kinds of capture.) In addition to the AXA stage on the Sony lot, Radiant Images used its technology for a Ford commercial, shot by Steve Moyer on location in Michigan, that highlighted the use of the multicamera rig to capture the bullet-time effect. At its Los Angeles volumetric studios, Radiant is working with NASA and Harvard Medical School on medical event training and simulation scenarios for long-duration exploration missions. “We’re their partner in developing 6DOF medical scenarios to augment astronaut training,” Mansouri describes. “The ultimate objective is to embed it at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.” Stump notes that most cinematographers won’t soon be faced with volumetric or lightfield shoots. Referring to Roger’s bell curve for technology adoption, he believes we’re in the “chasm” phase, a several-year period between the innovators/early adopters and more mainstream adoption. “In 2005, we were in the chasm on 4K,” he states. “There’s usually a nine- to 13-year adoption lag on new technologies in our industry, so we probably won’t see mainstream volumetric capture for another five to eight years.” But Stump and Lalinde do stress the technology’s potential within the craft of cinematography. “It’s often hard to see the upside of new technology,” Stump adds, “because we protect what we know from what we don’t know.” He encourages Guild members to stay up on the research coming out of Stanford and MIT Media Labs, and adds that a new crop of filmmakers will take to it with ease. “The light-field native cinematographers are growing up right now,” Stump concludes. “This is a new tool for us,” Lalinde adds. “As it gets better and easier to use, it offers more control and creates other avenues of storytelling. When a tool surfaces that can bring audiences to see something in a whole new light – well, that’s what we are always trying to achieve as cinematographers.”
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MASTER CLASS
Safety First LAWRENCE "DOC" KARMAN + WILL ARNOT BY PAULINE ROGERS PHOTOS COURTESY OF LAWRENCE KARMAN & WILL ARNOT
(cont'd on page 26)
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Safe sets are paramount, given today’s fast-paced, complicated, and often compressed shooting schedules, as well as escalating production demands that can include complex (and potentially hazardous) extended shots and scenes. ICG Magazine, representing the collective voice of some 9,000 working members in the film industry is tasked with ensuring that information about creating safer sets is coming from the most knowledgeable and experienced sources. That's why we asked two of this union’s most celebrated operators, Lawrence “Doc” Karman, SOC and Will Arnot, SOC, what safety concerns are most important to them and what advice they’d give everyone on a production. Arnot, who originally hails from Capetown, South Africa, is a twotime Operator of the Year nominee from the Society of Camera Operators (SOC), whose extensive feature credit list includes Blue Jasmine, The Help, Milk, Angels in America, and Coming 2 America. Karman, a fellow SOC award nominee, has been a member of the Steadicam Operators Association (SOA) since 2000 and had his first feature credit as an operator in 1990. His résumé includes the new TV series The Fugitive, ICG Magazine’s April cover-story subject A Quiet Place Part II, and The Laundromat, Runaways, Overlord, Alex, Inc., Father Figures, and Midnight, Texas.
Operator Placement Lawrence “Doc” Karman: You have to learn to position yourself for the best shot – and a quick escape if necessary. If there will be a stunt or explosion, you have to understand exactly what will be happening, ask specific questions about the safe distance or camera positions, know the possible dangers of flying objects, make sure certain loose items are secured with cable, and even know how loud it will be. Just remember – there are no stupid questions. No matter what position you are in, you always need to ask to inspect firearms and learn what a safe distance is when being fired at as well as what type of protection is needed.
Radio Frequency Dangers Will Arnot: RF transmitter–safe distances vary. Local 600 has purchased RF meters, and we are actually measuring the transmission from our equipment. The Union will then inform our members what the safe distances from specific pieces of equipment are. For most transmitters, that is a minimum of two inches from the antenna. RF dangers are often increased for the operator as more of our work is wireless and remote. A remote head often utilizes a wireless link. An operator uses HME wireless headsets on one ear to talk to crane operators and the AC’s. Comtec audio is on the other ear. And I often use a Preston Wireless Zoom control in hand. That’s at least three, if not four, RF sources in immediate proximity. There is so much RF in close proximity that there is interference. This is highlighted when operating directly on the camera using an eyepiece. The Preston MDR and Teradek Bolt combine enough wireless interference to require using an onboard monitor, so I have to pull my head away from the camera enough that the Comtec audio is clear.
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MASTER CLASS
Unsafe Hours and Distant Hire Locations LK: Unsafe hours are a less obvious safety hazard we all deal with. It’s not just being fatigued and driving while exhausted; it’s also the effects of constant shift changes. If you are too tired to drive home – take the rides or rooms if offered. Or even if not. Better to get some sleep in a hotel room rather than behind the wheel if you have any doubts. WA: Due to the loss of a weekend turnaround, it is perfectly legal to work a “Fraturday” and then be brought back to work on a Sunday morning – only a regular daily turnaround is required. This will give 6th-day pay (if a Monday-through-Friday shoot week is established). But it is blood money.
Let’s talk about travel scenarios on distant hire locations. At home, we resist taking the hotel room because we would much prefer to be home in our own beds and wake up to our family. So, we push through to get home. On distant locations, we don’t think of taking a hotel room because we are already staying in a hotel. Why are there now no longer crew vans from the crew hotel? The practice is to give every crew member a rental car. The crew has to gas it up. You get reimbursed, but not for weeks (so you are out of pocket). And you get taxed on the reimbursement check.
should be aired-out when not filming as per the safety bulletin, but they never are. Local 600 has made a video to deal with one of the dangers of car shots – free driving and airbags. Manned operation in the front seat is not recommended when the car is not being towed and is being driven by an actor or stunt driver. An accident and airbag deployment could result in death or injury to the camera operator and passengers. It is important during pre-production to determine whether this type of shot will be necessary and, if so, to come up with alternatives, such as a rigged remote head or a locked-off camera mounted outside the vehicle. Showing this video to anyone asking for this type of shot will invariably change their minds.
What doesn’t get talked about enough is the accumulated exhaustion that one (legal) Fraturday/Sunday can lead to. It’s not just about the short turnaround on that day/weekend. It is
Car Shots and Hazardous Sets
the cumulative effect throughout the next week. Everyone is bleary-eyed, grumpy, less effective, and slow. And that adds up to dropped shots, extra days and Second Unit added. Is that one short weekend worth it?
shots. Alleys and driveways are a big concern. If you have concerns, vocalize them.
Tech Scouts
Make sure there are dust masks available when shooting in dusty and smoky sets all day. Stages
WA: Bring the operator to the tech scout! I can’t stress how important and informative scouts are.
LK: Always ask what the lockups are on a road closure for driving stunts or plain old driving
(cont'd on page 26)
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Vittorio Storaro [ASC, AIC] insisted I be part of every two-week scout on the last three Woody Allen films I did with him [Café Society, Wonder Wheel, and Rainy Day]. So much can be achieved in the scout about how to preempt the safest, most efficient approach to a scene. You get the perfect forum to talk about what is wanted, how to best achieve it, and what the best equipment will be. I scouted a location with a corrugated metal bridge for a film in Fiji last year, and while it looked great from various angles, it would have been ludicrous to shoot on, and I pushed for alternatives based on the scout.
Speak Up! WA: Often we come onto a set when we don’t know the exact requirements of the day, like with a change to the script or the director wanting a different approach. Operators know what gear is best for what kind of shot, and they need to define the shot. Is it better and safer running with
a Steadicam or to get a Stabilized Head on a RickShaw or GripTrix electric cart? Communication of expectations and forethought are paramount to getting things done right and safely. This also requires us to be proactive and not wait to be asked everything. Read the script and look at the shooting schedule. Ask questions! Safety classes cover the necessary education for fire or high-effects situations. Unfortunately, not all parts of the country are mandated to take the classes. If it’s nationwide, being that IATSE Local 600 is a national Guild (and no longer a regional local), classes should be mandated. Whether there is a class or not, cultivating a relationship with your AD strengthens your line of defense – and your safety. Has the effect been tested? Is there a video of the test? The crew needs to see it and come up with questions before the shoot.
CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE LOCAL 600 SAFETY PAGE
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REPLAY
FOX TV’s Prodigal Son Cold Open, Episode 103 BY PAULINE ROGERS PHOTOS COURTESY OF WARNER BROS.
To effectively do his job profiling killers for the NYPD, former FBI profiler Malcolm Bright (Tom Payne), the son of a notorious serial killer himself, often has to think like his prey. The job brings up frightening memories of his father, terrorizing him to the extent that he sleeps with a mouthguard and arm restraints to contain his unconscious thrashings. “Quite a basket case,” describes Director of Photography Benji Bakshi. “Yet, delving into [Bright’s] dreams, however distorted and demented, seems to be the only way to uncover the truth that could eventually heal him. He’s on a one-way journey through his most traumatic memories. Episode 3 of Prodigal Son’s first season is a perfect example of the terror he experiences on this journey.” The opening begins with Malcolm in the throes of an early-morning sleep terror, recalling details of a mysterious woman lying in a trunk in his father’s basement. Was it real? Did he dream this? Or actually remember it? Downstairs from his loft bedroom, his mother, Jessica Whitley, who owns the building, tries to enter. “He is thrashing so hard from his dream, that he rips one of the restraints
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right out of the wall and crashes through the thirdstory window, 30 feet from the ground,” continues Bakshi. “He hangs by the remaining restraint on his other arm.” To photograph the sequence, Bakshi had to work closely with stunt coordinator Tony Guida, production designer Adam Sher, property master Matthew Amenta, FuseFX’s Steve Marino, and special-effects coordinator Dimitra Bixby. Breaking down the sequence, they decided it would take place across three different sets: a practical location, a standing interior set, and a constructed exterior façade. To maintain safety, the window crash couldn’t be done at the actual location in downtown Manhattan. The team needed to create an identical building façade and composite onto plates taken from the location. “This meant exterior lighting conditions and camera metrics would need to match between the elements,” Bakshi explains. As Bixby relates: “Tom Payne’s stunt double would dive through candy glass on balsa frame while rubber glass would be disbursed in reaction shots of his mother looking upward. The arm restraint ripped from the wall needed to be tested and pieces of the baseboard pre-scored to
produce a realistic amount of breakage without under- or overwhelming.” [Amenta fashioned custom bed restraints to accomplish these specific mechanics.] “The challenge was to build a structure at the proper height that allowed for the action to take place in a safe and manageable way,” adds Sher. The team created detailed storyboards and collaborated on the design of the structure. “The [window] sill on location was 30 feet above the ground. But we couldn’t build a stunt platform that tall,” Sher continues. “We had to calculate the angle on the street at the location and duplicate it on Silvercup Studio’s lot. We then created an interior at the studio to show the aftermath of the crash and see the broken window, continuing the illusion.” Marino says “only a very experienced DP can account for the differences between the two sets [real and stage] without creating a headache for the plates team and post-production. It wasn’t just the height; it was that the camera had the same lenses and metrics, and even that we were shooting at the same time of day when doing the plates.” The stunt itself wasn’t just a basic crash
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through a window. "Not only did we have the element of the candy glass," Guida explains, "we also had to rig it to deal with the height. Adam built a set for us with a window that had to break in certain areas, but not in others, to maintain continuity. While the gag was not without risk," the stunt coordinator describes, "the VFX team did a great job making the harness and stunt rigging disappear, allowing us to make it as safe as possible.” In addition to choreographing a fall that would convey excitement and danger, the Prodigal Son team had to be aware of safety vis-à-vis camera placement. One unmanned camera was brought low for an upward angle, while further off, out of glass-breaking range, a 32-foot Louma Crane was used, close enough to get the set-piece and green
matching the exterior façade. “We placed the camera looking upward toward the window stunt from Jessica’s POV. I made sure to shoot versions with and without direct sun, though we preferred a sunny version to motivate shifts of light in the interior set, which we shot last,” Bakshi shares. “With broken-up sequences like this filmed across multiple weeks, in different locations and times of day, it's best to establish the look with the biggest limiting factor first,” he continues. “In this case, it was the sun. With the size of the exterior building plate itself, and the need to match the already established surrounding scene work, we couldn’t rely on lighting or diffusing the location artificially. We had to go with the existing exterior light. We timed that part of the scene to be back/ side lit. The sky was a bit hazy, which gave us a
To shoot the actual fall, the team placed the crane and ground-level cameras in the identical positions to the plates. “We also utilized live video playback with a 50/50 overlay to visually match the angles,” Bakshi concludes. “Even when your calculations are mirrored exactly, sometimes you have to adjust to what looks optically correct when you put elements together. Once the stunt portion was successful, [actor Tom Payne] was placed in the hanging position to finish the scene. It all played relatively briefly on-screen, but it was a fun payoff for all the effort.”
screen without sky around it. A-Camera Operator Philip J. Martinez, SOC, says that Bakshi and episode Director Rob Bailey were looking for a fun shot. “They wanted to track our actress from her Town Car to the front door to the apartment," Martinez recounts. "We had four people working the camera, Paul McKenna working the Pickel, Don Glenn working the bucket, and Alex Waterston pulling focus. As Paul and Don moved the camera through space, I was able to frame the shot the way Benji and Rob wanted. Working with this crane is tight coordination with the crew and is one of my favorite parts of the job.” Bakshi shot the memories at the beginning of the sequence using vintage Panavision portrait spherical lenses, which heavily diffused the frame edges (and ALEXA MINIs). The plates for this exterior were shot on location first, before
semi-diffused quality.” The roughly 30-foot façade was built on a parking lot and angled so that there were no background buildings overlapping the frame edges, and the window would reflect the open sky. Lighting the stunt crash was an exercise in scale. “Key Grip Luis Colon and Rigging Key Grip Bert Montanari along with Chief Lighting Technician George Selden and ACLT Ted Goodwin developed a great plan to have two 20-by-20 fly swatters and an 18K on a lift,” explains Bakshi. “We had one fly swatter to flag the direct sun, another to shade the reflection angle of the glass,” adds Montanari. “We even blacked-out the entire height of two scissor lifts that were used as structural support for the façade.” Goodwin notes that “the 18K ARRIMAX on the lift gave us the versatility to mimic the sun angle of the locations plate.”
Director of Photography Benji Bakshi
LOCAL 600 CREW
A-Camera Operator/Steadicam Philip J. Martinez, SOC A-Camera 1st AC Alex Waterston A-Camera 2nd AC Kevin Howard, Jr. B-Camera Operator Chris Raymond B-Camera 1st AC Hamilton Longyear B-Camera 2nd AC Katie Waalkes Loaders Holly McCarthy AJ Strauman
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EXPOSURE
Scott Farrar VFX SUPERVISOR BY KEVIN H. MARTIN PHOTOS BY JONNY COURNOYER
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Shortly after Scott Farrar, ASC, began his career in visual effects on Star Trek: The Motion Picture (surviving the transition from original supervisors Robert Abel and Richard Taylor to maestro Doug Trumbull), he began a decades-long association with Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). With ILM, he rose quickly from effects camera operator on Return of the Jedi, The Golden Child and the next two Star Trek films to the role of VFX supervisor on projects ranging from science-fiction-oriented efforts like Back to the Future Part III and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, to such diverse contemporary features such as Wolf, Casper, and Congo. Most of these projects drew not only on Farrar’s passion for photography but also his ability to utilize non-real-time shooting techniques, ranging from motion-control miniature cinematography to high-speed work. He also worked on set during live-action scenes requiring a VFX presence, advising filmmakers how to avoid problems in post and, in the case of Spielberg's AI: Artificial Intelligence, facilitating the development of an on-set previsualization system that combined live action with separately shot backgrounds. Farrar has supervised effects for five Transformers features (the first, plus Dark of the Moon, netted him two of his five Oscar nominations, while he won the statuette for the original Cocoon), and he most recently oversaw the VFX work on both installments of A Quiet Place.
ICG: On the first A Quiet Place, you had to work out the look and the movement of the creatures. What were the principal issues surrounding those aspects? Farrar: The main one involved a total redesign of the character, once it was decided the original creature didn’t look scary. You don’t know how the performance is going to emerge until you put it through some animation. Then, if something doesn’t work, you may have to change the rigging, or, as was the case here, go in another direction. There were just two months to get that done from the ground up – design, texture, paint – a lot of work, and there was no time even to go through standard methodologies, like putting up a turntable to see it from all angles. I have to give credit to my team of about six artists. Some of these people were new to ILM,
but they would drop anything else they were doing to assemble at my desk to address the issues arising. Is the continuity you have with being able to use the same people at ILM one of the strengths of your long-term association with that facility? I get to make my choices in terms of the talent pool and am one of those supervisors who always wants my art director and animation [leads] on the movie for the whole process. That’s true going back to [art director] Bill George on Star Trek VI and Alive. Rick O’Connor and Scott Benza are animation supervisors I’ve worked with for a long time. There’s no choice for me – I’ve got to have one of those guys as leads along with me – Scott on the first film and Rick on this one. At ILM, we’ve
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EXPOSURE
VFX SUPERVISOR SCOTT FARRAR, LEFT, AND DIRECTOR JOHN KRASINSKI ON THE SET OF A QUIET PLACE PART II.
“ The art of moviemaking is one where it is more important to make beautiful pictures where the backgrounds look great; visual effects can always plus up the lighting on the creature to match what is done on set.”
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had amazing exposure to a range of processes and ideas, and a lot of that comes out of working with the same talented people, but some of it is because new people are coming into the mix as well. Together, we were able to build on and refine processes, then add new elements to the mix. You do a lot of experimenting, and it’s nice when something you’ve come up with can plug right into a movie. Can you give an example? On a Back to the Future sequel, Ken Ralston had us shoot an extra beauty pass of the DeLorean car miniature against black. That allowed Optical to deal with the vehicle’s shiny aspect during compositing, which in those days was a huge deal when shooting blue screen. And we applied that on the next Trek movie to deal with the sheen on the Enterprise model. Was working with John Krasinski atypical, given he comes from an acting background? John hadn’t done anything quite like this before, so we both benefited from working so closely together. He even acted out some scenes [as the creature] in a marker suit to give us a good reference. He could think and play it as an actor, producing the desired performance. On the first film, in most instances, we’d also have somebody act out the character on set for the cameras and then shoot a clean plate. This time out, we mainly just shot clean plates, because John felt comfortable without that safety net. We used a stand-in mainly for the operator to determine framing and eyelines, rather than to protect ourselves down the line. It is quite a departure from the way VFX interacted with filmmakers in the past; often when having to shoot motion-control, things would get slowed way down on set, which made some directors crazy! Returning for the sequel, did you find other, equally compelling challenges beyond creature design and performance? Even if you figure things out on the first movie, there’s always more to challenge you the next time. Now, there’s more than one creature – we call him “Happy” – sometimes three in a single sequence, plus there are a greater number of lighting circumstances, which is always challenging. We had indoor, moody, rain, firelight, backlight, toplight, edge light, barely any light – pretty much every imaginable circumstance, and Happy had to look good in all of them. I’m a member of the ASC, as is Polly, so we know very well that even when doing synthetic lighting for digital creatures, it still has to marry up. To what degree can that process be hamstrung
by technical issues, like render times? My whole orientation is around the aesthetic of how things look, rather than tech details like the render. Whether we’re predominantly using edge light or three-quarters backlight, it’s still going to look better if you are using a three-point lighting system. Also, depending on what is going to be done in the DI, our digital characters can careen wildly in color. Right now with John, I’m telling him to check the shots in the DI to see how things look, because if there is a readjustment on flesh tones for [human] characters to better suit the mood of a scene, it is going to affect the way our characters look, too, and sometimes rather severely. With your background in traditional photography and cinematography, do you have a foot up when it comes to communicating with cinematographers and directors? Polly is a really good DP, but more importantly, she is a great artist – very light – and color-conscious. She was very concerned about how we would sometimes have to do shots at times of day that were not optimal, but being professional, she just put her head down and went with it. Part of that was her knowing she could come to me and say, “Promise me you’ll take the sky down for this one.” So it was a matter of trust? There was enormous trust. I told her that if she had an actual creature in the scene, it might have caused her to change the lighting slightly, especially on some interiors. But the art of moviemaking is one where it is more important to make beautiful pictures where the backgrounds look great; visual effects can always plus up the lighting on the creature to match what is done on set. It’s no different than lighting liveaction; after you’ve got the set right, you may add a few more lights to bring out some detail of your lead, sweetening a bit. Polly genuinely cares about her craft, and that affection and dedication are what makes collaborating in movies such a wonderful experience. The love of film – or I guess we’d say “image” now, with the advent of digital. “Roll camera!” There’s nothing rolling [laughs]. How did you go about surviving that transition from photochemical to digital? I grew up shooting my own black-and-white photos and developing them – so I learned the necessity of burning through a lot in order to be able to “guesstimate” the proper exposure. I remember any number of excellent DP’s who still went through sleepless nights because they weren’t quite sure if the day’s shoot worked until seeing
the dailies. So there was that combo of frustration and fear shooting film. And on the effects end of things, just loading one of those old cameras at ILM – I remember one called the VistaRama, a reconfigured Technicolor box, where the prism and place for the three strips of film to run had been ripped out to make room for a VistaVision movement – if you ran the 1000-foot film all the way through and didn’t stop before you got to the end, it would take no less than ten minutes just to rethread the thing. Digital was almost inevitable because everything was getting so complex – all the filters, plus the stocks with different ASA ratings and different tolerances – there were just so many aspects that could go wrong. Nowadays with digital cameras, no threading, just snap a new box on. Is that better? Uh, yeah! But on these last two pictures with John, both DP’s wanted to shoot film, and if people feel comfortable with it, well, that certainly delivers a great look. Virtual production is gaining a lot of ground, most recently with The Mandalorian. You were involved 20 years back in an early process that was also powered by a cutting-edge gaming engine, allowing for on-set compositing of liveaction with effects backgrounds on AI. Was that a kind of bridge between old systems like Magicam and Introvision and what is emerging today? Introvision? [Laughing] I haven’t thought of that in years, but I remember they pulled off that shot of Harrison Ford jumping in front of a train in The Fugitive using that process. You had to design it for a very specific camera point-ofview, but it was like a hanging miniature – a fun thing to do, but the limitations make it a oncein-awhile-only technique. On AI, we were able to get a good idea of how the live-action would live in the effects background before going onto the next shot. It is a great example of how we sometimes went into a project unsure it would work and be reliable enough not to slow down production. That wound up helping everybody. Filmmakers today have the expectation of being able to realize anything – how has that impacted your job? The biggest problem we face these days comes on those occasions when, with things already all worked out, they suddenly change, which resonates among multiple departments. It can happen when a director hits on a new idea or the DP needs another angle. So it falls to us to remain flexible in accommodating these requests. That’s the main reason we don’t do miniatures anymore, even though we love them. Production costs and choices often prohibit that solution.
