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DECEMBER 2016
PRESIDENT’S LETTER
Photo by Scott Alan Humbert
ICG
December 2016 • vol. 87 no. 12 “Ahead of The Curve” There are more reasons to attend premier gatherings for independent filmmaking, like the Sundance Film Festival, than to just ski and go to parties. (This may be an unpopular notion, but I’ve never figured out why falling down a mountain on two boards is a smart idea!) You can always spend your time seeing indie movies, of course. But from the perspective of Local 600 members, one of the most important functions of Sundance (and some of the other conclaves I reference below) is to be there when new technologies are introduced to the non-technical participants in our industry. For example: for the last two years, virtual reality (VR) has been a huge focus at Sundance, with dozens of projects premiering at the festival. And it’s exciting to see, in person, the application of these new technologies at a place like Sundance, an event built around the discovery not only of new filmmaking talent, but of the means and ways of how new directors, cinematographers, producers, etc. get their projects up before an audience. I recall how, in 2012, I was at the IBC Convention in Amsterdam, scheduled to give a talk about furthering the involvement of cinematographers in the digital intermediate process. Walking through the main hall at IBC, I saw two funny-looking toy helicopters doing computerized acrobatics up above. There was even a show special selling them for $275. My first consideration was, “How amazing will it be when they put cameras on these things?” My second thought was, “I want to buy one of these just to mess with my cats!” Either way, there was a feeling of discovery, as if being part of a secret that allowed Local 600 to be first to the table when drones emerged as another tool in our kit. At Sundance we’ve seen discussions about VR, 360 video, drones with cameras, HDR, super-sensitive cameras for low-light scenarios, and ACES, the Academy Color Encoding System that is fast becoming the standard for color space management. Last year, Local 600 Business Representative (and technology expert) Michael Chambliss appeared at Sundance on two different drone panels, and the feedback was tremendous. It not only raises our prestige within the industry to ensure directors and producers know that new and emerging technologies are already in the domain of Local 600, but it also functions as a visible marketing tool to show that our members are involved in every aspect of image creation for the entertainment industry. We are also active at other key industry events where new technologies dominate the conversation: the Hollywood Production Alliance retreat in Palm Desert, CA (the name was changed from Hollywood Post Alliance in no small part due to our participation), NAB in Las Vegas, and the ever-growing NAB gathering in New York City, where we had a booth and panel on drones just last month. Many people already know we have a huge presence at Cine Gear Expo in Los Angeles, with a large booth and, this past summer, a major panel discussion on VR. Carrying on with virtual reality, we have also been active with the DGA’s Digital Day, attended by production managers, producers, directors and assistant directors. We organized all of the VR teams and equipment for a demo at that event, also this past summer. Just within the last two months, Local 600 has participated at Drone World Expo in San Jose, CA, and at Camerimage, in Bydgoszcz, Poland, the only film festival devoted to cinematography, where we brought our Emerging Cinematographer Award–winning short films to screen for attendees. We also continue to interface regularly with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Scientific-Technical Council and its annual Sci-Tech Awards, presented just before the Oscars, as well as the ASC’s Technology Committee, which was formed during my tenure as president of the ASC, and which has had a major influence on our industry. Local 600 members continue to act as leaders on that very important committee and its various subcommittees. The Guild maintains an active presence with technology considerations put forth by the VES (Visual Effects Society), as well as with the SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers). All of these events and groups ensure Local 600 has a voice in how emerging technologies will be applied and implemented in our industry. As new technologies are introduced and begin to mature, we will be there every step of the way, preserving access to the knowledge and training required to remain the image-creation leaders we are today. It is that combination of early adoption and deep immersion that allows us to grow our craft and our Guild. Steven Poster, ASC National President International Cinematographers Guild IATSE Local 600
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ICG
DECEMBER 2016
CONTENTS
DECEMBER 2016 THE INDIE ISSUE
CONTRIBUTORS
DEPARTMENTS GEAR GUIDE / 14 ZOOM IN / 22 BOOK REVIEW / 26 EXPOSURE / 28 FLASHBACK / 34
David Geffner (Breathless) “I chose the title of the famous Jean Luc Godard New Wave film for my feature about La La Land, because the spirit of creative abandon drove every momentous decision on this one-of-a-kind film. From cinematographer Linus Sandgren’s daring use of color to choreographer Mandy Moore’s unique partnership with Steadicam operator Ari Robbins, the work of these behind-the-scenes artists really did leave me…”
SPECIALS GENERATION NEXT / 78
FEATURES
Dale Robinette (Stop Motion, La La Land) “I have shot a lot of films over the years, but only a handful – well, maybe two handfuls – have lingered long and lovingly. La La Land is one of them. Director Damien Chazelle and his AD team (especially Peter Kohn), Linus [Sandgren] and his camera and lighting crew, and the cast all showed such kindness and cooperation that each day on set for me was sublime. I simply had to point my camera…and click.”
La La Land {42} Valentina I. Valentini (The Face of a Nation) “It doesn’t matter that I wasn’t alive when President Kennedy was assassinated; that event still burns deeply in my mind. But more than him, I was always interested in her [First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy]. Pablo Larraín’s masterpiece, Jackie, is built on DP Stéphane Fontaine’s images, composition and choreography in the dance with [lead actress] Natalie Portman, who brings the audience closer than ever to the woman behind the man.”
Jackie {58}
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Fences {70}
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ICG
DECEMBER 2016
ICG MAGAZINE Publisher Teresa Muñoz Executive Editor David Geffner Art Director Wes Driver
ACCOUNTING Glenn Berger COPY EDITORS Peter Bonilla Maureen Kingsley STAFF WRITER Pauline Rogers CONTRIBUTORS David Geffner Dale Robinette Pauline Rogers Valentina I. Valentini
December 2016 vol. 87 no. 12
INTERNATIONAL CINEMATOGRAPHERS GUILD Local 600 IATSE NATIONAL PRESIDENT Steven Poster, ASC NATIONAL VICE-PRESIDENT Heather Norton 1ST NATIONAL VICE-PRESIDENT Paul Varrieur 2ND NATIONAL VICE-PRESIDENT John Lindley, ASC NATIONAL SECRETARY-TREASURER Eddie Avila NATIONAL ASSISTANT SECRETARY-TREASURER Douglas C. Hart NATIONAL SERGEANT-AT-ARMS Christy Fiers NATIONAL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Rebecca Rhine
PUBLICATIONS & PUBLICITY COMMITTEE Henri Bollinger, Chair
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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) Published Monthly 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 2015, 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: $92.00 of each International Cinematographers Guild member’s annual dues is allocated for an annual subscription to International Cinematographers Guild Magazine. Non-members 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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ICG
DECEMBER 2016
WIDE ANGLE
DECEMBER 2016 / THE INDIE ISSUE
David Geffner, Executive Editor Twitter: @DGeffner Email: davidgeffner@icgmagazine.com
Watching and writing about this month’s cover story, La La Land, a gorgeous romantic musical that imagines Los Angeles as it’s never been imagined, requires re-booting what constitutes an indie film. December is our Independent Issue, and that’s often meant an ICG cover graced with a character-driven, Sundance-friendly drama for which “style” is measured in equal parts naturalistic cinematography and available lighting. It’s also typically been code for a budget that can barely afford a grip and electric truck or an art department with more than a week’s prep (at best.) But La La Land, as shot by Linus Sandgren, FSF, and directed by Damien Chazelle, has been in prep for years. And it was made by a studio, Lionsgate, that left the creative team totally alone (to be creative). The result is a once-in-a-decadetype project that blazes across screens with an independent vision – yet looks, feels, and smells (the cinematography and production design are that visceral) like something from a major Hollywood studio at the peak of its Technicolor glory. Think How To Marry A Millionaire, in 1953, released in the super-wide-screen format, CinemaScope. The challenges faced (and conquered) by La La Land’s camera team were almost insidious: Chazelle and Sandgren actually did shoot in CinemaScope (the older 2.55:1 aspect ratio is wider than the typical 2.40:1 anamorphic common today, requiring Panavision’s Dan Sasaki to ground glass for new lenses). They also wanted all single takes (often combined Steadicam and crane moves), which meant the 4-perf Super 35-mm magazine had to be reloaded every 10 minutes. For the long, spectacularly complex musical dance numbers (mostly shot on freeways, parks and piers), there was no B-roll or coverage. Nada. The filmmakers also fell head-over-heels in love with L.A.’s impossibly bluish-pink skies at twilight, necessitating that Sandgren shape La La Land’s color palette entirely on set – no safety net in post. Most everyone I interviewed, including choreographer Mandy Moore (So You Think You Can Dance); production designer David Wasco and his wife, set decorator Sandy Reynolds-Wasco (Rampart, Collateral, Pulp Fiction); and, of course, Chazelle, described Sandgren’s camera as “musical.” A hefty chunk of that credit goes to Steadicam operator Ari Robbins, SOC, crane operator Bogdan Iofciulescu, and A-camera First AC Jorge Sanchez. But Sandgren, who’s no stranger to a roving camera, having shot Joy and American Hustle for David O. Russell, says his biggest inspiration was composer Justin Hurwitz’s score, most of which was written before Chazelle had written a single line of dialogue! La La Land’s director, whose path to prominence could not have been more “indie,” having blown away critics and audiences at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival with the raw and mesmerizing Whiplash (shot by Guild DP Sharon Meir), says in this month’s Exposure conversation (Page 28) that he’s always wanted to make movies that, in another era, could only have been studio films. Chazelle’s praise for Sandgren (and his Union camera team), as well as all the other key creative partners, belies a director with more maturity and film history smarts than seems possible for his 31 years. Chazelle told me that, “better than any other cinematographer working today, in my opinion, Linus has this uncanny sense of how to find the magic in the real. Somehow [Sandgren’s] movies feel both gritty and dreamlike. I think with La La Land, we tried to push that tension to its extreme. And for me, that’s what feels so new and different.” Unlike many films that define indie movie making these days (and thank goodness there are so many new platforms for those films to be seen), La La Land was designed for the cinema. Period. Chazelle says he is a “stubborn believer” in the magic of people assembling in a dark room and watching images projected on a really big screen. “It lends every moment an epic weight,” he says, “and that deliberate shut-off of the world outside, for 90 minutes, two hours, whatever, is still as magical, to me, as it must have been in the days of the early movie palaces.” So is La La Land the future of independent filmmaking? Or just a frozen moment in time when past and present collide in a perfect storm of creative energies? I don’t know the answer – do you?
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CONSIDER THIS
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
“The city has rarely looked this gorgeous in films, a credit to the director’s romantic imagination as well as to the technical expertise of cinematographer Linus Sandgren.”
Linus Sandgren, FSF
TODD MCCARTHY, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
LionsgateAwards.com
ICG
DECEMBER 2016
Gear Guide
DECEMBER 2016 by Pauline Rogers
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CONSIDER THIS
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BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY SIMON DUGGAN, ACS LionsgateAwards.com
ICG
DECEMBER 2016
Gear Guide
LWZ.3 Universal Zoom by Zeiss + One zoom to fit all situations – ideal range of focal length allows user to master major film-set requirements on budget-conscious productions + Ergonomics, durability and precision of a ZEISS cine lens in a compact body – a long-term investment for smaller productions + All-in-one Super 35 zoom combines cine look, robust cine housing, compact and lightweight body at an affordable price + Precise calibration scales allow matching the typical cine production workflow – from the simplest setup to the complex cinema set + State-of-the-art optical design outperforms requirement for current and future camera sensors – no need to change the lens while upgrading camera
“In preproduction, I spent an afternoon shooting through the lens, using my Alexa XT running Open Gate, looking at resolution charts. I found the performance to be better than several competing zoom lenses and nearly equal to that of Ultra Prime lenses, all shot at T/2.9. There was minimal breathing with focus changes and almost no pincushion or barrel distortion. This lens fully covers the Alexa shooting in 16:9 and 4:3 modes, and only slightly darkens the corners of Open Gate at the wider focal lengths. When Open Gate is cropped to 16:9 or 1:2.39, there is no vignetting. There is a small amount of light transmission ramping that happens continuously over the entire zoom range, making it easy to correct with a ‘dynamic’ exposure compensation in post.” – Bill Bennett, ASC
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FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Caleb Deschanel, ASC/AMA
©2016 TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX
ICG
DECEMBER 2016
Gear Guide
VRig by Matthews + Reconfigurable modular system compatible with standard grip equipment for limitless custom configurations + Small footprint with low center of gravity that provides stability while minimizing nadir hole and shadow obstruction + Slim vertical profile minimizes view obstruction to live audiences, provides both sitting and standing VR perspectives + Chroma key green and reversible black elastic leg skirt for simplified post-production processing and on-set camera accessory concealment + Integrated ¼-20-in. and 3/8-in. mounts for installing binaural microphones, lighting fixtures and other camera accessories + Strong, lightweight all-aluminum construction with optional suction-pump cup and auger-spike stability enhancement
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ICG
DECEMBER 2016
Gear Guide
Cine Lenses by Sigma + Includes High-Speed Zoom line: 18-35 T2, 50−100-mm T2; FF Zoom line: 24−35-mm T2.2; FF HighSpeed Prime line: 20-mm T1.5 FF, 24-mm FF, 35-mm T1l5 FF, 50-mm T1l5 FF, 85-mm T1l5 FF + Optimized for the latest digital moviemaking technology, supports high-resolution shooting in 6K-8K, and features highest optical performance in its class + Weatherproof with luminous paint marking for low light + Manual linear iris control and electronic mounts + Two high-speed zooms available in Japan and USA in early December for EF and E-mount camera systems; FF Zoom/High-Speed Prime before NAB 2017. Support for PL-mount camera systems will also be added.
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F O R YO U R C O N S I D E R AT I O N B E S T C I N E M AT O G R A P H Y S T É P H A N E F O N TA I N E A . F. C .
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ICG
DECEMBER 2016
Zoom IN
Like Quentin Tarantino, Jessica Lopez, SOC says she “went to the school of movies.”
“As a little girl I was fortunate to live near a second-run movie theater and a couple of cool video rental stores,” she recalls. “I was always watching, and escaping from my mind into the story – from E.T., Grease, Annie and Stand By Me to Mr. Destiny. Lopez says she didn’t have a notion of a career in moviemaking until, as a first-year business major at The University of Toledo in Ohio, she signed up for the “Intro to Film” art elective. “In the first day I knew I was going to be a filmmaker,” she remembers. “And by the next semester I had switched my major to Film and Video Production.” The defining moment of where she would find a place in the film industry came after taking Peter Abraham’s On-Campus Steadicam Workshop hosted by Tiffen. “You could say the Steadicam profession found me,” Lopez observes. “Peter took the time to nurture my questions and help me collect the proper information on how to become a working camera operator. He’s still my mentor and friend, someone I could talk to for the last twelve years.” Lopez decided to relocate to L.A., dragging along a large college debt (and later adding equipment loans to that debt). At one point, continued on page 24
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by Pauline Rogers / photos by Parrish Lewis
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ICG
DECEMBER 2016
Zoom IN
A-Camera Operator / 2nd Unit DP Tari Segal with Lopez on the set of Chicago Justice
she even had to give up her apartment. “Car and couch living allowed me to put a down payment on my initiation dues – and even opened some amazing doors,” she reflects, such as moving in with cinematographer Cira Felina Bolla, who became another mentor and best friend. “She was recovering from breast cancer at the time,” Lopez says. “We talked about opportunity [for women in the industry] and compared reasons why we admired certain female filmmakers.” [Bolla passed not long after – with Lopez by her side.] Shortly after Bolla’s passing, Jessica had a chance to work with DP/Operator Tari Segal on a Disney music video, ushering in another strong female camera connection. After a few years of friendship and professional rapport, the two are working together now, Segal as A-camera operator/2nd unit DP, with Lisa Wiegand, ASC, on NBC/Universal’s Chicago Justice, Season 1. “As far as I’m concerned, working with Lisa and Tari is one of the ultimate dream career destinations,” Lopez beams. “It’s a groundbreaking time for women to be running a camera department – especially one led by Lisa, who is the most supportive boss I’ve ever had.” Lopez’s résumé shows the results of her efforts and determination. This past year she was called in for 2nd-unit Steadicam on Season 3 of Transparent (ICG April 2015). Director Silas Howard wanted Lopez to lead and follow the actors for two separate scenes in two separate episodes,
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through the Beverly Center Mall. She had to convey, in her movements, an emotional suicidal POV and discovery of a character’s end. “The toughest part was stepping onto different escalators backward, safely,” she recounts. “There is this sudden jerk that happens once you step on and try to balance by leaning backward when the escalator forces you forward with all the weight. It took a few rehearsals and a timed-out method of the key grip stepping off the lower railing as steps are moving, so he can get a one-second head start to counter the force, and by pulling me back once I would hit that first step. Our cinematographer, D.J. Harder, was adamant about safety and would not agree to shoot until he knew we were all comfortable with the multiple step-on and -offs of the escalators.” For the Hulu streaming hit East Los High (ICG September 2016), Lopez executed a single Steadicam take for the season finale dance competition that required her to learn the dance choreography for each of the rival dance squads. “After attending some rehearsals and combining my love for music and Steadicam ‘oners,’” she explains, “I was able to complement the camera movements with the dance moves the choreographers planned out. Producer/ Choreographers Reina Hidalgo and Asiel Hardison were able to collaborate with Cinematographer Kira Kelly and me by pulling off a high-paced continuous shot fusing between 18 people. The camera meets the dancers and follows them
DECEMBER 2016
through two group routines in two minutes thirty seconds in a single take.” Lopez credits her 30 years of roller-skating as good training for the East Los High Season 3 finale. “Every skating night as a kid was filled with some of the best musical jams of the 80s and 90s that required tricks and skating routines to keep up with the beats,” she smiles. “Every step you make on skates is about balance and hitting those notes with some funky tricks. Steadicam is a moving platform with its own way of capturing rhythm on camera. As the operator I felt I could channel through the same musical interests, single out the movements, anticipate, and use my personal instincts to achieve the shot. “What’s so important to me,” Lopez continues, referencing the strong diversity of shows like Transparent and East Los High, “is how inclusive the crews have been. No judgments and no questions as to why you were there other than being qualified. Your gender or your race doesn’t matter when you step onto a Topple set [referencing Transparent creator Jill Soloway’s concept of breaking down old ways of thinking]. It felt good not to be always reminded that I’m a female camera operator!”
ICG
Of course, there is an upside to being a female Steadicam operator – and that’s the help and support from other women in that craft. “There are two mentors that have experienced what I go through every day,” Lopez says. “Janice Arthur and Elizabeth Ziegler. They tell me things they couldn’t tell a male operator because they just wouldn’t get it. “Things that include Mother Nature, stereotypes, and comfortable clothes,” she adds. “Janice and I have emailed since 2007. She told me the best gear options over the years. Elizabeth has turned into my L.A. family – after I finally tracked her down. We talk about the shots she did on Eyes Wide Shut and Tombstone. We talk about how we are perceived on set and how to get what the director/DP wants. She critiques my shots when I get a chance to show her.” One exciting byproduct of being a female Steadicam operator, Lopez concludes, “is that my biggest fans are fathers with daughters. They all seem to have this compassion and nurturing personality. Probably because they’ve seen, first hand, what it’s like to be around a young girl trying to build a future in this country – and in a maledominated department.”