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Noises Polly Morgan ASC, BSC, quiets everything down for A Quiet Place Part II. BY KEVIN H. MARTIN
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PHOTOS BY JONNY COURNOYER
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2018’s A Quiet Place (shot by Charlotte Bruus Christensen) proved to be a genuine sleeper hit for Paramount. Co-written and directed by John Krasinski, the harrowing tale of a family (led by Krasinski’s Lee and Emily Blunt’s Evelyn Abbott) striving for survival in a world scoured nearly clean of humans by blind extraterrestrial creatures with highly attuned hearing proved both critically and financially successful, mandating a sequel. While ILM VFX supervisor Scott Farrar, ASC (Exposure, page 30) would return for A Quiet Place Part II, there was no initial guarantee of Krasinski’s involvement. “The first one was such an incredibly personal story for me,” the director explains, “that I told the studio I wanted no part in something that would be perceived as a cash grab or the betrayal of an audience that was so overwhelmingly supportive of this film. “But as they interviewed other candidates,” he adds, “I had this small idea of a way to continue the metaphor – it’s the promise we make our children that if you stay with us, we can keep you safe from harm. If that is true, then the sequel is about the inevitable breaking of that promise. It’s about dealing with loss and growing up.” Once back in the fold, Krasinski turned to Director of Photography Polly Morgan, ASC, BSC, having heard of her work from the hit FX series Legion and seen her reel. “I was looking not only for someone that was innately talented, which Polly most certainly is,” Krasinski reflects, “but also as a partner on set, as I knew this film
would be very ambitious and Polly has this incredible ‘can do’ attitude. She never stood in the way of an idea but rather fought for the best way to get it done.” Morgan says she found Krasinski’s script “beautiful” and “visual.” “John said the camera would be moving much more this time,” she recalls. “With the first film, they were often on sticks, because the characters were stuck at home. This time they were venturing onto new ground in a more expansive world and showing how the children grow up and embrace young adulthood.” The duo shared many of the same references, notably some early films of Steven Spielberg – Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind – the latter of which contributed to Morgan’s decision to pursue filmmaking as a career. Krasinski, who was not a genre film fan growing up, says he connected to them when the story was bigger than the scares. “Jaws and Alien, any Hitchcock film and maybe a little of the paranoia tension of Rosemary’s Baby,” he adds. Another connection those classic films share with A Quiet Place Part II is
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TOP: MORGAN WORKED WITH 1ST AD DAVE VENGHAUS TO ENSURE THE SUN’S PATH WOULD WORK IN HER FAVOR, AS FOR THIS KEY DAY EXTERIOR SEQUENCE THAT OPENS THE FILM. MIDDLE AND BOTTOM: BOTH MORGAN AND DIRECTOR KRASINSKI LOBBIED HARD TO ORIGINATE ON FILM, WITH KRASINSKI NOTING AN "IMMEDIATE FEELING WITH FILM" FOR A GENRE MOVIE, "THAT IS SO UNIQUE AND ALIVE."
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originating on celluloid, which Krasinski calls “a fight on every level.” “People will try to dissuade you, citing everything from the added budget to waiting to see dailies to the increased difficulty shooting in low light,” he laments. “But there is an immediate feeling with film, especially in a genre movie, that is so unique and alive.” Morgan concurs. “Audiences loved how [the original] harkened back to oldschool filmmaking, so shooting on film made sense,” she notes. “But this was on a bigger scale with a lot of night work, so that did merit some discussion. We wound up shooting some underwater scenes on the ALEXA Mini, since film camera housings haven’t been kept up to date. There was a big night sequence that took place at a marina with large expanses of water. We felt digital would best serve the location due to the sensitivity of the chip [the underwater work here was shot by Pete Romano, ASC]. The DITs [Luke Taylor and Jason Bauer] and Efilm worked up a LUT that matched our film stocks.” Nearly all of the rest of the filming utilized one or more Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL2 units. The director of photography did not alter her workflow for exposing raw stock. “There are a lot of dark scenes where I was pushing it,” she recounts. “But the film [Kodak 5287-250D and 5219-500T] handles underexposure very well.” When she needed more stop, Morgan would sometimes use the
tungsten in the day scenes. “I didn’t expose for their rated ISOs – rating the 500 at 400 and the 250 at 200 to get a thicker negative. I seldom used an 85 filter when using 5219 in daylight; I shot a grayscale and color chart at the head of every roll and let my dailies colorist [Richard Flores Jr.] dial that out. “It’s largely a matter of giving plenty of love to the negative,” Morgan continues. “John loves anamorphic glass, with the original being shot on the C-series lenses. When I talked with Dan Sasaki at Panavision, I asked if they could be modified to perform better wide-open and have nearer closefocus. Dan suggested using the newer T-series lenses since he could modify them to match the C-series with their oval falloff and specific artifacting, while performing brilliantly at a 2.8 stop and having closefocus ability.” First AC Steve Cueva hadn’t worked on film for a few years, “and a about a quarter of our team had never done one,” he reports. “It was great having Haydn [Pazanti, 1st AC] and Robin [Bursey, 2nd AC] on B-Camera. They have so much film experience and were instrumental in getting everyone up to speed. I took a refresher course, checking the flange on the cameras and going over menu setting and how to adjust the video taps, which are pretty old technology. About halfway through, Panavision came out to make the taps as good as they could perform,
[but] it’s a far cry from what a digital camera can output.” Cueva used a CineRT on the camera, walking alongside when possible, which, coupled with the HME’s worn by the crew, helped when improvised shots arose. Because Morgan and Krasinski are “passionate about being the author of our images,” there was no second unit, and Morgan often shot single-camera, usually on wide lenses with the camera in close on an arm. “That limited us on multiple camera use,” she states. “Although when possible, I would add in a B-Camera and sometimes other additional cameras [operated by Steve Matzinger, SOC, Chris Duskin, Lawrence Karman (SOC), Robby Baumgartner, and Heather Norton on reshoots].” Most creature features rely on previsualization but Krasinski is no fan of storyboards. “ILM did some rough previs to slot the creature in,” Morgan recalls, “and Production Designer Jess Gonchor had a VR-type helmet that let me explore his sets. But it wasn’t a heavy previs in the traditional VFX sense. It was very much old-school filmmaking.” For Morgan, the principal challenge remained the same as what Christensen faced in the first film: “How do you photograph action with no sound? For the audience to connect with the characters without dialog, they had to be able to pick up on the flick of an eye or read their body language, so we had to keep the camera up close.”
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A-Camera/Steadicam operator Matthew Moriarty, SOC, says the rules were clear. “Whoever was in jeopardy and what they were facing had to be together in the same frame,” he explains. “I don’t think you’ll find a single cutaway to an explosion because that would violate that philosophy. It’s more difficult and time-consuming, shooting this way, but it creates a strong unconscious effect on the audience. They’re in there with the heroes – not separated by a cut, or a long lens simply because that’s easier to shoot.” Gonchor’s scouting of Buffalo (rather than New York City as planned) triggered a reevaluation. “Jess fell in love with the look of dilapidated mills and general decay from all the industries dying out,” Morgan remembers. “I went up with John on a scout and we decided to move production there, using the stages at Buffalo FilmWorks. Most of my prep was spent picking locations with John and figuring out the blocking. Since we didn’t spend a lot of time shot listing, being in these spaces helped us see how things would play out. The locations were an exceptional fit for these characters, but my other takeaway was how John teased me about taking pictures there for my coffeetable book!”
Mini because we couldn’t fit a film body inside the car.” Researching the famous extended car take from Children of Men revealed that the custom-built rig that film used was no longer available. “We did not want to build a structure on top of the roof for operators, director, and DP, as it would make the car dangerously top-heavy,” describes Key Grip Manny Duran. “I reimagined the shot with the suggestion of dolly grip Sean Devine, [using] a small robotic arm, the CMOCOS (Camera Motion Control System), out of Vienna, Austria. And that led to mounting CMOCOS onto a CineMoves Powerslider.” “CMOCOS is an amazing multi-section gooseneck programmed with a sequence of moves, and executing them with robotic precision,” marvels Moriarty. “Because of the number of elements involved, I would also need the freedom to pan and tilt in real-time in response to actors, stuntmen, effects cues, and real moving vehicles.” Duran suggested CineMoves’ Scorpio Micro-Head, a non-stabilized device. And to keep within weight and space restrictions – 24 pounds for the arm and 10 inches between the two front seats – and safety limits, a unique collaboration was arranged, with reps from CMOCOS and Cinemoves onhand to make the systems work together – a A Quiet Place Part II begins with events first, as remote heads had never been placed before the first film. “We conceived the on the end of such an arm. Duran worked out prologue to be photographed with long the technical issues of the shot’s design with shots, with fewer edits, to establish a slower CineMoves’ Ron Tatham and Scott Howell. rhythm,” Morgan explains, “which would “We mounted the power slider upsidecontrast with the rest of the movie. We down and underslung the CMOCOS arm, wanted to control the pace with an almost [along with] the Micro Scorpio and Mini ethereal, Terrence Malick feel before the Libra head. SFX cut the Volvo roof to creatures strike. One of these shots was 36-inches by 6-feet and reinforced the a sustained oner inside the family Volvo, inside,” Duran explains. A truss system which was captured digitally on an ALEXA and the Powerslider were arranged by Key
Rigging Grip Jason Sarrey and his team. The shot was slated for day three on the schedule. “First AD Dave Venghaus brilliantly lobbied to book the town’s main street for not one, but two, rehearsal days,” Moriarty remembers. “We had a few days testing in a parking lot with [stunt coordinator] Kyle Woods’ team. The Volvo shell and all our overhead rigging were welded to the 500-horsepower Biscuit chassis. Biscuit driver Robert Nagle was so precise. The opening move had to be 19 seconds and coincide with Emily [Blunt] appearing to stop the car at first position; Robert hit 19 seconds every single time. I was on headset cueing Cinemoves’ Jeff Comfort, who was sardined into the trunk of the Volvo with 200 pounds of hardware. In a feat of brain-twisting that I still marvel at, he would then execute a Cmocos trigger, a manual slider move, or both – manually matching his slider moves to the timing of the automated cue.” On shoot day, a follow van was rigged to stay within the wireless range of the Biscuit. Moriarty was on the Scorpio wheels and was calling Comfort’s move cues on his headset. “Beside me, John was calling FX and actor cues,” Moriarty continues. “Our young actor, Noah Jupe, had to keep his head smashed against the window until our camera cleared his seat, then expertly re-install his headrest into a pre-rigged magnet before we panned around to see it, and then start acting! John was holding the trigger for an airbag bounce rig that made it appear that the bus [from which the creature burst out] hit the front of the Volvo. CMOCOS has limits in terms of G-forces; when the bounce rig goes off, the camera rolls over slightly. John is a natural risk-taker [and] loved that the camera goes Dutch, a rawness that fits his whole approach.”
“ILM did some rough previs to slot the creature in, and Production Designer Jess Gonchor had a VR-type helmet that let me explore his sets. But it wasn’t a heavy previs in the traditional VFX sense.
It was very much old-school filmmaking.” POLLY MORGAN, ASC, BSC
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“Our basic platform for shooting actors running with maximum camera freedom was a Libra head on a MiniScope 7 on a GripTrix,” Moriarty reports. “Sean [Devine] spent many days of his life strapped to that thing. And Libra tech John Bonnin kept the shots smooth, sometimes with every possible variable working against him. For close-up running, we often rigged the Steadicam off the back of the GripTrix because the arm allows you to make instantaneous distance adjustments to maintain image size. That was helpful to Steve, who pulled amazing focus on a dozen impossible shots a day.” For day photography, Morgan worked with Venghaus to ensure the sun’s path would work in her favor, and also sought to further shape the scenes using negative fill. “There were still some shots in the prologue that were devastating for me because they were front-lit,” she laments. “But that was a given since the street ran east-west. With all the moving parts it was often impossible to control the daylight, but luckily the amount of action in the scenes helped disguise any harsh lighting.” Duran met with Morgan and gaffer Dan Riffel during prep to discuss how best to use contrast for mystique and drama while keeping it within the realm of looking natural. Morgan says that “we motivated the light from natural and motivated sources but wanted it to have a stylized approach. We embraced silhouettes whenever we could and often lit the spaces and kept the actors faces out of direct light.” The unruly terrain of an abandoned world was challenging for grip and camera. “Polly always requested shooting wides first, to see all the terrain in its overgrown glory, then mediums,” Duran recounts. “By the time we shot up close with the actors, we had leveled out and widened a path to follow the chaos of the chase. We used Action Camera Cars out of New York City, driven by Dermott Trainor and mounted the Miniscope 7 over the center hub.” “For the running sequence right after Evelyn (Emily Blunt) triggers the wire-trap,” Moriarty recalls, “the Greens department had created several acres of clumpy, kneehigh grass for the actors to run through – not something you can drive a vehicle over. We ended up with the GripTrix on an adjacent gravel path and arming over the grass with the MiniScope to get the looser shots. But when it came time for the
closeups, the arm wasn’t long enough. So, I flipped the Steadicam around [backward] and ran with them in the brush. It developed a great camaraderie with the actors – much more than having them run, take after take, behind a vehicle, where they’re the only ones burning calories.” Gonchor’s art department had three sets built where significant action plays out. “Two settings were inherited from the first movie, which Jess built on stage,” Morgan relates. “There was the farmhouse basement and the underground safe room in the barn. Then there was a new underground room in a steel mill. We did wind up pulling walls frequently to get the camera in on a crane. That was the main difference from our smaller practical locations, where we’d minimize equipment or just use a slider.” When the safe room goes ablaze, Morgan used a mix of practical fire effects, Astera tubes, and SkyPanels. “I tested the flames, making sure I could expose it to capture all the color saturation on the negative and wouldn’t be clipping out the whites,” she reveals. “If the actual fire was big enough, we’d try using that with the actors in the frame, supplementing off-camera as needed.” Determining the look at night was a matter of discussion because as Morgan notes, "there is no source to speak of when you’re underground at night, so we used soft ambient light. We played with color temperatures, ranging between moonlight and firelight. There was the question of whether you’d see any practical lights at all – was the grid still up? – and so there are only a few visible since most would have burned out.” Shots planned to include the CG creatures were facilitated through the use of ‘Happy,’ a makeshift critter stand-in providing the operator with a reference when framing up shots. “ILM was a pleasure to work with,” Morgan continues. “They gave us tremendous freedom, and when we needed them, we’d put blue screens in a few times.” The DI, handled by Company 3 executive producer and DI colorist Stefan Sonnenfeld, was still pending at press time, but Morgan feels that the final look will mesh closely with what she achieved in-camera. “I think the color, warmth, and light all tie back to the first film, so it feels like one big complete story,” she concludes. “And that’s very appropriate because this is as much a family drama as a horror movie.”
LOCAL 600 CREW Director of Photography Polly Morgan, ASC, BSC A-Camera Operator Matthew Moriarty, SOC A-Camera 1st AC Steven Cueva A-Camera 2nd AC Katheryn Iuele B-Camera Operator Chris Duskin B-Camera 1st AC Haydn Pazanti B-Camera 2nd AC Robyn Bursey C-Camera Operator Doc Karman, SOC C-Camera 1st AC Donal Steinberg C-Camera 2nd AC Jay Hager Loader Josh Schnose Libra Head Technician John Bonnin DIT Luke Tayler Jason Bauer VFX Supervisor Scott Farrar, ASC Underwater Photography Pete Romano, ASC Still Photographers Jon Cournoyer Unit Publicist John Pisani
WATCH THE TRAILER
OPPOSITE PAGE TOP/BOTTOM: FOR THE SAFE HOUSE SETS PRODUCTION DESIGNER JESS GONCHOR CREATED, MORGAN SAYS "THERE IS NO [LIGHT] SOURCE TO SPEAK OF WHEN YOU’RE UNDERGROUND AT NIGHT... WE USED SOFT AMBIENT LIGHT AND PLAYED WITH COLOR TEMPERATURES, RANGING BETWEEN MOONLIGHT AND FIRELIGHT."
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PHOTO BY PETER KRAMER
Fearless Season two of NBC’s hit drama, Manifest, challenges viewers (and the production team) to soar outside their comfort zones. BY PAULINE ROGERS AND WILL HART /
“Manifest is a series that attempts to be both an intimate tale of relationships, dealing with the everyday struggles of contemporary life, as well as a fantastical science-fiction mystery,” explains producer Harvey Waldman. “We follow the lives of different people who have shared the same experience of having gotten on a normal airplane flight, only to discover, upon landing, that five and a half years have passed. But other than some strong turbulence, for those on-board, it was just an ordinary three-hour journey.” While the series is based in realism, elements often veer in different directions depending on the moments. Season
/ PHOTOS BY PETER KRAMER COURTESY OF NBCUNIVERSAL
One became a test run. Guild Director of Photography Tim Norman, who rotated Season One duties with Brad Smith – both men building the look of the template set by Tim Ives, ASC, in the pilot – says “[show creator] Jeff Rake often stressed that the environment should never feel too polished, or staged. It was a very effective approach in making the mysticism that connected the passengers all the more believable.” As Season One concluded, Rake and Executive Producer/Director Joe Chappelle decided to create a “look book” that would help define subsequent seasons. “Our goal
was to give the series a cinematic grandeur without ever losing sight of the emotional underpinnings that drove our character arcs,” Chappelle explains. The visual roadmap was shared with new, rotating cinematographers Sarah Cawley and John Inwood, who shoot Season Two using ALEXA Mini and Panavision lenses. “They each added to the visual vocabulary,” Chappelle continues. “For instance, before shooting the Season Two opener, we were looking for an interesting way to enhance ‘the callings [see below].’ Sarah brought a special camera lens [Lensbaby] that we tried out. Everyone liked the look, so it became part of our visual vocabulary for the rest of the season.”