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DECEMBER 2016
Book REVIEW Alex Cox’s Introduction to Film: A Director’s Perspective Kamera Books, imprint of Oldcastle Books Distributed by Trafalgar Square ISBN-10:1843447460, ISBN-13: 978-1843447467 Amazon Kindle price: $14.99, Amazon paperback price: $23.13
Given that Alex Cox is known as a maverick filmmaker, having made such indie cult projects as Repo Man, Sid and Nancy, Bill The Galactic Hero, Tombstone-Rashomon, and others, as well as the force behind the BBC’s weekly Moviedrome series of cult films, his guide to filmmaking – from a director’s perspective – is also filled with surprises. The book breaks filmmaking into the nuts and bolts of each department. But, it also serves up (to this American reviewer) a bit of an elitist view of the art form. Cox goes through the history of filmmaking, carefully choosing examples that support his theories (the book is based on a Critical Studies class he taught at the University of Colorado) and then applying them to our modern age. And true to his maverick sensibilities, Cox has created a “book” that does far better when you combine it with the digital age, giving the reader examples to view. Granted, the examples were part of his course curriculum – but we’d bet that an industrious researcher could find bits online, or better still, rent the DVD or download it – to learn even more. This 200-page education begins by analyzing the auteur theory of filmmaking, as Cox cites the opening sequence of Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969) “…because it is an exemplary title sequence, because it sets up the film’s conflict (outlaws versus railroad bounty hunters, all of whom are living on borrowed time), because the uniformed hero-villains who are about to provoke a massacre aren’t just a cinematic invention but a reference to the film’s context – the ongoing massacre in Vietnam – and because the sequence’s heroic conclusion (‘if they move, kill ’em’/freeze-frame on the hero’s face) is about as clear a celebration of the auteur director as you could ever get.” In peeling away the onion that is cinematography, Cox not only gives a detailed technical understanding of the craft but also gives the reader/student a chance to “see” the results (as he does with each job description). For example, in discussing “the frame,” Cox suggests watching two showdowns: the church gunfight in For a Few Dollars More (Italy/Spain, 1965) directed by Sergio Leone and shot by Massimo Dallamano; and the final samurai showdown of Sanjuro (Japan, 1962), directed by Akira Kurosawa and shot by Fukuzo Koizumi and Takao Saito. “Both were shot in the scope aspect ratio, Dallamano filming 26
in Techniscope, Koizumi and Saito in Tohoscope,” Cox writes. “Yet, their framing is quite different. For a Few Dollars More has an abundance of close-ups. Even though they have a vast space available in the ruined church set, Leone and Dallamano stage all the action and the characters in the centre of the frame. They don’t take full advantage of the aspect ratio, and they ignore the rule of thirds. In Sanjuro, by contrast, the compositions of Kurosawa, Koizumi and Salto push the edges of the frame. So, it’s not simply a question of choosing an aspect ratio. It’s a question of using it to advantage.” Cox goes on to explain the pivotal role of cinematography using the example of the 1995 indie classic Living in Oblivion, shot by Frank Prinzi, ASC. “It’s a very believable portrayal of a low-budget shoot,” he writes. “The self-regarding movie star played by James LeGros was apparently inspired by Brad Pitt, with whom the director, Tom DiCillo, had previously worked. In addition to the actors, how many crewmembers are identified as such in the film? What is their job?” he asks the reader. Then, delineating each job – gaffer, assistant, even craft services – that is identified in the film, he shows a small crew and explains how making a film is like “mounting an ambitious stage play. It’s a complicated process, and it involves many different jobs. The DP is never alone.” Cox’s example is a perfect metaphor for the industry as he sees it. Cox also deftly drills down into what he calls the “insanity” that follows film sets. He’s not afraid to take on those who believe the end justifies the means – and shows how, sometimes, that can be dangerous. He talks about projects for which the safety of actors, extras, and stunt actors were put in jeopardy, such as The Day of the Locust (1975), for example, where an unfinished and clearly unsafe film set collapsed beneath the cast and crew as they were filming. He also talks about the industry’s most high-profile safety tragedy to date, The Twilight Zone (1983), where three lives (including two children’s) were lost. Throughout the book Cox combines cautionary tales, sound judgment, simple terms for understanding – and magnificent examples that will help the reader achieve what Cox’s intellectual mentor, Sun Tzu, advocates: “Plan for everything to go extremely smoothly.” by Pauline Rogers
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DECEMBER 2016
Exposure Whiplash, the Oscar-winning Sundance hit that rocketed director
Damien Chazelle to the top of every producer’s must-call list, was not necessarily a good predictor for the stunning follow-up that is La La Land, a candy-colored romantic musical inspired by 1950’s Hollywood and Chazelle’s hero, French director Jacques Demy. As shot by Linus Sandgren, FSF (Joy, American Hustle, Promised Land), the camera in La La Land floats lyrically amidst the action, not unlike one of the woodwinds in the 95-piece orchestra composer Justin Hurwitz used to create the film’s music. Stylistically, Chazelle describes Whiplash as a movie about “punctuated editing” and “right angles,” while La La Land is “all about curves.” What both films represent is a startling reinvigoration of independent cinema, created by a filmmaker who draws as much from Old Hollywood (La La Land was shot in 2.55:1 Cinemascope and used complex staging for full-frame musical numbers) as new (elaborate crane and Steadicam work all done on location). ICG Executive Editor David Geffner talked with Chazelle about his passion for seeing movies in theaters and why La La Land was the perfect storm of creative talents, from cinematography to choreography and beyond. ICG: You’ve followed up a Sundance independent film with a studio movie, made by a studio that left you alone to make an indie film, which is inspired by the glory days of Hollywood studios. Damien Chazelle: [Laughs.] That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. We actually tried to make this movie for five or six years via a studio or outside the system and it just wasn’t happening. Whiplash opened some doors for me, but there wasn’t a huge appetite for a Technicolor-type romantic musical set in 2016. Basically, Lionsgate was the outlier that took a huge gamble.
Whiplash (shot by Sharon Meir) was very different – aside from the handful of whip pans. How did you and Linus Sandgren come together? I wanted a camera that felt like it was gliding on air, at least for large parts of the story. It’s an approach somewhat similar to what Linus did with American Hustle. Then, when Linus was grading Joy, and I got to see some stills, I was even more convinced he was the right guy. The way [in Joy that the photography] would flip in and out of dreams and reality sequences, but in a gritty and grounded way, was perfect for [La La Land]. I think of Linus as an analog DP in that he likes to use older, traditional processes in new and contemporary ways. That’s exactly how I like to make movies. Honestly, after one meeting I was dying to work with him. photos by Dale Robinette
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“I’ve always wanted to make movies that, in another era, would have been studio films.” 29
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But you did not make it easy for him or his camera department! No, I did not; I was a bit of a creative sadist. [Laughs.] I’ll say. Long single takes [some musical scenes are more than six minutes] on difficult-to-access real locations, and no B-roll. Where coverage was concerned, both Linus and I agreed the camera had to be a character in this film; it had to provide the audience with a privileged viewpoint. B-roll has that long-lens feeling that takes away that intimacy. As for using digital effects for background extensions or green screen instead of real locations, we did a little bit of that in the Planetarium scene for Emma and Ryan’s waltz in the air. But I wanted incamera capture, not just for the sake of it, but because I believe there is a feeling, perhaps even subliminally, that [the audience] can tell the difference. Linus and I were walking around L.A. at magic hour, and the sky was just so unbelievable. We wanted to capture those colors and that magical glow the way
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you really see and experience it, not through post or enhancements in the DI.
Thankfully, with Linus and his team there was always a solution to every problem.
How much did shooting in real locations – on a freeway or on a bike road in Griffith Park, for example – change how you had first imagined the film? I think it’s a testament to Linus’ genius as a DP that I never felt I had to radically compromise my original vision due to the limitations we encountered. We rehearsed a lot for both of those scenes you mentioned – many days in Griffith Park, with stand-ins, and just using iPhones at first, and then with the actors until the sun started to set. With the freeway scene, we had weeks of staging in a large parking lot with cars and a full dress rehearsal on location. But I won’t lie – there were moments in both cases, like lighting the road in Griffith Park to achieve this heightened naturalism before the sun was gone, or the complexity of keeping everyone safe on the freeway with a crane that had to move so much – where I thought, “These might really turn out to be disasters!” [Pause.]
For example…[Crane operator] Bogdan [Iofciulescu] and [Steadicam operator] Ari [Robbins] were amazing. They just seemed to have this instinctive musical sense that got better the more they rehearsed [with dance doubles]. One challenge for the freeway scene was how the crane could be dexterous enough without impacting the safety of the dancers. And we discovered during the dress rehearsal that a different crane head [Oculus] would help in that area. Often the brunt of the day – in Griffith Park, on the freeway, and with the other long music numbers, like Ryan walking on the pier, or their dance in the Observatory – was spent rehearsing to the point where Camera was a well-oiled machine and Linus and his team had worked out all the complex movements. Then we could bring in Ryan and Emma, like in Griffith Park, where we knew we’d only get five useable takes before the sun went down, and work on performance.
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“I think of Linus as an analog DP in that he likes to use older, traditional processes in new and contemporary ways.” Throughout the film, there typically was a moment where I could just literally see it all come to life – the music, the dancing, the camera work, the lighting, the production design, and, I’d think, “Oh, maybe this will turn out okay.” [Laughs.] You’ve cited French director Jacques Demy, specifically his films The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort, as a major inspiration. Did you include direct frames and compositions from some of those older films? This was a movie about movies in many ways, so I wanted to allow Linus, the Wascos, Mandy Moore, who did the choreography, and other department heads to have fun with that conceit. The final dream ballet, for cinematography and production design, certainly collects everything we loved the most in the history of musicals and throws it all at the wall. But the great thing about using these older movies as inspiration was that none of them was set in a contemporary Los Angeles, which is typically portrayed as much more gritty on-screen. That’s why this was such a location-heavy movie – even scenes that the older musicals would have done on a backlot or sound stage, we wanted to be on an L.A. freeway, or on a pier by the ocean. For the wide shots on freeway scene, you can see lanes below us moving with real cars! You block out half the screen with your hand and you’d see a documentary about L.A. traffic, while the other half is our dance number, as artificial and designed as you can get. That juxtaposition was exciting for you? Oh, absolutely. And it’s why I love Linus’ work so much. Better than any other cinematographer working today, in my opinion, he has this uncanny sense of how to find the magic in the real. Somehow his movies feel both gritty and dreamlike, and I
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think with La La Land, we tried to push that tension to its extreme. For me, that’s what feels so new and different.
Whiplash was all about a jazz drummer, and your main character (Ryan Gosling) is a jazz musician who gives speeches about the purity of that music, and preserving it. Are you on a crusade to save jazz from itself ? [Laughs.] I was a jazz musician, or a wanna-be jazz musician, I should say, so it’s less a conscious choice and more just a part of me. I actually wrote La La Land before Whiplash, so the germ of the idea was my collaboration with [composer] Justin Hurwitz, way back when we were college roommates [at Harvard], and jazz was at the core of everything we did. I do feel the great Hollywood musicals had a jazz vernacular at their center, even if they were dressed up with a big orchestral score. And there are many different kinds of music [in La La Land] besides jazz – from 19th-Century classical to the bop Ryan’s character plays in a small combo. I think the same kind of balancing of extremes Linus had with photography was what Justin had to do with music, of which he wrote every note in the film, by the way. Movies, as an art form, are not that dissimilar from music, as they both can reach deep emotional places without needing words. That’s probably why Whiplash and La La Land end with a wordless sequence set to music. Linus said you had playback on the set and that Justin is actually playing the music for Emma Stone’s solo song, “Audition.” Huge patches of the score, along with, of course, all the songs, had already been constructed before shooting began. In the scene you’re talking about, Justin was playing piano in another room and Emma was singing live [using ear buds]. Or when Emma runs out of the restaurant and down the street, we had
Justin’s full orchestral score playing. Hearing the music on set helped Linus time out the camera move, and set the colors and lighting. That’s a luxury we rarely get; Justin composed the main melody before I had written a word of the script. You come out of a long-standing indie background, with Whiplash being discovered at Sundance. But La La Land is very different. Is it the next evolution of independent filmmaking? I don’t know about that. But the irony here is that I’ve always wanted to make movies that, in another era, would have been studio films. I don’t think we could have made this movie in a classic indie model, where all the financing is cobbled together, as we needed too many resources. Lionsgate had those resources, but they left us completely alone to make the movie we wanted to make. It was this ideal universe – which I would love to repeat – of marrying an indie sensibility to this big-screen canvas. Think back to the 1970’s where so many movies that were made by the studios, and designed for the big screen, were totally weird and idiosyncratic. Speaking of big screen, would you have made La La Land for another platform – a streaming Web company or an HBO, both of which are producing amazing work? [Laughs.] Not likely. I remain a stubborn believer in the magic of people assembling in a dark room, and images projected on a really big screen. It lends every moment an epic weight and that deliberate shut-off of the world outside, for 90 minutes, two hours, whatever - a finite amount of time is still as magical, to me, as it must have been in the days of the early movie palaces. [Laughs again.] I’m going to cling to that notion for as long as I possibly can.
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Flashback
Horror films have always been societal mirrors; just ask the indie filmmakers who pioneered the genre. by Pauline Rogers
continued on page 36
Photo from Halloween (1978) from the book, “On Set with John Carpenter,” by Kim Gottlieb-Walker
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Flashback
Screen grab from Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) Courtesy of Daniel Pearl, ASC
The world is spinning out of control. Work pressures are beyond the pale. Why not take a weekend trip to the woods and relax? Maybe even gather a few friends and hire a guide. “You end up sitting around a fire listening to a wise man telling stories,” begins horror pioneer John Carpenter, whose 1978 indie scare-fest, Halloween (which he also scored) is on the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry. “At first he talks about what is out there in the dark – the people that don’t look like us. Then the same scenario, only the wise man talks about another evil – the one that lives inside the human heart.” This, Carpenter maintains, is a classic setup for why horror films are so successful. And what has made storytellers like Carpenter, as well as horror mavens like Roger Corman, Mick Garris, Joe Dante, Tobe Hooper, Wes Craven and others so ahead of the curve in creating independent horror films that couldn’t afford to show a ton of gore, yet still stripped every cinematic nerve raw in the minds of their audience. 36
Jacques Haitkin, who shot Wes Craven’s A Nightmare On Elm Street, says that “if people are feeling frightened in their everyday lives, it may have a cathartic effect to be confronted with a simulation of worse fear, as portrayed in [horror] films, where they can confront and overcome.” Sounds accurate. Between 2003 and 2008, horror films made more than three billion dollars, with an additional 100 billion more in ancillary home-video sales. Local 600 publicist Henri Bollinger, who worked with Craven for many years, remembers, “Wes figured out that if you made a horror film at a budget, and it met the parameter of the genre’s box-office potential, the financial risks were minimal or non-existent. “Of course,” Bollinger continues, “the key to making such films is to include scenes that will visually and psychologically shock targeted audiences. [Craven and his partner Sean Cunningham] quickly identified that target audience to be males between the ages of 12 and 35. They then agreed on the kind of horror scenes that would resonate with this audience and the nature and appearance of the lead characters.” It then fell to cinematographers like Haitkin, or Daniel Pearl, ASC, who shot Tobe Hooper’s groundbreaking indie classic, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), to depict that horror (and the often related social commentary) on a tight budget and schedule. Hooper’s film is, arguably, the touchstone for all indie horror that followed. The early 1970’s were chaotic times – Watergate, Vietnam, Patty Hearst, etc.– and the raw and gritty psychosis depicted in the film gave audiences (especially college students where
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Flashback
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
the film was made, at the University of Texas, Austin) a chance to “displace” unrest. Pearl describes his partnership with Hooper as two maverick filmmakers making up shots on the fly. “On the day we were in front of the house around the massive swing,” Pearl recalls, “I had an idea how to enhance the horror. If I lay flat on my stomach and hand-held the 16-millimeter Éclair off the front of our platform dolly, we would be able to dolly under the swing toward the house, following the second victim in a low wideangle shot, making the most of her bare legs and cut-off jeans while the house grew larger and larger until it dominated the frame. It worked!” People say Chainsaw was gory, but like many indie horror films that followed, there was little bloodshed. Hooper and Pearl wanted to visually lead the audience to the point of the violence, and then, by implication, let them scare themselves. “The scene where Leatherface is in the kitchen and cuts up his first victim is a perfect example of the horror from what you don’t see,” Pearl continues. “Shooting that scene at a time before video assist, when the camera operator was the only person seeing the actual shot as it unfolded, I was hard-pressed to explain its power.” Twenty-nine years later, Pearl became the first person in cinema history to reprise his role in horror filmmaking, shooting the 2003 remake starring Jessica Biel. “The budget was about 60 times the $80,000 we had to make the original, but it still wasn’t easy,” he smiles. “We were still indie and needed to stretch our dollars for production value. One new tool we did have was CGI, so we were able to graphically show a leg getting cut off. But I wonder if that is really any scarier than when we obscured the violence.” In the late 1970s, partners John Carpenter and Debra Hill were tasked with creating The Baby Sitter Murders for about
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Photo from Halloween (1978) from the book, “On Set with John Carpenter,” by Kim Gottlieb-Walker
$300,000. “Their idea was to set it on Halloween Night,” recalls actress Jamie Lee Curtis, who admits that she hates to be scared. What attracted Curtis to Halloween is that Carpenter and Hill created a character that resonates throughout the genre – a “vulnerable, real human being,” the actress adds, “who is then involved in something surreal. That realness, the tree-lined streets, girls walking home from school, would yield fear when the surreal was introduced.” “Our task was to create an absorbing film, without any resources, but with a creative use of the camera,” explains the film’s cinematographer, Dean Cundey, ASC. “For example, toward the conclusion, Jamie Lee’s character is in a corner of the house, standing next to a dark closet. John wanted the audience to feel, perhaps, she was safe, and then slowly realize that Michael Myers was standing in the closet in plain sight.” Carpenter praises the Panavision wide-screen format they used as “perfect” for a horror movie. Cundey says the format easily allowed the visual “lurking space” Carpenter sought. “John wanted the audience to feel that they could gradually make out the face of the hiding Michael Myers, as if their eyes were getting used to the dark and they knew something that the character Laurie Strode didn’t,” Cundey adds. “I used a small light on a dimmer to illuminate Michael’s face from complete black to barely perceptible. The audience reaction each time was tremendously satisfying.” Wes Craven’s landmark A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) elicited similar reactions. Haitkin says one of his most interesting challenges was making Freddy Krueger real – and horrific. “He couldn’t be a guy in a rubber mask,” Haitkin recalls. “He had to be lit well enough to tell a story and portray the character to make him scary; but not so well as to see the actor in make-up.” This was all pre-digital VFX; Haitkin had to light the “creature” with one lighting style – and the normal people with another. “Throw in the low indie budget, short schedule and a
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demand for high production value,” he says, “and making horror films can test one’s creativity and technical mettle. But that’s the fun of it!” In the late 1990s, two University of Central Florida college students had plenty of fun reinventing the genre with what has become the most financially successful indie horror film of all time. Dan Myrick and Ed Sánchez were fans of the In Search Of series from the 1970s and Ancient Astronauts, so they decided to apply that pseudo-doc style to a horror film they called The Blair Witch Project. “Reality TV was coming in, and so was 24/7 news coverage,” Myrick explains. “So audiences were being sensitized to that style of storytelling. We just took it one step further and applied it to a narrative film – feeding the horror element by using ‘found footage’ of three film students who disappear while researching the Blair Witch legend.” “The end scene in the house used this technique to great effect,” he adds. “Even though we shot it over multiple days, using multiple takes, it all feels like one continuous take from two perspectives, video and film.” A few years later, cinematographer Nancy Schreiber, ASC, expanded the found-footage approach with Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 for Artisan, who wanted to capitalize on the new franchise. “The budget was huge compared to the first Blair Witch, but still very small by most production standards,” Schreiber recalls. “We could create the ‘found footage’ with more professional equipment – 35 millimeter, Panavision, and two full weeks of Technocrane. A lot happened in the woods, and we had many days with those old Musco lights.” In 2005, Phil Parmet paired with Rob Zombie for The Devil’s Rejects, which he says aimed for the feeling of a seventies Western, about a super-violent fictional Manson-type family as anti-heroes. “Fine dust but with a modern raw kinetic look in both lighting and in the way the camera moved,” Parmet recalls. “[Rob Zombie] wanted a rough nonfiction feel,” he adds. “So we shot 16-millimeter, and I brought in two camera operators and designed scenes for spontaneous hand-held, allowing them to frame and execute the shots as they saw the scene unfold. At other times we were on the Steadicam, crane or dolly for precise designed moves. The opening shootout on the family farm turned out to be a mixture.” Parmet literally had one afternoon for the entire sequence, a house rigged with about 1000 squibs that could be used only one time. “Horror films address our innate fears of the unknown,” Parmet continues. “A perfect example is when the rejects are holding hostages in the motel room to the point where the girl escapes and is run down by the truck – it’s one of the darkest and most disturbing moments in any horror film I’ve seen or shot.” Carpenter’s philosophy that horror is an “elastic genre, reinvented by new generations,” has proven true. Young indie filmmakers are still often cutting their teeth on the genre, like 2015 Sundance Film Festival winner The Witch, shot by Jarin Blaschke and directed by Robert Eggers. And former ASC President Michael Goi, ASC, ISC, DGA (American Horror Story, Scream Queens), says many young filmmakers are returning to the genre’s roots in classic cinema, but on television. “We are seeing more horror that is based
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Flashback
“Reality TV was
coming in, and so was 24/7 news coverage. We just took it one step further and applied it to a narrative film.” – Co-writer/director Dan Myrick, The Blair Witch Project (1999)
on gothic elements from the nineteen-twenties through the Hammer films of the nineteen-sixties and seventies,” Goi offers. “The Val Lewton approach of suspense and dread never goes out of style, and it is mixed with flashes of eighties gore.” Goi loves to pay homage to the classics in his own work. “An episode I directed, American Horror Story: Hotel called ‘Flicker,’ is a direct homage to F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu,” he explains. “Right down to the shadow of the hand on the wall coming down to grip the hero on the throat. It’s simply saying, ‘This was fun and effective almost 100 years ago, and it’s still fun and effective now.’” But is indie horror still a commentary on the era we live in? “We know that Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers was a paranoid fable of the McCarthy nineteen-fifties era, and that Night of the Living Dead was a restless generation’s nihilistic ending to a decade of peace and love,” Goi explains. “But my feeling is that today’s horror wants to distance itself more from the sociopolitical climate and give the audience a break.” Blaschke, who coupled high-end digital capture (ARRIRAW) with vintage lenses (Cooke Speed Panchros and Bausch & Lomb Super Baltar) to help The Witch ride a wave of critical acclaim and strong box office, says neither he nor the film’s writer/ director, Robert Eggers, are horror film aficionados. “Our general approach could be called some version of minimalism,” Blaschke explains. “What is perhaps even more important than the decisions we make are all the decisions we don’t make, and what [the viewer] does not see.” Blaschke, currently shooting a dark fantasy thriller for Spanish director Rodrigo Cortés, adds that the use of minimalism is a powerful tool “in an age when filmmakers can easily fly a camera out of a dinosaur’s nose and explicitly illustrate any director’s notion,” he adds. “People underestimate the power of restraint. The audience leans closer; their senses more acute, and the carefully curated meal you provide is abundantly more satisfying after a short fasting period. Additionally, they then can project their own experience, and thus their own worst personal horrors into the spaces you provide.”
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Breathless Linus Sandgren, FSF, inhales deeply of the cinematic magic that is La La Land by David Geffner / Unit Photos by Dale Robinette Frame Grabs courtesy of Lionsgate
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La La Land, the new romantic musical from indie director Damien Chazelle, starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as a pair of star-crossed dreamers in contemporary Los Angeles, has been riding the kind of critical-acclaim wave that historically culminates in so many breathless acceptance speeches on Oscar night. 44
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And while the lovers at the heart of the story are driven, as Chazelle has described, by “giant dreams” in a city that “is a crazy haven for dreamers,” their journey may well be dwarfed by the ambitious behind-the-scenes dreamers intent on bringing Chazelle’s 1950’s Hollywood-inspired vision to life, most notably cinematographer Linus Sandgren, FSF; composer Justin Hurwitz; choreographer Mandy Moore and production designer David Wasco (working closely with his wife, set decorator Sandy Reynolds-Wasco). The risk/reward ratio of this once-ina-decade project was as epic as the Cinemascope format Chazelle used to tell his story.