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Inwood says the visual road map has scenes on short notice, they have their work helped the team approach each episode done. We have a fair amount of stunts and with clarity. “Joe talks about how we blend special effects, so working closely with those the classical well-framed compositions departments early is essential. We shoot that emphasize the dramatic, especially in with two cameras every day and sometimes the master shots, as well as coverage and even a third if there is a crane shot or limited medium shots,” Inwood shares. “We are daylight at a location.” also aiming for blending beautiful masters or static-wide shots with cuts into coverage that will be handheld with wider lenses close Operators Ryan Toussieng and Carlos to the subject or very long lenses in extreme Guerra have also helped in building the close-ups. We wanted to find unusual and complex schedules. Toussieng says that bold frames, like overhead Dutch angles “working alongside a seasoned operator” or extreme low angles through foreground like Guerra helped him “to better perform fences. And we’re always looking for ways my duties on a tandem day.” to show off New York City.” As Cawley adds: For Cawley, Episode 207 was pivotal to “The second season uses a much more this season’s dramatic arc. “It’s where the stylized approach to visuals.” Stone family is lured to a nightclub,” she As Chappelle noted, 'the callings' are describes. “There’s a huge fire, and the place m o m e n t s wh e n goes up in flames. characters slip into Our c h a ra c te r s a mental timeare lost inside and warp of memories desperate to get out. and horrific visions It’s a big episode for that, if not carefully lighting because we interpreted, can had three locations lead them onto a to look like one path of destruction. place.” With an eight-day After reading shooting schedule, the script, director often complicated Jean de Segonzac, multi-location production designer sh o t s , a n d at Ray Kluga, and least two days of Cawley teamed to tandem shooting, find a real nightclub it helps that the in Brooklyn. “The two directors of story starts with the JOHN INWOOD photography have club in full swing been friends for years and that each has an with moving lights and wall projection,” AD to smooth the way. Cawley recalls. “The fire spreads quickly Cawley’s 1st AD, Kelly Mahoney, says it’s throughout the club, and after being lost in all about preparation and logistics. the dark, smoky maze, the family exits onto “To make tandems successful, the AD the street just before the club explodes into team and the camera team have to work very a fireball behind them.” closely to make sure each unit has what they A duplicate set that would match need based on the day's work,” Mahoney the club was built on the burn stage. De explains. “Will both units need a Steadicam? Segonzac says safety was the uppermost Will both units be at the stage, or will one unit concern. “We were careful to make sure need the camera truck? If one unit is filming things didn’t fall from the ceiling, to better a ‘calling’ scene, and another is not, then we protect our stunt people,” he recounts. “We know where the Lensbaby needs to be on that needed a tremendous amount of smoke to day. If both units are filming a ‘calling,’ then make it look real. So, the set was built so that we know we need to order an extra Lensbaby. flames would go up to the ceiling [vented It’s always better to know these things as far with fans]. We had a smoke person blast it in advance as we can.” away for every scene – and a studio expert Rotating directors of photography who with a device to measure air quality to limit are in sync allow for a stronger prep, as the amount of atmosphere pumped into the Inwood’s 1st AD Jane Ferguson explains. set according to safety guidelines.” “In prep, both teams can make sure cast Cawley and gaffer Jeff Niggemeyer preavailability and storylines don’t intersect, scouted the location to establish a color so that we can concentrate on shooting,” she palette for the active club scenes before allows. “Many of our regular sets are on the the fire, and then an entirely different one sound stage, so for most episodes, we can for “emergency” mode. “The fire effects shoot about 50 percent there, allowing us had both LED lights and classic tungsten flexibility on locations. Early scripts allow in different areas, which blended well,” cast to be prepared, so if we have to shift Niggemeyer recalls. “The same for the
“We wanted to find unusual and bold frames, like overhead Dutch angles or extreme low angles through foreground fences. And we’re always looking for ways to show off New York City.”
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explosion. Then we had to replicate it exactly on the ‘burn stage’ and our actual sound stage, where different sets were built for the specialty shots involving fire and lighting effects. “For the exterior fire and explosions, we had lights on the roof, inside each window and out on the ground to help create the effect that the entire building was burning,” he continues. “That, along with police cars and fire trucks on the street and added police lighting effects, enhanced the look. There was a news article the next day about the shoot, because residents had called the police to report a building fire needing an emergency response! I guess that means we were on the right track.” Toussieng says the scene was one of the few times he and Guerra were handheld in Season Two. “ The characters are bobbing and weaving within this maze of a burning and collapsing building, and we were following along the entire time,” he remembers. “We coordinated falling debris with the passing of the cameras and actors, so everything was done practically, adding to the value of what we were shooting. It was all very safe.” Another key shot for Cawley’s team came in Episode 209, with a “calling” that revolves around a period pirate ship, built on-stage at Silvercup, with wind and rain effects. “The calling starts to take over the entire family,” Cawley explains. “It’s an ongoing hallucination in the form of a massive thunderstorm. We designed a series of camera moves that would provide an eerie feeling of sliding and tilting at the beginning of the episode. That feeling keeps building into rotating 360-degree camera moves, and disorientation takes hold. The hallucination culminates with the family transported to a Seventeenth-Century sailing vessel, at sea, at night. There were 270 degrees of bluescreen around the boat and a blue screen on the ceiling above. We did a Technocrane move around all four characters on the ship in the storm. It looked amazing, with SFX rain pouring into the shot as we looked down at the ship from above.” Niggemyer says the pirate set was lit mostly from above with ARRI SkyPanel S120 fixtures. “These lights were ideal for their spread and ability to do lighting effects,” he describes. “We set a base lighting and then added in different cues along with a bright warm glow at the end. All lights were on truss motors so we could raise or lower depending on the angle.” For Inwood, the “callings” are some of the most creative elements he has ever filmed. “They can appear in many ways,”
TOP IMAGE: OPERATOR RYAN TOUSSIENG (SHOOTING HANDHELD ON PLANE SET) SAYS THAT, "WORKING ALONGSIDE A SEASONED OPERATOR” LIKE CARLOS GUERRA HELPED HIM “TO BETTER PERFORM MY DUTIES ON A TANDEM DAY.” TOP/BOTTOM LEFT: PHOTOS BY WILL HART BOTTOM RIGHT: PHOTO BY PETER KRAMER
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he reveals. “Usually with the use of the Lensbaby, which softens the world around the subject, and sometimes with a violent shaking, which we created with the Clairmont Image Shaker mounted on the camera.” Season Two took the “callings” to a heightened level, with Inwood bringing in a Phantom high-speed camera system for one episode. “Michaela [Melissa Roxburgh] is walking down Queens Boulevard, beside the elevated subway, when, suddenly, she is hit with a surge of energy that slows the world way down,” Inwood explains. “We wanted to mount the Phantom onto the Steadicam, but due to its weight and cabling, that was impossible. So, instead, we cut in front of her with the Steadicam at 24 frames-per-second and pulled her dynamically around the corner, which helps sell the ‘calling’ when she comes to a sudden stop. “When we cut to her POV,” he continues, “everything is moving incredibly slowly. We chose actions she would naturally see on the street and accentuate the slow motion. Like a store owner hosing down his sidewalk, a little girl blowing bubbles, and the banner of the bank on the corner. Michaela feels the last image beckoning her to the bank, where there is a robbery about to take place, involving one of the passengers from Flight 828.” Inwood shot Michaela’s POV and her extreme close-ups at 1000 fps. As the team transitioned from the wide-angle 24-mm lens, normal-speed Steadicam walk, they cut to a long lens – 150 mm – at 1000 fps slow motion to strengthen the effect on the viewer. “Shooting 1000 frames-per-second,” Inwood adds, “means you can only shoot four seconds of footage at any one time with so much data. The camera is processing the shot in rolling four-second intervals so that as soon as you cut, you will only have the last four seconds. You need to watch your action carefully, and as soon as you get the perfect performance and action you want, you cut immediately.” Toussieng says another casualty of highframe-rate capture is the loss of depth-offield. “My first AC, Wesley Hodges, did an incredible job, especially knowing that he only had a tenth of an inch down to .02 of an inch to work with,” he states. “Wesley,
dolly grip Chris DesRochers, actress Melissa Roxburgh and I all had to be in sync, with no room for error. It was one of the most fun sequences to shoot this season.” “At 1000 frames-per-second, even with the sun shining clearly, it wasn’t enough level for John to be at the stop he needed,” adds Niggemeyer. “So we had an 18K HMI directly behind the camera and a 9K HMI PAR for fill. They shot these scenes on different corners and streets, so we used a van generator for power, which allowed us to quickly jump around to different shots with the same group of big lighting units.” One of the most dramatic scenes in Season Two takes place on the wreck of Flight 828, where each character reconciles his or her new normal in the form of snow falling. “Ben experiences it in his garage where he studies the lives of his fellow passengers,” Inwood describes. “He realizes that the snow is ash, and we flash cut to Ben in a dark world bathed in cyan blue light with the ash falling around him. We widen to see the wreck burnt and torn apart, covered with dead bodies, and all our characters are there standing in the aisles trying to understand what has happened.” Inwood and his team floated the camera on a MovieBird 45-foot telescoping crane. One shot, done at the tallest stage at Silvercup Studios, with a grid set at 35 feet, travels past the ribs of the wreck to reveal the entire plane and the other characters. Lighting came from four or five ARRI S120 SkyPanels with Chimeras for a soft source that was color programmable. “The angle was very specific, because of the rib beams of the plane and where the characters were placed,” Inwood explains. “On the other side, a smaller SkyPanel rig for fill – with the same cyan blue. Finally, we added a 10K backlight to edge the characters just a little and separate them from the inky black background.” Each episode of Manifest is a huge undertaking in logistics and new technology. It isn’t just a Lensbaby or Image Shaker, a Phantom camera, or a large crane. It’s also a device to measure air quality, and the tools 1st AD Kelly Mahoney uses to ensure safety. Lightning within New
York City is a real threat. Anything within six miles requires lifts and cranes to come down, and outside power to be shut off. “We are no longer surprised by lightning flashes, which require the crew to take shelter for 30 minutes,” Mahoney describes. “Everyone can track it with apps on their phone. We can pinpoint where the flash was, how close it was, and even in what direction the lightning is going. This past season that technology helped us decide that it was more efficient to shut down a night of shooting than to try and wait out the lightning storm – safety is always first.” Producer Waldman says the coming season of Manifest will challenge the show’s characters to “determine if these ‘encounters’” have scientific explanations yet to be uncovered or remain outside of what’s rational for some spiritual faith they must embrace. Lurking within the heart of this family drama are questions that are at the core of the human experience,” he concludes. “Viewers on the journey are also challenged to draw conclusions from the evidence presented.”
LOCAL 600 CREW SEASON 2 Directors of Photography Sarah Cawley John Inwood A-Camera Operator Carlos Guerra A-Camera 1st AC Andrew Peck A-Camera 2nd AC Tricia Mears B-Camera Operator Ryan Toussieng B-Camera 1st AC Wes Hodges B-Camera 2nd AC Kaih Wong Loaders Phil Thompson Will Fortune Still Photographers Peter Kramer Will Hart
WATCH S2 PREVIEW OPPOSITE PAGE TOP/BOTTOM: FOR A KEY SCENE IN EPISODE 207, WHERE MANIFEST CHARACTERS ARE CAUGHT IN A BURNING NIGHT CLUB, CAWLEY AND GAFFER JEFF NIGGEMEYER PRE-SCOUTED THE LOCATION TO ESTABLISH A COLOR PALETTE FOR THE ACTIVE CLUB SCENES BEFORE THE FIRE, AND THEN AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT ONE FOR “EMERGENCY” MODE. PHOTOS BY PETER KRAMER
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Set to One-Sheet
2
Seven years ago, ICG Magazine asked Local 600 Unit Still Photographers to share one magical image, captured on set, which journeyed through the corporate publicity machine to emerge as the key art/one-sheet for that project’s face in the global marketplace. And while much has changed in entertainment publicity since that eight-image gallery spread – social media now dominates the landscape, as do competing on-set smartphone cameras, electronic billboards, and a worldwide web not very patient with artistic intent – the power of a single image still retains its sway. It’s a product of one shining moment when Guild photographers (working in conjunction with Guild unit publicists) can successfully combine their talent, experience and physical access on set (which can often be limited). How that image then goes from a mirrorless (and silent) DSLR in a set photographer’s hand to a studio/network publicity executive, and then on to an agency to create memorable key art, is also an alchemic process – equal parts skill and professional intuition. The eight examples we lined up for our 2020 return to this world are infused with humanity and photographic composure; we hope the accompanying words, from Guild unit photographers and publicists, studio/network marketing executives, and creative directors help to pull back the curtain on this most ephemeral of journeys.
VICE
CHRISTIAN BALE AMY ADAMS STEVE CARELL SAM ROCKWELL
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Tobin Yelland
Mid90s / A24 Some of my favorite images happen between scenes, those moments when I don’t have a lot of time to plan, but I am ready with my camera and taking photos. [Art Director] Dawn Baillie, who designed the one-sheet, asked me to shoot images of the actors with lots of sky. I set up a time to shoot with First AD Scott Robertson and was able to get some good images. Sunny Suljic, the lead actor, was curious about how things looked through the fisheye lens, so I gave him my camera, and he got down on the ground and shot a few photos of the other actors. The image of Sunny that was used for the poster was shot a few minutes after we bonded, in between scenes, while Sunny and other actors were setting up. Sunny was on his skateboard and the shadow of the trees made for nice, cinematic lighting. It looked like Sunny wasn’t needed on set, so I seized the opportunity and asked him if I could shoot a quick photo. I only shot two frames, but it was all that was needed – they were both great shots.
Dawn Baillie Art Director BLT Communications
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I met Tobin on the set with [writer/director] Jonah Hill, and we talked about a wish-list of shots based on some of Jonah’s favorite 1990s skateboarding references. Tobin emailed back a few batches of glorious captures, and I then sent him the following email: “Everything is looking A M A Z I N G. The only thing is if you still have the fisheye, maybe a few more fisheye shots from the ground pop with lots of sky?” Tobin then sent back the last set of snaps, and the image we fell in love with was what became the poster. We extended the sky and moved some buildings for cropping. Otherwise, it was perfect.
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Aaron Epstein
Rim of the World / Netflix I loved shooting this movie. I had a huge amount of access to the actors and was always on the lookout for big moments. There was lots of action, but I wanted to capture the entire story in one frame. As we were losing the light at the end of a long day, we got to the scene where our heroes receive the all-important “key” that begins their journey. I got lots of good shots out of the scene, but the moment in the photo is of my own making as it’s not in the film. At the end of the scene, just before the light fell, I wrangled the actors and created the shot. Along with some VFX elements and a couple other shots of mine for background layers, it became the poster. The story in one frame.
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David James, SMPSP Chiabella James
Mission: Impossible – Fallout Paramount Pictures
“ There are a handful of shots during production that make for iconic stills, but there are a thousand other moments throughout the day, every day, that look like nothing special. To me, however, there’s a world of magic to be found if you’re looking from the right angle with a little imagination.” CHIABELLA JAMES
My shot of Tom [Cruise] hanging from the helicopter was combined with my daughter’s image taken at another time and location to create this key art. For my shot, we had to helicopter into the location, on South Island, New Zealand, and I was on a very long lens because the stuntman and a cable guy were already inside the helicopter, and they didn’t even allow the stunt guy to take an extra battery for his radio due to the allowable weight! I picked the highest hilltop I could find, which was much more dramatic than if I had been inside the helicopter. Being on the hill also allowed me to get some background of New Zealand and not just an unidentifiable sky. You just know when a frame has a great chance of becoming key art, as I did with this one. It’s an instinct that comes from the days when you had 12 shots on a roll of film, and you had to pick your moment. It also helps to work with an actor like Tom Cruise. On Edge of Tomorrow, the image for the key art was a shot where Tom is running toward camera away from a fiery explosion. Before they began shooting, Tom said, “Wait, hold up. Where’s David James? I can’t see him – is he here?” I was lying face-down in the mud to get a very low angle and said, “Here I am, Tom! Down here!”
This poster is one of many my father and I have shot as a team. David’s shot of Tom hanging from the helicopter is framed by an opaque, almost silhouette of Tom taken from a unit still I shot during a sequence filmed in Paris. It wasn’t a mind-blowing still on its own; but used the right way, it takes on a whole new context. There are a handful of shots during production that make for iconic stills, but there are a thousand other moments throughout the day, every day, that look like nothing special. To me, however, there’s a world of magic to be found if you’re looking from the right angle with a little imagination. There’s so much the creative teams can do with stills these days, and I look at each shot as part of a bigger picture. A face, an action, a prop. This art is special to me not only because it’s a “Stills Team James” poster, but also because the two images on this poster came from such contrasting versions of what we do from one day to the next.
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Michele K. Short
Quarry / HBO Unit photography is not a solo effort. The best, most fulfilling work comes with not only the support of filmmakers, cast and crew, but from inspiration and collaboration with your photo editors and publicists. From day one of shooting on the limited series Quarry, my photo editor, Justin D’Amico, shared the exciting challenge that the network was interested in getting the show’s key art from unit coverage. Justin, in concert with ideas that had come through the Cinemax marketing team, suggested several possible themes, motifs, and tones for inspiration. So every day on set I kept my eyes peeled and my mind open for opportunities to capture candid shots or create moments that could illustrate the themes, one of which was water. We were halfway through a week’s shooting at a small-town motel in Southern Louisiana, when, between scenes, I noticed some of our grips and lighting techs setting up for an upcoming scene by the pool. I was immediately struck by their reflections in the water and ran over to ask lead actor Logan Marshall-Green if he would come with me to the pool to shoot a few quick shots, and he generously obliged.
Justin D’Amico Senior Photo Producer HBO Michele was heavily engaged with the storyline for Quarry from the beginning and immediately grasped the tone that [showrunner] Greg Yaitanes wanted, which allowed her unmitigated access to talent and support from the crew. Water is a recurring theme in a show about an aspiring professional swimmer who becomes a reluctant hitman after his tour of duty in Vietnam. Our marketing team created multiple key art exploration decks that focused on pairing Logan Marshall-Green in/out or near pools or bodies of water. I shared all the sketches with Michele, so that when she was scheduled to work on a set that involved Logan around water, she could keep an eye out for a pull-aside opportunity. The key art shot happened when production was shooting at a run-down motel in Erath, Louisiana, where Logan’s character was hiding out. It was taken between scenes when there was some downtime for Logan and Michele. She
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asked him to stand by the swimming pool and got a full shot with his reflection in the water. The scene work did not call for Logan to have a gun – that was Michele’s note to Logan to go and grab one of the gun props to hold by his side. Having the gun included was a smart way to tie the hitman/swimmer together, and it was a nearly perfect shot except for the dirty water. The motel pool was dressed to look neglected and murky, so we had Michele shoot several plates of another pool, used by the characters in other scenes. With Logan’s reflection seen clearly, we could focus on his reflection only, and cut out background elements that would distract from the theme. Our marketing teams explored a wealth of other concepts, but none captured the tone as succinctly as the brief moment Michele thought to grab a pull-away between scenes and ask the actor to pick up a prop. If only all key art shoots came together this easily!
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Justin Lubin, SMPSP
Annabelle Comes Home / Warner Bros. After reading the script and seeing some of the concepts, I immediately knew what the main elements were that would be needed for possible key art. During that day on set, I would set up a seamless backdrop wherever I could find room. As actors were not being used, I would talk with our publicist, James Ferrera, who would help wrangle them to do some shots. We had the best cast and crew, and they were always game to help me out. Something fun for me, and that you don’t see as much anymore, were the practical monsters made up by some of the best in the business. I was thrilled to make sure the studio had the assets needed to assemble what would be one of my favorite pieces of key art.
James Ferrera Unit Publicist Annabelle Comes Home was an incredibly busy set for unit publicity. In addition to hosting more than forty domestic and international journalists, we had EPK on set nearly every day; a multitude of on-camera interviews, consumer products, and executive set visits; real-life counterpart set visits; plus a very tricky set blessing to coordinate. When the request came in to try to do pull-away shots as time permits, I helped Justin to navigate the requests of the studio photo department to minimize the impact on production, while still achieving all the marketing elements the studio needed. Working on a Conjuring Universe film is a family affair, not just in the feeling on set among the cast and the crew but also literally, with family members of cast, crew, and filmmakers visiting the set or performing in front of the camera! One of my favorite shots from Justin’s setup that made the one-sheet is that of our production designer dressed as a “coin corpse.” In addition to Justin’s superlative unit photography, which was also integrated into the final artwork, the bonus of having a pop-up photo studio on set gave the marketing and advertising departments a cornucopia of indelible images with which to work, and that is clear in the final one-sheet that uses so many of Justin’s iconic shots.
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Nicole Wilder
American Crime / ABC Television When I heard that American Crime would be moving to Los Angeles from Texas, I immediately contacted ABC to ask to be considered as a unit photographer. I was a huge fan of the first two seasons; I knew about [show creator] John Ridley and his having won an Oscar for the screenplay for 12 Years A Slave, and I thought it would be a fantastic opportunity to be a small part of what he was creating for Season Three. Getting to photograph cast members like Regina King, Lili Taylor, Felicity Huffman, and Timothy Hutton – all actors whose work I had long admired but never had a chance to work with – was also a dream. By the end of the shoot, I also had developed a rapport with a younger actor, Benito Martinez. We spoke Spanish on set, and he was up for any extra photos I needed. The image used for the key art was the last of some 10 photos I took at the end of a long day, out in the tomato fields in Camarillo. I knew the daylight was fading, so I asked (in Spanish) if I could grab some images before [the light] ran out. As always, Benito happily obliged, and it was from this spontaneous, lastminute shoot that the show’s key art photo emerged. I have photographed Benito since American Crime [on How To Get Away With Murder], and it feels like two old friends talking in Spanish together.
“It was from this spontaneous, last-minute shoot that the show’s key art photo emerged.”
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Matt Kennedy, SMPSP
Vice / Annapurna Pictures Christian Bale is one of my top three favorite actors to photograph. Not only is he a true master at his craft, but he is also a pleasure to watch in action. For his role as Dick Cheney in Vice, he was in character almost all of the time – some days I would even forget that I was photographing Christian! This image was captured between takes in one of the many scenes where Cheney is flexing his political power. It looked like Christian was deep in character and calculating what Cheney would say or do next – or maybe he was just thinking about lunch? Regardless of what he was pondering, Christian’s such a confident actor, and the peacefulness of him sitting there really grabbed me. Having a front-row seat to the genius of [writer/director] Adam McKay, Bale, and the rest of the Vice cast is something I will never forget.