Linus Sandgren, FSF, contemplates a setup in Sebastian’s Hollywood apartment
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“Duet”, a nearly 7-minute, single-take musical dance scene, was shot in real time over two nights on a bike road in Griffith Park
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Production Designer David Wasco, who scouted locations with Chazelle for more than year before shooting began, says they found “wonderful pockets of L.A.” that have never been used. “Other films I’ve done [like Pulp Fiction, and Collateral] used L.A. as a backdrop. In La La Land, the city was a full-blown character.”
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“It was obvious how risky this film was from the first meeting I had with Damien,” describes Sandgren, whose work for David O. Russell on Oscarnominated films like American Hustle and Joy caught Chazelle’s attention. “It would either be a total catastrophe, given how many challenges were set out, or absolute cinema magic.” La La Land is clearly the latter – whimsical, romantic, gorgeous, and definitely magical, thanks in no small part to a stalwart Guild camera team (led by an implacable Steadicam Operator, Ari Robbins, SOC) that never said “never.” Consider this: La La Land was shot on film in a 2.55:1 aspect ratio (the older Cinemascope format is wider than the 2.40:1 scope typical today) that required Panavision to build new ground glass for the lenses. Chazelle wanted long single takes, i.e. “oners” (often with combined Steadicam and crane moves), which meant the 4-perf anamorphic Super 35-mm mag had to be reloaded every 10 minutes, and no B-roll safety coverage. Los Angeles was a main character, so shooting was all practical locations, mostly within the small window of fading twilight at “magic hour,” limiting takes. Chazelle (See Exposure, Page 28) also wanted a bold color palette à la his muse, French director Jacques Demy, and films like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort, which would avoid post manipulation. [Sandgren says his favorite parts of being a DP are the shaping of color on set via natural and artificial light and filtration, and his partnership with Costume and Production Design.] And, oh yes, the classic Hollywood-inspired musical had to be grounded in the characters’ everyday reality of 2016! “It was a little daunting at first,” Sandgren continues. “But Damien has a passion for in-camera capture, and he prepares so meticulously – we carefully boarded the entire film in prep and made detailed cameramovement diagrams for each shot. His passion just carried us along to create something very special.” So special, the DP’s energetic camera was actually inspired by Hurwitz’s score. “The music existed before there was a finished script,” Sandgren continues, “and at our first meeting, I sensed this emotional melancholy that was really inspiring…insofar as I could see how the camera would move with these people through this city of dreams,” he adds. “We wanted the camera to participate as a dancer and a musical instrument, inspired by Justin’s music and Mandy [Moore’s] choreography in the musical numbers.” Hurwitz, who scored Chazelle’s senior thesis short at Harvard, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, and then later, his Oscar-winning indie hit, Whiplash, utilized a 95-piece orchestra and a 40-member choir for La La Land. He says he first met Sandgren during rehearsals for the film’s complex opening number, “Another Day of Sun.” [See sidebar Page 52] “When I saw what Linus and Damien were planning with the camera, that began to inform my orchestration for the songs,” Hurwitz recounts. “Then when I saw footage in post, I really fed off the lighting and colors on screen to help create dramatic underscoring.” The composer cites a key moment when Gosling’s character (Sebastian) has missed Stone’s (Mia’s) one-woman play because he was 47
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“I really fed off the lighting and colors on the screen to help create dramatic underscoring.” { Composer Justin Hurwitz }
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at a photo shoot. He screeches up in the car, pounds on the door [to the small theater] as Mia walks out, devastated because the play did not go well and he didn’t show up. “The camera is so active in that scene,” Hurwitz shares, “with [Robbins] on Steadicam following Ryan around. That really helped me to compose a similarly urgent musical cue that tied into what Linus and his team were doing. In that scene, and others, the music is responding to the photography in a very direct way.” Hurwitz, who wrote all of the music (including a big concert scene with John Legend on lead vocals, as well as smaller jazz “combo” numbers in the various L.A. clubs Sebastian visits and plays), says his marriage of lush orchestration with a jazz rhythm section reflects the same approach Chazelle and Sandgren had to production. “I wanted the jazz players to be to free to improvise,” he adds, “while behind them would be 95 musicians playing every note and slur on the page, exactly as they’ve been written. Likewise, Damien and Linus carefully planned all these incredibly complex numbers in advance for the camera, and then allowed themselves to improvise on the day if/when things had to change.” Moore, who has choreographed 11 seasons (and counting) of the Emmy-winning reality competition series So You Think You Can Dance, says working with Sandgren and Chazelle was a rare kind of partnership. “The style of live television today means my work is edited quite a bit, and I don’t get a lot of time to tailor the dancing directly for the camera,” she explains. “But Damien made it clear he wanted the choreography to be seen full-frame, head-to-toe, with very little editing. Having Linus come into the process so early was amazing, as it meant I could design the dancing for his camera.” The choreographer cites the opening “traffic” number as a sterling 49
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“You create depth by adding or contrasting colors from what’s on the actor’s faces and what’s in the background.” { Linus Sandgren, FSF }
example of the synergy that happens when various departments are given the time and freedom to collaborate and create a plan. She also points to a scene that is the film’s emotional rocket launcher, early on, when Sebastian and Mia search for their cars (after bumping into each other at the same party), and sparks first begin to fly. “Everyone knew it was pivotal for character,” Moore recalls about the more than six-minute continuous take, shot on a pitch-black bike road in Griffith Park that overlooked the eastern San Fernando Valley. “Linus and Damien shot the rehearsals in the dance studio on an iPhone, but the location was so physically different – asphalt, exterior, inclines, et cetera – that we had to repeat that process in Griffith Park with standins [Moore’s assistants, who are dancers]. Then we had to put Ryan and Emma up there, as the sun was going down, for a few more nights before the grip team brought the crane on-site.” Moore says looking back at the finished scene, she’s stunned by how soft and fluid the camera moves, gracefully echoing every emotional thrust and parry of the characters. “The crane rig was so heavy, and it looked like Bogdan was flying all over the place! He’d have to swing up, down, across, push past – it was an incredible feat to watch.” Sandgren says the scene, as Chazelle envisioned it, appeared impossible. “We kind of had to rewind any conventional approach to filmmaking,” he laughs. “It was a single shot that lasted more than six minutes; but a 1000-foot mag on a Steadicam would be too heavy [for Robbins to operate]. So then it had to be a crane. But that meant 27 different marks for our crane operator [Bogdan Iofciulescu] to hit given the scene starts with them walking up the road, and then moves into the dancing and singing, all with the twilight diminishing behind in real time. Ari and Bogdan were incredible on this film.” During the number, Gosling’s character does a direct homage to Gene Kelly’s famous scene in Singin’ in the Rain with a nearby streetlamp, which didn’t exist on the park service road. Sandgren had period streetlights brought in by La La Land’s electric and rigging teams (led by Gaffer Brad Hazen and Key Grip Tony Cady) to line the road. “All of the romantic gas streetlights [which were decorative and not used as source or fill lighting] were actually a motif in the film that we used quite often to heighten the magical quality
of the city,” the DP reflects. “Los Angeles doesn’t actually have those streetlights everywhere you go, but we made it feel like it does!” Sandgren says he wanted the dance number to be lit softly from above, with a green hue, to make the colors of the twilight sky end up more pink. (The scene was shot twice during a onehour window on successive weekend nights). “Our main key lights in the scene are two different toplight boxes on Condors at either end of the road, and a Bebee light further down the way. We pushed the green in the key lights so we could print up the magenta in the DI. We had cool fluorescents in all of the streetlights to help with [that] as well.” In fact, the deep pink and blue skies radiating romance behind Sebastian and Mia continued a visual theme set earlier, when Stone’s character leaves her Hollywood apartment to go to a party with her roommates. As Mia comes racing out to join her roommates (after first saying she needed to stay home and study for an audition), they’re framed beneath a classic L.A. sunset, palm trees arching into the painterly sky. Perhaps the best example of such a romantic color theme is a single-take musical number called “City of Stars,” during which Gosling’s character wanders the Hermosa Beach pier at dusk, singing about Los Angeles as both a dreamer’s paradise and purgatory. Sandgren says it reflects his passion for film “because I can control all the colors in-camera, using gels or different Kelvin sources, and not have to rely on adding saturation in the DI,” he explains. “You create depth by adding or contrasting colors from what’s on the actor’s faces and what’s in the background. Damien and I both felt the cool green of the mercury vapor is more romantic than orange [of sodium vapor]. The twilight behind [Gosling] on the pier looks so heightened, it’s almost like we used a green screen.” Deluxe’s EFilm dailies colorist Matt Wallace says he used a film-style LUT to hold his corrections essentially within the space of what would be possible photochemically. “Ironically,” Wallace notes, “today’s Kodak stocks are so robust, they don’t have some of the attributes we normally associate with the organic film look Linus loves so much. “The one-stop push [Sandgren] did on the negative provided built-in texture and made the highlights have a kind of creamy, continued on page 53
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Sunshine Daydream
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The Best Opening Scene in a Movie...Ever?
The opening scene of La La Land is a tour-de-force of filmmaking that took many weeks to prep and rehearse, and two successive weekends to shoot. It presents a mélange of “L.A. dreamers” (it’s here that Gosling and Stone’s characters first meet) stuck in a massive traffic jam – on a freeway! One by one they jump out of their cars for a lavish song and dance that was filmed (nearly completely) in an unbroken series of camera moves on a real L.A. freeway. “The scene began with me and Damien in a room drawing on paper as we listened to the music Justin had written – the freeway, one actress here, four dancers here, with the camera flipping across, et cetera,” Moore recounts. “Then we met with Linus using Hot Wheels cars to see where he could find the hidden cut points to make it feel like a single shot. After that it was all about [camera] logistics.” And what logistics. Sandgren breaks down the shot this way: “It begins on the L.A. skyline, tilt-down to a profile shot of a traffic jam and then track-pan past the cars to introduce Emma, then past [her] to start a classic whip-pan left, where the first cut is hidden. We land on a car as a woman gets out onto the freeway, continues on past other cars in 270 [degrees], forward again with an acrobatic flipover and a quick push-in to a man crossing the lanes. The camera tracks across the cars with him, eventually panning over to the large truck, whose back lift gate opens to reveal a full band playing, which leads into a big dance number! We do another whip-pan to the girl who opened the scene [not Stone], where there’s another hidden cut, and she’s on the hood. All of that was done on a crane.” From there Robbins’ Steadicam takes over, dashing in and around what seems like dozens of parked cars on the freeway, following dancers (and even a skateboarder leaping over one of the cars) and stepping up onto a crane as it booms up, leading to another hidden cut in the title card, and then a boom back down to Gosling and Emma in their cars as he zooms around her, flipping the bird in frustration. Challenges to moving the camera were plentiful. “Damien envisioned the scene in his head as a Steadicam, but there was a median on the freeway that we ended up using that one of the performers had to leap over, and we’d see that jump with a Steadicam,”
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Sandgren continues. “That meant the best option was a crane, which also meant we had to deal with the crane shadowing actors in the shot.” Chazelle and Sandgren rehearsed intensely for weeks in a parking lot that had sun placement similar to the real freeway location. They used iPhones to pre-stage camera movements with Moore and 1st AD Peter Kohn, as well as actors and dancers. “We realized the 45-foot Scorpio crane would have to go on a platform on top of a Biscuit rig, which Allan Padelford would be driving,” Sandgren adds. To account for back lighting and crane shadowing, part of the scene was shot in the morning, and two parts in the afternoon. Rehearsals led to the crane being raised even higher on the platform, necessitating even more cars and performers in the shot. “There were moments where it just seemed impossible,” Chazelle laughs. “Staying safe with a crane that had to be that dexterous was such a huge task. Based on the rehearsals, we were able to get another remote head [Oculus] that made a big difference. “But more than anything,” he continues, “it was Linus and his team figuring out the language of the dancers and the music. They had to execute as much choreography as Mandy’s dancers. I learned so much watching Bogdan [on crane] and Ari [on Steadicam] as they did take after take, sometimes up to 40 times!” Most everything was accounted for in rehearsals, except one especially tricky section where the camera flips 180 degrees, then pulls around a car and past several other cars. “I had to shift the movement of the dancers to match what the camera was able to do, which was different than we had envisioned,” Moore recalls. “And it all had to happen before the sun came up! There was a part of the long Steadicam move where I found myself underneath the car counting down the skateboarder (who flies over a car) and then signaling to Ari, who was beyond amazing. When we finally knew we had the entire scene as Damien imagined, it was just an incredible feeling for everyone.” by David Geffner
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“The color palette reaches a crescendo in the Planetarium, the peak of their romance...” { Sandy Reynolds-Wasco }
organic look,” he continues. “So I approached this more the way a [film] timer would than a colorist. [EFilm scanned La La Land’s 35-mm negative to 3K DPX files and down-converted those to 2K DPX.] We didn’t want to affect the image in ways that you couldn’t have done photochemically. The OSD system doesn’t have a ‘printer light’ function per se, but I always kept that directive in mind.” Wallace sent JPEG stills of every shot to Sandgren on set to examine on his iPad. “Linus would then send notes about any alterations he wanted made before dailies were distributed,” Wallace adds. “He was very keen on having the dailies just right. Nobody else on the project would see anything until [Sandgren] had signed off.” Per the film’s title, Los Angeles, where so many come to dream of reinventing themselves in the arts, was a full-fledged character. Locations included the iconic Griffith Park Observatory, the El Rey Theater, Pasadena’s Rialto movie house, and Redondo Beach’s historic jazz venue, Lighthouse Café. David and Sandy Reynolds-Wasco, whose art department masterstrokes include such iconic L.A.-based films as Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Collateral, spent nearly a year in preproduction (Chazelle had his own working desk in the art department) on La La Land, and their efforts are obvious on screen. “This movie fluctuates between the contemporary and the period,” David Wasco notes. “And although much of that marvelous 30’s, 40’s and 1950’s architecture has been torn down, there are wonderful pockets that still remain. Often we had to go to L.A.’s fringes to find it; for instance, Seb’s jazz club and Mia’s Spanish courtyard apartment were shot in Long Beach because they look more like what L.A. used to be.” The Wascos created an evolving “look book” for the film that was shared (via Dropbox) with Sandgren and Costume Designer Mary Zophres. “Damien said the ideal look for this movie was sunrise and sunset,” Sandy Wasco recounts, “with
orange and fuchsia, and a deep sapphire sky. Linus used camera light to create this color-palette arc – bright and bold early in the film in Mia’s apartment and at her job at the coffee shop, to a crescendo of sorts in the Planetarium, at the height of her romance with Sebastian. “In the second half of the film,” she continues, “when Seb goes on the road and Mia gets disenchanted with acting and returns home [to Nevada], the color palette becomes muted and real. Then everything amps up again for the final epilogue scene, where they dance through all these painted backdrops. Throughout the film, we enhanced and keyed off Linus’ use of color through lighting in these amazing practical locations.” “A word Damien used a lot to describe the color palette was Technicolor,” David Wasco adds, noting that Chazelle and Sandgren would often have weekly movie screenings to convey look information to all departments. “You could see, in the Demy films, these eye-popping colors where every inch of background was brought out.” The Wascos also referenced iconic L.A. painters like Ed Ruscha and David Hockney, as well as the French Fauvist painter Raoul Dufy. For the Griffith Park segment, which begins with the couple watching Rebel Without A Cause at the Rialto Theater and moves inside the Griffith Park Observatory’s Art Deco foyer, Wasco had to build set pieces with integrated lighting around the Deco baseboard. “You’re not allowed to touch anything, anywhere, or bring in any lighting equipment that will damage this historic place,” Sandgren recounts. “David’s solution to build in practical lighting was a great help.” The scene culminates in the park’s fabled planetarium [built in 1935] for what Moore describes as a “gravity free” waltz, floating against the location’s starry geodesic-domed ceiling. “Of course we could not shoot inside the planetarium using wires,” Wasco explains, “so we built a set around a replica of the planetarium’s original Zeiss Ikon projector [from the mid 1930’s], which had these wonderful Deco elements.” Through photo references, and the period footage in 53
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Rebel Without A Cause, the Wascos were able to build a replica based around a similar projector they found on Ebay. “It was massive, like eight-feet tall, that we planned to build as a prop,” David Wasco recalls. “Everything from 10 feet up above the built cylindrical set was blue screen.” Culver City, CA–based VFX firm Crafty Apes handled blue screen duties, along with CG removals of wires that hoisted Gosling and Stone up high for their star-filled waltz. Crafty Apes also provided Sandgren’s team with a computerized mock-up of the star field that would be layered in around Gosling and Stone. “We used LED’s to project that image onto Ryan and Emma’s faces during the waltz,” Sandgren adds. “We could change from blue to pink to orange to match the blue screen inserts.” “Originally that scene was going to be shot underwater,” Moore reflects, “to better capture the feeling of being weightless. I even went with a GoPro and my two assistants to a pool to try and show Linus and Damien what it would look like.” Moore says she tries to have filmmakers (and audiences) define what dance on screen means to them. “Often they assume it needs to be much bigger, with more virtuosity by the 54
dancers, than it needs to be,” she adds. [For the Planetarium waltz] we talked about how bodies moving in space would not be able to touch or push together, really, because of the lack of gravity. So it took much less from Ryan and Emma in that scene to convey the fantasy, the whimsical romance, that Damien was after.” Balancing dreams and reality was at the core of Chazelle’s vision. So it’s not that surprising that his favorite moments recall his and Sandgren’s indie roots. The director cites a moment when Mia is in a restaurant and hears [Sebastian’s music] playing outside. She runs out and down to the street toward the movie theater. “We had Justin’s [completed and orchestrated music] blasting on that street corner as she ran outside,” Chazelle recounts. “Having this huge orchestral [and finished] score, which is rare in production, gave Linus the cues as to how his team would time out the camera move, as well as what colors and lighting we needed to augment the music. “The analog simplicity of that shot,” the director continues, “brought together all that we wanted to achieve with photography, production design, and lighting. And the fact
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Sebastian’s (Ryan Gosling) apartment reflects the flip side of La La Land’s Technicolor shine – muted colors, naturalistic lighting, real and gritty.
that it’s just an average L.A. street, not iconic at all, with oldfashioned lampposts from the Wascos, Linus lighting through the trees, and us waiting until the sky had that purplish magichour glow until shooting, imbued this unremarkable location with Old Hollywood magic. I could see it standing near camera, and remember feeling that we were, at the very least, within striking distance of what we wanted to be saying.” The other scene both Sandgren and Chazelle single out is early in the film when Sebastian has a visit from his sister [Rosemarie DeWitt] after having just relocated to L.A. His apartment, barely furnished, reflects the kind of “everything for his art” dream his sister scolds him about in the give-and-take single Steadicam shot. “This is a dialogue scene, and the lighting and color palette are more muted,” Chazelle remembers. “We wanted a oner that wouldn’t feel like a oner, and feature blocking that’s from another era of moviemaking – where wider angles and longer takes were given a high premium. The camera is constantly moving and reframing, but only in response to Ryan or Rosemarie’s movements,” he continues. “It took many, many takes to have the scene look effortless, and that’s a real credit to Linus and his team to have the camera feel so musical in one
of the few scenes in the film that does not have a lot of music.” Sandgren says it’s beautiful to block scenes as was done in older films, “where the actors drive the camera to close-ups or wide shots, often with a pan or a sideways tracking shot. And in La La Land, we wanted to make use of today’s tools to make [that approach] even more three-dimensional. “The risks we took in how we told this story really come out in big, emotional moments,” he adds, citing Emma’s final audition scene, where the casting directors tell her to simply “tell us a story,” which she then does in song. “Emma was in one room where the camera was,” Hurwitz explains, “and I was in another room playing an electric piano into her ear. I was listening to her, and watching her on a monitor, and letting her drive the song.” “Since the number was being performed live and the pacing was always variable, it took careful planning to time the camera [the shot is a 360-degree Steadicam oner] to help support this moment,” Sandgren concludes. “It feels like the very top point of Mia’s lifelong dreams, a private thing between her and the audience. Making the camera express those emotions, as it’s guided by the music, was challenging, but so inspiring.” 55
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DAMIEN and LINUS, thanks for making the freeway fun again. - the apes crew
LOS ANGELES | ATLANTA
CRAFTYAPES.COM
CRAFTY APES VFX VISUAL EFFECTS & PRODUCTION SERVICES
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The Face of a Nation
Stéphane Fontaine, AFC brings us closer than ever to Jackie by Valentina Valentini / photos courtesy of Fox Searchlight
In the last decade, multi-faceted filmmaker Pablo Larraín has quietly become Chile’s greatest artistic export. And while he’s been busy bringing us gritty dramas like Post Mortem, No and most recently Neruda, on a different continent and from a different discipline, cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine, AFC has been creating his own works of art. Though Fontaine has worked in the camera department in Paris since 1988, first as a clapper/loader, then as a focus puller, eventually leading to camera operating and director of photography in 2000, his name has come around to the Americas for his careful and eye-catching work on such lauded indie features as Rust and Bone, A Prophet and one of the biggest hits from the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, Captain Fantastic – each nothing like the others. 58
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“The last thing you want to experience in a movie like this is to feel remote from the main character.” { Stéphane Fontaine, AFC }
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“Stéphane did something amazing,” Larraín describes. “Besides choosing the texture, color palette, lens and film stocks, he also figured out how to make it so you don’t know where the light is coming from.”/ Photo Courtesy of Fox Searchlight
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It is with Jackie – and in Natalie Portman’s transformative performance – that these two artists’ visions have melded to create what many critics are calling an Oscar-worthy film, certainly the most intimate look to date of Jacqueline Kennedy’s life during and after her husband’s assassination in 1963. “Stéphane was the first of three cinematographers I was to meet with,” explains Larraín, who says that their shared technical backgrounds, being raised and trained on celluloid, probably had a lot to do with the camaraderie. “I sat down with Stéphane and one of the producers, Pascal Caucheteux, in a café in Paris, and after 10 minutes I looked to Pascal and said, ‘Okay, I’m done, it’s him, cancel the other two meetings.’ It’s hard to explain, but when you make a movie with someone who is going to be with you all the way, it’s a big decision and I could just feel that he was the right DP.” Larraín says he’s not the type of director who sits in the director’s chair 40 feet away from the scene. “I am next to the camera, always,” he shares, echoing Fontaine’s hands-on approach. Jackie had an estimated budget of $9 million, making it “indie” because it didn’t have studio backing from the outset. More important to Fontaine than the amount of money with which he had to work was making sure he could share Larraín’s vision and translate it to the screen. “This film is not the classic shot-with-reverse-coverage biopic,” the DP shares. “Pablo has a very unique voice. That was the biggest challenge, in a way: getting into his mind.” Jackie (about 60 percent of which was shot handheld) is an intimate portrait of the former First Lady. The shooting style keeps the audience as close to her face – and her heart – as possible, with a fictionalized interpretation of what transpired in the days after the president was shot. It’s not even until a few minutes into the film that we’re allowed a vantage point, pulled back from Jackie’s breath, in order to begin to see the chaos around the First Lady. “We never wanted to shoot something that would look like a biopic and feel like a biopic, in the derogatory sense of the word,” Fontaine continues. “The last thing you want to experience in a movie like this one is to feel remote from the main character.” Although the assassination and aftermath have been covered extensively in cinema and television over the last 50 years (see ICG, November 2013, Killing Kennedy), Fontaine says, “It seems quite strange, but I think this is the first time that audiences will get that close to and be so intimate with [Jackie].” As for recreating the Dallas shooting, Fontaine says he and Larraín wanted to avoid using the famous Zapruder film – a silent, color motionpicture sequence shot by private citizen Abraham Zapruder with his own home-movie camera. That meant they needed to find a different angle – literally – and a different approach. “Being in the car with them seemed to be the best way to tell the story from her point of view,” he adds. And although the bulk of the film was shot in Paris on stages, building the White House residency interiors from scratch, Washington D.C. was
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“Pablo was unconventional in that he would run the camera continuously and have the actors restart the scene wherever they were in the environment, rarely going back to one.” { 1st AC Eric Swanek }
utilized for the scenes that took place there. It was especially important for the filmmakers to shoot the iconic funeral procession – a mixture of archival footage and period footage – in the place it actually occurred. Celluloid, specifically Kodak Vision3 500T 7219 and 200T 7213, coupled with an ARRI 416, was everyone’s choice for Jackie – even, and especially, after a test was done with an ALEXA MINI, a RED Weapon, and then the Arri 416 with Kodak Super 16. “When the projection was over,” Larraín recounts, “there wasn’t even a discussion. Everyone that was there knew it had to be made on film.” In Fontaine’s arsenal were Zeiss Super Speed Prime lenses with Tiffen 1/8 Pro-Mist filtration for nearly every shot. Most often he chose to stay very wide – 14 mm, 18 mm and 25 mm. These lenses normally wouldn’t be used for close-ups, but the filmmakers didn’t want to use long lenses that would have totally isolated Jackie from the background. Instead they intended to be tight on Portman’s face and at the same time still have a sense of the world surrounding her. “Pablo was unconventional in that he would run the camera continuously and have the actors restart the scene wherever they were in the environment, rarely going back to one,” says the D.C. unit 1st AC Eric Swanek, whose first collaboration with Fontaine was The Next Three Days. “Stéphane and Pablo continued with us the look they’d begun in Paris – wide lenses up close to the actors, bringing an immediacy, intimacy and presence to their performance. On the technical side, you don’t normally think of an 18 millimeter as a wide lens [in 16 mm], but we were often focused between 20 and 24 inches – well beyond what is my normal comfort zone, as the camera rarely gets that close. Most actors wouldn’t be able to deal with a matte box being 10 inches from their face; it was amazing to watch how Natalie Portman and Peter Sarsgaard related to each other in such close emotional space.” Throughout the film are archival-looking scenes, where the viewer is transported (quickly and seamlessly) to a living room with a Magnavox 575 and its black-and-white fuzzy picture, watching Jackie and the president step off the plane in Dallas or
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Jackie giving the White House tour during a CBS documentary: “For the CBS White House tour we used an old Ikegami camera that Pablo had used on a movie he had shot a couple of years ago called No,” Fontaine recounts. “This tri-tube camera made in the early nineteen-eighties [with the footage graded in black and white with added grain] gave us a look pretty similar to the archives.” For the other period footage scenes, the team used Kodak Super 16-mm film stock. But today’s 16 mm is still too crisp compared to 1960s 16 mm, so colorist Isabelle Julien at Technicolor Paris was employed to find a way to match the different periods with different formats used – Super 16 mm, Ikegami, all the different resolutions of the archival stock, black and white and color. “To match all the different sequences was difficult,” admits Julien, who has her own post-production studio Ike No Koi and has worked with Fontaine before on Rust and Bone, Jimmy P. and A Prophet. “Pablo was always looking for the best resolution of each archival image, and that wasn’t always easy to find. I worked with Autodesk Lustre to grade this movie and used it to match all the different footage, especially playing a lot with the grain. Technicolor created a great plug-in that was easy to use, and, most importantly, it looked like grain and not like noise.” Julien used different grains on different sequences, downgrading the Super 16 mm to match with archival materials when needed. She played with the contrast and the color saturation, using masks to add color in the blacks or whites and windows. Her main goal was always to keep the quality of the footage that Fontaine had shot, while seamlessly gliding into the archival footage. In fact, the combined formats are barely recognizable – a credit to the combined efforts of production/post, and Portman’s total transformation into the role. An example that Fontaine uses to deconstruct the illusion is when Jackie and Kennedy are deplaning in Dallas: “You’re on the plane with the Presidential couple and we’re shooting in studio, then you see the plane on the tarmac, and that’s a wide shot of the period footage, and then, finally, you see them being greeted by the crowd, and that’s our recreation of Dallas Love Field airport.”
Courtesy of Fox Searchlght
Photo by William Gray
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Costume Designer Madeline Fontaine (no relation) had to recreate many real outfits, including four versions of the famous pink skirt-suit and pillbox hat. “I tried to find fabrics that were not dead, with texture, like silks that can give back the light,”she says. / Photos Courtesy of Fox Searchlight
Fontaine’s goal for lighting Portman was – unapologetically – to capture her beauty. Beyond that, it was trying to match the lighting to her emotions. “It was more about creating a mood that you think the character would be comfortable with, instead of just doing nice beauty shots.” Makeup and Hair and Costume Design had much laid out for them already, considering that Portman’s look and outfits needed to mimic exactly what Jackie had looked like and worn. “Stéphane really likes things to be perfect, and I like that,” describes costume designer Madeline Fontaine (no relation), who was the designer on the Yves Saint Laurent documentary and Amélie. She had to recreate all of Jackie’s outfits highlighted in the film, including four versions of the infamous pink skirt-suit and pillbox hat. “The thing we knew for sure was that some fabrics eat the light and some vibrate the light,” she continues. “I tried to find fabrics that were not dead, with texture, like silks that
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can give back the light.” One sequence was particularly challenging – Jackie at her most untethered, drinking and smoking in the residence and playing a vinyl Camelot at peak volume, as she wanders through the residence changing outfits and staring at herself in mirrors – as Fontaine had to light for 360 degrees, as per Larraín’s request. “Stéphane did something that I think was amazing,” the director says. “Besides choosing the texture and the color palette and the lens and film stocks, he also figured out how to make it so you don’t know where the light is coming from. That was something difficult to accomplish, and when it’s well done, it’s beautiful.” Fontaine’s team couldn’t have lights standing anywhere for that sequence, because the camera – operated partly handheld and partly on Steadicam – covered the whole area constantly, walls and floors included. “It was a tricky situation,” the DP remembers, “and I
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RULE THE NIGHT
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Final Grade
Scene from the film “It’s a Mess” by Director/DP Frank Prinzi, ASC Captured on VariCam 35, V-Log, AVC-Intra 4K 4:4:4 T4 at native 5000 ISO, negative gain set to 2500 ISO
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1st AC Eric Swanek (in cap) and DP Stéphane Fontaine on set in Washington, D.C. / Photo by William Gray
Portman contemplates a scene with director Pablo Larraín / Photo by William Gray
Production Designer Jean Rabasse used window sheers throughout to isolate the world outside / Photo Courtesy of Fox Searchlight
worked with production designer Jean Rabasse early on to light this long hallway – about 53 meters – between the east sitting room and the west sitting room with only two windows. At some point, the obvious question was, ‘Where would the light come from?’ The simplest approach was to use the whole ceiling as a gigantic soft light. So we had 50-something meters of muslin as our ceiling with 30 Spacelights, 30 LED SL1 Switches by DMG Lumière and 18 Par 64 lights above it.” The main reason for shooting so much of Jackie handheld was, as Fontaine relates, because “we’re not there to observe like scientists would, but more to accompany her, to be with her in a more personal or subjective way.” While production and set design, hair and makeup and costume departments all rigorously utilized reference materials to make sure every detail was taken into account for Jackie’s appearance and her environment, Larraín and Fontaine refused any source materials to shape their vision of Jackie.
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“We never felt that we needed to provide a realistic look,” Fontaine adds. “For example, you never get to see much of the outside world. It’s all these sheers in front of the windows, with big lights behind them. It’s almost as if the outside world is an abstraction. Intuitively it felt like this second floor of the White House needed to be a soft and protective shelter. We wanted the audience to feel psychologically what Jackie would feel, knowing that at some point she would be thrown into a world of madness and fear and anger.” When Larraín is asked what the reason was for not using reference materials, he explains: “It’s very simple. Today, we have so much information and so many references, and there are so many movies out there, we have phones with cameras and filters, so how do you find identity? How do you find something that will only belong to that movie?”
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Out At Home
Charlotte Bruus Christensen shoots film for the longanticipated screen adaptation of August Wilson’s powerful Broadway hit, Fences
by Kevin H. Martin / photos by David Lee 71
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“We elected to use a lot of wide shots to keep the feel of the play.” { Charlotte Bruus Christensen }
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August Wilson’s Pulitzer-prize-winning play Fences – the tale of an ex-Negro League ballplayer who settles into a contentious existence with his family as a sanitation engineer in 1950s Pittsburgh – had long been considered a good bet for cinematic adaptation, but the late author’s preference for an African-American director had (for many years in diversity-challenged Hollywood) stymied its development. James Earl Jones won a Tony on Broadway when the play first opened, and decades later, during a 2010 theatrical revival, Viola Davis and Denzel Washington also earned Tony awards. Five years later, when Washington decided to helm a film version reteaming the pair, it seemed as though the stars had finally aligned for Wilson’s masterpiece. Fences’ director of photography Charlotte Bruus Christensen had shot Life for filmmaker Anton Corbijn and a trio of films – Submarino, The Hunt, and Far From the Madding Crowd – for her fellow Dane, director Thomas Vinterberg. “Fences producer Todd Black had seen Madding and suggested me to Denzel,” she recalls. “We had an intense four-hour meeting in his New York flat while I was shooting The Girl on the Train.” The pair discussed issues ranging from the impact of particular lenses to visual treatments for adapting the play to film. “It was obvious from the beginning that this would not be about using the camera for cinematic tricks to make Fences a ‘movie,’” Christensen recalls. “Instead, this would often be about choosing not to do something visual – unless it was in support of what the scene was about. We would have a crane and track and Steadicam, yes, but movement would relate to how energy changes between characters at certain points, not to play the location.” In the play, the action takes place entirely in a backyard with five people in a circle talking. “The film script is very close in many ways to that stage play,” she continues. “But filming a group just sitting or standing in a circle would be difficult to make work. We elected to use a lot of wide shots to keep the feel of the play, which was in response to Denzel saying he wanted the film audience to feel and engage with the characters as theater audiences did with the play.” Christensen confides that both she and Washington are stubborn artists. “We may have surprised one another a few times,” she laughs. “If I came up with an idea that pulled too far away for Denzel, he would tell me he’d been with this play for years and knew that wouldn’t work. And I’d remind him how it can be good to hear from somebody with fresh eyes who hadn’t been with the work for five years!” Shooting on 35-mm film, using Panavision XL cameras, was Washington (and Christensen’s) wish from the start. “Usually you have to fight for that,” she says. “It took time on Girl for me to win that point. But there was never any discussion of digital for [Fences].” For 1st AC Glenn Kaplan, who also worked with Christensen on The Girl on the Train, shooting film (on half his projects for the last five years) has been a pleasure. “I don’t think film is going to die, but the skillsets are in danger of becoming lost arts,” Kaplan states. “Newer crewmembers often
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Production Designer David Gropman has waited his whole career to reference the work of 19th-Century Danish interior artist, Vilhelm Hammershøi. “We did a lot of testing of wall colors prior to shooting, but ultimately it was more about mood and texture than color,” he notes.
don’t have the training to pull focus for film, because during training, everyone pulls off the monitor, and then the spatial relationships aren’t developed. We’ve been training people to load film too, as we don’t want rolls of stock getting flashed!” Washington was also insistent about shooting anamorphic. “That was very challenging, given our interiors were all in tight locations, with no studio work at all,” relates Christensen. “Denzel understands the visual language. He said he wanted that compression and stressed his belief that anamorphics represent an actor’s lens; that the distortion on the edge of anamorphic frames focuses attention on faces in a more dramatic fashion.” Kaplan concurs with that assessment. “Our B-camera focus puller, Jan Ruona, recognizes the relationship between lens and actor and agrees, even though anamorphic complicates depthof-field issues. It seemed counterintuitive to use it in such small spaces, but there’s no question of how much it helped compress the performances. Denzel really liked Panavision’s C-series [lenses], but there are only maybe twenty sets in the world. It took calling lots of people, and Denzel got involved in the process, but it paid off so well I can’t imagine the movie in spherical at this point.” Christensen adds that she mostly shoots with filters, “but these C-series lenses were so warm that, combined with the choice to originate on film, filtration was unnecessary.” Fences’ interior scenes take place in realistically cramped spaces, which, while logistically difficult, aided with verisimilitude.
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“Denzel wanted to keep things honest and truthful,” Christensen maintains. “And had we been in a studio, I don’t think the reality of the scenes would ever have fully translated. Production designer David Gropman did a beautiful job of adapting them for us, and even made sure we could take down the cupboards and move the sink.” Gropman says the heart of the play is the family’s backyard. “We owned the home we shot in and that half-block behind,” he adds, “so we were able to art-direct all that to our desired palette, which derived from the neighborhood itself. August was such a local hero for writing the play that we had great cooperation from the [Pittsburgh] community.” The production designer also bought into Washington’s desire to maintain a tight palette. “In general I feel strongly that the less you muddy your landscape, the easier it will be for an audience to focus on the world being created,” Gropman continues. “So that level of control was absolutely the way to go. And getting such input from Denzel directly was absolutely instrumental, reinforcing my thought that first meetings are about seeing the filmmaker’s vision, not demonstrating my take on it.” Still, Gropman was able to embellish Washington’s vision and build on his lifelong admiration for a 19th-Century Danish artist. “Vilhelm Hammershøi painted portraits and interiors, and I’ve waited my whole career to reference his work in a film,” Gropman says excitedly. “We did a lot of testing of wall colors prior to shooting, but ultimately it was more about mood and texture than color. I thought it was wonderful, given the Hammershøi connection, that we also wound up with a Danish
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Lighting was challenging, Christensen recalls. “The kitchen, dining room and sitting area were each about ten or eleven feet wide. [The practical location] was three boxes all in a row.”
DP. In many ways, this project is what you hope to achieve when working with such tremendous collaborators.” As one would expect, lighting was challenging, given the location was essentially three boxes all in a row. “The kitchen, dining room and sitting area were each about ten or eleven feet wide,” Christensen recalls. “Right next door was another house, so we couldn’t even light in through the window from that side except for the kitchen, where we could just angle an 18K inside.” [Camera moves from room to room were accomplished via Steadicam – operated by Dave Thompson – as well as handheld and on rails.] Christensen and her gaffer, Ed Maloney, wanted to avoid top lighting, but with five people in a room and no way to light from outside, how else to proceed? “We had [ARRI] SkyPanels above the window, and then used covered wagons with oldfashioned light bulbs, which got us the unlit look, since the bulbs were soft in a way that newer lights aren’t,” the DP reveals. The dining room posed a particularly tricky lighting problem. “There was no way to get any window light in, so we wound up with eight lamps overhead, all pointing in different directions,” Christensen says. “You’d look up and think, ‘This is crazy.’ But bulb by bulb, we built a look that felt naturalistic, like a unidirectional light coming from the window, augmented by one practical.” Christensen strove for a constant stop of t5.6 for interiors, rarely opening to t4 and only going wide-open for a few shots using zoom lenses. “We chose never to rack focus between the
actors because that just felt like TV,” Kaplan shares. “Sometimes it felt right emotionally to only have one actor sharp, in shallow focus, while other times we’d pump more light in to carry focus between the performers.” Using Kodak’s Vision3 5207 250D stock, attaining such levels required large quantities of light. “It’s a huge switch from being used to 800 speed,” the DP allows, “but it felt right to use approaches that were period-appropriate, so we shot slower stocks with most exteriors on 50D [Vision3 5203.] “You can try to create that effect in the DI by softening corners and highlights, and then adding grain,” Christensen continues. “But all that can be done in the camera, and then spending time in DI can go for matching rather than creating. It was a big deal to Denzel and I that we make the movie [on set] rather than in post. That’s why he provided that extra bit of time, because he knew it was worth it to create this world in the lens.” Day exteriors proved equally challenging from a lighting perspective. “We only had seven weeks to shoot this movie and a somewhat restrictive budget, so there was no time to wait for the sun,” Christensen explains. “When we were in the backyard, the lighting changed constantly. Four or five times in a day, you’d go from hard sunlight to clouds and rain, so we’d move inside and back out again during the course of a morning or afternoon. But some of these exteriors were scenes where Denzel had 13-page monologues, so we’d have to keep trying to go back to that while shooting over perhaps three days in these fluctuating conditions, and somehow get it to flow.”
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Technicolor Supervising Colorist Michael Hatzer says Christensen “sent us high-resolution stills [pre-graded on set], so we could help verify the look was what she intended.”
Christensen and Maloney relied on tungsten light to embellish exteriors. “That is a kind of old-fashioned pre-HMI way of dealing with daylight,” she acknowledges. “When Viola is doing her morning washing and Denzel comes down to talk with her, we started in hot sunlight, but the sun went away when we came in for close-ups. Denzel just said, ‘It is what it is, we’re shooting now,’ so we used tungsten to create the sun – which meant getting really close to the actors. Denzel would have two 20K tungsten lights ten feet from his face, so he was roasting, but that gave us an image.” L.A.-based FotoKem is the only major lab processing film; dailies were handled digitally via Technicolor. Wanting to see some film dailies, Christensen had selected takes marked and could see those projected every few weeks. “This way,” she explains, “I could see the differences from digital dailies and know my negative exactly.” Technicolor supervising digital colorist Michael Hatzer had collaborated with Christensen on The Girl on the Train. He says the rapport established on that film developed further on Fences. “Charlotte wanted to make sure the photography supported the 1950’s period,” Hatzer recalls. “She would send us samples during filming, as well as high-resolution stills, pre-graded on set so we could help verify the look was what she intended. With the help of Technicolor’s VP of Imaging Science, Josh Pines, we developed a vintage film emulation LUT to give the negative a great starting point, which complemented the period of the film.” Much of the DI was spent smoothing out natural variations
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in the location lighting. Beyond that, a lot of time was also spent refining the overall light-to-dark color contour that had been established in-camera. “Autodesk Lustre was used for primary grading in order to take advantage [of] its exceptional Log grading toolset,” Hatzer elaborates, “which is well-suited to film-originated projects; these same systems were used on Bridge of Spies, Lincoln and The Girl on the Train.” The DI was completed at the Technicolor Hollywood Sunset Gower facility, projected in the main theaters during grading via a Christie CP4220 4K DLP; the Rec709 home-video master and Academy screeners were graded on the Sony BVM X300 and Panasonic CZ950 4K OLEDs. The Lustre workflow was augmented by Digital Vision Nucoda workstations using HP z840s and z820s. “Nucoda was incorporated throughout the film for its sophisticated image enhancement and restoration toolset,” concludes Hatzer, “as well as to take advantage of certain thirdparty plug-ins for specific client requests. Charlotte was highly involved throughout, collaborating with Denzel up to, and through, their final reviews.” At press time, Christensen had only just seen the completed film for the first time. “I knew it would be good, but what’s amazing is that people are speechless afterward.” she enthuses. “Denzel and Viola are just so compelling. I cannot remember a film with such intense performances!”