Spooky Stevens Unit Publicist If you were to go through Matt Kennedy’s résumé and look at images from all of his work, you would see that his eye is constantly roving over the set, catching as many terrific behind-the-scenes images as scene stills. As a partner in crime, he is a wonder. There is never a time that I arrive on the set that he doesn’t have something interesting to relate about what occurred in my absence. Often, I’m able to ask the cast, filmmakers or crew to elucidate on these tidbits, and they end up in the production notes. Oh, and did I mention how hard he can make me laugh?
“As a partner in crime, [Kennedy] is a wonder. There is never a time that I arrive on the set that he doesn’t have something interesting to relate about what occurred in my absence.”
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Dale Robinette Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made / Disney+ Imagine an enormous whitish creature on camera gallantly trying to keep step with our hero, Timmy Failure, as he rides a Segway down the street. The creature, our CGI reference bear, was, in fact, a very large man (Michael Adamthwaite) who walked on all fours with the aid of forearm crutches. He was draped with a white rug/carpet and was not visible, save for the fake bear head, the tips of his crutches, and his Under Armour sneakers. On director Tom McCarthy’s “cut,” Mike magically appeared from beneath the faux fur, sweating and in need of H2O. The image I shot on set had no bear/man in frame, as it was physically impossible for Mike to keep up with Timmy’s Segway (and we had no second team if the man/bear passed out). The cameras were still rolling after cut, as the CGI circus rolled in: two performers – one with a middle-grey sphere, the other with a shiny chrome middle-school-sized globe – who circled our set. A quick color chart, and then the finale: a winsome young woman pirouetting about with a real polar bear rug. She fluffed it out for DP Masanobu Takayanagi’s lighting arrangements. I was told she owned the rug, and no one else touched it for the eight weeks of shooting! After this memorable day, the CGI geniuses summoned their creative forces, and the result was pure Disney magic.
Erin Felentzer Unit Publicist “Uncle Dale” as he is affectionately known, was a true joy to work with. Not only is he an amazing photographer on set, but he entertained the child actors in between takes helping our lead, Winston Fegley, with his magic tricks. Having to work with a large CGI reference bear could prove difficult for some photographers, but not a seasoned professional like Dale. He even made the shots for social media a work of art!
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STORIES FROM RURAL, URBAN AND SUBURBAN AMERICA HIGHLIGHT SUNDANCE 2020’S PRESTIGIOUS U.S. DRAMATIC COMPETITION, WITH GUILD CAMERA TEAMS WORKING ALL OVER THE MAP. BY DAVID GEFFNER
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“This community in Baltimore is special and unique and has not had a lot of exposure [in movies or television],” describes Charm City Kings Director of Photography Katelin Arizmendi. “Authenticity was our guiding light, and we didn’t want to stray too far from that approach. [Director] Angel [Manuel Soto] and I had never met, and Baltimore was an unknown as well; so, in many ways, this was a journey of discovery into this amazing and fresh new place.” Discovering new American worlds is what Charm City Kings – a story about 13-year-old “Mouse” (Jahi Di’Allo Winston), who along with his two friends, “Sweartagawd” (Kezii Curtis) and Lamont (Donielle T. Hansley Jr.), work their way into Baltimore’s dirt-bike culture – shares with two other Guild-shot and -crewed U.S. Dramatic Competition films at Sundance 2020, Minari (Director of Photography Lachlan Milne) and BLAST BEAT (shot by Ed Wu). All are inspired by real-life tales, but only Charm City Kings had a template to draw from: 12 O’Clock Boys, a feature documentary that premiered at SXSW in 2013 and offered a dynamic view into a subculture little known outside of Baltimore in which neighbors gather on summer Sundays watching dirtbikers pull “wheelies” for blocks at a time. Arizmendi, making her Sundance feature debut, says that while accurately depicting this world was key, “[Soto and I] also wanted the film to feel big and exciting. There were budget constraints, but we were very targeted about when we had a Technocrane or could do extended Steadicam takes. We shot ALEXA XT and MINI, with Panavision lenses, and tried for fluidity with the camera that would echo the thrill and freedom these characters feel on the bikes.” Challenges (and some thrills) abounded for Arizmendi and her Local 600 team, which included her longtime A-Camera operator Stew Cantrell, SOC; B-Camera operator Janice Min, A-Camera 1st AC Ian Axilrod, A-Camera 2nd AC Mike Panczenko Jr., B-Camera 1st AC Chevy Anderson, B-Camera 2nd AC Aidan Gray, DIT John Vallon, and Unit Still Photographer William Gray. Not the least of which was the fact that the juvenile actors were not allowed to ride dirt bikes, let alone attempt some of the trick-riding seen in the film. “We did a lot of Texas switches,” Arizmendi reveals. “We’d show Mouse or his friends getting on the bike, putting their helmets on, with the camera then moving past them to pick up another rider, before racking around back to our subject, who is now a stunt double. Without going for those kinds of [oners] where the camera is moving from character to character, as well as revealing the world around them, the film would be choppy and lacking energy.
THIS PAGE AND LEFT: ON LOCATION IN BALTIMORE FOR CHARM CIT Y KINGS / PHOTOS BY WILLIAM GRAY
Our longest ‘oner’ is the first Sunday ‘ride,’ where Mouse, against the orders of his [single] mother, goes to see what this world [in which his deceased older brother, Stroh, was a key player] is all about.” As Arizmendi describes, Mouse idolized his older brother and is awed as he comes upon “The Ride” for the first time. A sound of a passing dirt bike would motivate Mouse to turn and the camera would then follow, before picking Mouse up somewhere else. “It’s all choreographed and rehearsed,” Arizmendi shares, “but the camera movements are not perfect, and we pan off of Mouse a lot so it feels subjective – we’re also caught up in all the noise and excitement.” Currently prepping to shoot Rachel Morrison, ASC’s feature directing debut, Arizmendi says Charm City Kings was also challenged to achieve a balance between including Baltimore’s legendary real-life
riders, i.e. “Wheelie Wayne” and “Dirtbike Manny,” and using professional stunt riders. “You have some people saying there would be less liability if we use actors,” she recalls. “And Angel and me saying that these guys have more experience doing this kind of riding, on urban streets, in traffic, than anyone, anywhere. Quite honestly, we made this movie for those [dirt bikers in] Baltimore. If that community was stoked, we’d done our jobs.” Safety, particularly on a low-budget feature with fast-moving vehicles, was also a key part of the Local 600 camera team’s job, and Arizmendi praises First AD Rob Burgess (Legion, Animal Kingdom) and Stunt Coordinator Kevin Rogers (a longtime stunt rider/driver whose recent coordinator credits include another Sundance 2020 feature, The Glorias) for their knowledge and experience. “It’s interesting,” she continues, “because I put a clip of our Russian Arm
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DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY KATELIN ARIZMENDI SAYS CHARM CIT Y KINGS USED A BLEND OF LEGENDARY REAL-LIFE RIDERS, LIKE “WHEELIE WAYNE” AND “DIRTBIKE MANNY,” ALONGSIDE PROFESSIONAL STUNT RIDERS. PHOTO BY WILLIAM GRAY
team following about eight real Baltimore riders doing extended wheelies, on a closed freeway, on my social media feed, and I got comments back that it looked unsafe. In fact, all of the Russian Arm team was totally comfortable with everything we did. As for the riders, this movie was the least extreme riding they’d ever done on a bike. They actually scaled it way back for safety.” From Baltimore’s urban biker culture to 1980’s rural Arkansas, Minari, shot by Lachlan Milne, ACS, NZCS, won both the U.S. Dramatic Competition Grand Prize and Audience Award for its poignant dramatization of a Korean-American family working toward the American Dream. When Jacob Yi (Steven Yeun) relocates his wife, Monica (Yeri Han), and children, Anne (Noel Cho) and David (Alan Kim), from California to a patch of unworked Arkansas farmland, with only a run-down trailer on cinder blocks for a home, things do not look promising. As the family struggles to integrate with the locals, including Jacob’s Bible-quoting farmhand, Paul (Will Patton), Monica’s mother, Soonja (Yuh-Jung Youn) moves into the trailer (from her native South Korea), injecting even more surprises. David, whose priceless reactions to the grandmother he has never known, as well as calamitous events to Jacob’s fledgling farm, help to create a funny, tender film, wellserved by the understated cinematography. Milne, who worked on Netflix’s hit
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series Stranger Things, heard of the project, shepherded by Plan B Productions and A24 Releasing, while he was on set in Queensland [Australia] on the final day of Paramount’s big-budget Monster Problems. “I did something I’ve never done before,” Milne recalls. “I asked to stop shooting to take a phone call from my agent! My phone just kept ringing, so I knew something was up.” What was up was Lee Isaac Chung’s autobiographical script that Milne rushed back to L.A. to read. “My first conversation with a director is always the most important, as you can tell if there is a shared vision and you’ll get on together,” he continues. “Issac and I both love single-camera films with minimal coverage and letting shots play wide for the sake of the performance. This was his story, and he had a clear idea of what he wanted, but he wasn’t married to the execution. He wanted his department heads to bring a lot to the table, and, for me, those are the best kinds of directors to go into battle with.” “Battle” included a 25-day schedule, all real locations, and a house trailer that was used for both interiors and exteriors, the latter of which Milne assumed would be built on a stage but was practical. Using Panavision’s PVintage lenses, and shooting spherically in a 2.39 aspect ratio, allowed Milne to go wider inside the trailer and not feel visually closed in. “I wanted the 2.39 for all the great landscapes,” he shares. “But I also needed a faster [spherical] lens for the night work and the practical lighting inside
the trailer. Most of the film lived on the 29-millimeter [PVintage spherical prime], as it didn’t distort faces when they came close to camera, and also didn’t soften out when we had a deeper frame.” Minari shot in mid-summer, in Oklahoma, with light that Milne calls “toppy” and not flattering. “We wanted the landscape work to feel a bit overwhelming, particularly with Jacob and his son,” he continues. “I didn’t use anything to diffuse the sunlight and applied a look-up table that took out a lot of the saturation, overexposing some of the exteriors about half-a-stop to look even more overbearing and harsh. These people are like fish out of water with an almost insurmountable task before them.” That might well have applied to Minari’s production team. Milne says there were “many situations, where I really didn’t know if we could pull the scene off. A picture car would have two flat tires, or we were doing a car rig as the sun is setting and the light’s running out.” He recalls the push-bike Kim’s character had to ride arrived with a seat that was too high for the actor to touch the pedals. “It was rusted tight and could not be changed, and there was only 20 minutes to get the scene,” Milne explains. “We were like: ‘let’s pull the front wheel off, find a flatbed trailer, make a quick bungy rig and tow it all on the back of a quad bike.’ We shot another scene, to make up some time, and when the rig was done, we did ‘poor man’s process’ for the bike shot. Little moments
TOP: DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAHY LACHLAN MILNE DIDN'T DIFFUSE OR CUT THE HARSH "TOPPY" SUNLIGHT OF THE OKLAHOMA SUMMER TO BETTER CONVEY THE CHALLENGES THE LAND PRESENTED TO THE CHARACTERS, AS IN THIS SCENE WITH JACOB LI (STEVEN YEUN) AND HIS SON, DAVID (ALAN KIM). PHOTO COURTESY OF SUNDANCE INSTITUTE BOTTOM: MILNE (PICTURED) SAYS THE DAYS WERE SO LONG IN JUNE/ JULY "WE COULD ONLY BUDGET FOR 10 HOURS, WHICH MEANT GETTING ANYTHING IN A NICE LIGHT WOULD HAVE TO BE SUNRISE OR SUNSET." PHOTO COURTESY OF LACHLAN MILNE
like that will in no way translate to the audience’s experience of the movie. But they are supremely satisfying, because you know you pulled a rabbit out of a hat and got away with it.” Milne’s favorite moment was a similarly fortunate improvisation, with Jacob smoking a cigarette at sunset in the field that represents all his hopes and dreams. “We were waiting for it to get dark for some night scenes,” Milne concludes. “The days were so long in June/July that we could only budget for 10 hours, which meant getting anything in a nice light would have to be sunrise or sunset. I was shooting B-roll and I saw Steven in his wardrobe smoking. So, I ran over and shot a few close and wide, available-light shots and that made it into the film. It was so simple, and lucky, really, and yet said so much.” BLAST BEAT, directed by Esteban Arango and shot by Guild Director of Photography Ed Wu (with a Local 600 camera team that included Steadicam Operator Chris Smith, 1st AC Will Culick, 2nd AC Trisha Solyn, DIT Johnny Revolt, and Still Photographer Brian Douglas), also had a lot to say in terms of outsiders searching for the American Dream. The opening twenty minutes introduces Mateo and Carly, teenage brothers living in Bogota, Colombia, who are poised to escape the kidnappings terrorizing upper-middle-class residents of the city in the late 1990s, by joining their
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father in suburban Atlanta, GA. Played by real-life brothers (and Disney Channel actors) Mateo and Moises Arias, they are a study in contrasts. Carly (Mateo Arias) loves heavy metal music and is a high-achieving engineering student who wants to one day work for NASA; Mateo (Moises Arias) is a skateboard-riding troublemaker, who wallows in low self-esteem spurred on by his family’s praise for Carly. Wu and Arango, good friends off the set who originated BLAST BEAT four years ago as a short, chose to embrace the visual imperfections of Lomo’s Round Front anamorphic lenses (layered with black pro mist 1/4 and gold diffusion). The goal, as Wu describes, was to create a “soft, dream-like quality that recalls the idyllic mindset we have when we’re growing up.” The Lomo’s optical messiness is established early on in Bogota, in a roof-top scene in which Carly tells his girlfriend not to visit him in the U.S. “There are a series of straight-on looking-into-the-lens shots when Carly is looking at Mafe at the metal concert,” Wu recounts. “You feel this energy in them of a youth that you know will never last in their relationship. The lenses and the flares of the Lomos conveyed that.” Wu typically lit with a combination of 1/2 CTS + 1/4 Green on Tungsten units, aiming for a 4300K white balance. But camera settings on the rooftop scene, where Carly’s girlfriend has arranged for a heavy metal concert, were not dialed in correctly. “When [I saw the scene] on the monitor, it was way warmer than I would have tried pushing it. But it looked so right,” Wu remembers. “The dailies were made with that look, and I got used to the extreme warmth. In the DI, my colorist, Alastor Arnold at Fotokem, put on the LUT for the show, and it wasn’t anywhere near the dailies. I realized that [the rooftop scene] was a happy accident, and narratively it made so much sense to be
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DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY ED WU (BOTTOM WITH DIRECTOR ESTEBAN ARANGO) SAYS THE CAMERA SETTINGS FOR A KEY HEAVY METAL CONCERT SCENE ON A ROOFTOP (ABOVE LEFT AND RIGHT) WERE NOT DIALED IN CORRECTLY. “WHEN [I SAW THE SCENE] ON THE MONITOR, IT WAS WAY WARMER THAN I WOULD HAVE TRIED PUSHING IT," WU REMEMBERS. BUT IT LOOKED SO RIGHT...WE MAINTAINED THE LOOK [FOR THAT SCENE] THROUGH DAILIES AND INTO THE DI." PHOTOS COURTESY OF ED WU
this warm because we wanted to set up the rich culture in Bogota and the raw emotion Carly has with his metal music.” Having two characters with divergent goals and personalities also provided the freedom for contrasting visual styles. As Wu continues: “Carly is meticulous and organized, so we tried to be fluid or stable when shooting him, with flowing Steadicam moves or composed dolly moves. Mateo is all raw energy that needs to be unleashed. He feels he’s being repressed much more than anyone else in the family because he doesn’t want to move to America – he sees the worst in a lot of situations.” Consequently, the approach with Mateo was more dutch angles and handheld camera movement, “where we’re reacting off of Moises’ acting,” Wu adds. “The angles get more extreme, either going low canted or upside down. At the same time, both brothers are trying
to adapt to America, so we played into that mutual isolation and the shared barrier to acclimation with short-sided frames – it’s visually unsettling when characters are placed into unnatural parts of the frame.” If the Colombian family in BLAST BEAT (the name refers to a drumbeat often associated with extreme metal music) find their dreams elusive and fragile, Wu has no such problem. It’s always a special feeling when any movie that you work on gets to play at a premier festival, but Sundance is the crème de la crème,” he concludes. “I was lucky enough to have the first feature I ever shot, Sleight, premiere in Sundance’s NEXT category in 2016, and a short, The Blazing World, here in 2017. To have a film in the Dramatic Competition [so soon after Sleight] was only a dream when I first started shooting movies, and now it’s become a reality.”
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BAD HAIR / PHOTO COURTESY OF TOPHER OSBORN
PERSONAL STORYTELLING AND CREATIVITY TEAM UP AGAINST DARKNESS IN SUNDANCE 2020’S ALWAYS EDGY MIDNIGHT SECTION. BY ELLE SCHNEIDER
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RUN SWEETHEART, RUN DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY BARTOSZ NALAZEK SAYS THAT WITH THE DOZENS OF L.A. LOCATIONS ON THE SCHEDULE, ALL SHOT AT NIGHT, "IT WAS ALWAYS A CHALLENGE TO FINISH BEFORE THE SUN CAME OUT.” PHOTO COURTESY OF SUNDANCE INSTITUTE
The Midnight section at the Sundance Film Festival has always been an eclectic mix of adrenaline-pumping and heartpounding fun, with an impressive past roster of films that include Delicatessen, But I’m a Cheerleader, Haute Tension, Saw, The Descent, Old Boy, It Follows, The Babadook, What We Do In The Shadows, and A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night. Nearly as old as the festival itself (the section celebrated its 30th iteration in 2020), the category was first presented as “a special showcase of the most challenging but rewarding film experiences from around the world brought to you at the most arduous hour.” Mostly horror films, Midnight titles often draw from real-life fears and anxieties to craft narratives that often resonate with audiences for years to come. Bartosz Nalazek, who shot the 2020 Midnight selection Run Sweetheart, Run for Sundance alumna Shana Feste (The Greatest, 2009), says it’s important the story is always personal, regardless of the genre. He cites Bong Joon-Ho’s Oscar-acceptance speech, which quoted Martin Scorsese as saying, “More personal means more creative.” Feste, a survivor of sexual assault who used her personal experience of a harrowing blind date gone bad as a jumping-off point for the story, agrees, noting that, “I always need a personal way into each film, or I can’t tell the story.” Run Sweetheart, Run centers on Cherie (Ella Balinska), a single mother hesitant to step back into the dating game. Her boss sets her up on a blind date that becomes a night from hell, culminating in a demon chasing her through Los Angeles. Nalazek says the complexity of the scenes was often demanding. “Chasing night was
a big part of it,” he recalls, “as every day was a challenge to try to finish the work before the sun came out.” Nalazek used an ALEXA Mini for its portability and maneuverability. He used Leica Summilux lenses, bright enough to compensate for the semi-controllable lighting environment of the L.A. streets, which could only be somewhat supplemented by film lights. The Summiulx’s uniform weight across the set also helped save time when changing lenses on the Ronin 2. When breaking down the script with Feste, it was clear to Nalazek that constant movement would be integral to the visual style, and he determined early on that using a small camera and gimbal (when they weren’t on a crane or motorcycle) were the best tools. What bonded Feste and Nalazek in prep was a desire to make the personal nature of the story front and center by staying physically close to Cherie and telling the story from her subjective perspective. “We wanted [it to be] a bit more intimate,” Nalazek adds. Using wide lenses up close allowed him and his operators to be more “inside the action” with the genre itself, lending to visual experimentation in color and lensing. Hence, the dozens of L.A. locations were divided into male and female spaces (denoted by green and red palettes), with some places saturated, others not, some more flat and sodium-lit, and others more vibrant. “We talked a lot about what safe locations would feel like,” explains Feste, who liked the idea of reclaiming red as a color for the feminine locations, i.e., a scene set entirely in a crimson-drenched Korean
Spa. The L.A. native adds that “for a woman, I think it’s lovely to go from feeling like you need to cover yourself up and not be seen to being naked.” Since many Korean Spas are open 24 hours, that seemed like the obvious place for Cherie to seek refuge and gather strength in the middle of the night. “In genre movies, the visuals are another character,” she adds. And the horror genre offered Feste the freedom to experiment beyond the naturalistic approach she’d taken on previous films. “Working with color and costumes, production design and lighting, I just felt like you could be more extreme. You could take bigger risks in genre that I hadn’t taken before.” Creative framing and focus was one such technique important to the tone of the story, with Cherie often positioned at the bottom or side of a frame. “She almost looks inconsequential,” Feste notes, “especially in a big wide shot with L.A. looking large and scary at night.” The director says she and Nalazek “relegated Cherie to spaces your protagonist wouldn’t normally take up. There are shots where she’s not even in focus, because she’s not being heard or listened to, or she isn’t being believed, and we have background people walking in front of her, which you would normally never do,” Feste adds. “It was interesting to think about power and when she had it, when she doesn’t have it, and what that looks like when she reclaims it. By the end of the movie, she takes control of the camera and we’re shooting her from a low angle, and she’s center of the frame. I loved learning how much power you can give to a character by just letting the cinematographer run free with his or her toolbox.”
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BAD HAIR DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY TOPHER OSBORN SAYS DIRECTOR JUSTIN SIMIEN IS VERY SPECIFIC, “IN TERMS OF HOW HE WANTS THE SHOT AND THE LENS COMPRESSION TO FEEL...SO I’M OFTEN LOOKING TO ENHANCE THE STORY WITH LIGHTING.” PHOTO COURTESY OF SUNDANCE INSTITUTE
A creative photographic toolbox also played into the visual style for Bad Hair, a satire set in 1989 that blurs the line between horror and kitsch. Shot on 16mm film, Director of Photography Topher Osborn chose to leave dirt, hair, and other imperfections in the scans, adding grit to a story about an ambitious young woman (Lena Waithe) who gets a weave to succeed in the imageobsessed world of music television. Osborn and director Justin Simien have worked together since the 2014 Sundance smashhit feature Dear White People (and the pair re-teamed for the Netflix series of the same name). The men have a visual shorthand that helps them move quickly while still experimenting. “Justin is one of the most specific directors I’ve ever worked with in terms of how he wants the shot and the lens compression to feel,” Osborn describes. “His vision is very camera focused, so I’m often looking to enhance the story with lighting.” The party-color palette of Bad Hair feels at home in the polished, Machiavellian
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television station where much of the action takes place. “We were trying to lean into a bit of an eighties camp feel, like, I’m not going to say Suspiria was a reference, but it was a film that came up,” Osborn adds. Other references included Rosemary’s Baby and John Frankenheimer’s Seconds, shot by James Wong Howe, ASC. “That film was something we would commonly refer back to when designing scene coverage,” Osborn states. “We both strive to shoot scenes with as little coverage as possible unless the story dictates otherwise. It’s a visual aesthetic we share, and it also felt right for what turned out to be a brisk shooting schedule.” Simien’s “signature style” includes experimenting with wide-angle lenses on close-ups (in this case with ARRI/Zeiss Ultra 16s), short siding, headroom, and challenging angles. Or as Osborn shares: “Justin is very fond of finding a frame he hasn’t seen before. He’ll ask, ‘What’s the widest lens we have?’ And we’ll end up shooting on a 14mm prime.”
Where Run Sweetheart, Run found creative challenges in exterior locations, Bad Hair found them in interiors. Locations, initially chosen for their period texture, included a cramped Koreatown apartment, a 5-foot-by-5-foot dressing room, and a 10thfloor office at LA Center Studios, where no rigging was allowed, and lights couldn’t be positioned outside. Osborn says they had to “embrace a lot of the fluorescent practicals, which ended up looking great. But that’s not an idea we had in pre-production,” he laughs. Osborn, who says creative problem solving is at the heart of all indie projects, describes himself as a “100 percent fan of working within limitations. I think you end up coming up with ideas that you just wouldn’t have when working inside of a vacuum.” The choice to shoot on film was a challenge in its own right – when Osborn pitched the idea of shooting on 16mm at the first meeting for the project, Simien loved the idea. “And then he stuck with it,” Osborn notes. “Every time format came up, he would
SIMIEN (FIFTH FROM LEFT IN HAT) AND OSBORN (THIRD FROM RIGHT WITH GLASSES) MADE THEIR SUNDANCE DEBUT TOGETHER IN 2014 WITH THE INDIE FEATURE DEAR WHITE PEOPLE, WHICH WENT ON TO BECOME A NETFLIX SERIES. PHOTO COURTESY OF SUNDANCE INSTITUTE
just say, ‘We’re shooting on 16. We’re going to have to figure it out.’” The film was scanned at the end of every day at Fotokem, bypassing telecine entirely. “Watching dailies the next day and seeing it on 16mm always just felt kind of magical,” Osborn reflects. Probably the most challenging part of shooting on film was the balancing of detail and shadows. “We wanted a dark look, but we also wanted our female talent to look their best, and it was important to Justin and me that we preserved some rich skin tones,” Osborn continues. “With a healthy negative, and the amazing work of [colorist] Andrea Chlebak, we managed to hit a balance that we were very happy with.” On-set special effects play a big part in Bad Hair, as the perfect hairdos the female characters are pressured into adopting turn out to be anything but. While it was a debate whether shooting on film would make the hair effects harder or easier, the team ultimately saw that the graininess of 16mm helped sell the practical nature of the SFX.
“We tried to do as much of the hair stuff in-camera as we possibly could, going back to that late-eighties aesthetic,” Osborn recalls. “And we also knew that the limitation of achieving the effect incamera would probably play to our goals. You can create moving hair in post, no problem, but it’s going to look a little bit too perfect.” Using fans and other tricks to create the hair’s movement on set was a fun experience. “We couldn’t do exactly what we wanted or exactly what we originally had in mind, but we always came up with something just as good, if not better,” Osborn remembers. Collaboration was the key to success on both Midnight projects, which shot on short schedules and limited budgets. Feste notes that communicating and clarifying the female experience visually to a male cinematographer was interesting. “I told [Nalazek] early on that this isn’t an area where you’re going to be an expert,” she recounts. “Just listen with your heart, and
we’ll tell you the feelings that [the female department heads and I] want to capture. And you’re going to help us capture them. Bartosz really did act like an ally.” For Nalazek, being personally engaged and empathetic towards new points of view is something that gets him excited about filmmaking. “It was inspiring to dive into her perspective and also into the perspective of female oppression,” he explains. “The ride that we’re having in this movie is subjective. And I’m happy that storytelling format allowed me to be bold with certain choices. I suppose that in the madness of achieving the impossible, I found creative freedom.” What both Midnight projects also shared was the excitement and delight of a Sundance premiere. “Sundance is a place where people are hungry for cinema and new ways to tell a story,” Nalazek, a Park City first-timer, concludes. “To experience such a celebration of cinema is an amazing opportunity to remind ourselves why we’re doing this.”
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PHOTO BY LYNN GOLDSMITH / COURTESY OF SUNDANCE INSTITUTE
GUILD CINEMATOGRAPHER SAM PAINTER AND DIRECTOR ALISON ELLWOOD RETEAM FOR ANOTHER SENSATIONAL MUSIC DOCUMENTARY PREMIERE AT SUNDANCE. BY DAVID GEFFNER
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Local 600 Director of Photography Sam Painter, who has an illustrious documentary career, including several prominent Sundance premieres, including HBO’s Jane Fonda In Five Acts (2018), and Going Clear: Scientology & The Prison of Belief (2015), had previously worked with director Alison Ellwood on Showtime’s Emmy-winning two-part documentary, The History of the Eagles (2013). For the Sundance 2020 Documentary Premieres feature The Go-Go’s, Painter and Ellwood re-teamed to bring the story of the music industry’s first all-female band to top the Billboard charts writing their own songs and playing their own instruments. The group’s 1981 debut, Beauty and the Beat, reached #1 on the Billboard 200 chart, selling more than two million copies and going double platinum. ICG Magazine Executive Editor David Geffner caught up with Painter and Ellwood a few weeks after the film’s rousing Sundance premiere to talk about what makes a successful music doc pairing between director and cinematographer.
GO-GO JANE WIEDLIN WITH 1ST AC JEREMY EVANS READY TO FILM USING EMOTIMO ST4 MOTION CONTROL FOR SLIDER CAM / COURTESY OF SAM PAINTER
ICG: Give us the quick origin story of how you two came together for this film. Alison Ellwood: Sam and I had worked on the Eagles film together, back in 2013, and The Go-Go’s saw that movie, thought it was a really honest rock doc, and asked me to direct a film about them. Once we finally got the film going, I reached out to Sam to shoot it. Sam Painter: Everyone was shot in their own home except for Belinda [Carlisle], who was in London. The lighting was fairly straightforward; the one unique approach, interview-wise, was that Alison wanted a side-camera on a tight shot on a slider, which is pretty hard to sustain for a two-hour plus interview (pulling focus, panning and sliding). There’s a company called eMotimo, based in San Diego, that has a semi-affordable motion-control system called the ST 4 that I ended up buying for this documentary. It allowed me to have a 50mm [prime lens] about six feet away from the subject’s head that would pull focus, slide, pan and tilt consistently at the same time. I’d never done that before. Jeremy Evans, who was my first AC, was a big help. AE: For the five current band members we wanted to use the Interrotron, so they’re able to look directly into the camera. For everybody else, and the two original members [who left the band], I was sitting right next to the camera in a more traditional style. The band members all come together towards the end in a rehearsal
studio, preparing for an upcoming show. What was the approach to that segment? SP: Alison had rented out the Whisky a Go Go, which was very cool as the band had not played together in more than a year, and they sounded amazing as soon as they started up. As the film shows, they used to be the house band at the Whisky before their heyday, so it was a great idea, dramatically, to have them rehearse and reunite there. We wanted the club to look like a rehearsal studio, but those are typically black rooms with overhead fluorescent lights. We didn’t want it to look like a music video or a concert, so we just basically filled their faces in with Lekos and soft fill and let the rest fall off. The goal was to make sure it didn’t look overproduced. Brad Serreno was an additional operator on the Whisky footage, with Martin Rosas as my 1st AC. AE: We got some great footage of them running in and out of different rooms at the Whisky and recounting past experiences – they were a pretty rowdy bunch back in the day [laughs]. But as fun as that stuff was, it just didn’t fit in the final edit. This was the first all-female rock band to have complete control over their music and careers – did they exercise control over the film? AE: They wanted final cut, but I said no. I told them this was a leap of faith built on honesty and trust and they accepted that. It was the same approach with the Eagles. We told them: “We’re not the right people if you want someone to make a commercial,
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OPPOSITE PAGE TOP: WHEN SHOOTING THE BAND REHEARSING AT THE LEGENDARY WHISKY A GO GO, PAINTER SAYS "WE DIDN’T WANT IT TO LOOK LIKE A MUSIC VIDEO OR A CONCERT, SO WE JUST BASICALLY FILLED THEIR FACES IN WITH LEKOS AND SOFT FILL AND LET THE REST FALL OFF." OPPOSITE PAGE BOTTOM LEFT: DIRECTOR ALISON ELLWOOD SETTING UP A SHOT FOR REHEARSAL SEQUENCE AT THE WHISKY A GO GO OPPOSITE PAGE BOTTOM RIGHT: PAINTER (CENTER) WITH PRODUCERS TREVOR BIRNEY (LEFT) AND EIMHEAR O’NEIL (RIGHT) PHOTOS COURTESY OF JULES KUEFFER
PHOTO COURTESY OF SUNDANCE INSTITUTE
we’re making an honest film and you have to trust us.” SP: That trust is a big part of my job as the cinematographer, as [The Go-Go’s] were conscious of where I was at all times, but there were no restrictions on anything… AE: I was surprised how not vain they were, compared to other musicians we’ve documented. We would show them the frame and they would say, “Great, cool.” We didn’t delve into their personal lives beyond the band because the bulk of the story is about their early years, before families, and children and husbands. Sam, what did you use gear-wise for this project? SP: Everything was shot on Sony F5’s and Schneider Xenon Primes, Fujinon MK zooms, and occasionally a Canon 30300mm cine zoom. I own all of that stuff so…[laughs]. AE: I prefer the look of the primes over the zooms, even though there are times, especially in documentary filmmaking, you need the speed and mobility of a zoom. But the primes are so beautiful. SP: What’s different about documentary filmmaking, from say episodics or features where you’re typically doing weeks on end, or eight weeks, it’s just a day here or there, and you don’t have the luxury of prep days. That’s why I like owning over renting – my gear is reliable so there’s no surprises or the need to test in advance. And you don’t have to worry about something not showing up on shoot day.
Gotta put you on the spot, Alison – what is it about working with Sam that you like so much? SP: I’ll get off the phone now [laughs]. AE: [Laughing.] For starters, he’s really fun to work with. Smart, funny, like a brother. But mostly he’s just really good at what he does. Sam has a fantastic eye for composition and storytelling that I can trust implicitly. For example, two cameras were shooting a verite scene [at the Whisky], and sometimes I couldn’t see what the other was getting, but I just knew with Sam it was going to be good. SP: The thing with documentaries is anytime you’re shooting vérité, unless you have a wireless link, which I haven’t done with Alison, the director doesn’t see what I’m doing until it’s done. I communicate what I got – or didn’t get – after the fact, and we go from there. But going back to that idea of trust the subjects have in the filmmaker – the director has to have that same bond with the cinematographer, which Alison and I have forged over many films. AE: We had three projects together this year alone. Along with The Go- Go’s, we shot a series for EPIX called Laurel Canyon: A Place in Time [which premiered at 2020 SXSW after this interview], and The Women of Troy, for HBO Sports, about the USC women’s basketball team in 1983/84, and how they changed that sport. The USC film was shot in a very old gym, where Sam had extremely challenging lighting
conditions, and all of the shots came out beautiful. Is there anything unique about making music documentaries, craft or otherwise? AE: In the Laurel Canyon project we didn’t do any on-camera interviews – it was all audio, and then Sam shot a lot of impressionistic stuff on Super 8 film, which was great fun. It’s always about telling a great story and making it look as visually wonderful as you can. Rock stars, of course, can be difficult. But The Go-Go’s were terrific to work with, and there has been a lot of healing for them as a result of this film. The same happened with The Eagles. SP: I saw The Go-Go’s in concert back in 1980 at a small dive bar called the Milestone, in Charlotte, North Carolina, and they were pretty great! [Laughs.] AE: A lot of people don’t know about The Go-Gos’ hardcore punk roots. They associate them only with this bubbly pop music. But their lyrics have dark layers, and the songwriting goes well beyond the main four hits everyone knows. SP: Hopefully they’ll finally get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame… AE: We were prepared to pull the scenes [in the film showing music critics balking at why the band is not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame] in October because we thought for sure they would be on the list for 2020. But it didn’t happen, so…
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OMNIBOAT: A FAST BOAT FANTASIA / COURTESY OF SUNDANCE INSTITUTE / DANIEL FERNANDEZ
MEET THREE GUILD CINEMATOGRAPHERS WHOSE DARING, ALL-IN APPROACH TO FILMMAKING MADE FOR MUST-SEE VIEWING AT SUNDANCE 2020. BY MICHAEL CHAMBLISS
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Technically demanding visual treatments have become a defining element of high-budget films. But the fact that elaborate continuoustake scenes (such as the many oners in Oscarwinner 1917) or extreme locations can stress any size production was no deterrent to the vision of filmmakers in the NEXT and Spotlight sections at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Combining technical skills, innovation, and determination, Local 600 Directors of Photography and their camera teams are upending traditional assumptions about what independent productions can or should attempt to capture and put on screens. We took a look at three such ambitious feature projects during our January visit to Park City.
OMNIBOAT: A FAST BOAT FANTASIA / COURTESY OF SUNDANCE INSTITUTE / DANIEL FERNANDEZ
Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia With fifteen different filmmakers each working with different production crews, Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia is a wild experiment in narrative cinema that was unlike anything else at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Director of Photography Ian Takahashi, SOC (who also was Underwater Director of Photography for his segment), describes the project as “the sort of film where we could do anything we wanted to do as long as it was based on this 47-foot Top Gun speedboat. We had complete freedom and, as far as I know, we did not have notes on anybody else’s section. Our story is about a woman testing the edges of survival, only to be faced by an unknown threat that forces her past her perceived physical and mental limits – underwater.” Takahashi recalls that while interning with Oscar-winning writer/director/ producer Francis Ford Coppola, “he mentioned that he would break a film down to a single word and use that word as motivation for his decisions. For Omniboat, I chose ‘perseverance.’ I thought that this not only fit the story, but the entire production experience – shooting an almost fully underwater story, at an open-ocean location, on an indie budget takes perseverance from everyone from producers to PA’s. The production understood what we needed and what we had to do for safety, and the Meza brothers [co-directors] were very cooperative about switching things around in terms of the time of day and logistics.” When working underwater, allowable safe diving times and lighting requirements have a major impact on the budget. “We searched the globe online to find the right wreck and settled on the SS Sapona just off Bimini in the Bahamas [about 80 kilometers due east of Miami],” Takahashi continues. “The Sapona allowed us to work at a 15-
to 20-foot shooting depth so we wouldn’t be concerned with dive-time limits, and we’d have plenty of light from the surface. We could manipulate the day’s shooting sequence according to the sun and use natural light.” This process also allowed Takahashi to get the look he needed using just a few LED tubes for fill and HMI’s at a distance to reflect off the talent’s silver swimsuit. The Clio -winning director of photography (ICG Magazine, Interview Issue, June/July 2018) recalls one shot for which the solution boiled down to brute strength. “Our safety diver, Luiz Benitez, is a big ex-military guy,” he recounts. “There was one long sequence where our actor is freediving the length of the wreck’s hallway – filled with columns and pieces of debris. It was difficult for me to swim fast enough backward through all the rubble and debris while operating. Luiz added weight so he could walk through the wreck. We got the shot by his sprinting underwater through the wreck while dragging me behind him as I operated, and it added a frenetic and intense quality to the movement.” The production moved to a water tank in Miami for the shot of actor Valentine Thomas free-diving in the pitch-black open ocean. “We blacked out a 20-by-20-foot corner of the tank to create the black-water environment,” Takahashi describes. “We needed a shaft of light to contrast with the blackness, but we wanted it to feel natural, not lit. Gaffer Jimmi Lyon bounced a 4K Xenon across the pool into a mirror over the pool with a couple of Pars aimed into an eight-by-eight Ultrabounce just out of frame to create highlights on her swimsuit. Pulling all the warmth out in post for the deep-water look was going to reduce our light levels down to almost nothing.” And that “almost nothing” resulted in a very convincing deep-water night look utilizing only a handful of lighting instruments and a bare-bones crew.
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The Mountains Are a Dream That Call to Me On the far end of the barometric pressure scale, The Mountains Are A Dream That Call to Me is a cinematic meditation about two strangers being changed by the grandeur observed on a trek through the Annapurna Massif mountains in Nepal. Director of Photography Jake Magee, who was working at altitudes as high as 15,000 feet, describes director Cedric Cheung-Lau’s vision as “pushing the boundaries of using duration and space.” The film began not with a script, but as a series of 47 pictures that the director took when he first undertook the trek himself. “This movie is about going for a long walk,” Magee describes. “Giving as much time and visual presence to the landscape as we gave to the characters was important in getting to the transcendent feeling one gets while trekking in the Himalayas. Cedric has said that there is no wrong way to watch this movie. For us, it’s a film that should wash over the viewer. If someone watching can give themselves over to the meditative state it aims for, then they’ll be along for the ride, and hopefully have a different experience of
“BEING TRUE TO THE IDEA OF A TREK,” DESCRIBES DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY JAKE MAGEE, MEANT “WE SHOT IN SEQUENCE AND DIDN’T HAVE A CHANCE TO GO BACK...THE FILM IS 90 MINUTES LONG AND HAS 100 SHOTS. EACH IMAGE IS A SCENE IN AND OF ITSELF.” COURTESY OF SUNDANCE INSTITUTE / JAKE MAGEE
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the mountains. Even though the structure is experimental, and the story open-ended, the feelings we were after in our use of images were very specific to the experience and story of this place.” Magee says his prep began three years ago before the script existed, taking the trek with Cheung-Lau to talk about the film and identify his feelings for the place. “About a month ahead of shooting, we went on a tech scout,” Magee recounts, “an eight-day trek to the base camp and back. One of the challenges was the pure expanse of the trail itself. It would play tricks as to where the locations we chose were actually positioned. Sometimes we just couldn’t find them again. Being true to the idea of a trek, we shot in sequence and didn’t have a chance to go back. We had to adapt – light, shoot and move on. The film is 90 minutes long and has 100 shots. Each image is a scene in and of itself.” Magee shares that one of the ironies of the production was that “we were trying to capture the unrushed experience of trekking through the mountains and the Nepalese culture while also keeping a production on schedule. We’d start each day with our equipment package laid out in 14 baskets that our porters would carry. There was no
escape from the cold and no place to get warm at the end of the day. Physically, one of the biggest challenges was going from the high activity level of the trek to getting your heart rate down to execute a lyrical fourminute-long 180-degree panning/sliding shot. We were working with non-actors, so we only had a couple of chances to get it right. “Out of necessity,” he continues, “everything had to be light and simple. We used an Alexa Mini with Zeiss Super Speeds, and two compact zooms – Panavision’s 19-90 Primo and the Leica R 70-180 with a 2X optical doubler, a sharp lens with more contrast to balance-out the far-away images softened by atmosphere.” Along with batteries to last a full day’s shooting, the production also carried battery-powered LED lights and diffusion/ grip for which Magee and gaffer Alessandro Prokos created using tent poles and plastic grip heads. “Our first assistant, [fellow Local 600 member] Joey Dwyer, kept everything in perfect working order and had a very intuitive sense of focus for this film,” Magee concludes. “That freed me to concentrate on working with Cedric, the mountains and our actors.”