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GENERATION
NEXT FROM VR TO AERIALS, ICG’S “CLASS OF 2016” IS FUTURE-PROOF by Pauline Rogers
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Today’s young filmmakers are entering the industry in an exciting time. Digital has changed the mode of capture, VR and drones the visual presentation. While new technologies have opened up seemingly limitless creative possibilities, these are often offset by increased pressure to deliver on shorter schedules and tighter budgets. But never fear: for ICG’s Generation NEXT class, circa 2016, the risks and rewards of this new media landscape are pretty much built into their DNA. They are influencing, right now, every type of format and genre – from commercials (Rik Zang), aerials and drone work (Eric Dvorsky) and television (Jeff Waldron) to indie features (Sean Porter) and even the exploding format of virtual reality (Eve M. Cohen). Their insights as they relate their fantastic journeys have made some ICG staffers go searching for a filmic fountain of youth. Let’s hear their stories to get a glimpse of cinematography’s future stars. 79
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Eve M. Cohen
Home: Somewhere near the ocean in Los Angeles Education: Bachelor of Fine Arts, Photography, UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture; Master of Arts, Cinematography, UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television Favorite film: The Spirit of the Beehive Coolest gear: Jaunt VR Latest DP gig: Be Somebody, directed by Joshua Caldwell; upcoming narrative VR Memory Slave, directors James Kaelan and Blessing Yen Union love: There is incredible camaraderie between members, and I am so thankful that ICG allows us to focus on creativity while they take care of the rest.
Photography supplemented Eve M. Cohen’s memory as a child. “If I took a photograph of something, I would remember it,” she recalls. “I just had to press the shutter and everything around embedded into my brain.” By high school, her Canon AE-1 went everywhere with her. A bonus: Cohen’s high school had a black and white dark room, so she experimented with pushing film to the limits of its ability. She thought her path was in the fine arts, and entered UCLA with that goal, studying painting, drawing and photography. “Then I sat down in Bill McDonald’s cinematography class and saw a Panavision camera,” she recounts, “and realized motion-picture cameras were just like still cameras, but instead of one frame, there were 24 of them.” When internships were offered in her senior year, Cohen assisted in New Line Cinema’s publicity department on the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. “Looking through those massive binders of stills,” she remembers, “I thought I should be a behind-the-scenes photographer. But I didn’t want to capture what someone else was creating. I wanted to be part of the creation.” Under the tutelage of teachers like Johnny Simmons, ASC, at UCLA Masters program, Cohen learned to translate her fine-art skills into filmmaking. “To this day,” she says, “I use what I know about painting when lighting a scene, and I take what I know from drawing when shaping the shadows.” Are things different, being a woman cinematographer? “Other than showing up to meetings and being greeted twice?” she smiles. “Once when someone says hello and shakes my hand, then a second time when they realize I’m a cinematographer. Hey, I know I have to prove myself each time I walk on set, but I also know I can and know the team that I hire
can as well – so I don’t let any [gender issues] bother me. I’ve got more important things to focus on.” Today, Cohen balances documentaries and narrative in a new medium – VR. “I entered the world of filmmaking through cameras, and I’ve always been drawn to methods of capturing images, whether that be stills, motion pictures, or a VR array. “All of these devices are essential to communicate a story – and I’m drawn to that story,” she adds. “With VR my standard frame of a film is expanded into multiple perspectives, and I suddenly have 360 degrees of space to visually guide a story.” While Cohen takes her 2D skills into this world, she says she understands VR is a new medium with its own parameters and storytelling devices. “There is a twist in The Visitor where we had to hide something key to the story,” she recalls. “The most difficult element in VR is guiding the viewer’s gaze, but there is nothing more rewarding than watching a viewer wearing an HMD turning their head left, then up, right and across – almost exactly when we wanted it to turn.” What intrigues her is VR’s potential power. “We need to be careful with what we as filmmakers are creating,” she concludes. “[VR] relies on the audience’s being fully immersed, visually and aurally, and affects the brain in a different way than standard films viewed on screens. If filmmaking is part magic and part manipulation, then virtual reality is a maze of magical-realism with many possible exit points.”
“If filmmaking is part magic and part
manipulation, then virtual reality is a maze of magical-realism with many possible exit points.”
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Sean Porter
Home: Ashland, Oregon. Currently in a trailer, off the grid, with my wife and two kids. Education: Bachelor of Arts in General Studies from University of Washington Favorite film: Before or after kids? Can’t remember life before. But Ratatouille never gets old, and Boxtrolls was pretty great. Last film print I saw projected in a theater that blew me away was Beasts of the Southern Wild. Coolest gear: Cliché, but my crew. Also loving Skypanels Latest DP gig: Untitled dark comedy for Sony/Columbia Pictures Union love: Healthcare for my growing family – and, of course, the crews
Instead of shooting each other with BB guns or venturing into the “bear woods,” Sean Porter says he and his three siblings (growing up in a small port town an hour and a half outside Seattle) made little movies with the family camcorder. Getting inspiration from the TV show Movie Magic, the Porter kids tried everything from forced perspective, miniatures, and clay animation to “eventually, more complex things like green screen and computer-aided editing,” the young DP recalls. Porter’s early exposure to popular films like Indiana Jones, Romancing the Stone and the comedies of Mel Brooks gave him a “broad, Americana introduction. I’m not from the art house school of filmmakers,” he laughs. At U of W, there really wasn’t a proper film school, but Porter was able to take theory classes in literature, visualization, and 3D design and animation from the Engineering department, along with color and light science courses in physics. Halfway through, a new program started, called DXARTS. “It was very small – only twelve students – and focused on using technology as an art medium. Video was a big component,” Porter explains. “We studied everything from Stan Brakhage to Fellini. It was a great way to hone my skills at making images – and work with like-minded filmmakers.” Porter’s first job was in the art department for a start-up called The Film Company in Seattle. Their first project was Guy Maddin’s The Brand Upon The Brain, shot by Ben Kasulke, who immediately got Porter into the camera 82
department. Porter began as a loader on his second project with Kasulke, and gradually worked up to 1st AC. When Kasulke got sick he asked young Porter to “finish out the night.” Another Guild indie, Sean Kirby, also opened doors for Porter, both “professionally and creatively.” Stephen Gyllenhaal’s Grassroots was Porter’s first union job (it actually flipped on the last day), and then next was Jeremy Saulnier’s Greenroom, on which Porter recalls a “classically indie” moment. “We imagined the camera following the gang down to the bar where Daniel [Mark Webber] was going to save the group by finding the forgotten shotgun,” Porter describes. “Just as he realizes it’s gone, he’s too late – and gets blasted in the head from behind. “Right off the bat everyone was saying this shot was going to be too complicated,” he adds. “To have a move involved, we would have to shoot all these plates and elements and were looking at a half-day of work just to get the head-hit. But we realized we could just run the first half of the shot, freeze the camera, rig the effect, and replace Mark in the exact spot by using an outline we had hand-drawn on a monitor. It was a super-punk approach to a difficult shot, and the results were seamless, took us less than half the time to get, and looked great!” Certainly Porter’s many hours in the indie trenches have prepared him for anything. Eliza Hittman’s It Felt Like Love (for which he earned a Spirit Award nomination), which featured an intimate and fluid camera, is a perennial favorite. “I’m a sucker for the road less traveled,” Porter concludes. “When I was a student, I’d always be dreaming up crazy ways to get unique shots… like rigging a lazy Susan to the top of a car, running a two-by-four like a propeller from it and saddling a counter-balanced Panasonic DVX100 off the end.” Or, like on major projects, a Zero Gravity Jib: “OK, it was sitting around gathering dust, but when I saw it I was like, ‘We gotta get this thing working,’” he laughs.
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“We studied everything from Stan Brakhage to Fellini. It was a great way to hone my skills at making images – and work with like-minded filmmakers.” 83
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Jeffrey Waldron
Home: Los Angeles Education: Bachelor of Arts, Production, USC Master of Arts, Cinematography, AFI Favorite film: Walt Disney’s The Jungle Book (1967) Coolest gear: Ricoh Theta S Camera + VR headset for remote mid-season tech scouting Latest DP gig: Dear White People (Netflix) Union love: Being a Guild member means I can concentrate on the cinematography. I’m proud to work in the company of the great camera-folk of the world. Jeff Waldron, who dreamed of being an animator, says his play materials as a child were cutouts, toys, sand, and paper drawings. “I was always making little movies,” he remembers about his family travels to different countries and cultures. Once he started volunteering on indie features, he replaced his animation goals with cinematography. Earning a Masters in cinematography at AFI allowed Waldron to be “immersed on the sets of amazing cinematographers’ projects, and being able to ask questions and understand their instincts, habits, and ideas, provided constant breakthroughs.” As an undergraduate at USC, Waldron had William Fraker, ASC, BSC, as his prime mentor. “We used to meet up at Musso’s & Franks. I’d have a list of questions,” he adds, “and he’d have a vodka tonic. [Fraker] encouraged me to take risks, mix color temperatures and experiment.” Waldron, who says he’s a “big fan of formal cinematography rooted in natural situations,” and loves the idea of “playing up and down the spectrum from very formal to very natural, based on a given story,” describes some of his first jobs as “Craigslist specials: shady real-estate seminars, corporate videos, cheap music videos. My first feature had a ten-day schedule, and I got paid $50 a day.” His first union job was operating on a Justin Bieber concert doc. “Yes, I was front row at a lot of Bieber shows!” A comedy feature that premiered at Tribeca opened the door to cable pilots, one of which was picked up. “The speed and ingenuity required to pull off a visually innovative indie film on a restrictive schedule and budget has been great training for TV,” he says. “I had already been photographing indie features on what was basically a TV schedule, and learning how to ride that tension between quality and time has been invaluable.” Waldron says his work in the half-hour format requires a DP to “create quickly and flexibly. You have to choose your camera and lens package wisely,” he says. “On a recent mini-series called Crunch Time, these college kids discover a way to enter somebody’s subconscious brain. It was a playground of different looks and genre homages, creativity and flexibility.” He’s also had a lot of fun on his current show, Netflix’s Dear White People. “We combine in-shot zooms with studio-style camera movement,” Waldron explains, “which becomes an unconventional variable for already complicated compound moves. There is nothing better than collaborating with directors who push you to unfamiliar places.” Waldron says the explosion of episodic content and the demand for visually engaging TV is at an all-time high. “Pay cable and the streaming services, with alternative revenue models, continue to pave the way for greater risk-taking in the episodic world,” he concludes, “and there’s an enormous push for quality work. I’m incredibly thankful to be a small part of this growing industry. I learn something new every day!”
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“There is nothing better than collaborating with directors who push you to unfamiliar places.”
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Eric Dvorsky Home: Los Angeles Education: Bachelor of Science, Film and Video, Drexel University Favorite film: Easy Rider, Baraka Coolest gear: Shotover U1 Latest DP gig: Drone pilot, Sense8, Transformers 5; Aerial DP, Wind River, The Death and Life of John F. Donovan Union love: Health benefits are fabulous. Not only that, I feel that we are stronger unionized, rather than individually. The Union protects its members by negotiating wages, health/safety issues and benefits.
Winning a statewide competition for the New York State Summer School for Visual Arts was where things all began for Eric Dvorsky. “I’d submitted a documentary that I shot and edited about a mall,” he recalls. “The short was mostly noticed for it’s editing, but it got me into studying film in high school. A year later, I went back to the program for photography.” Drexel University opened up the world of filmmaking for Dvorsky. He studied directing, acting for film and theater, editing, even directed a documentary on a local Habitat for Humanity project, did Foley sound work, and learned live TV directing. But when he began job-hunting, it was hard to get something related to film, so Dvorsky did free jobs and even acted in a feature (he hopes no one will ever see). Things changed when his cousin (a pilot) tipped him off to a job with Wescam (Pictorvision). It took a year of tenacity – first with the Canadian office, then in Los Angeles – but finally the dream came true. So he packed up and drove crosscountry. The original idea was to train on the XR ground system, and then the Wescam, and move back to New York to be the company’s East Coast guy. But, after freelancing for several years, Dvorsky became full-time out of L.A. 86
“At one point the company was creating a new system,” he recalls with flushed excitement. “They didn’t even have a name for it. But, one night, brainstorming with my wife – we came up with ‘Eclipse.’ I went up to Canada and helped out with the build and with many test flights. It was originally designed for film, but after it was made, digital cameras started coming out, and I was tasked with putting in the Red One. My favorite Eclipse setup was the six-camera array that we made for Jupiter Ascending.” Aerial work put Dvorsky in play with the likes of Stephen Pizzo and David Nowell, ASC. “David’s eye for VFX plates is amazing,” Dvorsky says. “Phil Pastuhov was the first aerial DP I worked with. He’s brilliant at lining up a shot and getting it in a few takes.” Today, Dvorsky is doing a lot of drone work – properly planned. “My favorite drone shot that I flew was on Sense8, operated by Phil Pastuhov,” he recalls. “It’s a shot of a car chasing a motorcycle in Chinatown in San Francisco. It starts out five feet off the ground in an alley and pulls out to a great view of the city during sunrise. I love shots that start out as if it’s a crane or a car, and then reveal that it’s a drone.” The coolest, however, was on Transformers 5. “I flew a drone on one of the many explosions,” he explains. “We got a great shot where the drone was about five to ten feet over the top of the explosion. It was cool to see the fireball that close with a wide focal length. It’s something that would obviously be unsafe to do with a helicopter.”
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“I love shots that start out as if it’s a crane or a car, and then reveal that it’s a drone.” 87
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Rik Zang
Home: Mostly hotels and planes, but Antwerp, Belgium for 10 percent of the time Education: Brussels Film School RITCS Favorite film: There Will Be Blood Coolest gear: My eyes Latest DP gig: Commercial, “Acura,” with Johnny Harstaff for Reset Union love: Not staying longer than three weeks in the same place makes it hard to find good, long-term connections. For me, that’s where the Union comes in and facilitates. Suddenly life is so much easier, and you get to meet inspirational people!
Rik Zang’s creativity started out of boredom. Growing up in a small countryside village where the local church, soccer field and two bars were the only entertainment wasn’t easy for a kid with an imagination. “It took me a while to know how I could express myself,” he admits. “I started making music, then it naturally evolved to pictures and visuals.” It was at film school in Brussels that Zang’s journey began to take shape. “Film school taught me what I liked – and especially what I didn’t like,” he recounts. “And, mentors like Walther Van den Ende [one of Belgium’s most celebrated cinematographers] brought so much to the table – classical painters, magazines, mood boards, textures, tissue samples. I realized there isn’t a box for cinematography – it’s everything around you and more.” Zang’s first job out of college was as a grip, which he liked because “you’re close to camera and you get free master classes on set from DPs and directors.” His first Union job was also his first job in the U.S. “I’d heard that it was less rock-and-roll shooting in Los Angeles, and that everything was well organized and planned,” he laughs. “But, then I shot for three days and had 11 scenes a day for a commercial. It was crazy fun!”
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The “crazy fun” world of advertising spots has become Zang’s playground, where he says he’s free to create even within the restrictions. “You get the best crews, tools and locations,” Zang says. “You get to create so many different moods and setups that it becomes a very handy way of practicing your craft. “But, in the end, all that matters is the visual language you are trying to create with the directors,” he adds. “I love to improvise and give them some abstract ideas. Sometimes it’s a funny situation on set, when nobody has a clue [including the client/agency] what we are shooting. And that’s where the magic starts.” Zang recently shot a Michael Jordan commercial for The Breakfast Club that began in black and white and then seamlessly shifted to color. “Shooting and lighting for black and white, and doing the same for color, are two completely different things,” he recalls. “It was a challenging and creative process.” In fact, Zang’s appetite for adventure seems to know no bounds. In the last decade, he’s shot commercials in 51 countries, using a wide variety of techniques to capture many different cultures. “In reality, the work on set is pretty similar,” he admits. “It always comes down to a group of people that respect each other and want to perform at their best.