The Climb The opening sequence of The Climb finds its two lead characters in what’s the first of several comic betrayals, playing out in one continuous shot bicycling through the mountainous French countryside. But the long continuous sequence isn’t just an opening attention-getter, it’s director Michael Angelo Covino’s opening salvo in a film where each scene unfolds in long, dialog-driven shots that glide from actor to actor. “Mike and I talked about ‘oners’ and how we could make sure [using them] was never gimmicky,” observes Director of Photography Zach Kuperstein. “We wanted to make sure that the motivation for any camera move came from the performance, that we were telling the story in a way that’s new, different and driven by the narrative. We mostly figured out how to do that while shooting.” Kuperstein used a local crew for the opening shot in France, and, as he reflects, there was a bit of a language barrier. “The plan was to put the camera on an arm,” he recalls, “but we couldn’t afford a Scorpio Arm. Instead, we opted for an electric camera car with a jib arm, remote head and vibration isolator. With only one day to shoot the sequence, the walkies not having the range we needed, the driver speaking only French and the electric car not having enough power to get up the hill, we scrambled. The electric car had arrived on a process trailer, so we loaded it back onto the trailer and pulled it up the hill with its delivery truck. It took seventeen takes to get the timing right. To top it off, our local French actor didn’t understand that the fight was fake, so Mike was really getting beat-up every take.” Changing how the camera is handled mid-shot throughout The Climb results in a shift in energy and momentum, launching the film into its next moment. Outside of carefully choreographed blocking and camera movement, Kuperstein needed a way to seamlessly transition between camera supports during the shot. “Our key grip, Dylan Kaplowitz, and I focused on various clamps and tripod plates that allowed us to carefully release the camera from its mount,” he explains. “This worked for the transition from dolly to Steadicam, but when it came to the dolly to handheld transitions, it wasn’t as seamless as I had hoped. “Between takes, our first AC, Logan Gee, had the sudden insight of using magnets,” Kuperstein continues. “Our Second AC, Matt Richards, discovered that magnets won’t damage any part of a modern camera, so we were in the clear. I found a security camera shop back in New York that sold electromagnets for locking apartment doors. And powered by 12-volt camera batteries, they worked! Dylan built a custom dock where our Steadicam operator, Brendan Poutier, could smoothly land the camera with the correct frame and turn off the magnet to release the post so I could scoop it up on my shoulder and continue the shot.” Kuperstein, making his second appearance at Sundance since his debut there in 2016 with The Eyes of My Mother, says it took some planning to work out the ability to shoot 360-degrees for interior locations. “We often rigged lights in unusual places, but were challenged when it came to looking through a window from one angle yet feeling the light from it in the reverse. We came up with a ‘movable awning light,’ a LiteGear LiteTile mounted on a frame that we could raise and lower with ropes and pulleys from above the window. We’d pull it up when looking out and drop it down when looking deep. The discovery process can be hit or miss, but there’s always a way.” TOP/MIDDLE: PHOTOS COURTESY OF ZACH KUPERSTEIN BOTTOM: DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY ZACH KUPERSTEIN / PORTRAIT BY SARA TERRY
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PRODUCTION CREDITS COMPILED BY TERESA MUÑOZ – AS OF MARCH 1, 2020 The input of Local 600 members is of the utmost importance, and we rely on our membership as the prime (and often the only) source of information. In order for us to continue to provide this service, we ask that Guild members submitting information take note of the following requests: Please provide up-to-date and complete crew information (including that the deadline for the Production Credits is on the first of the preceding cover month (excluding weekends & holidays).
Submit your jobs online by visiting: www.icg600.com/MY600/Report-Your-Job Any questions regarding the Production Credits should be addressed to Teresa Muñoz at teresa@icgmagazine.com 84
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First Man / Photo by Daniel McFadden
Still Photographers, Publicists, Additional Units, etc.). Please note
20TH CENTURY FOX “911” SEASON 3
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JOAQUÍN SEDILLO, ASC OPERATORS: PHIL MILLER, SOC, DUANE MIELIWOCKI, SOC, JAMIE ALAC ASSISTANTS: KEN LITTLE, CLAUDIO BANKS, ERIC GUERIN, DAVID STELLHORN, MAX MACAT, JIHANE MRAD STEADICAM OPERATOR: PHIL MILLER, SOC STEADICAM ASSISTANT: KEN LITTLE CAMERA UTILITY: PAULINA GOMEZ DIGITAL UTILITY: JOSHUA SMITH
“FRESH OFF THE BOAT” SEASON 6 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GREG MATTHEWS OPERATORS: JOEY MORENA, ADAM KOLKMAN ASSISTANTS: RAY DIER, TOMOKA IZUMI, CHRISTIAN COBB, AJIRI AKPOLO STEADICAM OPERATOR: JOEY MORENA CAMERA UTILITY: LESLIE KOLTER
“LAST MAN STANDING” SEASON 8 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DONALD A. MORGAN, ASC OPERATORS: GARY ALLEN, RANDY BAER, DAMIAN DELLA SANTINA, JOHN BOYD ASSISTANTS: MISSY TOY-OZEAS, SEAN ASKINS, AL MYERS CAMERA UTILITIES: JOHN WEISS, STEVE MASIAS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: VON THOMAS
“MODERN FAMILY” SEASON 11 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JAMES BAGDONAS, ASC OPERATORS: TREY CLINESMITH, TOBY TUCKER ASSISTANTS: JOHN STRADLING, MICHAEL BAGDONAS, NOAH BAGDONAS, REBECCA MARTZ SPENSER CAMERA UTILITY: GAVIN WYNN DIGITAL UTILITY: SEAN KEHOE
“THE ORVILLE” SEASON 3 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JEFF MYGATT OPERATORS: BILL BRUMMOND, GARY TACHELL, MIKE SHARP ASSISTANTS: DENNIS SEAWRIGHT, DALE WHITE, STEVE MAGRATH, DUSTIN KELLER, BUTCH PIERSON, KRISTEN LAUBE STEADICAM OPERATOR: BILL BRUMMOND LOADER: BROOKE MAGRATH UTILITY: FERNANDO ZACARIAS
“SINGLE PARENTS” SEASON 2 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TIM GILLIS OPERATORS: NEAL BRYANT, ILAN LEVIN, DEMIAN SCOTT VAUGHS ASSISTANTS: SHARLA CIPICCHIO, EVAN WILHELM, MATT BLEA ANDY KENNEDY-DERKAY, NATHAN SAKS, EVEY FRANCESCHINI LOADER: MAUREEN MORRISON
“THIS IS US” SEASON 4 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: YASU TANIDA OPERATORS: JAMES TAKATA, COY AUNE ASSISTANTS: SEAN O’SHEA, RICH FLOYD, BRIAN WELLS, JEFF STEWART STEADICAM OPERATOR: JAMES TAKATA STEADICAM ASSISTANT: SEAN O’SHEA LOADER: MIKE GENTILE STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: RON BATZDORFF
0305 PRODUCTIONS, LLC
“GABRIEL’S RAPTURE PART 1” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DENIS MALONEY ASSISTANT: LAWRENCE MONTEMAYOR
ABC STUDIOS
“AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE” SEASON 4 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ROB KITZMANN OPERATORS: RICH DAVIS, TIM WALKER, LISA STACILAUSKAS ASSISTANTS: MAX NEAL, ROBERT GILPIN, JOE TORRES, ELIZABETH ALGIERI, KARL OWENS, JASWINDER BEDI STEADICAM OPERATOR: RICH DAVIS STEADICAM ASSISTANT: MAX NEAL DIGITAL LOADER: LESLIE PUCKETT DIGITAL UTILITY: STEVE ROMMEVAUX
“A.P. BIO” SEASON 3 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DAVID ROBERT JONES OPERATORS: NICK MEDRUD, KEITH DUNKERLEY ASSISTANTS: IAN BARBELLA, BRIAN FREEMAN, JASON WITTENBERG, DAN MARINO LOADER: JOHANNES KUZMICH STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: RON JAFFE
“BLACK-ISH” SEASON 6 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ROB SWEENEY OPERATORS: JENS PIOTROWSKI, GARRETT BENSON ASSISTANTS: ART MARTIN, NEAL MORELL, TIFFANI STEPHENSON, PABLO JARA DIGITAL LOADER: JAI CORRIA DIGITAL UTILITY: RAUL PEREZ
“CRIMINAL MINDS” SEASON 15 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DARCY SPIRES OPERATORS: GARY TACHELL, KEITH PETERS, BRIAN GARBELLINI, JOSH TURNER ASSISTANTS: BRYAN DELORENZO, TODD DURBORAW, TIM ROE, ROBERT FORREST, TOBY WHITE, CARTER SMITH UTILITIES: ALEX MARMALICHI, JACOB KULJIS STEADICAM OPERATOR: KEITH PETERS STEADICAM ASSISTANT: BRYAN DELORENZO
“GREY’S ANATOMY” SEASON 16 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: HERB DAVIS, ALICIA ROBBINS OPERATORS: FRED IANNONE, STEVE ULLMAN, LESLIE MORRIS ASSISTANTS: NICK MCLEAN, FORREST THURMAN, KIRK BLOOM, LISA BONACCORSO STEADICAM OPERATOR: STEVE ULLMAN STEADICAM ASSISTANT: FORREST THURMAN CAMERA UTILITY: MARTE POST STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: LISA ROSE
“JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE!” SEASON 18 LIGHTING DIRECTOR: CHRISTIAN HIBBARD OPERATORS: GREG GROUWINKEL, PARKER BARTLETT, GARRETT HURT, MARK GONZALES STEADICAM OPERATOR: KRIS WILSON JIB OPERATORS: MARC HUNTER, RANDY GOMEZ, JR., NICK GOMEZ CAMERA UTILITIES: CHARLES FERNANDEZ, SCOTT SPIEGEL, TRAVIS WILSON, DAVID FERNANDEZ, ADAM BARKER VIDEO CONTROLLER: GUY JONES STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: KAREN NEAL, MICHAEL DESMOND 2ND UNIT DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BERND REINBARDT, STEVE GARRETT
NANCY SCHREIBER, ASC OPERATORS: RON SCHLAEGER, MARIANA ANTUNANO, BILL BOATMAN ASSISTANTS: TONY SCHULTZ, HANNAH LEVIN, MICHAEL ALVAREZ, SUMMER MARSH, ADAM COWAN, DUSTIN FRUGE STEADICAM OPERATOR: RON SCHLAEGER STEADICAM ASSISTANT: TONY SCHULTZ DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ANDREW LEMON UTILITY: GEORGE MONTEJANO, III TECHNOCRANE OPERATOR: NAZARIY HATAK TECHNOCRANE TECH: BRIAN LOVE REMOTE HEAD TECH/OPERATOR: JAY SHEVECK
“STUMPTOWN” SEASON 1 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CLARK MATHIS, MAGNI AGUSTSSON OPERATORS: BUD KREMP, PHIL MASTRELLA ASSISTANTS: JUSTIN WATSON, SHANE CARLSON, GAYLE HILARY, JESSYCA MARILYN CARACCI LOADER: DYLAN NEAL CAMERA UTILITY: CHRIS SHADLEY STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CAROL KAELSON
AFN PRODUCTIONS-TELEPICTURES “THE REAL” SEASON 6
LIGHTING DIRECTOR: EARL WOODY, LD OPERATORS: KEVIN MICHEL, NATE PAYTON, STEVE RUSSELL, CHRIS WILLIAMS STEADICAM OPERATOR: WILL DEMERITT CAMERA UTILITIES: HENRY VEREEN, SALVATORE BELLISSIMO, ANDRES VELASQUEZ, JR. JIB ARM OPERATOR: JIM CIRRITO VIDEO CONTROLLER: JEFF MESSENGER
A VERY GOOD PRODUCTION, INC. & WAD PRODUCTIONS
“THE ELLEN DEGENERES SHOW” SEASON 17 LIGHTING DIRECTOR: TOM BECK PED OPERATORS: DAVID WEEKS, PAUL WILEMAN, TIM O’NEILL HANDHELD OPERATOR: CHIP FRASER JIB OPERATOR: DAVID RHEA STEADICAM OPERATOR: DONOVAN GILBUENA VIDEO CONTROLLER: JAMES MORAN HEAD UTILITY: CRAIG “ZZO” MARAZZO UTILITIES: ARLO GILBUENA, WALLY LANCASTER, DIEGO AVALOS
BACKLIGHT PRODUCTIONS “DMZ” PILOT
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MATT LLOYD, CSC OPERATORS: DEKE KEENER, SOC, DENISE BAILIE ASSISTANTS: NANCY SEGLER, JACKSON MCDONALD, JOHN METCALFE, DWAYNE GREEN STEADICAM OPERATOR: DEKE KEENER, SOC DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MICHAEL KIM LOADER: CAROLINE OELKERS
BEACHWOOD SERVICES
“DAYS OF OUR LIVES” SEASON 54 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: VINCE STEIB OPERATORS: MARK WARSHAW, VICKIE WALKER, MICHAEL J. DENTON, STEVE CLARK CAMERA UTILITIES: STEVE BAGDADI, GARY CYPHER VIDEO CONTROLLER: ALEXIS DELLAR HANSON
“STATION 19” SEASON 3 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DARYN OKADA, ASC,
APRIL 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS
85
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“THE GOLDBERGS” SEASON 7
“NCIS: LOS ANGELES” SEASON 11
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JASON BLOUNT OPERATORS: SCOTT BROWNER, NATE HAVENS ASSISTANTS: TRACY DAVEY, GARY WEBSTER, JENNIFER BELL PRICE, MICHELLE BAKER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: KEVIN MILLS LOADER: DILSHAN HERATH STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: LISA ROSE
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: VICTOR HAMMER OPERATORS: TERENCE NIGHTINGALL, TIM BEAVERS ASSISTANTS: KEITH BANKS, RICHIE HUGHES, PETER CARONIA, JACQUELINE NIVENS STEADICAM OPERATORS: TERENCE NIGHTINGALL, TIM BEAVERS STEADICAM ASSISTANTS: KEITH BANKS, RICHIE HUGHES DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOHN MILLS DIGITAL UTILITY: CAROLINE MILLS STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: RON JAFFE PUBLICIST: KATHLEEN TANJI
CBS
“BULL” SEASON 4 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DERICK UNDERSCHULTZ OPERATORS: BARNABY SHAPIRO, MALCOLM PURNELL ASSISTANTS: ROMAN LUKIW, SOREN NASH, MICHAEL LOBB, TREVOR WOLFSON DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: THOMAS WONG LOADERS: QUINN MURPHY, NIALANEY RODRIGUEZ
“ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT” SEASON 39
LIGHTING DESIGNER: DARREN LANGER DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KURT BRAUN OPERATORS: JAMES B. PATRICK, ALLEN VOSS, ED SARTORI, HENRY ZINMAN, BOB CAMPI, RODNEY MCMAHON, ANTHONY SALERNO JIB OPERATOR: JAIMIE CANTRELL CAMERA UTILITY: TERRY AHERN VIDEO CONTROLLERS: MIKE DOYLE, PETER STENDAL
“MAN WITH A PLAN” SEASON 4 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GARY BAUM, ASC OPERATORS: GLENN SHIMADA, TRAVERS HILL, LANCE BILLITZER, ED FINE ASSISTANTS: ADRIAN LICCIARDI, JEFF GOLDENBERG, ALEC ELIZONDO, CLINT PALMER, JASON HERRING UTILITIES: DANNY LORENZE, SEAN ASKINS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DEREK LANTZ VIDEO CONTROLLER: JOHN O’BRIEN
“NCIS” SEASON 17 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: WILLIAM WEBB, ASC OPERATORS: GREGORY PAUL COLLIER, CHAD ERICKSON, DOUG FROEBE (VIDEO) ASSISTANTS: JAMES TROOST, HELEN TADESSE, NATHAN LOPEZ, YUSEF EDMONDS LOADER: ANNA FERRARIE STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MIKE KUBEISY
86
APRIL 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS
“SEAL TEAM” SEASON 3 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: J. MICHAEL MURO, ALAN JACOBY OPERATORS: DOMINIC BARTOLONE, MATT VALENTINE ASSISTANTS: TODD AVERY, ANDREW DEGNAN, ARTURO ROJAS, RYAN JACKSON STEADICAM OPERATOR: DOMINIC BARTOLONE STEADICAM ASSISTANT: TODD AVERY DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: RAUL RIVEROS LOADER: NOAH MURO STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: CAROL KAELSON, RON JAFFE
“THE GOOD FIGHT” SEASON 4 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: FRED MURPHY, ASC, PETR HLINOMAZ, TIM GUINNESS OPERATORS: ALEC JARNAGIN, PETER NOLAN ASSISTANTS: RENE CROUT, DANIEL FIORITO, ELIZABETH HEDGES, JULIA LEACH, EMILY DEBLASI STEADICAM OPERATOR: ALEC JARNAGIN LOADERS: SANCHEEV RAVICHANDRAN, BRIAN CARDENAS
“THE TALK” SEASON 10 LIGHTING DIRECTOR: MARISA DAVIS PED OPERATORS: ART TAYLOR, MARK GONZALES, ED STAEBLER HANDHELD OPERATORS: RON BARNES, KEVIN MICHEL, JEFF JOHNSON JIB OPERATOR: RANDY GOMEZ HEAD UTILITY: CHARLES FERNANDEZ UTILITIES: MIKE BUSHNER, DOUG BAIN,
DEAN FRIZZEL, BILL GREINER, JON ZUCCARO VIDEO CONTROLLER: RICHARD STROCK STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: RON JAFFE
“TOMMY” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CRAIG DIBONA OPERATORS: DAVID TAICHER, ERIC TRAMP ASSISTANTS: EDWIN EFFREIN, JAMES BELLETIER, DEREK DIBONA, JAMES MCEVOY STEADICAM OPERATOR: DAVID TAICHER LOADERS: CHRIS MENDEZ, TREVOR BARCUS STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: CARA HOWE, ALYSSA LONGCHAMP, JEFFREY NEIRA, MICHAEL PARMELEE
CETERI, LLC
“UNTITLED KINBERG WEIL SERIES AKA RAY JAMES” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TIMOTHY IVES OPERATORS: MARK SCHMIDT, WYLDA BAYRON ASSISTANTS: ADRIANA BRUNETTO-LIPMAN, ROSSANA RIZZO, AMBER ROSALES, MIKE SWEARINGEN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: J. ERIC CAMP LOADER: BRITTANY JELINSKI STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MACALL POLAY
CHICK FIGHT THE MOVIE, LLC “CHICK FIGHT”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: STEVE HOLLERAN OPERATORS: RAUL ROSADO, EDUARDO MARIOTA ASSISTANTS: CARLOS GARCIA, LIZZ DIAZ, ERNESTO GOMEZ CAMERA UTILITY: MARIA BELTRAN LOADER: NESTOR CESTERO STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: LAURA MAGRUDER
CMS PRODUCTIONS
“AT HOME WITH AMY SEDARIS” SEASON 3 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ROBERT BAROCCI OPERATORS: CHARLES BEYER, CLINT LITTON, MICHAEL DRUCKER ASSISTANTS: GORDON ARKENBERG, SARAH HENDRICK, STEPHEN KOZLOWSKI, CASEY JOHNSON, KATIE GREAVES LOADER: MATHEW MARTIN STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: PHIL CARUSO
DAYLIGHT DAYCARE, INC.
“DAYLIGHT DAYCARE” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ANETTE HAELLMIGK OPERATORS: RACHAEL LEVINE, WILLIAM GREEN ASSISTANTS: ANDREW HAMILTON, JAMES DALY, COREY LICAMELI, ANDREA BIAS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: TED VIOLA LOADERS: ANJELA COVIAUX, BILLY HOLMAN STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: CRAIG BLANKENHORN, BARBARA NITKE
EYE PRODUCTIONS, INC.
“BLUE BLOODS” SEASON 10 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GENE ENGELS OPERATORS: STEPHEN CONSENTINO, GEOFFREY FROST ASSISTANTS: GRAHAM BURT, JACOB STAHLMAN, MARTIN PETERSON, KENNETH MARTELL DIGITAL IMAGING TECHS: RYAN HEIDE, STEVE CALALANG LOADERS: MICHAEL FULLER, JOHN KEELER STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: CRAIG BLANKENHORN, PATRICK HARBRON
“DYNASTY” SEASON 3 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: STAR BARRY, ROGER CHINGIRIAN OPERATORS: BRETT MAYFIELD, BROWN COOPER ASSISTANTS: COLIN DURAN, RYAN ABRAMS, ALEXA ROMERO STEADICAM OPERATOR: BRETT MAYFIELD STEADICAM ASSISTANT: COLIN DURAN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ERIC HENSON DIGITAL UTILITY: JIMARI JONES
“MACGYVER” SEASON 4 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAEL MARTINEZ, CHRISTOPHER DUDDY OPERATORS: IAN FORSYTH, PAUL KRUMPER, GREG BALDI ASSISTANTS: AL COHEN, TREVOR RIOS, MICHAEL TORINO, STEFAN VINO-FIGUEROA, EASTON HARPER, TYLER BASTIANSON STEADICAM OPERATOR: IAN FORSYTH STEADICAM ASSISTANT: AL COHEN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: GREG VANZYCK DIGITAL UTILITY: BRIAN FREDERICK STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MARK HILL
“SWAGGER” SEASON 1 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: RODNEY TAYLOR, ASC CLIFFORD CHARLES OPERATORS: KERWIN DEVONISH, GARY HATFIELD ASSISTANTS: CHRISTOPHER GLEATON, NICHOLAS HAHN, ZAKIYA LUCAS-MURRAY, DERRICK DAWKINS LOADERS: BRITTANY WILSON, XAVIER VENOSTA STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: PATRICK HARBRON, FRANK MCPARTLAND, ANTONY PLATT
FOX21
“THE CHI” SEASON 3 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JESSE M. FELDMAN OPERATORS: DAVE SAMMONS, JORDAN KESLOW ASSISTANTS: KATHRYN MOSS, RACHEL DONOFRIE, BRIAN KILBORN, J’MME IHMAD LOVE STEADICAM OPERATOR: JORDAN KESLOW LOADER: JJ LITTLEFELD DIGITAL UTILITIES: RODERICK REED, RICHIE COLMAN STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: ELIZABETH MORRIS, PARRISH LEWIS
FUQUA FILMS
“THE RESIDENT” SEASON 3
FILMNATION ENTERTAINMENT
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BART TAU OPERATORS: MATT DOLL, ANDY FISHER, CHRISTIAN SATRAZEMIS ASSISTANTS: JUSTIN DEGUIRE, TAYLOR CASE, APRIL RUANE CROWLEY, MIKE FISHER, JENNIFER RANKINE, GRACE PRELLER CHAMBERS STEADICAM OPERATOR: MATT DOLL STEADICAM ASSISTANT: JUSTIN DEGUIRE LOADER: TREY VOLPE DIGITAL UTILITY: RYAN ST CLAIR STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: GUY DE’ALEMA
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDREW WEHDE OPERATORS: GARY MALOUF, TIM DIXON ASSISTANTS: SETH GALLAGHER, MEL KOBRAN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: CHASE ABRAMS STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: DAN ANDERSON PUBLICIST: DIANE SLATTERY
2ND UNIT DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDY FISHER OPERATORS: CHRISTIAN SATRAZEMIS, MICHAEL GFELNER, COOPER DUNN ASSISTANTS: JACKSON MCDONALD, CLAIRE PAPEVIES, TAYLOR CASE, MATT EVANS, STERLING WIGGINS,
“THE MAP OF TINY PERFECT THINGS”
APRIL 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS
87
“THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BRIAN BURGOYNE OPERATORS: ARI ISSLER, ROD CALARCO ASSISTANTS: JEROME WILLIAMS, ALEXANDER WORSTER, CAMERON SIZEMORE, ALEX DUBOIS LOADERS: AMANDA URIBE, JAKOB FRIEMAN
MAIN GATE PRODUCTIONS, LLC “GOD FRIENDED ME” SEASON 2
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JON DELGADO OPERATORS: THOMAS SCHNAIDT, DANIEL HERSEY ASSISTANTS: BLACKFORD SHELTON, III, MARCOS RODRIGUEZ QUIJANO, BEHNOOD DADFAR, ALFONSO DIAZ DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: CHANDLER TUCKER LOADERS: ANGEL VASQUEZ, MIGUEL GONZALEZ STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MICHAEL PARMELEE
PHOTO LAB
MESQUITE PRODUCTIONS
“FOR ALL MANKIND” SEASON 2 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: STEPHEN MCNUTT, ROSS BERRYMAN OPERATORS: TIM SPENCER, MIKE MCEVEETY ASSISTANTS: STEPHEN PAZANTI, JORGE PALLARES, DARIN KRASK, ARTHUR ZAJAC STEADICAM OPERATOR: TIM SPENCER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MIKE DEGRAZZIO DIGITAL UTILITY: ROBERT RUELAS STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: JONNY COURMOYER
NBC
“BROOKLYN NINE-NINE” SEASON 7 TRISHA SOLYN STEADICAM OPERATOR: CHRISTIAN SATRAZEMIS DIGITAL UTILITY: TREY VOLPE UTILITY: ERIC GAVLINSKI
GHOST PRODUCTIONS, INC. “GHOST” SEASON 1
DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CHRIS LA VASSEUR, AARON MEDICK OPERATORS: JON BEATTIE, NICOLA BENIZZI ASSISTANTS: MICHAEL GAROFALO, CHARLIE FOERSCHNER, YALE GROPMAN, ALIVIA BORAB LOADERS: SCOTT GAROFALO, ANDREW DAILEY DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ROB MUIA STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MYLES ARONOWITZ PUBLICIST: SABRINA LAUFER
GRACE AND FRANKIE PRODUCTIONS, LLC “GRACE AND FRANKIE” SEASON 7
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GALE TATTERSALL OPERATORS: CRAIG COCKERILL, TONY GUTIERREZ ASSISTANTS: DAN SCHROER, NAOMI VILLANUEVA, DAN URBAIN, RENEE TREYBALL STEADICAM OPERATOR: CRAIG COCKERILL STEADICAM ASSISTANT: DAN SCHROER LOADER: NICOLA CARUSO STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: SAEED ADYANI
88
APRIL 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS
GWAVE PRODUCTIONS, LLC
“SULPHUR SPRINGS” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: STEFAN VON BJORN OPERATORS: GREG MORRIS, ROBERT FOSTER ASSISTANTS: BROUKE FRANKLIN, RY KAWANAKA, ERIC VAN DER VYNCKT, MATT GUIDRY DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: PAUL RAHFIELD
H9
“A CHRISTMAS PIROUETTE” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JAMES SIMEONE OPERATORS: JOSEPH LAVALLEE, JOSEPH CHRISTOFORI, EDWIN RUBIO ASSISTANTS: CHRIS BOYLSTON, CHRIS MALENFANT, CHEYENNE CAPRI, FUJI PANJALI STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: ROBERT CLARK
HORIZON SCRIPTED TELEVISION, INC. “ANIMAL KINGDOM” SEASON 5
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: LOREN YACONELLI OPERATORS: SCOTT DROPKIN, BROOKS ROBINSON ASSISTANTS: DAVE EGERSTROM, PATRICK BENSIMMON, ERIC GUTHRIE, CRISTY ARBOLEDA STEADICAM OPERATOR: SCOTT DROPKIN STEADICAM ASSISTANT: DAVE EGERSTROM DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JEFFERSON FUGITT DIGITAL UTILITY: GOBE HIRATA STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: EDDY CHEN
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: RICK PAGE OPERATORS: PHIL MASTRELLA, LAUREN GADD, JOEL TALLBUT ASSISTANTS: JAY LEVY, BILL GERARDO, DUSTIN MILLER, WILLIAM SCHMIDT, CHRIS CARLSON LOADER: NICK GILBERT DIGITAL UTILITY: KURT LEVY STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: JOHN P. FLEENOR
“CHICAGO MED” SEASON 5 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: LEX DUPONT, ASC OPERATORS: FAIRES ANDERSON SEKIYA, JOE TOLITANO, BENJAMIN SPEK ASSISTANTS: GEORGE OLSON, KEITH HUEFFMEIER, SAM KNAPP, LAURA DIFIGLIO, PATRICK DOOLEY, JOEY RICHARDSON STEADICAM OPERATOR: FAIRES ANDERSON SEKIYA LOADER: MATTHEW BROWN UTILITY: EMMANUEL BANSA STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: ELIZABETH SISSON
“CHICAGO PD” SEASON 7 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JAMES ZUCAL OPERATORS: VICTOR MACIAS, DARRYL MILLER, SETH THOMAS ASSISTANTS: JOHN YOUNG, JAMISON ACKER, DON CARLSON, KYLE BELOUSEK, DAVID WIGHTMAN, NICK WILSON STEADICAM OPERATOR: VICTOR MACIAS LOADER: MARION TUCKER DIGITAL UTILITIES: CHRIS POLMANSKI, STEVE CLAY
HMI LED JOKER ALPHA SLICE ASC 2020 v5.indd 1
“F.B.I.” SEASON 2
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TARI SEGAL OPERATORS: AFTON GRANT, CHARLES ANDERSON ASSISTANTS: LEE VICKERY, NIKNAZ TAVAKOLIAN, GEORGE LOOKSHIRE, YURI INOUE STEADICAM OPERATOR: AFTON GRANT LOADERS: CONNOR LYNCH, NKEM UMENYI STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: MICHAEL PARMELEE, ELIZABETH FISHER
“GOOD GIRLS” SEASON 3 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JASON OLDAK OPERATORS: GARY CAMP, BRIAN OUTLAND, NICOLE LOBELL ASSISTANTS: JOHN RUIZ, JASON KNOLL, PATRICK BLANCHET, ROBYN BUCHANAN, EM GONZALES, CARTER SMITH STEADICAM OPERATOR: GARY CAMP STEADICAM ASSISTANT: JOHN RUIZ LOADER: MATT SCHOUTEN DIGITAL UTILITY: JONNIE MENTZER
“NEW AMSTERDAM” SEASON 2 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDREW VOEGELI OPERATORS: JULIAN DELACRUZ, SCOTT TINSLEY ASSISTANTS: PEDRO CORCEGA, JAMES MADRID, MATTHEW MONTALTO, ROBERT WRASE LOADERS: JEFFREY MAKARAUSKAS, ANABEL CAICEDO
“SUPERSTORE” SEASON 5 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JAY HUNTER OPERATORS: ADAM TASH, DANNY NICHOLS,
MIGUEL PASK ASSISTANTS: JASON ZAKRZEWSKI, BRANDON MARGULIES, ERIC JENKINSON, RYAN SULLIVAN, ESTA GARCIA, RIKKI ALARIAN JONES LOADER: GRACE THOMAS
“UNTITLED TRACY OLIVER PROJECT” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MATT EDWARDS OPERATORS: MATT FLEISCHMANN, CAITLIN MACHAK ASSISTANTS: BLAKE ALCANTARA, VANESSA VIERA, JORGE DEL TORO, DERRICK DAWKINS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: GUILLERMO TUNON LOADER: CHRISTINASE CARMODY
NETFLIX PRODUCTIONS, LLC “THE CREW” SEASON 1
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BILL BERNER OPERATORS: ALAIN ONESTO, MARK RENAUDIN, MIGUEL ARMSTRONG, JIMMY O’DONNEL ASSISTANTS: JASON KNOBLOCH, KYLE GORJANC DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DAVE SATIN LOADER: SHAUN JOYE CAMERA UTILITIES: JAMES ABAMONT, ANTHONHY BENEDITTI STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: ERIC LIEBOWITZ
“COUNTRY COMFORT” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GEORGE MOORADIAN, ASC OPERATORS: RON HIRSHMAN, RANDY BAER, DAVE DECHANT, ELI FRANKS, MICHELLE CRENSHAW, HELENA JACKSON
JIB OPERATOR: MICHAEL JAROCKI ASSISTANT: CONNOR HECK DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ELENA GOMEZ CAMERA UTILITY: KATE STEINHEBEL DIGITAL UTILITY: ERINN BELL TECHNOJIB OPERATOR: ELI FRANKS VIDEO CONTROLLER: RICK DUNGAN
2/16/20 5:23 PM
NKZ PRODUCTIONS, INC.
“THE BACHELOR” SEASON 24 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DENNIS WEILER, CHAD GRIEPENTROG, ANDRE MARTINEZ OPERATORS: DOUG HENNING, MARK JUNGJOHANN, IVAN DURAN, MARTIN MOURINO, TIM STAHL, ANDREW RAKOW, EZRA EPWELL, NICK TULLY, ERICA SHUSHA, JEREMY GUY, SUZIE WEIS ASSISTANTS: YOGI NEELY, TYLER DETARSIO, DAVE OSTERBERG, THOR FRIDLEIFSSON, NICK MILLER, JAY STRAMM, JEN CHMIELEWSKI, TAYLOR GILMARTIN CAMERA UTILITIES: APPLE SCHLOSSER, MICHAEL WILLIAMSON JIB OPERATOR: RANDY GOMEZ, JR. VIDEO CONTROLLERS: RICHARD STROCK, MARC SURETTE
OJB, LLC
“THE OUTLAW JOHNNY BLACK” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KEITH L. SMITH OPERATORS: CHRIS WALLING, SAM LAW ASSISTANTS: STEPHEN BRANAGAN, ISAAC DOWELL, JONATHAN MEDINA STEADICAM OPERATOR: SAM LAW
APRIL 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS
89
OLIVE AVENUE PRODUCTIONS, LLC “DOOM PATROL” SEASON 2
DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SCOTT WINING, SCOTT PECK OPERATORS: TIM FABRIZIO, RYAN WEISEN ASSISTANTS: JOSH HANCHER, CRISTIAN TROVA, KYLER DENNIS, MIKE FISHER STEADICAM OPERATOR: TIM FABRIZIO STEADICAM ASSISTANT: JOSH HANCHER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOE ELROM LOADER: NICK YOUNG DIGITAL UTILITY: ALESSANDRA MACI
PACIFIC 2.1 ENTERTAINMENT GROUP, INC.
“MADE FOR LOVE” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: NATE GOODMAN OPERATORS: PETER MERCURIO, RON BALDWIN ASSISTANTS: MATTHEW KING, JOJO SUTERA, HEATHER LEA-LEROY, NINA PORTILLO DIGITAL IMGAGING TECH: MICHAEL BORENSTEIN
“THE POLITICIAN” SEASON 2
STILL PHOTOGRAPER: JOHN JOHNSON
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TIMOTHY NORMAN OPERATORS: MATTHEW PEBLER, JENNIE JEDDRY ASSISTANTS: MICHAEL BURKE, ANDREW JUHL, VINCENT TUTHS, ADAM DEREZENDES DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: LUKE TAYLOR LOADERS: MICHAEL POMORSKI, SYDNEY BALLESTEROS STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: JOHN LOPEZ, GIOVANNI RUFINO, NICOLE RIVELLI, DAVID LEE
“STATION ELEVEN” SEASON 1
PARAMOUNT
PROJECT NEXT
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DAVID MORRISON OPERATORS: BRANDON THOMPSON, SIDARTH KANTAMNENI
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GRANT SMITH OPERATORS: RYAN HOGUE, AUSTIN TAYLOR ASSISTANTS: RYAN GUZDZIAL, KEVIN ANDERSON, JESS FAIRLESS, ANDREA GILL
“BOOMERANG” SEASON 2
90
ASSISTANTS: AUSTIN LEWIS, ALEX HOOPER, OREN MALIK STEADICAM OPERATOR: BRANDON THOMPSON STEADICAM ASSISTANT: AUSTIN LEWIS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JAZZ PIERCE DIGITAL UTILITY: TRENT WALKER STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CURTIS BAKER
APRIL 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CHRISTIAN SPRENGER OPERATORS: BRIAN FREESH, BLAINE BAKER ASSISTANTS: LIAM SINNOTT, RON RUANPHAE, JASON BONNER, ELAISA VARGAS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: CHRIS HOYLE DIGITAL UTILITY: LITONG ZHEN STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: PARRISH LEWIS
“TACOMA FD” SEASON 2
DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: BEN CRUMP DIGITAL UTILITY: JESSICA PINNS
ROCART, INC.
“ALL THAT” SEASON 11 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAEL FRANKS OPERATORS: VANCE BRANDON, JIM ORR, ROBERT MCCALL TECHNOJIB OPERATOR: ELI FRANKS ASSISTANT: MONICA SCHAD DIGIAL IMAGING TECH: DEREK LANTZ UTILITIES: JOSE GOMEZ, TAYLOR FICKLE TECHNOJIB TECH: COREY GIBBONS VIDEO CONTROLLERS: KEITH ANDERSON, BARRY LONG
RADICAL MEDIA
“SHERMAN’S SHOWCASE” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GILES DUNNING OPERATORS: JOHN VELETA, WAYNE GORING, MARK EVANS ASSISTANTS: JAVIER SANTOS AUDERA, WILLIAM HAYES, LORENZO PORRAS, PATRICK ROMERO, NOAH GLAZER DIGITAL UTILITY: DANA FYTELSON DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: SCOTT BECKLEY STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MICHAEL MORIARTIS
ROCART, INC.