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“But, in the end, all that matters is the visual language you are trying to create with the directors.”
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Production Credits COMPILED BY TERESA MUÑOZ – AS OF NOVEMBER 1, 2016 ICG Magazine strives to maintain an up-to-date and accurate record of all crew members for the Production Credits section. In order for us to continue to provide this service, you input is invaluable and of the utmost importance. You are our only source of information. Please take note of the following requests. They will allow us to better serve you. Please provide up-to-date and complete crew information (including Still Photographers, Publicist, etc.). Please note that the deadline for the Production Credits is on our around the first of the preceding month. Submit your jobs online by visiting www.icg600.com/MY600/Report-Your-Job Any questions regarding the Production Credits should be address to Teresa Muñoz at teresa@icgmagazine.com
20TH CENTURY FOX “24: LEGACY” SEASON 1 Dir. of Photography: Jeff Mygatt Operators: Greg Bubb, Dave Drzewiecki Assistants: Butch Pierson, Steve Magrath, Scott Forte, Ryan Abrams Loader: Matt Evans Digital Utility: Mary-Margaret Porter “APB” Dir. of Photography: Bart Tau Operators: Marcis Cole, Robert Arnold Assistants: Christian Satrazemis, Eric Arndt, Chris Wittenborn, Ron Ruanphae Camera Uitlity: Elaisa Vargas Digital Imaging Tech: Joe Dare “AMERICAN HORROR STORY” SEASON 6 Dir. of Photography: Nelson Cragg, Michael Goi, ASC Operators: Jesse M. Feldman, Brice Reid, Nikhil Paniz Assistants: John Holmes Mike Vejar, Maricella Ramirez, Michael Yaeger, Alvaro Navarro, Shane Carlson Steadicam Operator: Brice Reid Digital Utility: Baird Steptoe, Jr. Loader: Justin Steptoe 2ND UNIT Dir. of Photography: Jesse M. Feldman “BONES” SEASON 11 Dir. of Photography: Bobby Altman Operators: Gerry O’Malley Assistants: Steve “Spike” Barnes, Gary Johnson, Maurizio “Nino” Dotto, Larissa Supplitt Steadicam Operator: Gerry O’Malley Loader: Kara Rittenhouse Still Photographer: Dean Hendler, Ron Jaffe “FRESH OFF THE BOAT” Dir. of Photography: Brandon Mastrippolito Operators: Greg Matthews, Brian Moreno Assistants: Ray Dier, Gaston Richmond, Christian Cobb. Steve Whitcomb Camera Utility: Adam Kolkman Still Photographer: Nicole Wilder
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“LAST MAN STANDING” Dir. of Photography: Donald A. Morgan, ASC Operators: Marvin Shearer, Randy Baer, Larry Gaudette, Neal Carlos Assistants: Missy Toy-Ozeas, Damian Della Santina, Al Myers Camera Utility: John Weiss, Steve Masias Digital Imaging Tech/Colorist: Doug DeGrazzio Still Photographer: Nicole Wilder, Danny Feld “MODERN FAMILY” Dir. 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: Corey Gibbons Still Photographer: Nicole Wilder “PITCH” Dir. of Photography: Paul Maibaum, ASC, Bobby LaBonge Operators: James Takata, Heather Brown Assistants: Wayne Goring, Camille Freer, Carter Smith, Mike Cahoon Steadicam Operator: James Takata Steadicam Assistant: Wayne Goring Digital Imaging Tech: Kyle Sauer “ROSEWOOD” Dir. of Photography: Michael Stetcher Operators: Eric Schilling, Steve Matzinger Assistants: Tommy Lewis, David “Clean” Berryman, Ken Tanaka, Blake Hooks, Gus Bechtold Still Photographer: Nicole Wilder “SCREAM QUEENS” Dir. of Photography: Joaquin Sedillo, ASC Operators: Spencer Hutchins, Dave Chameides Assistants: Kenneth J. Little. Jr., Erin Guerin, Yusef Edmonds, Nancy Piraquive, Charlie Nauman Steadicam Operator: Dave Chameides Steadicam Assistant: Eric Guerin Loader: Maya Morgan
“SLEEPY HOLLOW” SEASON 3 Dir. of Photography: Bing Sokolsky, ASC, Jan Richter-Friis Operators: Matthew Doll, Michael Gfelner, Brown Cooper Assistants: Justin Deguire, Taylor Case, Tom Nemy, Justin Noel, Tim Risch, Alex Hooper Digital Loader: Oren Malik Utility: Erik Olsen “SPEECHLESS” Dir. of Photography: Rhet Bear Operators: Jaxon Woods, Patrick McGinley Assistants: Blair Rogers, Peter DePhilippis, David Erickson, Suzy Dietz Camera Utilty: Brittany Meadows Still Photographer: Nicole Wilder “THE LAST MAN ON EARTH” Dir. of Photography: Carl Herse Operators: Jeff Bollman, Brian Sowell Assistants: Mark Legaspi, Barry Elmore, Emily Zenk, Devon Hoff-Weekes Camera Utility: Clayton Daily “THE MICK” Operator: Craig Kief Operators: Brad Richard, Dave Linstrom, Derek Carver Assistants: Jarrod Oswald, Joe Solari, Richard Avalon, Aaron Tichenor, Michele McKinley, Sharla Cipicchio, Caleb Einhorn Camera Utility: Aaron Biller, Katie Detemple “THIS IS US” Dir. of Photography: Yasu Tanida Operators: James Goldman, Coy Aune Assistants: Sean O’Shea, Rich Floyd, Brian Wells, Arturo Rojas Steadicam Operator: James Goldman Steadicam Assistatn: Sean O’Shea Digital Loader: Mike Gentile Still Photographer: Ron Batzdorff ABC STUDIOS “AMERICAN CRIME” Dir. of Photography: Ramsey Nickell
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“CODE BLACK” Dir. of Photography: Spencer Combs Operators: Jason LeBlanc, Mike Sharp, Brian Garbellini Assistants: Jon Sharpe, Stephen Franklin, Jim Thibo, Oliver Ponce, Bill Marti, Tim McCarthy Digital Loader: Joe Pacella Still Photographer: Ron Jaffe “GREY’S ANATOMY” SEASON 13 Dir. of Photography: Herb Davis Operators: Fred Ianonne, Steve Ullman Assistants: Nick McLean, Chris Johnson, Forrest Thurman, Marte Post Steadicam Operator: Steve Ullman Loader: Leslie Puckett Still Photographer: Adam Taylor, Nicole Wilder “HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER” Dir. of Photography: Michael Price Operators: Paul Sanchez, John Hankhamer, Scott Boettle Assistants: Heather Lea LeRoy, Vanessa Morehouse, Darrel Herrington Drew Han, Mark Sasabuchi Digital Imaging Tech: Andrew Osborne Digital Utility: Andrew Hays Still Photographer: Nicole Wilder “JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE” Lighting Director: Christian Hibbard Operator: Randy Gomez, Parker Bartlett, Ritch Kenney, Kris Wilson, Garret Hurt, Marc Hunter, Mike Malone Camera Utility: Scott Spiegel, Travis Wilson, Randy Pulley Video Controller: Guy Jones Still Photographer: Danny Feld, Karen Neal, Michael Desmond, Adam Larkey 2ND UNIT Dir. of Photography: Jimmy Lindsey “KICK” Dir. of Photography: Manuel Billeter Operators: Francis Spieldenner, Joshua Blakeslee Assistants: Marc Hillygus, Jason Rihaly, Andrew Peck, Amber Rosales Loader: Vince Tuths, Ryan Toussieng 2ND UNIT Dir. of Photography: Chris LaVasseur
“NASHVILLE” Dir. of Photography: Micheal Lohmann Operators: Tim Sutherland, Bob Scott, Jeremy Curtis Assistants: Ron Peterson, Tyler Bradley, Mark Reilly, Jarrett Rawlings, Kenny Bazal Digital Imaging Tech: Casey Nearing Still Photographer: Mark Levine “SCANDAL” SEASON 6 Dir. of Photography: Oliver Bokelberg, ASC, Daryn Okada, ASC Operators: Steve Fracol, SOC, Bill Boatman Assistants: Jon Zarkos, Anthony Schultz, Jorge Pallares, Hannah Levin Steadicam Operator: Steve Fracol, SOC Steadicam Assistant: Jon Zarkos Digital Utility: George Montejano, III Digital Imaging Tech: Andrew Lemon Still Photographer: Mitchell Haddad, Nicole Wilder “THE CATCH” Dir. of Photography: Ross Riege Operators: Stephen Collins, Patrik Thelander Assistants: Bianca Bahena, Chris Sloan, Greg Dellerson, Terry Wolcott Digital Utility: Chris de la Riva Digital Loader: Earl Fulcher Still Photographer: Nicole Wilder “THE FOSTERS” Dir. of Photography: Kees Van Oostrum, ASC Operators: Aaron Schuh, Robin Charters, Rob Draper Assistants: Carlos Doerr, Nathan Lewis, Tammy Fouts, Nicholas Neino, Matthew Del Ruth, Brad Gilson, Jr. Digital Utility: Maya Morgan Still Photographer: Nicole Wilder ATLANTIC 2.1 ENTERTAINMENT “HOMELAND” SEASON 6 Dir. of Photography: David Klein, ASC, Giorgio Scali Operators: Rick Davidson, Jonathan Beck Assistants: Dominik Mainl, Courtney J. Bridgers, Brett Walters, Andy Hamilton Steadicam Operator: Rick Davidson Steadicam Assistant: Dominik Mainl Digital Utility: Corey Licameli Still Photographer: Jo Jo Whilden BBG HOME AGAIN, LLC “HOME AGAIN” Dir. of Photography: Dean Cundey, ASC Operators: David Diano, BJ McDonnell Assistants: Clyde Bryan, Milan Janicin, Bill Coss, Winona Wacker Loader: Ryan Kelley Still Photographer: Karen Ballard Publicist: Spooky Stevens BEACHWOOD SERVICES “DAYS OF OUR LIVES” Dir. of Photography: Mark Levin,
Ted Polmanski Operators: John Sizemore, Mark Warshaw, Vickie Walker, Michael J. Denton Camera Utility: Steve Clark, Steve Bagdadi BLUE CAT PRODUCTIONS “OZARK” Dir. of Photography: Pepe Avila del Pino, Ben Kutchins Operators: Bud Kremp, SOC, Ari Issler Assistants: Michael D. Alvarez, Justin Cooley, Clyde Bryan, Jamie Pair Steadicam Operator: Bud Kremp, SOC Steadicam Assistant: Michael D. Alvarez Loader: Taylor Seaman Still Photographer: Eliza Morse BONANZA “THE ORIGINALS” SEASON 4 Dir. of Photography: Roger Chingirian, Kurt Jones Operators: Ian Forsyth, Brian Davis Assistants: Matt Brewer, Billy Mueller, Uly Domalaon, Trevor White Steadicam Operator: Ian Forsyth Digital Imaging Tech: Dustin Diamond Utility: Andy Lee “VAMPIRE DIARIES” SEASON 8 Dir. of Photography: Darren Genet, Michael Karasick Operators: Geoff Shotz, Pierre O’Halloran Assistants: Colin Duran, Nichole Castro, Ryan Weisen, Kelly Poor Steadicam Operator: Geoff Shotz Digital Imaging Tech: Eric Henson Digital Utility: Anna-Marie Aloia CBS “2 BROKE GIRLS” SEASON 6 Dir. of Photography: Christian La Fountaine, ASC Operators: George La Fountaine, Brian Sweeney, Chris Wilcox, Kevin Haggerty, SOC Assistants: Jeff Johnson, Brian Lynch, Jeff Roth, David Colclasure, Craig La Fountaine Digital Imaging Tech: Ryne Niner Video Controller: Andy Dickerman Camera Utility: Chris Todd, Vicki Beck “CRAZY EX GIRLFREIND” Dir. of Photography: Todd A. Dos Reis Operators: Ian Todd, Taj Teffaha Assistant: Eric Dyson, Megan Morris Joel Perkal, Eric Wheeler Digital Imaging Tech: Sam McConville Digital Utility: Genna Palermo “COLONY” SEASON 2 Dir. of Photography: Christopher Faloona Operators: Allen Easton, Steve Andrich, Nicole Lobell Assistants: Brian Legrady, Scott Whitbread, Jeff Graham, Thomas Lairson, Bryan DeLorenzo, Brett Gates
Production Credits
Operator: Nikhi Paniz, Baudine Credle Assistants: Jon Jung, Mike Fauntleroy, Charlie Murphy Digital Imaging Tech: Shannon Cook Digital Utility: Seth Sherman Still Photographer: Mitch Haddad, Nicole Wilder
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Production Credits
Digital Loader: Scott O’Neil Digital Utility: Ben Shurtleff
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“DOUBT” Dir. of Photography: Alex Nepomniaschy, ASC Operators: Chris Squires, Bonnie Blake Assistants: Stefan Tarzan, Simon Jarvis, Scott Martinez, Chris Garland Steadicam Operator: Chris Squires Loader: Lauro Avila “ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT” Dir. of Photography: Kurt Braun Operators: Jaimie Cantrell, James B. Patrick, Daniel Diaz, Marcus Glasgow, Ed Sartori, Henry Zinman, Tom Van Otteren, Bob Cambi, Rodney McMahon, Anthony Salerno Camera Utility: Terry Ahern Video Controller: Mike Doyle, Peter Stendal “HAWAII FIVE-O” Dir. of Photography: Michael Martinez, Krishna Rao Operators: Greg Lundsgaard, Jim Jost, Ruben Carillo Assistants: Rick Brock, Brian Matsamura, Jeff Pelton, Kanoa Dahlin, Mike Prioste, Caleb Lucero, Warner Wacha, Will Wacha Digital Imaging Tech: Scott Mason Loader: Ezekiel Hanohano Digital Utility: Ryan Charlton-Halweg, Brandon Ho “JANE THE VIRGIN” Dir. of Photography: Lowell Peterson, ASC, Joe Gallo Operators: Rory Knepp, Paul Planette Assistants: John Flinn, IV, Peter Norkus, John Pouncey, Don Burton Utility: Jai Corria
Still Photographer: Ron Jaffe “MAN WITH A PLAN” Dir. of Photography: Gary Baum Operators: Glen Shimada, Travers Hill, Lance Billitzer, Ed Fine Assistants: Adrian Licciardi, Jeff Goldenberg, Alec Elizondo, Meggins Moore, Jason Herring Utility: Adan Torres, Richard Fine Digital Imaging Tech: Derek Lantz Video Controller: John O’Brien “NCIS” SEASON 14 Dir. of Photography: William Webb, ASC Operators: Christos Bitsakos, George Loomis Assistants: Chad Erickson, James Troost, Nathan Lopez, Helen Tadesse Still Photographer: Adam Taylor “NCIS: LOS ANGELES” SEASON 8 Dir. of Photography: Victor Hammer Operators: Terence Nightingall, Tim Beavers Assistants: Keith Banks, Richie Hughes, Peter Caronia, Jacqueline Nivens Steadicam Operator: Terence Nightingall, Tim Beavers Steadicam Assistants: Keith Banks, Richie Hughes Digital Imaging Tech: John Mills Digital Utility: Trevor Beeler Still Photographer: Ron Jaffe “NCIS: NEW ORLEANS” SEASON 3 Dir. of Photography: Gordon Lonsdale, ASC Operators: Greg Morris, Vincent Bearden, Jerry Jacobs Assistants: Peter Roome, Brouke Franklin, Jeff Taylor, Toni Weick, Dave Edwards, Sienna Pinderhughes Steadicam Operator: Vincent Bearden Digital Loader: Christian Wells Still Photographer: Sam Lothridge “SCORPION”
Dir. of Photography: Ken Glassing, Fernando Arguelles Operators: Paul Theriault, Wally Sweeterman Assistants: Scott Ronnow, John Paul Rodriguez, Chris Mack, Tim Sheridan, Digital Imaging Tech: Greg Gabrio Utility: Tyler Ernst Still Photographer: Ron Jaffe “SUPERIOR DONUTS” PILOT Dir. of Photography: Gary Baum Operarors: Chris Wilcox, Geroge La Fountaine, Tim Tyler, David Dechant Assistants: Jeff Roth, Brian Lynch, Chris Workman, Jeff Johnson, Jason Herring Utility: Richard Fine, Denny Lorenze Digital Imaging Tech: Derek Lantz Video Controller: Barry Long “THE GREAT INDOORS” Dir. of Photography: Patti Lee Operators: Mark Davison, Cary McCrystal, Robert Guernsey, Ed Fine Assistants: Adrian Licciardi, Vito De Palma, Alec Elizondo, Lisa Anderson, Clint Palmer Digital Imaging Tech: T Brett Feeney Digital Utility: Alicia Brauns, Selvyn Price Video Controllers: Stu Wesolik, Ed Moore, Pete Stendal “THE INSIDER” Dir. of Photography: Kurt Braun Operators: Jaimie Cantrell, James B. Patrick, Daniel Diaz, Marcus Glasgow, Ed Sartori, Henry Zinman, Tom Van Otteren, Bob Cambi, Rodney McMahon, Anthony Salerno Camera Utility: Terry Ahern Video Controller: Mike Doyle, Peter Stendal “THE TALK” Lighting Director: Marisa Davis Ped Operators: Art Taylor, Mark Gonzales,
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GIVING YOU THE POWER TO CREATE www.idx.tv Ed Stebler Hand Held Operators: Ron Barnes, Kevin Michel Jeff Johnson Jib Operator: Randy Gomez Head Utility: Charlie Fernandez Utility: Steve Deaver, Doug Bain, Mike Bushner, Joe Zuccaro, Robert Cade Video Controller: Richard Strock Still Photographer: Ron Jaffe COLUMBIA “JEOPARDY!” Dir. of Photography: Jeff Engel Operators: Diane L. Farrell, SOC, Ray Reynolds, Mike Tribble, Jeff Shuster, L. David Irete Jib Arm Operator: Marc Hunter Head Utility: Tino Marquez Camera Utility: Ray Thompson Video Controller: Gary Taillon Still Photographer: Carol Kaelson “WHEEL OF FORTUNE” Dir. of Photography: Jeff Engel Operators: Mike Corwin, Steve Simmons Camera Utility: Fortino Marquez, Ray Thompson Video Controller: Gary Taillon Jib Arm Operator: Steve Simmons, Mark Hunter Still Photographer: Carol Kaelson “TOSH.0” SEASON 7 STAGE CREW Operator: Jason Cochard Camera Utility: Benjamin Steeples,
DUO-C190 Kyle Kimbriel, Phoebe Krueger FIELD CREW Dir. of Photography: Andrew Huebscher Operator: Jason Cochard Assistants: Benjamin Steeples, Kyle Kimbriel, Peter DePhilippis COMEDY BANG BANG PRODUCTIONS “BAJILLION DOLLAR PROPERTIES” SEASON 3 Dir. of Photography: Jonathan Nicholas Operators: Gretchen Warthen, Ana Amortegui Assistants: Erin Olesen, Rick Escalante, Jonathan Dec CONACO “CONAN” Operator: Ted Ashton, Nick Kober, Kosta Krstic, James Palczewski, Bart Ping, Seth Saint Vincent Head Utility: Chris Savage Utilities: Baron Johnson, Johs Gwit CONMEN PRODUCTIONS “SUPERCON” Dir. of Photography: Zoran Popovic Operators: Michael Stumpf, SOC, Robert Foster Assistants: Wade Whitley, Austin Alward, Jose Figueroa Baez, John Richie Steadicam Operator: Michael Stumpf, SOC Digital Imaging Tech: Brian Stegman Digital Uitlity: Matt Guidry Still Photographer: Patti Perret
CRANETOWN MEDIA “MINDHUNTER” Dir. of Photography: Erik Messerschmidt Operators: Brian Osmond, David Richert Assistants: Alex Scott, David Edsall, Gary Beavans Still Photographer: Merrick Morton CRACKLE “SPORTS JEOPARDY!” SEASON 3 Dir. of Photography: Jeff Engel Operators: Mike Tribble, Jeff Shuster, David Irete, Ray Reynolds Jim Arm Operator: Mark Hunter, Steve Simmons Video Controller: Gary Taillon Head Utility: Fortino Marquez Utility: Ray Thompson Still Photographer: Carol Kaelson DOMBEY STREET PRODUCTIONS LIMITED “BODEGA BAY” Dir. of Photography: Hoyte Van Hoytema Operator: Henry Tirl Assistants: Bob Hall, Dan Schroer, Stephen Wong, Milan Janicin, Jonathan Clark IMAX Camera Tech: Scott Smith Still Photographer: Melinda Sue Godon ENTERTAINMENT ONE/FOUS FEATURES “VILLA CAPRI” Dir. of Photography: Philippe Le Sourd Assistants: Hector Rodriguez, Bryce van der Marshall Loader: Melanie Gates
Production Credits
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Still Photographer: Ben Rothstein Publicist: Diane Slattery EYE PRODUCTIONS, INC. “BLUE BLOODS” SEASON 7 Dir. of Photography: Gene Engels Operators: Jim McConkey, Jack Donnelly, Perris Mayhew Assistants: Geoffrey Frost, Martin Peterson, Justin Whitacre, Jake Stahlman, Kellon Innocent, Yvonne Vairma Steadicam Operators: Jim McConkey, Perris Mayhew Digital Imaging Tech: Ryan Heide Dailies DIT: Steve Calalang
Production Credits
“ELEMENTARY” SEASON 5 Dir. of Photography: Ron Fortunato, ASC, Tom Houghton, ASC Operators: Alan Mehlbrech, Jeremy Weishaar Assistants: Kate Larose, Jason Cleary, Charlie Foerschner, Kyle Blackman Loader: Tricia Mears, Patrick O’Shea Steadicam Operator: Alan Mehlbrech Still Photographer: Thomas Concordia, Cara Howe, Michael Parmelee, Christopher Saunders
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“MACGYVER” SEASON 1 Dir. of Photography: Gabriel Beristain, ASC, BSC, Pter Levy, ASC, ACS Operators: Mark Moore, Al “Tiko” Pavoni, Paul Krumper Assistants: Al Cohen, Kate Roberson, Trevor Blake Rios, Stefan Vino-Figueroa, Mike Torino, Danny Vanzura Steadicam Operator: Mark Moore Steadicam Assistant: Al Cohen Digital Imaging Tech: Greg VandZyck Digital Utility: Melissa Porter Still Photographer: Guy D’Alema “MADAM SECRETARY” Dir. of Photography: Jonathan Brown, ASC Operators: Learan Kahanov, Devin Ladd Peter Vietro-Hannum Assistants: Heather Norton, Jamie Fitzpatrick, Jacob Stahlman Maria Gonzales, Damon Lemay, Zack Shultz Steadicam Operator: Peter Vietro-Hannum Loader: Autmn Moran,Brent Weichsel, Christopher Patrikis Digital Imaging Tech: Keith Putnam Still Photographer: Sara Shatz, David Giesbrecht, Cara Howe, Barbara Nitke, Christopher Saunders
Operator: Beau Chaput Assistants: Michael Lincoln, Chip Byrd, Erick Castillo, Ryan Eustis, Bret Latter Still Photographer: Lewis Jacobs FTP “BLACK-ISH” Dir. of Photography: Rob Sweeney Operator: Jens Piotrowski, Brian T. Pitts Assistants: Art Martin, Lou Demarco, Tiffani Stephenson, Tony Muller Steadicam Operator: Jens Piotrowski Steadicam Assistant: Art Martin Digital Loader: Josh Schnose Digital Utility: Pablo Jara Still Photographer: Scott Everett White, Adam Taylor, John P. Fleenor FX “FEUD” Dir. of Photography: Nelson Cragg Operators: Andrew Mitchell, SOC, Brice Reid, Jesse M. Feldman Assistants: Penny Sprague, Ben Perry, David Leb, Betty Chow, Toby White, Vanessa Ward Steadicam Operator: Andrew Mitchell, SOC Digital Imaging Tech: Justin Steptoe Camera Utility: Jared Wilson Digital Utility: Aidan Ostrogovich 2ND UNIT Dir. of Photography: Jesse M. Feld GEMINI 3 PRODUCTIONS “FACE OFF” Dir. of Photography: Bruce Dorfman Operators: Dave McCoul, David Gaines, Matt Ferguson, Jason Ippolito, Brandon Benning Assistants: Dustin Penn, Clarence Nelson, Dave Mickler, Carlos Carmona, Brian Griffo, Artemio Pena Still Photographer: Brandon Hickman GLOW PRODUCTIONS “GLOW” Dir. of Photography: Christian Springer Operators: Andy Graham, Eric Schilling Assistants: Justin Watson, Paul Tilden, Jacqueline Stahl, Giselle Gonzalez Steadicam Operator: Eric Schilling Digital Imaging Tech: Chris Doyle Utility: Nicola Caruso Still Photographer: Erica Parise
FALL BIG, LLC “6 BALLOONS” Dir. of Photography: Polly Morgan, BSC Assistants: Stephen Taylor-Wehr, Otis Sherman Digital Imaging Tech: Kelly Eaton Still Photographer: Bruce Finn
GO2 Z, LLC PRODUCTIONS “Z NATION” SEASON 2 Dir. of Photography: Alex Yellen Operators: Federico Verardi Assistants: Coty James, Shaun Springer, Nick Kelling, Kyle Petijean Digital Loader: Nicole Heigh
FREEDOM FILMS, LLC “CLIFFS OF FREEDOM” Dir. of Photography: Steve Finestone
HALF A YOGURT PRODUCTIONS, LL. “GIRLS” SEASON 6 Dir. of Photography: Timothy Ives
Operators: Mark Schmidt, Julian Delacruz Assistants: Rebecca Arndt, James Daly, Eric Schwager, Caitlin Machak Steadicam Operator: Wylda Bayron Digital Imaging Tech: J. Eric Camp Loader: Rachel Doughty, Robert Wrase Still Photographer: Craig Blankenhorn, Mark Schafer, Giovanni Rufino, JoJo Whilden HANDCUFFS, LLC “GERARLD’S GAME” Dir. of Photography: Michael Fimognari Operators: Thom Valko Assistants: Troy Wagner, Alex Waters Steadicam Operator: Thom Valko HBO “VEEP” Dir. of Photography: David MIller Operators: Bo Webb, Josh Wiliamson, Johnny Martin Assistants: Mark Figueroa, Greg Kurtz, Aaron Bowen, Will Evans, Maryan Zurek, Ana Amortegui Digital Loader: Rachel Mangum Still Photographer: Justin Lubin HI LAW PRODUCTIONS “JUMANJI” Dir. of Photography: Gyula Pados Operator: Geoff Haley Assistants: Daniel Bombell, Robert Campbell, Greg Irwin, Caleb Lucero Steadicam Operator: Geoff Haley Loaders: Luke Gorder, Richard Dabbs Digital Imaging Tech: Lonny Danler Libra Head Tech: Jason Hibarger Still Photographer: Frank Masi Publicist: Carol McConnaughey HOLD FAST PRODUCTIONS, LLC “BOSCH” SEASON 3 Dir. of Photography: Patrick Cady Operators: Kenji Luster, Sylvain D’Hautcort, John Pingry Assistants: Tom Gleason, Danny Brown, Dan Coscina, Mike Thomas, Todd Avery, Yuka Kadono Steadicam Operator: Kenji Luster Loader: Jonathan Taylor Utility: Kristina Lechuga Digital Imaging Tech: Tyler Goeckner-Zoeller HORIZON “FOREVER BOYS” PILOT Dir. of Photography: Christian Sebaldt, ASC Operators: Matt Pierce, Eric Laudadio Assistants: Ryan Pilon, Matt Kelly, Dawn Nakamura, Nick Martin Steadicam Operator: Matthew Pierce Digital Imaging Tech: John Reyes “NOT AGAIN” Dir. of Photography: Anthony Palmieri Operators: Garrett Benson, Kevin Celi, Tony Politis, Gerry Marzocco Assistants: George Hesse, Ryan Mhor,
Toby White, Manning Tillman, Keith Rash Robo Operators: Donny Anderson, Jaime Mejia BTS Operator: Jeff Feller “STUCK IN THE MIDDLE” Dir. of Photography: Suki Medencevic, ASC Operators: Benjamin Spek, Radan Popovic Assistants: Bill Coss, Salvatore Coniglio, Chris Friebus, Angela Ortner Steadicam Operator: Benjamin Spek Steadicam Assistant: Bill Coss Digital Imaging Tech: Scott Resnick Digital Utility: Baird Steptoe “GAMERS GUIDE” Dir. of Photography: Thomas T. Eckelberry Operators: Brian Gunter, Mike Denton, Bob McCall, Cory Gunter Utility: Terry Gunter, Ryan Eckelberry Video Controller: Tim Gamble Still Photographer: Nicole Wilder “LIV AND MADDIE” Dir. of Photography: Thomas T. Eckelberry Operators: Ken Herst, Thomas Dougherty, Jack Chisolm, Pete Wilson Utility: Adan Torres, Angelica Giangregorio Video Controller: Keith Anderson Still Photographer: Nicole Wilder IT’S A LAUGH PRODUCTIONS, INC. “ANDI MACK” Dir. of Photography: Matthew Williams
Operator: Scott Hoffman Assistants: John Williams, Kurtis Burr, David Rhineer Digital Imaging Tech: Sean McAllister “BUNK’D” Dir. of Photography: Joseph W. Calloway Operators: Cory Gunter, John Goforth, Brian Gunter, Ray Liu Camera Utility: Terry Gunter Digital Utility: Michael Sweeney Video Controller: Brian Dodds “K.C UNDERCOVER” SEASON 2 Dir. of Photography: Joseph W. Calloway Operators: Vance Brandon, Larry Blumenthal, Deb O’Brien, Cory Gunter Digital Utility: Ricco Ricardo Clement Video Controller: Nichelle Montgomery JAX MEDIA “MIKE BIRDIGLIA: THANK GOD FOR JOKES” Dir. of Photography: Benjamin Kasulke Operators: Charlie Libin, John McDonald, Zach Schamberg Digital Imaging Tech: James Strosahl LADY PRISON PRODUCTIONS “ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK” SEASON 5 Dir. of Photography: Ludovic Littee Operators: Spencer Gillis, Julian Delacruz Assistants: Scott Tinsley, Michelle Sun, Justin Mancuso, Michael Swearingen
Digital Imaging Tech: Matthew Selkirk Loader: Joshua Waterman Still Photographer: JoJo Whilden LIONSGATE “DWP” Dir. of Photography: Jeff Waldron Operators: Mikael Levin, Ilan Levin Assistants: Jorge Devotto, Charlie Murphy, Leoncio Provoste, Cristy Arboleda Steadicam Operator: Ron Schlaeger Loader: Chase Azimi Still Photographer: Eddie Chen MARVEL ENTERTAINMENT “AGENTS OF SHIELD” SEASON 4 Dir. of Photography: Feliks Parnell, Allan Westbrook Operators: Kyle Jewell, Bill Brummond Assistants: Coby Garfield, Josh Larsen, Derek Hackett, Tim Cobb Steadicam Operator: Bill Brummond Steadicam Assistant: Josh Larsen Digital Imaging Tech: Ryan Degrazzio Digital Utility: Josh Novak Remote Head Operator: Clay Platner Still Photographer: Kelsey McNeil 2ND UNIT Dir. of Photography: Kyle Jewell Operators: Operators: Tony Cutrono, Miguel Pask
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MESQUITE PRODUCTIONS, INC. “SNEAKY PETE” Dir. of Photography: Rene Ohashi Operators: Jim McConkey, Lawrence McConkey, Gregor Tavenner Assistants: Anthony Cappello, John Oliveri, Cornelia Klapper, Julian Bass Digital Imaging Tech: Gary Isaacs Loader: Brian Grant, Matthew Montalto Still Photographer: Eric Liebowitz
“CHICAGO FIRE” SEASON 5 Dir. of Photography: Jay Crothers Operators: Jack Messitt, Billy Nielsen Assistants: Melvina Rapozo, Hunter Whalen, Zach Gannaway, Gary Malouf Digital Loader: J’mm Love Digital Utility: Amy Tomlinson Still Photographer: Elizabeth Morris 2ND UNIT Dir. of Photography: Billy Nielsen
“THE GET DOWN” Dir. of Photography: Willam Rexer Operator: Jeff Muhlstock , Andy Voegeli, Derek Walker Assistants: Michael Burke, James Madrid, Stephen McBride Michael Guthrie Steadicam Operator: Jeff Muhlstock Loaders: Frank Milea, Rachael Doughty Pilot Digital Imaging Tech: Luke Taylor
“CHICAGO MED” Dir. of Photography: Lex du Pont, ASC Operators: Scott Steele, Faires Anderson Sekiya Assistants: George Olson, Gary Malouf, Dean Simmon, Keith Huffmeier Steadicam Operator: Faires Anderson Sekiya Loader: Sam Knapp Utility: Michael Olson
2ND UNIT Dir. of Photography: Andy Voegeli
“CHICAGO PD” Dir. of Photography: Rohn Schmidt Operators: James Zucal, Will Eichler, Scott Thiele Assistants: John Young, Don Carlson, David Wightman, Jamison Acker, Phillip Walter, Bing Liu Digital Utilty: Corinne Anderson, Nick Wilson Loader: Kyle Belousek
MTV “TEEN WOLF” Dir. of Photography: Dave Daniel Operators: Dominic Bartolone, Todd Barron Assistants: Lee Jordan, Gavin Alcott, Sarah Galley, Marshall Rao Steadicam Operator: Dominic Bartolone Steadicam Assistant: Lee Jordan Digital Imaging Tech: Aaron Picot Loader: Jeremy Hill Still Photographer: Scott Everett White NETFLIX “OUR SOULS AT NIGHT” Dir. of Photography: Stephen Goldblatt, ASC, BSC Operator: Henry Tirl Assistants: Dennis Seawright, Dale White Digital Imaging Tech: Abby Levine Loader: Dustin Keller NBC
Additional Unit Dir. of Photography: James Zucal “THE PATH” SEASON 1 Dir. of Photography: Yaron Orbach Operators: Brian Osmond, Arthur Africano, Philip Martinez Assistants: Toshiro Yamaguchi, Waris Supanpong, Adriana Brunetto Lipman, Eric Lichtenstein, Becki Heller, Maria Gonzales Digital Imaging Tech: Tiffany Armour-Tejada Loaders: Matthew Martin, Nathalie Rodriguez, Elmer Vargas
Still Photographer: Chris Saunders, Greg Lewis “SUPERSTORE” SEASON 2 Dir. of Photography: Jay Hunter Operators: Sarah Levy, Adam Tash, Hassan Abdul-Wahid Assistants: Jason Zakrzewski, Brandon Margulies, Eric Jenkinson, Ryan Sullivan, Sean Mennie, Keith Moore Loader: Matthew Goodwin NEXT PARLAY, LLC “BEING MARY JANE” Dir. of Photography: Michael Negrin, ASC Operators: Richard Keener, Alfeo Dixon Assistants: Tom Cherry, Emil Hampton Cait Rockwell, Chris Dawson Steadicam Operator: Richard Keener Steadicam Assistant: Tom Cherry Digital Imaging Tech: Tyler Blackwell Digital Utility: Amanda Gianneschi Still Photographer: Eli Ade NICKELODEON “THUNDERMANS” Dir. of Photography: Wayne Kennan Operators: Keith White, Vickie Walker, Dave Forrest, Pete Wilson Utility: Brian Lynch, Selvyn Price Video Controller: Stuewe Prudden Still Photographer: Dale Berman NORTHERN ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCTIONS “MIDNIGHT TEXAS” Operators: Lawrence “Doc” Karman, Adam Santelli Assistants: Aileen Taylor, Gabe Pfeiffer, Jeff Lamm, John Hamilton Steadicam Operator: Lawrence “Doc” Karman Steadicam Assistant: Aileen Taylor Digital Imaging Tech: Lane Luper Camera Utlity: Taylor Hilburn OPEN 4 BUSINESS
DECEMBER 2016
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“GRIMM” Dir. of Photography: Ross Berryman, ASC, ACS, Eliot Rockett Operators: Tim Spencer, Mike McEveety Assistants: Wili Estrada, Jerry Turner, Patrick LaValley, Danielle Eddington Steadicam Operator: Tim Spencer Steadicam Assistant: Patrick LaValley Loader: Nate Goodman Camera Utility: Thomas Oliver PAPER MEETS PLANE PRODUCTIONS “INSECURE” Dir. of Photography: Anette Haellmigk Operators: Colin Hudson, Bonnie Blake Assistants: Matt Stenerson, Nate Havens, Joe O’Donnell, Keith Rash Steadicam Operator: Colin Hudson Loader: Kathleen Corcoran Digital Utility: Freddy Fernandez Still Photographer: Anne Marie Fox
PARLOR GAME PRODUCTIONS, LLC “GODLESS” Dir. of Photography: Steven Meizler Operator: George Billinger Assistants: Richie Masino, Steve Cueva. David O’Brien, Tristan Chavez Digital Utility: Juergen Heinemann Digital Imaging Tech: Jeroen Hendriks Still Photographer: Ursula Coyote Publicist: Amy Johnson EPK/Behind-The-Scenes: Dean Eastman PICROW, INC. “GOLIATH” Dir. of Photography: Edward Pei Operators: Andy Graham, Mikael Levin, Chris Tufty Assistants: James Sprattley, Maryan Zurek, Rich Floyd, Jim Gavin, Greg Kurtz, Emily Zenk Underwater/Hydrohead Tech: David William McDonald “HAND OF GOD” Dir. of Photography: David Morrison Operators: Jamie Sterba, Eric Schilling Assistants: Ian Barballa, Andrew Pauling, Ignacio Musich, Jessica Ramos Steadicam Operator: Eric Schilling Digital Imaging Tech: Dan Moses Loader: Arthur Zajac Still Photographer: Nicole Wilder “JUST ADD MAGIC” Dir. of Photography: Mark Doering-Powell, ASC Operators: Paul Sanchez, Sarah Levy Assistants: Robert Schierer, Paul Janossy,
Michael Kleiman, Dan Taylor Loader: Andrew Oliver Still Photographer: Adam Taylor “PATRIOT” SEASON 1 Dir. of Photography: James Whitaker Operators: Jody Miller, Chris Rejano Assistants: Chris Wittenborn, KT Moss, Eric Arndt, Nina Portillo Loader: Derek Ashbaugh Digital Imaging Tech: Ryan Kunkleman Digital Utility: Ron Ruanphae Still Photographer: Elizabeth Morris “THE LEGEND OF MASTER LEGEND” Dir. of Photography: James Laxton Operators: Dana Morris, Otis Ropert Assistants: Scott Johnson, Joe DiBartolomeo, David Mobi Olaoniye, Rachel Wiederhoeft Digital Utility: Mason Thibo Camera Utility: Cole Ellett Stil Photographer: Nicole Wilder “WONDERSTRUCK” Dir. of Photography: Ed Lachman Operators: Craig Haagensen, Peter Agliata Assistants: Gus Limberis, Graham Burt, Randy Schwartz, Sarah Guenther Loader: Nicholas Koda Still Photographers: Mary Cybulski, David Giesbrecht, Myles Aronowitz “Z: THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING” SEASON 1
Dir. of Photography: David Franco, Joseph Collins, Eric Moynier Operators: Edgar Colon, Pierre Colanna Assistants: Alfonso Diaz, Michael DeRario Digital Imaging Tech: Charlie Anderson Loader: Daniel Pfeifer Still Photographer: Nicole Rivelli, Giovanni Rufino, Christopher Saunders, Myles Aronowitz POSSIBLE PRODUCTIONS “BILLIONS” Dir. of Photography: Radium Cheung, HKSC Operator: Aiken Weiss Steadicam Operator: Aiken Weiss Still Photographer: Mark Schafer RADICAL MEDIA, LLC “FTWDI S2” Dir. of Photography: Timothy Burton Operators: Jon Michael Mooney, Nathan Meade Assistants: Bianca Bahena, Ryan Monelli, Carlos Lopez-Calleja, Matt Williams Digital Utility: Chris De La Riva Digital Imaging Tech: Lance Hashida Still Photographer: Ron Jaffe REMOTE BROADCASTING “MASTERS OF SEX” Dir. of Photography: Joe Gallaher Operators: Dan Ayers, Mark Laskowski, Paige Thomas
Production Credits
PARAMOUNT “CLEAN PASS” Dir. of Photography: Dan Mindel, ASC Operators: Chris Haarhoff, Phill Carr-Forster Assistants: Serge Nofield, Robert Campbell, Keith Davis, Natasha Mullan Loader: Kristen Correll Still Photographer: Scott Garfield
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Assistants: Tony Martin, Rob Monroy, Dan Coscina, Aldo Porras, Jr., Darin Krask, Jared Wilson Steadicam Operator: Dan Ayers Steadicam Assistant: Tony Martin Digital Imaging Tech: Bobby Hatfield Digital Utility: Rachel Mangum Still Photographer: Warren Feldman RIVERDALE (GOTTI) PRODUCTIONS “THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JOHN GOTTI” Dir. of Photography: Michael Barrett, ASC Operators: Matthew Pearce, Brad Grimmett Assistants: David Leb, Richard Avalon, Colleen Mleziva, Joe Bou Steadicam Operator: Matthew Pearce Steadicam Assistant: David Leb Digital Imaging Tech: Eric Ransbottom Still Photographer: Brian Douglas
Production Credits
RUNWAY PRODUCTIONS, INC. “PROJECT RUNWAY AKA BIG LEAGUE CHEW” SEASON 15 Operators: Gene Bradford, Jeffrey Canfield, Jason Derck, Tommy Parfitt, Jack Reichert, Erica Shusha Camera Utility: John Floresca, Katie Greaves, Kathleen Harris Utility: Nick Miller, Tim Pepin
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SANDY PRODUCTIONS, INC. “SANDY WEXLER” Dir. of Photography: Dean Semler, ASC, ACS Operators: Kris Krosskove, Richard Merryman, Mark LaBonge Assistants: Tony Rivetti, Brent Egan, Roger Wall, Jai Corria, Brandon Ponticelli, Christi Arboledo Digital Imaging Tech: Tim Nagasawa Loader: Kevin Sun Still Photographer: Glen Wilson SANTA CLARITA DIET “SANTA CLARITA DIET” Dir. of Photography: Todd McMullen Operators: Dan Gold, Greg Smith Assistants: Dave Egerstrom, Jeff Stewart, Chris Toll, Sal Alvarez Steadicam Operator: Greg Smith Loader: Mike Langford Utility: Joe Sutera Still Photographer: Saeed Adyani SAN VICENTE PRODUCTIONS, INC. “THE BLACKLIST” SEASON 3 Dir. of Photography: Michael Caracciolo, Eric Moynier Operators: Thomas Weston, Saade Mustafa, Bruce MacCallum Assistants: Hollis Meminger, Michelle Sun, Paul Bode, Vanessa Morrison, Sarah Hendrick Loaders: Edgar Velez, Trevor Wolfson Still Photographer: Julie Platner, Nicole Rivelli, Jo Jo Whilden SHOCK AND AWE, LLC
“SHOCK AND AWE” Dir. of Photography: Barry Markowitz, ASC Operators: Michael Stumpf, SOC Assistants: Steve Search, Rob Baird, Cody Gautreau, Rome Julian Steadicam Operator: Michael Stumpf, SOC Loader: Chad Taylor SHOWTIME “I’M DYING UP HERE” Dir. of Photography: Jim Frohna Operators: DJ Harder, Andy Shuttleworth Assistants: Gunnar Mortensen, Faith Brewer, Tammy Fouts, John Roney, Nick Neino Steadicam Operator: Andy Shuttleworth Digital Imaging Tech: Peter Brunet Digital Utility: Lindsey Gross Still Photographer: Lacey Terrell “WHITE FAMOUS” Dir. of Photography: Sid Sidell Operators: Victor Macias, Brooks Robinson, Larry Karman Assistants: Michael Endler, Don Burghardt, Larry Nielsen, Naomi Villanueva, Rudy Pahoyo, Jeremiah Kent, Matthew Fisher Steadicam Operator: Victor Macias Steadicam Assistant: Michael Endler Loader: Matt Kirschner SIDNEY HALL CORP “SIDNEY HALL” Operators: Stew Cantrell Assistants: Ben Spaner, Brent Weichsel, Autumn Moran Loader: Tsyen Shen, Gregory Pace Digital Imaging Tech: Jon Pack, Seacia Pavao
Digital Utility: Dishan Herath Still Photographer: Nicole Wilder, Adam Taylor STALWART FILMS, LLC “HALT & CATCH FIRE” SEASON 3 Dir. of Photography: Evan Brown Operators: Glen Brown, Jordan Slovin Assistants: Mary Stankiewicz, Josh Gilbert, Cameron Schwartz, Catherine Greene Steadicam Operator: Glen Brown Digital Imaaging Tech: Nick Hiltgen Loader: Mary-Margaret Porter Still Photographer: Tina Rowden 2ND UNIT Dir. of Photography: Stephen Campbell “RECTIFY” SEASON 4 Operator: Patrick Cady, ASC Operator: Chris Jones, Rob Robinson Assistants: Justin DeGuire, Josh Hancher, Angela Holford, Taylor Case, Jennifer Braddock Steadicam Operator: Chris Jones Loader: Peter Johnston Still Photographer: Jackson Davis “THE WALKING DEAD” SEASON 7 Dir. of Photography: Michael Satrazemis Operators: Stephen Campbell, Robert Carlson, Deke Keener Assistants: David Galbraith, Matt McGinn, Robert McMahan, Matt Horn, Robert Veliky, Lauren Gentry Loader: Austin Blythe Still Photographer: Gene Page 2ND UNIT Dir. of Photography: Stephen Campbell
SIX PRODUCTIONS, LLC “SIX” Dir. of Photography: David Klein Operators: Rick Davidson, Michael Bonsignore Assistants: Dominik Mainl, Courtney Bridgers, Alan Aldridge, Marshall Johnson Digital Utility: Seth Lewis Still Photographer: Kent Smith
STU SEGALL PRODUTIONS, INC. “HAP AND LEONARD” SEASON 2 Dir. of Photography: Joseph Gallagher Operators: Chris Campbell, Bobby Boothe Assistants: Mary Stankiewicz, Zach Junquera, Fred Thomas, Rodrigue Gomes Loader: Violet Jackson Digital Utility: Dwayne Green Still Photographer: Jackson Lee Davis
SONY PICTURES STUDIO “DR KEN” SEASON 2 Dir. of Photography: Wayne Kennan Operators: Ron Hirschman, David Dougherty, Vernon Kifer, Candy Edwards Assistants: Marianne Franco Camera Utility: Brad Traver, Doug Minges Digital Imaging Tech: Dave DeMore Video Controller: Keith Anderson Still Photographer: Nicole Wilder
SUBURBICON, LLC “SUBURBICON” Dir. of Photography: Robert Elswit, ASC Operator: Colin Anderson Assistants: Erik VBrown, Josh Friz, Larissa Supplitt, Renee Treyball Steadicam Operator; Colin Anderson Digital Imaging Tech: Dan Skinner Digital Utility: Johanna Salo Still Photographer: Hilary Bronwyn Gayle
“THE GOLDBERGS” Dir. of Photography: Jason Blount Operators: Scott Browner, Kris Denton Assistants: Tracy Davey, Nate Havens, Gary Webster, Jen Bell-Price Digital Imaging Tech: Kevin Mills
TAKE THE STAIRS INC. “YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE” Operator: Michael Fuchs Assistants: Alexander Worster, Daniel Sheats Loader: Holly McCarthy