“SIDE HUSTLE” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAEL FRANKS OPERATORS: KRIS CONDE, JOHN DECHENE, GEORGE LA FOUNTAINE, CHRIS WILCOX TECHNOJIB OPERATOR: ELI FRANKS TECHNOJIB TECH: COREY GIBBONS
DOCK IT MOUNT IT GET IT
Dutti Dock
Monitor Mount
Panel Stand
861862
249570
Monitor Stand II
249562
Docking Stand 999045
Mini Slider Stand 249564
Rock n’ Rollers 366075
ASSISTANT: MEGGINS MOORE UTILITIES: JOSE GOMEZ, ERINN BELL DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DEREK LANTZ VIDEO CONTROLLER: BARRY LONG
SAN VICENTE PRODUCTIONS, INC. “FBI: MOST WANTED” SEASON 1
DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MANUEL BILLETER, LUDOVIC LITTEE OPERATORS: CHRISTOPHER MOONE, REBECCA ARNDT ASSISTANTS: JASON RIHALY, MARC HILLYGUS, DYLAN ENDYKE, CHRISTOPHER CAFARO LOADERS: RYAN HADDON, DONALD GRAHAMER, III STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MARK SCHAFER
“THE BLACKLIST” SEASON 7 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAEL CARACCIOLO, SAADE MUSTAFA OPERATORS: DEREK WALKER, DEVIN LADD, PETER RAMOS ASSISTANTS: DANIEL CASEY, GARETH MANWARING, MIKE GUASPARI, JAMES GOURLEY, EDWIN HERRERA, EDGAR VELEZ LOADERS: JAMES PARSONS, CHARLES GRUNDER JR., ALYSSA LONGCHAMP STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: JOJO WHILDEN, WILL HART, DAVID GIESBRECHT
OPERATORS: JONATHAN BECK, ERIN HENNING ASSISTANTS: CAI HALL, LEONARDO GOMEZ, II, PATRICK BRACEY, SEAN MCNAMARA LOADERS: DONALD GAMBLE, ARIEL WATSON STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: JEFF NEUMAN
SONY
“JEOPARDY!” SEASON 36
SOUNDVIEW PRODUCTONS
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JEFF ENGEL OPERATORS: DIANE L. FARRELL, SOC, MIKE TRIBBLE, JEFF SCHUSTER, L. DAVID IRETE JIB ARM OPERATOR: MARC HUNTER HEAD UTILITY: TINO MARQUEZ CAMERA UTILITY: RAY THOMPSON VIDEO CONTROLLER: GARY TAILLON STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CAROL KAELSON
DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KEVIN THOMPSON, TOMMY LOHMANN OPERATOR: STEPHEN BUCKINGHAM ASSISTANTS: JASON GARCIA, SAM LINO, TIM GUFFIN, ANNE LEE DIGITAL LOADER: ANTHONY ROSARIO STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: DAVID MOIR
“ONE DAY AT A TIME” SEASON 4 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: WAYNE KENNAN OPERATORS: RON HIRSHMAN, DAVID DOUGHERTY, ED FINE, DAVID DECHANT ASSISTANTS: JEFF JOHNSON, VERONICA DAVIDSON CAMERA UTILITIES: DOUG MINGES, BRAD TRAVER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: CHRIS RUBIN VIDEO CONTROLLER: KEITH ANDERSON
“WHEEL OF FORTUNE” SEASON 37
SHOWTIME PICTURES
“BILLIONS” SEASON 5 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GIORGIO SCALI, ASC, J.B. SMITH
CAMERA UTILITY: RAY THOMPSON HEAD UTILITY: TINO MARQUEZ VIDEO CONTROLLER: GARY TAILLON JIB ARM OPERATOR: RANDY GOMEZ, SR. STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CAROL KAELSON
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JEFF ENGEL OPERATORS: DIANE L. FARRELL, SOC, JEFF SCHUSTER, RAY GONZALES, STEVE SIMMONS, L. DAVID IRETE, MIKE CORWIN
“13 REASONS WHY” SEASON 4
STALWART FILMS
“FEAR THE WALKING DEAD” SEASON 6 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ADAM SUSCHITZKY, BSC, JALALUDIN TRAUTMANN, BVK OPERATORS: JUAN RAMOS, KRIS HARDY ASSISTANTS: MARK BOYLE, THEDA CUNNINGHAM, SAM PEARCY, DON HOWE STEADICAM OPERATOR: JUAN RAMOS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JAMIE METZGER LOADER: BRENDA SZWEJBKA DIGITAL UTILITIES: LOUIS WATT, JASON HEAD STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: RYAN GREEN PUBLICIST: SHARA STORCH
APRIL 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS
91
TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS DIGITAL CINEMA - POST PRODUCTION - DIGITAL WORKFLOWS 420 9 th Avenue New York, NY 10001 | 212.502.6370 | BandH.com/thestudio | thestudio@BandH.com
THIMBLE PEA PICTURES, LLC
“UNTITLED ANNA DELVEY ART PROJECT” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MARYSE ALBERTI OPERATORS: GEORGE BIANCHINI, JOHN PIROZZI ASSISTANTS: JAMIESON FITZPATRICK, KEITT, CORNELIA KLAPPER, EVE STRICKMAN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DOUGLAS HORTON LOADER: JONATHAN PERALTA STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: PETER KRAMER
UNIVERSAL
“LAW & ORDER: SVU” SEASON 21 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAEL GREEN OPERATORS: JONATHAN HERRON, MICHAEL LATINO ASSISTANTS: CHRISTOPHER DEL SORDO, MATTHEW BALZARINI, JUSTIN ZVERIN, EMILY DUMBRILL LOADERS: JASON RASWANT, JASON GAINES STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MICHAEL PARMELEE
USA NETWORK
“QUEEN OF THE SOUTH” SEASON 5 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ABE MARTINEZ OPERATORS: DOMINIC BARTOLONE, MATT VALENTINE ASSISTANTS: JASON GARCIA, DAN MCKEE, RIGNEY SACKLEY, ZANDER WHITE STEADICAM OPERATOR: DOMINIC BARTOLONE STEADICAM ASSISTANT: JASON GARCIA DIGITAL LOADER: ADAM LIPSCOMB
WARNER BROS
“ALL RISE” SEASON 1 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DAVID HARP, CYBEL MARTIN OPERATORS: TIM ROARKE, STEPHEN CLANCY, SHANELE ALVAREZ ASSISTANTS: MATT GUIZA, KRISTI ARNDS, RANDY SHANOFSKY, ADAM TSANG, ANTHONY HART, BENNY BAILEY STEADICAM OPERATOR: STEPHEN CLANCY STEADICAM ASSISTANT: KRISTI ARNDS DIGITAL UTILITY: MORGAN JENKINS
92
APRIL 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS
LOADER: JOHANNA SALO TECHNOCRANE OPERATORS: NAZARIY HATAK, BRIAN LOVE REMOTE HEAD TECH/OPERATOR: JAY SHEVECK
“B POSITITVE” PILOT DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GARY BAUM, ASC OPERATORS: GLENN SHIMADA, TRAVERS HILL, LANCE BILLITZER, EDDIE FINE ASSISTANTS: ADRIAN LICCIARDI, JEFF GOLDENBERG, ALEC ELIZONDO, CLINT PALMER, JASON HERRING UTILITIES: RICHIE FINE, DAN LORENZE DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DEREK LANTZ VIDEO CONTROLLER: KEVIN FAUST
“BOB HEARTS ABISHOLA” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: PATTI LEE, ASC OPERATORS: MARK DAVISON, CHRIS HINOJOSA, JON PURDY, MICHELLE CRENSHAW ASSISTANTS: JEFF JOHNSON, VITO DE PALMA, MARIANNE FRANCO, ADAN TORRES, LISA ANDERSON, ALICIA BRAUNS, LANCE MITCHELL, JORDAN HRISTOV VIDEO CONTROLLER: JOHN O’BRIEN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: T. BRETT FEENEY STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MICHAEL YARISH PUBLICISTS: KATHLEEN TANJI, MARC KLEIN
“MOM” SEASON 7 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: STEVEN V. SILVER, ASC OPERATORS: CARY MCCRYSTAL, JAMIE HITCHCOCK, SOC, DAMIAN DELLA SANTINA, CANDY EDWARDS ASSISTANTS: MEGGINS MOORE, NIGEL STEWART, SEAN ASKINS, MARK JOHNSON, WHITNEY JONES CAMERA UTILITIES: ALICIA BRAUNS, COLIN BROWN, JEANNETTE HJORTH VIDEO CONTROLLER: KEVIN FAUST DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: BENJAMIN STEEPLES STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: ROBERT VOETS PUBLICIST: MARC KLEIN
“YOUNG SHELDON” SEASON 3 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BUZZ FEITSHANS, IV OPERATORS: NEIL TOUSSAINT, SOC, AARON SCHUH ASSISTANTS: MATTHEW DEL RUTH, GRANT YELLEN, BRAD GILSON, JR., JAMES COBB
STEADICAM OPERATOR: AARON SCHUH STEADICAM ASSISTANT: GRANT YELLEN DIGITAL LOADER: BAILEY SOFTNESS DIGITAL UTILITY: IAN DOOLEY STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: ROBERT VOETS, MICHAEL DESMOND, DARREN MICHAELS, NICOLE WILDER
WEISNER
“EL CUARTITO” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SANTIAGO BENET MARI OPERATOR: CHRISTIAN RAMIREZ-COLL ASSISTANTS: CARLOS RIVERA, CARLOS DE LEON DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: OMAR RIVERA ABREU STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: LAURA MAGRUDER
WOODBRIDGE PRODUCTIONS “S.W.A.T.” SEASON 3
DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: FRANCIS KENNY, ASC, CRAIG FIKSE OPERATORS: TIM DOLAN, BRIAN PITTS, MICHAEL OTIS ROPERT ASSISTANTS: RYAN PARKS, LOGAN TURNER, THANE CHARACKY, RILEY PADELFORD, JUSTNI QUACH, MIKE FAUNTLEROY CAMERA UTILITY: CARL LAMMI LOADER: TREVOR BEELER
COMMERCIALS 1ST AVENUE MACHINE “VW OF AMERICA”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KAI SAUL ASSISTANTS: NICOLAS MARTIN, ALAN CERTEZA DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: CJ MILLER
IT'S A GAME CHANGER! Introducing
TRP WORLDWIDE exclusive SNAP accessory kit CINEO LIGHTING AND TRP WORLDWIDE ARE CHANGING THE GAME. The R15 light reflector can easily be removed and replaced with a variety of TRP WORLDWIDE SNAP accessories, including the SNAPBAG® OCTA 3', 5', 7', SNAPGRID®, LANTERN and SPACELIGHT BAGS for a structured soft lighting solution.
Spring 2020 www.TRPWORLDWIDE.com www.cineolighting.com/reflex
99 TIGERS “LEXUS”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TOM KRUEGER ASSISTANTS: DANIEL FERRELL, MATT SUMNEY DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MICHAEL BORENSTEIN PHANTOM TECH: MATT DRAKE
138 PRODUCTIONS “CARTIER”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JOSHUA MCKIE ASSISTANT: ADAM GONZALEZ
ASSISTANTS: RUDY SALAS, ANDREW PORRAS, KEVIN SUN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: STEVE HARNELL
CMS PRODUCTIONS
“ANCIENT ALIENS, DISH NETWORK” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIC HAASE ASSISTANTS: DANIEL HANYCH, JOHN TAKENAKA LOADER: DAGMARA KRECIOCH
BISCUIT FILMWORKS “NATIONWIDE”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIC SCHMIDT OPERATORS: CHRIS BOTTOMS, DJ HARDER ASSISTANTS: DANIEL HANYCH, JD MURRAY, JOHN SCIVOLETTO, JASON ADLER, JORDAN MARTIN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOHN SPELLMAN
BUNKER
“JEEP-PALE BLUE DOT” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DARREN LEW
GENTLEMAN SCHOLAR “SAMSUNG”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SHANE SIGLER ASSISTANTS: LUCAS DEANS, MANASH DAS PRIME TECH: DAVID CORNELIUS
“GOOGLE”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BEN KUTCHINS ASSISTANT: JASON REMEIKIS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DAMON MELEDONES
DIVISION7
“STELLA ARTOIS”
BACON & SONS
TRP OCTA 7’
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ROBERT CHAPPELL OPERATOR: DAVID WATERSTON ASSISTANTS: PETER MORELLO, RICK GIOIA, JEFF TAYLOR, SCOTT MILLER, JONATHAN SCHAEFER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: THOMAS WONG
DUMMY
GNET AGENCY
“CYBERPUNK 2077 SPOT” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DALLAS STERLING ASSISTANTS: CHRIS CUNNINGHAM, MARC WIERCIOCH, COLLEEN MARSHALL DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MICHELE DELORIMIER
HOUND CONTENT
“FACEBOOK, BLACK HISTORY MONTH” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DUSTIN LANE ASSISTANTS: ERICK AGUILAR, MARK DANIEL QUINTOS, MARIA VALLETTA, JORDAN CRAMER LOADER: LACEY JOY
“CENTURY 21” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JONATHAN FREEMAN ASSISTANTS: LILA BYALL, KIRA HERNANDEZ, NOAH GLAZER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JESSE TYLER
FRAMESTORE PICTURES “GM”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: STEEVEN PETITTEVILLE ASSISTANTS: DANIEL HANYCH, JOHN TAKENAKA DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: CJ MILLER
HOYT HARDWARE “NSW”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JEFF POWERS ASSISTANTS: ALICIA PHARRIS, RENNI POLLOCK DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: TIM GAER
HUNGRY MAN
“APARTMENTS.COM” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JONATHAN SELA OPERATOR: LUKAS BIELAN
APRIL 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS
93
NEW FreeStyle T44 LED System Exclusive Camera prooile matching Gamut selection, 709, P3, 2020 Gels on any Kelvin setting CIE XY and RGB color selection
Kinoolo.com Shop.Kinoolo.com ASSISTANTS: PAUL SANTONI, NOAH THOMSON, MARK SANTONI, GREG KURTZ REMOTE HEAD OPERATOR: CHRIS SWEENEY DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MATTHEW LOVE
“COKE” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ELIE SMOLKIN OPERATOR: RYAN HOGUE ASSISTANTS: CHRISTINE HODINH, DARIN NECESSARY, RAY DIER, CHARLIE MURPHY, JACOB DEPP STEADICAM OPERATOR: BENJAMIN VERHULST DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MICHAEL BORENSTEIN
JOJX PRODUCTIONS
“ILLINOIS LOTTERY” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAEL SVITAK OPERATORS: RUSS HARPER, TOM CICIURA, MICHAEL MONAR ASSISTANTS: BOB FAISON, ALEX GARCIA, DILLON BORHAM, MAX MOORE DIGITAL IMAGING TECHS: FILIP DVORAK, BRIAN KILBORN
MERMAN USA “LEXUS”
“PROJECT TINA” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BRYAN NEWMAN ASSISTANTS: JOHN CLEMENS, JIM HAIR, SCOTT MILLER STEADICAM OPERATOR: MEGAN MASUR DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: KAZIM KARAISMAILOGLU
“WALMART” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JONATHAN SELA OPERATOR: JOHNS SKOTCHDOPOLE ASSISTANTS: PAUL SANTONI, BRAD ROCHLITZER, NOAH THOMSON, GREG KURTZ DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MATTHEW LOVE
ICONOCLAST
“WALLABEE” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TODD MARTIN ASSISTANTS: EVAN WALSH, RYAN NOCELLA, IVANA BERNAL, JOSH BOTE
94
APRIL 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MATTHIAS KOENIGSWIESER OPERATOR: CEDRIC MARTIN ASSISTANTS: ETHAN MCDONALD, JASON ALEGRE STEADICAM OPERATOR: CEDRIC MARTIN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MICHAEL HARDWICK
MINTED CONTENT “CADILLAC”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JONATHAN SELA OPERATOR: LUKAS BIELAN ASSISTANTS: EJ MISISCO, NOAH THOMSON DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MATTHEW LOVE DIGITAL UTILITY: ZACH MADDEN
“CIRRO ENERGY 2020” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KAI SAUL OPERATORS: JACOB PINGER, DAVID SHAWL ASSISTANTS: NICOLAS MARTIN, RYAN GUZDZIAL, ALAN CERTEZA DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: CJ MILLER
“NISSAN” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JONATHAN SELA OPERATOR: JOHN SKOTCHDOPOLE ASSISTANTS: PAUL SANTONI, NOAH THOMSON, NICOLE MARTINEZ, GREG KURTZ DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MATTHEW LOVE UTILITY: COURTNEY MILLER
O POSITIVE
“BEST BUY” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SEBASTIAN PFAFFENBICHLER OPERATOR: JOSH MEDAK ASSISTANTS: DAVID PARSON, JOHN PARSON, LAWRENCE LIM, PETER PARSON DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MATTHEW LOVE
“FCA” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SEBASTIAN PFAFFENBICHLER OPERATOR: JOSH MEDAK ASSISTANTS: EJ MISISCO, BRAD ROCHLITZER, DANIEL TAYLOR DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: STEVEN HARNELL CAMERA UTILITY: CHAE HYUN LIM
“GEICO” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SEBASTIAN PFAFFENBICHLER OPERATOR: JOSH MEDAK ASSISTANTS: EJ MISISCO, NIGEL NALLY, JASON SEIGEL DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: STEVE HARNELL
“JIMMY JOHN’S” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIC STEELBERG, ASC OPERATOR: CALE FINOT ASSISTANTS: JOE SEGURA, HAYDN PAZANTI, JORDAN CRAMER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: STEVE HARNELL
“RED CROSS, YOU’VE GOT TIME” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIC STEELBERG, ASC OPERATOR: CALE FINOT ASSISTANTS: JOE SEGURA, KEVIN ANDERSON, JORDAN CRAMER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: STEVE HARNELL
PALMER PRODUCTIONS “T MOBILE”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BRADLEY STONESIFER OPERATOR: REID MURPHY ASSISTANTS: ADRIEL GONZALEZ, ANGELO GENTILE, LEONARD WALSH DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MICHAEL BORENSTEIN
PARK PICTURES “SUBARU”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: LANCE ACORD, ASC OPERATOR: JOSEPH MESSIER ASSISTANTS: MATEO BOURDIEU, LUIS SUAREZ, ANDREW CRANKSHAW DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: STEVE HARNELL
PEANUT GALLERY GROUP
PSYOP
OPERATORS: COLIN MACDONNELL, CHRIS CUNNINGHAM ASSISTANTS: LUCAS DEANS, CAMERON KEIDEL, LILA BYALL, NOAH GLAZER, JORDAN MARTIN, NATE CUMMINGS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ADRIAN JEBEF
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JONATHAN SELA ASSISTANTS: PAUL SANTONI, NOAH THOMSON DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MATTHEW LOVE CRANE OPERATOR: BOGDAN IOFCIULESCU MATRIX TECH: SHAWN FOSSEN
PELLINORE PRODUCTIONS
PULSE FILMS
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIC SCHMIDT ASSISTANTS: DANIEL HANYCH, ETHAN MCDONALD, JASON ADLER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOHN SPELLMAN
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: EDUARD GRAU ASSISTANTS: NICOLAS MARTIN, ALAN CERTEZA DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JESSE TYLER
“ADIDAS HEAT READY CHAPTER 2”
“AT&T CONNECTED HOME 2020”
“UNITED AIRLINES”
“LINKEDIN”
“DIRECTV”
RADICAL MEDIA
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIC SCHMIDT ASSISTANTS: DANIEL HANYCH, ETHAN MCDONALD, JASON ADLER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOHN SPELLMAN
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SCOTT CUNNIGHAM ASSISTANTS: PERGRIN JUNG, VANESSA MANLUNAS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: STEVE HARNELL
PRETTYBIRD
“CONSTELLATION BRANDS, TWO LANE” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MAX GOLDMAN ASSISTANTS: ETHAN MCDONALD, MARCUS DEL NEGRO DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ERICA MCKEE STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: ANNE MARIE FOX
“BMW”
“CA LOTTERY” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIC SCHMIDT ASSISTANTS: DANIEL HANYCH, MARCUS DEL NEGRO DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOHN SPELLMAN
APRIL 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS
95
®
20,000W Output
BOOTH#
mole.com/20k-led
“LINCOLN” DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DUSTIN MILLER, MARTIN AHLGREN ASSISTANTS: LUCAS DEANS, CONRAD CASTOR, CAMERON KEIDEL DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: LANLIN WONG
RAKISH
“FCA US LLC, ALFA ROMEO” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MATTHIAS KOENIGSWIESER OPERATOR: CHRIS CUNNINGHAM ASSISTANTS: ETHAN MCDONALD, EZRA BASSIN-HILL, MARCUS DEL NEGRO DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MICHAEL HARDWICK
RSA
“LENS CRAFTERS” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ADAM NEWPORT-BERRA ASSISTANTS: LUCAS DEANS, CAMERON KEIDEL, EDGAR GONZALEZ-LEON DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JUSTIN STEPTOE
SMUGGLER “SHIPT”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DARREN LEW ASSISTANTS: RUDY SALAS, ANDREW PORRAS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: STEVE HARNELL
SOCIETY, INC. “TARGET”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SHAWN KIM OPERATORS: DANA MORRIS, LILA BYALL ASSISTANTS: LAURA GOLDBERG, JOHN HOLMES, GAVIN GROSSI, NOAH GLAZER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DYLAN JOHNSON
SOMESUCH “FORD”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CHAYSE IRVIN ASSISTANTS: JIMMY WARD, JEREMIAH KENT, SEAN KISCH DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: TONY KWAN DIGITAL UTILITY: IAIN TRIMBLE
96
APRIL 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS
2-15 AMP Circuits
C5044
SPEARS & ARROWS
TASTE
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: RICHARD HENKELS OPERATOR: HASSAN ABDUL-WAHID ASSISTANTS: ETHAN MCDONALD, MARCUS DEL NEGRO, DANIEL HANYCH DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DAN SKINNER
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: THOMAS SCHAUER ASSISTANT: DOUG PRICE DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: KEVIN ZANIT
“BURLINGTON”
STATION FILM “TORO”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BENN MARTENSON ASSISTANTS: LEO ABRAHAM, NOAH GLAZER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: FRANCESCO SAUTA
“KROGER”
THE DIRECTORS BUREAU “CHANEL”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: PIETER VERMEER ASSISTANT: PETER MORELLO DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JEFF FLOHR
“OLD NAVY”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MATTHIAS KOENIGSWIESER ASSISTANTS: ETHAN MCDONALD, MARCUS DEL NEGRO DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MICHAEL HARDWICK
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SHAWN KIM OPERATOR: DANA MORRIS ASSISTANTS: LILA BYALL, GAVIN GROSSI, MARY FUNSTEN, NOAH GLAZER JIB ARM OPERATOR: PHILLIP EBEID DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DYLAN JOHNSON
SUPERLOUNGE
TRAVELER FILMS
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAEL SVITAK ASSISTANT: RYAN PATTERSON
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KAI SAUL ASSISTANTS: NICOLAS MARTIN, ALAN CERTEZA DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: BEN MOLYNEUX HEAD TECH: RANDY JOHNSON
STINK
“VALSPAR”
“BUICK”
SUPER PRIME “JITTERBUG”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: LINUS SANDGREN OPERATOR: DAVON SLININGER ASSISTANTS: JORGE SANCHEZ, EMILY AMOS, DIANA ULZHEIMER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: KEVIN ZANIT
SUPPLY & DEMAND “LUMIFY MOTION”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TRISTAN SHERIDAN ASSISTANTS: JOHN CLEMENS, SCOTT MILLER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: KAZIM KARAISMAILOGLU
“SQUARESPACE”
VICTORHOUSE FILMS “FX NETWORK”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: PAUL TOLTON OPERATOR: CHRIS ROBERTSON ASSISTANTS: JOSH KNIGHT, STEVEN WOLFE, AMBAR CAPOOR, JASON ADLER, NOAH GLAZER CRANE OPERATOR: MIKE NELSON CRANE TECH: JAMES DANICIC DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: STEVE HARNELL
WORLD WAR SEVEN
“AMERICAN HOME SHIELD” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BRYAN NEWMAN ASSISTANTS: RICK OSBORN, COREY BRINGAS,
MATT SUMNEY STEADICAM OPERATOR: JASON LEEDS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: STEVE HARNELL
YORK PRODUCTION “CASPER”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIC SCHMIDT OPERATORS: CHRIS CUNNINGHAM, CHRIS BOTTOMS ASSISTANTS: DANIEL HANYCH, JD MURRAY, JASON ADLER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOHN SPELLMAN
MUSIC VIDEOS PRETTYBIRD
“SAM SMITH & DEMI LOVATO” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ROB WITT ASSISTANTS: NICOLAS MARTIN, RYAN GUZDZIAL, KYLE PETITJEAN, JESS FAIRLESS STEADICAM OPERATOR: MARK GOELLNICHT DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: BEN MOLYNEUX
SUPER PRIME “SAPPHIRE”
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: RODRIGO PRIETO, ASC, AMC ASSISTANT: CRAIG GROSSMUELLER TECHNOCRANE OPERATOR: NAZARIY HATAK TECHNOCRANE TECH: BRIAN LOVE REMOTE HEAD TECH/OPERATOR: JAY SHEVECK
Advertisers Index COMPANY
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APRIL 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS
97
STOP MOTION
Jonny Cournoyer UNIT STILL PHOTOGRAPHER A QUIET PLACE PART II
I snapped this shot of Emily Blunt as she was closing the hatch on our final day of shooting. It was a “hipshot,” shooting off my tilted screen about waist-level so I had enough peripheral vision to monitor where the Steadicam operator was, who, in this case, was Matt Moriarty, SOC. If you have a respectful approach to the camera, grip and sound departments’ space, they will, in turn, make all the space in the world for you to ride along. The same is true for the cast. I have found it’s just as important to know when not to shoot – though on this film I had carte blanche freedom (for the most part) to snap away. When that hatch was finally closed, it was the end of one of the most visually and emotionally thrilling projects I’ve been blessed to be a part of. 98
APRIL 2020
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