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Digital Imaging Tech: Dustin Diamond
TET, LLC “THE DARK TOWER” Dir. of Photography: Rasmus Heise Operators: Matthew Pebler, Maceo Bishop Assistants: Craig Pressgrove, Rob Koch, Marc Loforte, Samantha Silver Digital Imaging Tech: Gary Isaacs Loader; Robert Wrase Still Photographer: Jessica Miglio
THREE BILLBOARS PRODUCTIONS, INC. “3 BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING MISSOURI” Dir. of Photography: Ben Davis Operator: Stephen Campanelli, Andy Fisher Assistants: Bill Coe, Bobby McMahon, Harry Zimmerman, Trevor Caroll-Coe, Steve Latham, Justin Noel Steadicam Operator: Stephen Campanelli Loader: Trish Solyn Digital Imaging Tech: Dane Brehm Still Photographer: Merrick Morton
THANK YOU BRAIN “THOSE WHO CAN’T” Dir. of Photography: Paul Koestner Assistants: Alaina McManus, Tiffany Aug, Robyn Buchannan, Amanda Levy Digital Imaging Tech: Earl L. Fulcher THE INSPECTORS, LLC “THE INSPECTORS” Dir. of Photography: Shawn Lewallen Operator: John Lehman Assistants: Jake Butler, Nicholas Cole Brown Steadicam Operator: John Lehman Loader: Cassandra Tuten THE PRODUCTION SUPER, LLC “THE SUPER” Dir. of Photography: David Isern Assistants: Cory Stambler, Christpher Wiezorek, Nolan Maloney, Brett Checkelsky Camera Utility: Trevor Wolfson Digital Imaging Tech: Michael Maiatico Still Photographer: Christopher Saunders THE VAULT PRODUCTIONS, LLC “THE VAULT” Dir. of Photography: Andrew Shulkind Operator: Chris Campbell Assistants: Warren Brace, Oren Malik Steadicam Operator: Chris Campbell
TNT “THE LAST SHIP” SEASON 3 Dir. of Photography: Cort Fey, ASC, Rodney Charters, ASC Operators: Bud Kremp, SOC, David Sammons, SOC Assistants: Stephen Pazanti, Shane Carlson, Michael D. Alvarez, , Roger Spain Steadicam Operator: Bud Kremp, SOC Steadicam Assistant: Stephen Pazanti Digital Imaging Tech: James Cobb Digitual Utility: Joe Sutera “THE LIBRARIANS” Dir. of Photography: David Connell Operators: Gary Camp, Houman Forough, SOC Assistants: Kyril Cvetkov, Michael Crockett, Troy Wagner, Justin O’Shaughnessy Steadicam Operator: Gary Camp Digital Utility: Devin Greenman, Rodrigo Melgarejo TOPANGA PRODUCTIONS “MODEL WOMAN” Dir. of Photography: Vanja Cernjul, ASC Operators: Francis Spieldenner, Thomas Lappin Assistants: Edwin Effrein, John Oliveri, Leonardo Gomez, Liz Cash
Digital Imaging Tech: Nicholas Kay, Andrew Nelson Loader: Derrick Dawkins Still Photographer: Giovanni Rufino “NOTORIOUS” Dir. of Photography: Shawn Maurer Operators: Richard Crow, Greg Williams, Tom Lembcke Assistants: Andrew Degnan, Ryan Jackson, Ron S. Peterson, Tony Hart, Ryan Parks, Logan Turner Digital Utility: Brandon Gutierrez Loader: Tim Balcomb Still Photographer: Nicole Wilder, Adam Taylor TRIAGE ENTERTAINMENT, LLC “THE HALF HOUR COMEDY” Dir. of Photography: Jay Lafayette Operators: David Eastwood, John Kelly, David Castellano, Lyn Noland, John Sutherland Assistants: Rob Pittman, Eric Smith, Joe Waistell, Channign Brenholtz, Justin Cooley Utility: Steve Law Digital Imaging Tech: Matt Conrad Technojib Tech: Dan DeNitto VER Camera Tech: James Coker TRIP PRODUCTIONS, LLC “GIRL TRIP” Dir. of Photography: Greg Gardiner Operators: Peter Roome, Grayson Grant Austin, Jerry Jacob, Kerwin Devonish, Vincent Bearden Assistants: Channing Brenholtz, Rome Julian, Mike Kenedy, Paul Rahlfield, Penny Helmer, DJ Phillips, Alan Keffer Steadicam Operator: Grayson Grant Austin Loader: Chad Taylor Still Photographer: Michele Short TURNER NORTH CENTER PRODUCTIONS
Production Credits
Still Photographer: Alison Rosa
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Production Credits
“GOOD BEHAVIOR” Dir. of Photography: Elie Smolkin Operators: Matthew Doll, Michael Repeta Assistants: Patrick Borowiak, Mark Legaspi, Sean Yaple, John McIntyre Digital Imaging Tech: Andy Bader Still Photographer: Eric Liebowitz, Michael Tackett, Brownie Harris
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“MR. ROBOT” SEASON 2 Dir. of Photography: Tod Campbell Operators: Aaron Medick, Brian Jackson Assistants: Michael Garofalo, Wesley Hodges, Patrick Bracey Digital Imaging Tech: Douglas Horton Loader: Rodrigo Millan Garce, Kaih Wong Still Photographer: Peter Kramer, Scott Gries
TV LAND “TEACHERS” SEASON 2 Dir. of Photography: Brian Burgoyne Operators: Tim Gillis, Abby Linne Assistants: John Ruiz, Sharla Cipicchio, Mariela Ferrer, evey Franceschini Digital Imaging Tech: Nathan Saks Still Photographer: Dale Berman
“SHADES OF BLUE” SEASON 2 Dir. of Photography: Stefan Czapsky, ASC Operators: David Taicher, Eric Tramp Assistants: Gregory Principato, Raul A. Erivez, Pete Keeling, John C. Walker Digital Imaging Tech: Patrick Cecilian Loader: Brian Lynch, James McEvoy
TVM PRODUCTIONS, INC. “CHANCE” Dir. of Photography: Terry Stacey, ASC Operators: Will Arndt, Jeff Greeley Assistants: Patrick McArdle, Henry Nguyen, Dennis Rogers, Aaron Kirby Digital Imaging Tech: Jordan Livingston Loader: Sam Lino Still Photographer: David Moir
“SINNER” PILOT Dir. of Photography: Jody Lee Lipes Operators: Matt Doll, Mike Repeta Assistants: Patrick Borowiak, Sean Yaple, Will Hand, Roy Knauf Digital Imaging Tech: Derek Grover Steadicam Operator: Matt Doll Steadicam Assistant: Patrick Borowiak Still Photographer: Brownie Harris
UNIVERSAL “BROOKLYN NINE-NINE” Dir. of Photography: Giovani Lampassi Operators: Phillip Mastrella, Rick Page, Jon Purdy Assistants: Jamie Stephens, Bill Gerardo, Lauren Gadd, Dustin Miler, Will Schmidt Loader: Nick Gilbert Digital Utility: Rochelle Brown Still Photographer: John P. Fleenor
“THE GOOD PLACE” Dir. of Photography: David Miller Operators: Paul Theriault, Trey Clinesmith Josh Williamson Assistants: Scott Ronnow, Kevin Huver, Chris Mack, Timmy Sheridan, Mark Figueroa, Julie Helton Steadicam Operator: Trey Clinesmith Digital Imaging Tech: Ryan Degrazzio Loader: Tyler Ernst
“CHICAGO JUSTICE” SEASON 1 Dir. of Photography: Lisa Wiegand, ASC Operator: Tari Segal, Jessica Lopez, SOC Assistants: Luis Fowler, Matt Rozek, Stephanie Dufford, Matt Feasley Steadicam Operator: Jessica Lopez, SOC Loader: Drew Fulton Digital Utility: Ryan Schuck Still Photographer: Parrish Lewis
“THE TAP” PILOT Dir. of Photography: Sharon Meir Operators: Gregor Tavenner, Oliver Cary, Richard Moriarty Assistants: John Oliveri, Nick Timmons, Cornelia Klapper, Ryan Nocella Loader: Matt Harding Camera Utility: Andrea Romansky
“FALLING WATER” SEASON 1 Dir. of Photography: Richard Rutkowski Operators: Stephen Consentino Assistants: Rory Hanrahan, Robert Bullard, Sean Souza Loader: Sebastian Iervolino, Ning Li Still Photographer: Craig Blankenhorn, Phil Caruso, Thomas Concordia, Eric Liebowitz, Michael Parmelii, Jeff Neumann “LAW & ORDER-SVU”SEASON 18 Dir. of Photography: Michael Green Operators: Jonathan Herron, Mike Latino Assistants: Christopher Del Sordo, Matthew Balzarini, Emily Dumbrill, Sara Boardman Steadicam Operator: Jonathan Herron Camera Utility: Christopher Marlow Loader: Justin Zverin
WAD PRODUCTIONS “THE ELLEN DEGENERES SHOW” Lighting Director: Tom Beck Ped Operator: David Weeks, Hand Held Operator: Brian Loewe Jib Operator: David Rhea Assistants: Nolan Ball, Jason Brignola Head Utility: Craig Marazzo Video Controller: James Moran WARNER BROS. “BLINDSPOT” Dir. of Photography: Dave Tuttman, David Johnson Operators: Andrew Priestley, Pyare Fortunato, Peter Ramos Assistants: Lee Vickery, John Romer, Marcos Rodriguez-Quijano, Nicknaz Tavakolian, Kyle Clark, Kjerstin Rossi Steadicam Operator: Pyare Fortunato
Steadicam Assistant: John Romer Digital Imaging Tech: Jeff Cirbes, Chloe Walker “DUNKIRK” Dir. of Photography: Hoyte Van Hoytema, ASC Operators: Henry Tirl Assistants: Bob Hall, Stephen Wong, Doug Lavender, Dan Schroer, Jonathan Clark, Milan Janicin Steadicam Operator: Henry Tirl Steadicam Assistant: Bob Hall Imax Tech: Scott Smith Still Photographer: Melinda Sue Gordon AERIAL UNIT Dir. of Photography: Hans Bjerno Assistant: Stephen Wong Shotover Tech: Dane Bjerno UDERWATER UNIT Dir. of Photography: Pete Romano Operator: Scott Hoffman VFX UNIT Dir. of Photography: Mark Weingartner, ASC Assistants: Andy Borham “GOTHAM” SEASON 2 Dir. of Photography: Christopher Norr, Crescenzo Notarile, ASC, AIC Operators: Gerard Sava, Al Pierce, SOC Assistants: Braden Belmonte, Gavin Fernandez, George Tur, James Schlittenhart, Grace Preller Chambers Steadicam Operator: Gerard Sava Steadicam Assistant: Braden Belmonte Digital Imaging Tech: Dan Brosnan Loader: Samantha Panger “LETHAL WEAPON” Dir. of Photography: David Moxness, ASC, CSC, Andy Strahorn Operators: Michael Brian Hart, Eric Roizman Assistants: James Rydings, Kaoru Ishizuka, Lauren Soriano, Kelsey Castellitto Digital Utility: Alex Gadberry Digital Imaging Tech: Mike DeGrazzio Technocrane Operator: Nico Bally, Nazariy Hatak, Joseph Rodmell Remote Head Operator: Jay Sheveck Still Photographer: Adam Taylor “LITTLE BIG SHOTS” Lighting Designer: Kieran Healy Video Controller: Chris Gray Ped Operators: Greg Smith, Helena Jackson, Keith Hobelman, Kary D’Alessandro, John Bromberek Hand Held Operators: Danny Webb, Ed Horton, Dylan Sanford, Derek Hernandez, Allen Marriweather Techno Jib Operators: Keith Dicker, David Eastwood, Brian Reason, Alex Hernandez Steadicam Operator: David Kannehan Remote Head: Alex Hernandez, Derek Hernandez
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“
I have to be ready for the unexpected, and lately I've been all over, from a network series in New York to an indie feature in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. The cameras, lenses, locations, actors all differ—but my filter kit always travels with me. And Schneider Classic Softs® and Black Frosts™ have been my go-to filters for over a decade.
SCHNEIDER SMOOTHS THE WAY FOR NANCY SCHREIBER, ASC On “Moving Parts”, shot in Trinidad, I used a ½ or a 1 Classic Soft® every day to take the edge off sharp lenses and help portray this very human story about a young woman who gets tangled up in sex trafficking. For the more mature co-star, I sandwiched on a ½ Black Frost™, which didn’t eliminate her facial lines, but smoothed them just enough to maintain the character of her seasoned life. The subtlety of the filters let me get the look we needed while keeping the authentic, almost documentary feel of the mainly handheld production.
w w w.s ch ne id e ro pt i cs. co m
”
Utility: Jon Zucarro, Byron Blades, Sean Woodside, Robert Cade, Dustin Stephenss, Delvin Careathers, Joe Algandar “MAJOR CRIMES SEASON 5” Dir. of Photography: David Harp, Kenneth Zunder, ASC Operators: Chris Hood, Tim Roarke, Duane Mieliwocki Assistants: Matt Guiza, Randy Shanofsky, Dan Squires, Adam Tsang, Russ Miller, Veronica Bouza Digital Imaging Tech: Evin Grant “MOM” SEASON 3 Dir. of Photography: Steven V. Silver, ASC Operators: Cary McCrystal, Jamie Hitchcock, Larry Gaudette, Candy Edwards Assistants: John Graham, Nigel Stewart, Damian Della Santina, Mark Johnson, Benjamin Steeples Camera Utility: Alicia Brauns, Andrew Pauling Digital Imaging Tech: Robert Zeigler Video Controller: Kevin Fraust Still Photographer: Ron Jaffe “PRETTY LITTLE LIARS” SEASON 7 Dir. of Photography: Larry Reibman Operators: Craig Fikse, Carlos Arguello,
Ken Lehn Assistants: David Dowll, Brian Morena, Gretchen Hatz, Rocio Meda Steadicam Operator: Craig Fikse Steadicam Assistant: Brian Morena Digital Imaging Tech: Conrad Hunziker Digital Utility: Nate Lewis Technocrane Tech: Brett Folk, Clay Platner 2ND UNIT Dir. of Photography: Carlos Arguello “SHAMELESS” SEASON 7 Dir. of Photography: Loren Yaconelli Operators: David Sammons, SOC, Bradley Richard Assistants: Ray Milazzo, Blake Collins, Patrick Bensimmon, Kirsten Laube Digital Utility: Mike Prior Digital Imaging Tech: Jefferson Fugitt “SUPERGIRL” Dir. of Photography: David Stockton, ASC, Jeff Mygatt Operators: Tom Schnaidt, Joel Schwartz Assistants: Dennis Seawright, Dale White, Bruce De Aragon, Trevor Coe Digital Utility: Brooke Mygatt Digital Imaging Tech: Mike DeGrazzio
2ND UNIT Assistants: Scott Birnkrant, Keith Moore “THE BIG BANG THEORY” 9 Dir. of Photography: Steven V. SIlver, ASC Operators: John Dechene, Richard Price, SOC, Jamie Hitchcock, Brian Armstrong Assistants: Nigel Stewart, Chris Hinojosa, Steve Lund, Meggins Moore, Benjamin Steeples Camera Utility: Colin Brown, Jeannette Hjorth Video Controller: John O’Brien Digital Imaging Tech: Robert Zeigler “THE LEFTOVERS” Dir. of Photography: Michael Grady Operators: Chris Cuevas, Ian Ellis, Jim Marquette Assistants: Liam Sinnott, Sam Pearcy, Theda Cunningham, Don Howe, Robert Rendon, Leslie Frid Digital Imaging Tech: Shannon Cook Still Photographer: Van Redin “THE MIDDLE” Dir. of Photography: Blake T. Evans Operator: John Joyce, SOC, Bret Harding Assistants: Jefferson T. Jones, Bryan Haigh, Nathan Crum, Emily Goodwin Steadicam Operator: John Joyce, SOC Steadicam Assistant: Jefferson T. Jones Loader: Suzy Dietz
Production Credits
info@schneideroptics.com • 818-766-3715 • 800-228-1254
103
ICG
DECEMBER 2016
“TIME AFTER TIME” Dir. of Photography: Dave Insley Operators: Tom Schnaidt, Jon Delgado Assistants: Boots Shelton, Ben Dadfar, Jerome Williams, Cameron Sizemore Loader: Peter Westervelt, Jackson Lewis Still Photographer: Sarah Shatz “TRAINING DAY” Dir. of Photography: Robert Gantz, Thomas Camarda Operators: Kenneth Brown, Craig Cockerill Assistants: Jamie Felz, Matthew Freedman, James Barela, Chris Burket Digital Imaging Tech: Kevin Britton Digital Utility: Sean Kehoe
Production Credits
WARNER/HORIZON “LONGMIRE” Dir. of Photography: Cameron Duncan, Jim Muro Operators: Alan Jacoby, Jason Goebel Assistants: Steven Early, Liza Bambenek, Cheri Barnard, Artu Arin Steadicam Operator: Jason Goebel Steadicam Assistant: Steven Early Digital Imaging Tech: Tim Gregoire Digital Utlity: Taylor Hilburn
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WHERE ARE THEY NOW?, LLC “OPRAH, WHERE ARE THEY NOW?” Operators: Mike Latino Assistants: Mark Killian WOODBRIDGE “BETTER CALL SAUL” Dir of Photography: Marshall Adams, ASC Operators: Paul Donachie, Matt Credle Assistants: Chris Norris, Rob Magnano, Rob Salviotti, Cheryl Barnard Steadicam Operator: Paul Donachie Loader: Bryan Jones Digital Utility: Claudio Banks Still Photographer: Michelle Short
COMMERCIALS AL MEDIA “STEVE SANTARSIERO FOR CONGRESS” Dir. of Photography: Jen Schneider Assistant: Andy Hensler A WHITE LABEL “COVERGIRL” Dir. of Photography: Peter Vermeer Assistants: Scott Kassenoff, Miles Custer, Digital Imaging Tech: Steve Harnell Still Photographer: Lacey Terrell DUO FILMS “G-80” Dir. of Photography: Michael Fitzmaurice Assistants: Greg Benitez, Cameron Fitzmaurice Digital Imaging Tech: Steve Harnell, Stuart Hammond
GOOD HUSTLE “JACK REACHER” Dir. of Photography: Matt Jensen Assistants: Andy DePung, Harrison Reynolds Digital Imaging Tech: Michael Borenstein HUNGRY MAN PRODUCTIONS “OLD NAVY” Dir. of Photography: Mauro Fiore, ASC Operators: Joseph Arena, Robert De Angelis, Sergio De Luca Assistants: Matt Reid, E.J. Misisco, Rudy Salas, Jeff Lynn Digital Imaging Tech: Daniel Hernandez INDEPENDENT FILMS “CONFUSED” Dir. of Photography: Hoyt Van Hoytema Operator: Hans Bjerno Assistants: Daniel Ferrell, Laura Goldberg, Nate Cummings, Kira Hernandez Digital Imaging Tech: Steve Harnell LAUNCH PAD FILMS “LEXUS” Dir. of Photography: Ross McLennan Phantom Operator: Drew Lauer Assistants: Chris Strauser, Seth Peschansky Digital Imaging Tech: Steve Harnell MELLOW MEDIA, LLC “GMC” Dir. of Photography: Stefan von Borbely Assistants: Micah Bisagni, Noah Glazer Blackburd Array Assistant: Mark Santoni Digital Imaging Tech: Michael Borenstein Camera Utility: Joe Kocsis “MERCEDES-BENZ” Dir. of Photography: Stefan von Borbely Assistants: Micah Bisagni, Noah Glazer, Mark Santoni, Tom Barrios Digital Imaging Tech: Michael Borenstein Camera Utility: Joe Kocsis MJZ “AT&T” Dir. of Photography: Matt Libatique, ASC Operator: Bela Trutz Assistants: Matt Stenerson, John Holmes, Joey O’Donnell, Jose De Los Angeles, Phil Volkoff Digital Imaging Tech: Frank Kowalczyk Camera Utility: Jessyca Harrison PALMER PRODUCTIONS “BRASIL” Dir. of Photography: Bradley Stonesifer Movi Operator: Connor O’Brien Assistants: Jeff Noble, Leonard Walsh, Alicia Pharris Digital Imaging Tech: Michael Borenstein PARK PICTURES “DRAFT CHOICE” Dir. of Photography: Ross McLennan
Assistants: Chris Strauser, Seth Peschansky Digital Imaging Tech: Steve Harnell “KOHL’S” Dir. of Photography: Lance Acord, ASC Operator: Joseph Messier Assistants: Mateo Bordieu, John Schivoleto, Max Deleo Digital Imaging Tech: Steve Harnell PRETTY BIRD “OREO” Dir. of Photography: Starr Whitesides Operator: Tobin Oldach Assistants: Travis Daking, Michael Klimchak, Peter Parson Digital Imaging Tech: Michael Borenstein RADICAL MEDIA “SAMSUNG” Dir. of Photography: Natasha Braier Operators: Bela Trutz, Shasta Spahn Assistants: Dominic Aluisi, Jonas Steadman, Eric Jensch Digital Imaging Tech: Matt Love Remote Head Tech: Jay Sheveck “WALMART” Dir. of Photography: Scott Cunningham Assistants: Pergrin Jung, Delfina Garfias Digital Imaging Tech: Will Chung Technocrane Tech: Nazarly Hatak Remote Head Tech: Jay Sheveck ROYAL STUDIOS “ONE X” Dir. of Photography: Johnny Simmons Operators: Robert Arnold, Ken Herft Assistants: Prentice Smith, Jose Angeles, Gina Victoria Digital Imaging Tech: Cliff Jones SPARE PARTS “NBC ENTERTAINMENT DIGITAL” Dir. of Photography: Byron Shah Steadicam Operator: Luke Rocheleau Assistants: Nicolas Martin, Geoff Goodloe Digital Utility: Jesse Tyler STATION “WALGREENS” Dir. of Photography: Kip Bogdahn Assistants: Ethan McDonald, Marcus Del Negro Digital Imaging Tech: Steve Harnell TORCH 2014, INC. “GROWN & SEXY” Dir. of Photography: Karsten Crash Gopinath Operators: Joe Provenzano, Dennis Noyes, Ruben Avendano Assistants: Greg Benitez, Hiro Fukuda, Luis Suarez, Bill Robinson, Rochelle Brown, Matthew Williams, Michael Stampler Camera Utility: Nathan Saks
DECEMBER 2016
ICG
Digital Imaging Tech: Dino Georgopoulos
Advertisers Index COMPANY PAGE 20th Century Fox 17, 19 Adorama 23 AJA 39 ARRI 30 Backstage Equipment 98 Blackmagic Design 9 Camera Car Systems 69 Chapman Leonard 67 Cinegear Expo 68 Cineo Lighting 33 Cinemoves 7 Convergent Design 107 Crafty Apes 57 CW Sonderoptic 35 Fox Searchlight 21 Glidecam 90 Jem Lighting 99 IDX 95 Lionsgate 13, 15 Kino Flo 89 Mac Tech LED Manfrotto 25 Mole Richardson 94 Paralinx 108 Panasonic 65 Paramount 11 Pro Cam Rentals 77 Quasar Science 101 Red 37 Sammy’s Cinema Works 97 Schneider Optics 103 Sony Pictures 4,5 Sundance Film Festival 56 Technicolor 41 Teradek 2,3 Zeiss 27
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Production Credits
VICTORHOUSE FILMS “FX NETWORK Dir. of Photography: Paul Tolton Operators: Mike Froehlich, Chris Robertson, Steve Wolfe Assistants: Chris Toll, Keith Jones. Josh Friz, James Jermyn, Ron Elliott, Jeremy Cannon Digital Imaging Tech: Steve Harnell
105
ICG
DECEMBER 2016
Stop
Specs: 35-mm Nikon Df with 1.8 prime lens @ 1/125 sec. / F2.5/ ASA 1000
MOTION
Dale Robinette This was shot on La La Land, Day 37 of 41, on the “star field” set (actually an LED background reflected into vinyl), for the incredible “Epilogue” scene. Linus Sandgren, our DP, in frame with his meter caught my eye. I loved the rim light, the set, and his solitary lithe self, so I pointed the camera and…
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